Chapter 1: Descent

Was this it? Was this the point where the Wasteland bent me over its knee like an unruly foal?

The cool floor was somewhat relieving against my cheek as I lied there wounded, gazing blearily through my swimming vision at the flickering readout on the small screen suspended in front of my right eye. Though it was badly damaged, cracks spidering all across its shiny monochromatic surface, I could still make out the sad little pegasus with indicators pointing to various parts of its body, insistently pointing out the multitude of wounds I’d sustained.

I was dimly aware of the slowly spreading pool of blood beneath me, and I noted somewhat morbidly that it was nearly the same shade of red as my stickily matted coat. Impending death had a funny way of putting insignificant things into perspective like that.

How long had it been since I’d gone down to that stars-forsaken place? Days, weeks, months? However long it had been, it had been long enough for my short, bristly mane to grow out into a disgusting shaggy mess. In all honesty, it felt like I’d been wandering around down there for an eternity. All this time and I still hadn’t managed to accomplish what I’d set out to do. How hard was it to track down one pony? Maybe I deserved to just bleed to death.

All I needed was a quick rest. Yeah, that would do me just fine and I’d be fighting fit again in no time. I closed my eyes for what seemed like a moment, but when I opened them again the little clock on the damaged screen said nearly ten minutes had passed. The slow, dull thud of my weakening heartbeat in my ears was soon drowned out by gunshots and shouting somewhere in the distance. They were coming.

No, damn it. Not like this; I couldn’t give up yet. I owed it to myself to at least see my goal achieved. I’d been in worse situations the past few weeks, and I could pull through this one. If that little mare was supposed to be here, then damn it, she’d be here... and so would her captor; my true target.

Slowly, shakily, I dragged myself back to my hooves and began to stumble forward. I’d thrown everything away that day when I decided to descend beneath the clouds, and giving up now would’ve made all of that pointless.

Could I have done anything different, I wonder? I felt myself slip into a trance as I plodded unsteadily forward, allowing the events to replay in my head.

That fateful day had started out just like any other. I jarred awake to the sound of Reveille, slammed my head on the bunk above me and tumbled onto the floor. Yes, I really did slam my head on the stars-damned bunk every morning. It was maddening in its regularity. Inhaling with a sharp hiss, I slapped a hoof to the sore spot and gently massaged it as I stood and filed out behind the rest of the troops on my way to the showers.

Floating high above the ground, the Grand Pegasus Enclave was the governing body of the pegasi that had fled above the clouds two hundred years ago, after the megaspells had hit Equestria. When we’d lost Cloudsdayle, our capital, the pegasi had cranked out enough clouds to completely blot out the sky, and we’d made our home up there. The clouds were regulated by a series of towers strewn all over Equestria, though their exact workings were privy only to the higher ups in the government.

One such spire rose magnificently up through the clouds, in the center of the small installation where I was posted. The Soarin Institute for Weapons Research and Development wasn’t much in the way of a key military structure, but it was important enough to warrant a small posting of personnel. As a lieutenant in the Enclave’s reconnaissance squadron, I, along with a few others, took small groups out on regular recon sorties as per regulations.

Reconnaissance was a thankless job. Every day we flew under the clouds to gather intelligence on the status of the Wasteland, logging the outposts and unit positions of anypony hostile to the Enclave, as well as monitoring all the hubs of civilization that had sprung up down there since people had started repopulating. It was all one big waste if you asked me; the government never took our findings into account. It had been okay to live down there for a long time now, but they lied to the pegasi population, burying our findings and telling everypony it was still too lethal to repopulate. It kept them happy, but for somepony who had to look at it every day, blissful ignorance was not an option.

Having gone through the same rote crap every day for years, it was no surprise when I found myself staring blankly at the floor, hot water running through my crew cut mane and down my muzzle. I stood there for some time, staring blankly at the steam curling up from the floor as the water helped me to wake up. Shutting the faucet off and shuffling over to a sink like a zombie, I pulled out my toothbrush as I approached.

I was halfway to completing step three of my four-step morning ritual when I heard somepony calling from behind me. I glared at the mirror in contempt. Everypony knew better than to bother me until I’d completed step four- acquire coffee. My anger faded a bit when I saw who it was. One of my squadmates: Duster. The laid-back country pegasus trotted up to me, a look of confusion on his face.

Duster was my oldest and dearest friend. My very first friend, actually. We’d met at our first day of flight school, and he’d helped me out of a spot of trouble. He had a beige coat and a sandy yellow mane, and could rarely be spotted without his straw hat perched atop his head. On his flank was a green hoof-operated insecticide sprayer- his cutie mark. He was built a lot more powerfully than me, his shoulders broader and his muscles better defined from years of working on his father’s cloud farm. When compared to my racer’s lean, agile physique, we looked like polar opposites. He was built for power, and I for speed. We covered each other’s weak points and It worked out relatively well for the two of us.

“LT! LT? What’s all this about, pardner?”

I raised an eyebrow. “Huh? What are you talking about?” Or that’s what I tried to say, at least. It came out something like: “Hah? Waaroo awkin ah-oot?” He rolled his eyes and gave me a level look, and I realized I hadn’t taken the toothbrush out of my mouth. Spitting it out into the sink, I repeated myself.

A look of confusion passed over his features. “Y’… y’ ain’t heard yet? They broke up our squad! Solara an’ I are flyin’ with Sergeant Nova tonight!”

My stomach lurched uncomfortably and my heart nervously started beating faster. That wasn’t good. My squad had been with me since long before I’d been posted here, despite all the stupid things I’d done since gaining command. That happened to be a miracle in and of itself, because I had done a lot of stupid things since I’d gained command; reckless and impulsive were at the very top of my resume.

Shaking my still-dripping-wet self off, I jumped into my flight barding, a black one-piece garment that covered my entire body and had pockets all over the place, grabbing all my things before trotting briskly to the door, Duster following close behind.

“I’m gonna go talk to the Colonel and get to the bottom of this. You and Solara meet me in the mess in ten.”

“Yes, sir.” I saw him swallow nervously out of the corner of my eye as he peeled off to find Solara, the other pony under my command. Why had the Colonel picked now of all times to separate me from the rest of my crew? One thing was for sure: she was about to get an earful from me. I ran through the halls at top speed, weaving through ponies going about their duties, and marched up to a door whose plaque read “Base Commander”. I hammered aggressively upon it, and without waiting for a response, barged on in.

Three ponies in lab smocks whirled to glare angrily at the source of the disturbance. Behind a large desk at the back of the room I could just barely make out the slight form of Colonel Astral, the Institute’s base commander, peeking between two of the three ponies assembled in front of her. The look in her eyes was absolutely haunted, telling me that these eggheads had been harrying her over something for quite some time, her nerves having been pushed close to the breaking point. I read her lips as she silently mouthed a pair of words to stealthily get a message across: “Help me.” So I did what seemed to be, to me at least, the most logical thing. I started a fight.

“To what do I owe the pleasure of this, ah, interruption, Lieutenant Mach?”

Shouldering my way roughly past the group of eggheads, I slammed my hoof on her desk in legitimate frustration. “You know damn well why I’m here, Astral. What are you playing at, reassigning my squad? Is there a reason I had to find this out from Duster? You couldn’t have told your own brother you tore his squad asunder?”

That’s right, Astral was my sister. My little sister. I had five years on her and still she was higher in the chain of command than me. She was smart though; she worked her tail off to get to where she was and deserved her position way more than I did mine. I looked her over, trying to get a read on her expression as she glared back at me, her grey eyes mirroring my own. She was a cute kid, half a head shorter than me with a jet-black coat. She wore her aquamarine mane in a bob, cut short in the back and lengthening gradually as it got closer to her face, forming long bangs that hung around neck level and framed her cute face quite nicely.

Astral’s brow furrowed with genuine displeasure. “You will address me as Colonel, Lieutenant. This insubordination is exactly why you’ve been relieved of command. The Enclave feels you are no longer fit to lead a squad, given your reckless streak.”

My jaw dropped in surprise, but I regained my composure quickly enough and felt my ears begin to burn in rage. They did that a lot when I was angry. “That’s a load of horseapples and you know it! If that had any bearing on the situation Solara and Duster would have been reassigned years ago!”

She reached out to straighten some papers I’d skewed. “Be that as it may, Lieutenant, this is only for a trial basis, to see if you get your act together when you’re separated from your friends. I know how much of a distraction that mare Solara is for you.”

“What does she have to do with- that’s-” I spluttered, my ears practically on fire now. It hadn’t been my intention to get legitimately worked up, and as a result I fell back on a tried and true argumentative tactic: deflection. “Well maybe if you didn’t spend so much time… collating, or- or whatever, you could find yourself a buckfriend and learn to loosen up a little!”

The three ponies she’d been having a meeting with were looking very uncomfortable by this point, and kept shifting glances between each other and the door. This time it was her turn to slam a hoof on the desk, scattering the papers she’d carefully reorganized.

“Look Lieutenant,” she hissed through gritted teeth, “what I do with my spare time isn’t any of your business. Maybe if you had more blood running into that pea-sized, pathetic excuse for an organ you call a brain instead of those big goofy wings you’d be able to hold down a promotion for longer than five minutes!”

Well now, that stung a little. I couldn’t help the way I’d been born. I had the largest wingspan of any pegasus I’d ever met, which according to some- like my doting, supportive mother, stars bless her- was a blessing, and to others, made me a walking freakshow.

“Prude!” I bellowed in retaliation.

“Lech!” She shot back.

Alas, we were getting nowhere in a hurry; her unwelcome guests wouldn’t be likely to leave unless we were willing to ramp it up a whole lot more. Okay then. It was time for the big guns. Time to hit her where it really hurt.

“I’d go live on the surface long before I’d kiss dad’s ass to work my way up the ladder.”

That did it. With a growl she launched herself over the desk and cannoned into me, sending us tumbling to the floor. The group scattered with a shout as we became a whirlwind of legs and hooves, tumbling around the office as we wrestled with each other.

She’d never been good at close-quarters-combat, and I easily managed to pin her. With a wicked grin I shouted “Cutie horse!” and thrust a hoof into the swirling galaxy on her flank. She gasped in pain before seizing one of my ears in her teeth and pulling- hard. Gritting my teeth despite feeling my ear practically start to tear off, I turned it around and managed to get her into a headlock when I heard the door close. Looking up, I saw that they’d left, evidently none too keen on being witness to our fight.

“Mmph m mm?” Astral mumbled, her mouth muffled by one of my forelegs.

“Yeah. Yeah, they’re gone,” I said, releasing her from the hold. She got to her hooves, straightening her dress uniform and returned to her position behind the desk. I helped pick up some of the things that had fallen off of it, pausing as I saw the framed picture of my father, General Immelmann. Standing at attention, a cap adorned with three stars tucked underneath a wing, the stern, wizened old blue-grey stallion’s expression glared coldly at the viewer. I returned his gaze with one of contempt before returning the picture to its place on the desk. “So seriously, why did you reassign my squad?”

Astral snorted. It was a funny noise coming from her normally-demure self. “I was being serious, Mach. You need to cool it; need I remind you that you’ve been court martialed and busted down more times than anypony else in the history of the Enclave? The only reason you haven’t been dishonorably discharged yet is because of General Immelmann. He can’t afford the dishonor that would bring upon the family.”

I chuckled darkly. “Horseapples. If, for whatever reason, I ever decided to up and leave the Enclave he’d be the first one in line with the Dashite branding iron. He wouldn’t even try to cover it up. Now you, on the other hoof… Well, you’re daddy’s little filly. He’d be willing to flush his entire career down the toilet if it meant he’d get you off the hook.”

When the pegasi had closed up the skies two hundred years ago, Rainbow Dash, one of the six ministry mares, didn’t approve of the action and instead left for the surface to provide aid. Over time, other pegasi grew to adopt a likeminded viewpoint, and left the Enclave for the Wasteland below. These pegasi called themselves Dashites, and were branded with a cloud and lightning bolt, Rainbow Dash’s cutie mark, to reflect that. Some Dashites wore their brands like badges of honor, but some of them, and definitely all of the pegasi in the Enclave saw it as a mark of shame and disgrace.

Astral frowned disapprovingly, and blew a stray lock of her mane out of her face. “Look Mach, we’ve been over this before. Father isn’t out to get you; he just wants to see you make something of yourself. You have a great military career ahead of you if you just exercise a little discipline. All this business fooling around with your squadmates will get you nowhere in a hurry.”

I gave her my best scowl. “Look, I’m not dad, and I’m not you. What he wants for me I absolutely will not stand for; I can’t be content to sit behind a desk all day. You know what I wanted to make of my military career, and so does dad. Because he doesn’t agree with it and has been blocking me at every turn since I was a colt, I really don’t care where I end up as long as I get to fly. I need to be out there, Astral. I need to feel the wind in my feathers, and at least running recon patrols gives me the chance to do that.”

“Yes, well,” she said, all business once more. “About that. You’re flying with the twins tonight, we’ve got some new equipment for you to test out. It’s right up your alley, I think you’ll enjoy it.”

I groaned and flopped to the floor. “Oh no, not the twins. Shoot me, Astral. Just save me the pain and misery and put one between my eyes right now.”

Gust and Gale, or the Wind-Twins as most called them, were two of the most insufferable mares I’d ever had the misfortune of working with. The worst part of it was that they outranked me, which meant I’d be stuck following their orders. For some reason they had it out for me, big time. I don’t know what the hell I’d done, or if it was even my fault to begin with; maybe they just didn’t like my family all that much. It would make sense, given that my father was a much decorated general, my mother a top-class corpspony and my little sister a Base Commander.

She smiled smugly down her nose at me. “Well, maybe a sortie or two with them will get you to straighten up and fly right. Report to Weapons Development when you’re through here. Dismissed.”

I rose to my hooves and saluted her, as was proper, before turning and leaving her office. I dragged my hooves as I slowly made my way towards the mess hall, weaving through the ponies hurriedly rushing off to other parts of the base. How were the hallways always full of them? They had to get to where they were going eventually.

When I arrived at the mess, it took me a moment to locate Duster. The place was packed wall-to-wall with the breakfast rush, the line for food wrapping around the room to end right by the door where I’d come in. Scanning the long tables full of ponies trying to get a quick bite in before starting their morning duties, I found him at his usual spot, in the back nearest the north corner. Plopping down beside him, I allowed my head to slam into the surface of the table, and groaned melodramatically.

“Where is Solara?” I mumbled into the shaped cloud.

I heard the smile spreading across his face as he spoke. “Y’ took a bit longer’n a spell, she weren’t too happy. She already blames y’ fer losin’ command o’ our squad. Reckon she’s got a point. Ah’d watch out if Ah were you, pardner, she’s on the warpath.”

He nudged me in the ribs. “Hey. Hey, ‘member that time y’ pissed her off, an’ she beaned y’ with that hailstone the size o’ a melon?” He started to snicker as I rubbed the spot on the back of my head where I’d been hit by it. It had been months ago, but my head throbbed with the memory of it as if it had happened just yesterday. I’d forgotten we were supposed to go out to dinner once we were off duty and I’d inadvertently stood her up to go to the bar with Duster. Needless to say, she hadn’t been too happy about it.

“Or what ‘bout the last time, when she took a leaf out o’ yer own book, stole a thundercloud from the armory an’ used it t’ hit y’ with a bolt o’ lightnin’?” He broke out into a raucous bout of laughter, and I pulled my head up to glare at him.

“Okay, no. That’s not funny. I was in the infirmary for three days; she could’ve killed me that time.” Personally, I didn’t think I deserved that one all too much. It had affected me much more than it had her. I’d gotten busted down from captain to second lieutenant for pissing the wrong bunch of ponies off, landing her, Duster and I at our current posting as a result.

“An’ yet,” He choked out between gasps of air, “y’ still go out with her. Tell me now, LT, why is that?”  

I felt my ears start to burn, and I slugged him in the ribs. Who was he to talk? He didn’t even have a marefriend; he was terrible with the ladies. “I’ll tell you when you tell me why you’re not still working on the cloud farm, you backwoods hick.”

“Backwoods? Well now, Ah reckon that ain’t fair. Ain’t no trees up here in the clouds, feller. ‘Sides, Ah don’t belong on no farm. Ah was born t’ serve in the military like muh pappy before me.”

“Uh huh,” I said sarcastically as I rolled my eyes, “the insecticide pump on your flank tells a different story, pal.”

It was Duster’s turn to get all red in the face. “Now lookie here feller, it ain’t ‘bout what’s on yer flank that determines what yer good at. What really counts is what’s in here.” He gestured to his chest with a hoof.

To tell the truth, I never really believed that a cutie mark was an accurate indicator of one’s special talent, anyway. My own cutie mark was a winged silver horseshoe. What the hell kind of talent produced a mark like that?

Pushing myself up, I started towards the door. “You keep telling yourself that, Duster. Whatever helps you sleep at night.”

The sound of Duster’s grumbling faded behind me as I exited the mess and started towards the Weapons Development lab, keen on checking out the new equipment Astral had mentioned.

The institute was set up in a circle, like a giant compass rose. To the north was the main building, to the east was the barracks, to the west was the hangar, and all the way in the south was Weapons Development. The tower rose up in the middle of the installation, and a flagpole had been erected beside it on the parade grounds. I glided over the parade grounds, passing between the barracks and hangars, where a few mechanic pegasi were tinkering with a Vertibuck, a versatile little aircraft that could function as a troop transport or a gunship as the situation called for it. I nodded to them as they waved, and continued on towards the R&D lab.

If there was one location on the base where security was tight, it was definitely the lab. The moment I was inside, I was bombarded from every which way by security checkpoints and clearance checks. All of the ponies here knew me by now, but the Enclave was very thorough when it came to matters of such a sensitive nature. I breathed a sigh of relief as the last guard waved me through, and I pushed open the door to the lab, where I immediately began searching for the Doc.

Chief Engineer Noctilucent, or Doc as I called him, and sometimes very rarely Doc Noc, was an eccentric pony to say the least, but he was the best damn weapons engineer I’d ever met, and he always had something interesting to show me. I was examining an energy rifle with its parts eviscerated and strewn all over a workbench when he called out from behind me, causing me to jump in fright.

“Mach! I was wondering when you’d get here, sonny. Got something real nice for you today. Two things, in fact.”

Doc had a light grey coat, one of the lightest I’d ever seen- it was almost white. His mane was something else though, it shot out in every which way, like he’d been struck by a bolt of lightning and it had refused to lie flat ever since. If not for the pince-nez he always had perched on his muzzle, it would have easily been his defining characteristic.

“Oh, yeah?” I said, gripping his outstretched hoof and shaking enthusiastically. “Let’s see what you’ve got for me, Doc.” I followed as he led me further into his lab. My neck was starting to hurt as I tried to whip it around to look at everything all at once. Doc always had a large assortment of half-assembled gadgets and doodads lying around his workspace, and most were really a sight to see.

“Well,” Doc said, turning to beam at me. “Here it is, my friend.” He swept a sheet off of the object on the table and I felt my mouth pull into a huge grin. I felt like a colt in a candy store.

It was about as long as a Novasurge rifle, maybe a little longer, and a whole lot bulkier. The rear two thirds of the weapon was essentially one big block of metal. The rest of it was a series of odd parts wrapped around the barrel that extended nearly all the way to the muzzle. A small targeting device sat atop it, and I peered into it to find that it wasn’t a scope as I’d thought.

“Stars alive, Doc! What is it?”

“This, my friend,” He said, with another fierce grin of pride, “is what I like to call a coilgun. Top brass is looking for something they can mass produce that will punch through those pesky alicorn shields, and I’d like to think I’ve done it with this beauty here.”

I felt my mane crawl in discomfort. Alicorns were a fearsome opponent in battle. Possessing elements of all three pony races, they brought a lot of power to the table. Along with their deadly array of offensive spells, like shooting arrows comprised entirely of magic, for example, they could also teleport and form shields powerful enough to deflect nearly anything thrown at them. If this coilgun could do what Doc hoped it could do, then any threat they posed would soon be a thing of the past.

“Give me the brief on it, Doc.”

“Very well, then. Firstly, realize this is still a prototype and not indicative of the final product, which is why you’re going to be testing it for me. The weapon itself fires a solid slug, which is propelled by a series of electromagnetic fields shrouding the barrel. We’re hoping the high velocity will bypass the alicorns’ shields entirely.”

I circled the table, drinking in the raw beauty of the weapon lying there. “Ammunition? Power?”

Doc gestured to a magazine attached to the weapon’s side, and an empty socket nearby.

“The coilgun fires 2 millimeter slugs, stored in the magazine here, which cap at twenty. The gun itself requires one microspark cell per shot to magnetize the round and charge the electromagnet capacitors. I’m still working on the power efficiency, but as it is a prototype, these things will change for the production model.”

I rubbed my chin thoughtfully. “A whole microspark cell, huh? Those aren’t hard at all to come by, but having to swap cells after every shot is deadly on the battlefield. What about operating it? It seems rather heavy, and I’m noticing this device here isn’t a scope of any kind.”

Doc walked over to another table, where a small device sat by a soldering iron and a torn up metal shell. “You have a keen eye for details, Mach. That brings me to the second piece of equipment I’ve got for you. The weapon uses an advanced targeting suite designed to interface directly with either a PipBuck, or the onboard targeting systems in powered armor suits. Since you never applied for power armor training, and considering PipBucks are awful hard to come by up here in the clouds, I whipped up this neat little number for you. Go ahead, slip it on.”

It was rather simple in design. An arm holding a small, semi-transparent display screen jutted out from an angular, ovoid, octagonal shape that looked like somepony had ground all the round edges off of an ear. The main body of the device itself had a band around it, which looked to fasten around the backside of my ear, lending some sense as to the device's strange shape. I put the thing on, and Doc hit a switch on the side, which caused the little screen hanging in front of my right eye to flicker to life. The first thing I noticed were the white diagrams popping up at the edges of my range of vision, completely independent from the device. It looked like they were being displayed right there on my actual eyes themselves.

“Whoa, what the-? Doc, what is all this?”

He chuckled amusedly to himself. “What you’ve got there, son, is a PipBuck. I’ve cut it down a bit to be more compact and portable, to help it fit better with your role as a reconnaissance trooper. It retains most of the PipBuck’s features: the item sorting spell, Eyes-Forward-Sparkle friend-foe spell, Stable-Tec Arcane Targeting Spell, magical radiation detector, radio receiver, you get the picture. Additionally, there are a few things of my own design I threw in. I’ve removed the lamp to make room for a telescopic variable zoom function and an infrared vision spell. The infrared spell works for both night vision and thermal imaging, I’m proud to say. I call it the PipBuck Scout, or ScoutBuck, for short.”

I gazed at the little semi-transparent screen again. It was displaying a little picture of a pegasus, and showed all its limbs in good working order. “You’ve got all that crammed into a neat little package, and all the displays are in black and white, Doc? What are we, caveponies?”

Doc grimaced. “Ah, well the best I could get was an older model PipBuck, a 2000. I hear Stable-Tec phased them out some time ago, all the stable ponies are probably using the PipBuck 3000 by now.

“As for the weapon itself, it can’t be fired via traditional means. It is a strictly battle saddle mounted weapon.”

“Well what are you waiting for?” I said with an ear-to-ear grin, hopping up and down on the spot like an excitable schoolfilly. “Hook me up, Doc! Slap that thing on!”

Doc slid a hoof protectively over the weapon, shaking his head. “No, the gun stays with me until you’re ready for deployment. I’ve a few tests yet left to run. You can keep the ScoutBuck, though. The mass production coilgun is intended to be standard issue for troopers in power armor anyway. It’s my gift to you, Mach.”

I fidgeted uncomfortably. “Gee, thanks, Doc. I honestly don’t know what to say, I’ve never been given a gift quite like this before.”

“No thanks necessary, sonny!” He slung a hoof around my neck and gestured around his lab. “Your field tests have helped me push forward most of my best designs! It’s the least I could do to pay you back for taking my prototypes out into active combat, where you’re trusting your life to my engineering prowess.”

I’d never really thought about it that way before. In retrospect, it made me feel incredibly uncomfortable. Something could have gone wrong on any one of several occasions, and I could’ve died because of it. Hindsight was fifty-fifty though, as they say.

I shook Doc’s hoof one last time as I began to see myself out. “Well, let me get out of your mane, I’ve got a bunch of time to kill before the sortie tonight, think I’ll go test out your new gadget on the firing range.”

Doc looked up over his glasses at me, his expression one of seriousness and concern. “Make sure you get a good feel for the Eyes-Forward-Sparkle and S.A.T.S., they could mean all the difference between life and death out there. Take this mission seriously, Mach, alicorns are no joke. If the coilgun doesn’t perform to expectations, you get the hell out of there and we’ll readdress it. I can’t stress enough that it isn’t something worth getting killed over.”

“Don’t worry about me, Doc. I’ll come back alive, I’ll get you your data, and I’ll even bring your equipment back in pristine order.”

“That’s really all I can ask. Good luck out there, Lieutenant.”

I nodded and left Doc’s lab, passing back through the staggering amount of checkpoints before emerging once again into daylight. I drifted slowly towards the barracks to collect my equipment, noting that the ScoutBuck was showing all the ponies on the base as little white blips on the E.F.S. Doc had said it was a friend-foe system. So white blips were non-hostiles? What color would hostile targets be on this relic, grey?

Smirking, I shook my head, amused by my own thoughts as I entered the barracks and made my way back to my bunk. We had distinct roles in our little squads. In mine, Solara, as the lightest and most nimble flyer had been our lead scout. Duster was our point buck, first in, last out. Me though? I was our heavy weapons specialist, and that meant I got to play with the all the fun toys.

I hauled the crate out from under my bunk and pulled the lid off. There sat my baby, my pride and joy. A 5.56 millimeter light machine gun, which I’d nicknamed Rattler. Pulling it out, I rigged it up to my battle saddle and strapped the whole kit and caboodle on before heading out.

When I got to the range, I procured several belts of ammunition and hooked them up to my battle saddle’s autoloader. I stopped to watch the other troops shooting for a short while before facing downrange myself. With a start, I noticed something I hadn’t on the way over. A small crosshair had appeared in the center of my vision.

Leaving the targeting spell alone for the time being, I instead relied only on the newly added crosshair. Firing in short, controlled bursts as I’d been taught in Basic, I managed to pull a pretty decent grouping. Nodding in acceptance of the crosshair’s accuracy, I waited for the loader to feed in a new belt before engaging S.A.T.S. I almost had a panic attack when I did. Time slowed to a standstill, and I found that I could target not only the paper target downrange, but everypony around me as well! I could even target specific body parts, and the spell told me what the probability of hitting the target was.

Focusing on the paper target, I queued up a series of shots, and let the spell go. Time still flowed in that distorted manner, and I loosed several short bursts at the target in that period. When I snapped out of it, I noticed that my grouping this time was nearly all dead center-mass.

“Whoa.”

I grinned and licked my lips before slipping back into S.A.T.S. for another round. It wasn’t long before I managed to draw a crowd of curious onlookers. Most of them had their jaws hanging agape as I carved a hole in the paper target’s center. When Rattler clicked dry, I finally noticed the group that had formed.

“As you were!” I snapped in irritation, before turning to leave. I hadn’t gotten far when a pair of hooves slipped over my eyes.

“Guess who?”

Uh-oh. I knew that voice. I tried to take off, but she had me pinned before I’d even made it a foot off the ground. “Uh, hi Solara,” I grinned sheepishly up at the mare sitting on my chest.

Though it was mostly covered by her flight barding, Solara had the most blindingly bright orange coat I’d ever seen on a pony. Looking at her was like staring at the surface of the very sun itself. Her wine red mane was just as much an exemplification of her personality as it was Solara turning her nose up at military regs. It was long, wild, and just as untamed as she was, windswept and blown out in every direction. When the light hit it just right, it somehow managed to look blue. Her cutie mark was a pair of binoculars, and it served her well. She had the best eyesight out of anypony I'd ever met. Perhaps Solara's most distinguishing characteristic, however, were the intricate patterns of the feathers on her wings. Comprised of multiple hues of oranges, yellows and reds, Solara's wings looked as if they were made of purest, shimmering flame. I'd never seen anything quite like it before.

As we stared at each other I remembered the last two times I’d pissed Solara off, which made me none too eager to see her at the moment. Sweat was starting to bead on my forehead as we continued to glare at each other, and my mind raced with the possibilities she could be planning to exact her wrathful vengeance upon me. It was quite the shock when she broke into her cute lopsided grin and clambered off of me, offering me a hoof up.

“Jeez, calm down. I’m not mad at you, Duster was just riling you up, trying to make you nervous. You know how he is.”

Oh. Oh, thank the stars, I thought I’d be a goner after that incident with the thundercloud. I fought the impulse to wipe my brow in relief. “Well, uh, you can never be too careful, right? There’s not much that can top being shocked by lightning.”

“Look,” she said mutedly, leaning in close, her tone serious. “I heard through the grapevine they’ve got you testing a prototype weapon against alicorns. As much as I want Duster and I to be the ones to have your back, my wings are clipped. You better not do something stupid and wind up dead, or I’ll kill you.”

I chuckled. “You know that makes no sense, right? Look, I’ll tell you the same thing I told Doc: I’ll be back, and I’ll complete the mission too. Where are you going tonight, by the way?”

She rolled her eyes and blew a raspberry in response. “Command’s got us headed all the way over to Hoofington to check out what it is those Thunderhead featherbrains are up to.”

Thunderhead was another pegasus city, formed around Shadowbolt tower. Intel reports suggested they were up to some shady dealings in the Wasteland, way, way over in Hoofington.

“Pfft, boring. That’s a long way to fly for a whole lot of nothing. You have fun with your goose chase while I go get some real action.”

“Oh, I’ll show you some real action, stud.” Solara purred, sidling up to me. I stepped back a hoof as she approached.

“Hey, any other time of day I’d step in and rock your world, but we’re on duty and I’ve got shit to do. We’ve been busted for fraternization more times than I can count and- mmph!”

She cut me off as she pressed her muzzle to mine in a passionate kiss. It wasn’t long before I gave up and reciprocated her enthusiastic efforts.

“We’re gonna get caught,” I said between breaths. Let’s take this someplace a little more private.”

She seized my hoof in hers and pulled me towards the hangar, where I noticed the mechanics had finished their maintenance on the Vertibuck. Solara made a beeline for the open troop bay, and slammed the door shut after she’d dragged me inside.

“Well, now that I’ve got you all to myself…” she said with a wicked smile before pouncing on me.

Hey, if it might be your last day alive, you may as well enjoy it, right?

Evidently we’d fallen asleep sometime after our wild shenanigans, and I looked out of the Vertibuck’s cockpit windscreen to see that night had fallen. Quickly, I refastened my battle saddle and replaced the ScoutBuck on my ear.

My heart skipped a beat when I looked at the ScoutBuck’s clock. “Oh, shit! I’m late for the briefing!”

I took only a moment to kiss Solara on the forehead before launching myself out of the Vertibuck at top speed towards the institute’s main building. Ignoring base regulations, I flew through the corridors as well, to the dismay of many of those ponies constantly shuffling from point A to point B.

Slamming open the door to the briefing room, I skidded to a stop in my hurry, my hoof to my forehead in a salute. “Ma’am, I apologize for my tardiness, I lost track of time!” The Wind-Twins, Gust and Gale, both turned to regard me with looks of disgust. It wasn’t too hard to tell them apart, twins though they were. They were both a light grey with matching dark blue eyes, but Gale, the older (by minutes, as her sister constantly pointed out) of the two, wore her charcoal grey mane tied up in a bun while her younger sister had hers woven into a long braid. My eyes flicked to the captain’s bars at their necks and I swallowed nervously, holding my salute while they stared me down.

“You’re late, Lieutenant,” Gale snarled angrily. “The briefing started ten minutes ago.”

“I know ma’am, and I apologize for that. I was uh… I was testing out the new piece of gear Doc issued me.” I lied through my teeth, but there was a chance they’d buy it. Besides, it wasn’t a complete lie.

“Very well,” Gale said curtly. “I suppose that is an acceptable excuse.” At long last she returned the salute, and I allowed my hoof to drop in relief.

“I imagine you got an idea of our mission from the Chief Engineer, but allow me to elaborate. Command wants us to test the effectiveness of the prototype coilgun on alicorn shields. In order to do this, we’re heading into the very heart of their territory- Maripony.”

I felt my blood run cold, and I swallowed a lump in my throat. “M- Maripony? Sending three pegasi into an alicorn nest that big is suicide! Even if the coilgun works flawlessly, we’ll probably all wind up dead before we can get the observational data back to base!”

“If you have a problem with our orders, Lieutenant, you may take it up with Command.”

“Just give me the stars-damned gun and let’s get this over with,” I snapped through clenched teeth.

With uncannily appropriate timing, Doc chose that moment to stroll through the door, an MP pegasus hauling the coilgun for him.

“Well, here it is, Mach. Let’s hook her up to that battle saddle of yours.”

I stepped over to them, and Doc and the MP began rigging it up to my battle saddle. “Hey, mind Rattler, there. That gun and I go way back.”

Doc adjusted his glasses and took a good look at it. “When was the last time you serviced this weapon, Lieutenant?”

I didn’t even need to think on that one. “Just last night before I turned in. I’ve just used it recently to test out the ScoutBuck though, so excuse me if it’s a bit out of sorts.”

“Actually, I was surprised with how well it’s been maintained. If you manage to keep it this well taken care of, it’ll be with you for quite a while yet. Now then, you should be ready to go, I’ve linked the trigger to your battle saddle’s bit, and your ScoutBuck should recognize the targeting suite.”

I flicked an eye over to the display screen and noticed that the pegasus had been replaced with the most needlessly complicated reticule I’d ever seen. “Is this reticule really necessary, Doc? I’ve got a perfectly good crosshair right here.”

Doc simply chuckled. “The reticule is there for a reason, Lieutenant. The telescopic zoom function I mentioned? The coilgun’s targeting suite is designed to work hoof-in-hoof with it. If need be, you can treat it as a designated markspony’s rifle. A somewhat overpriced, ridiculously powerful markspony’s rifle, but one nonetheless. Here, I’ve gathered all the magazines I’ve managed to put together thus far. You’ll have to obtain microspark cells when you pick up the ammunition for your other weapon.”

“Thanks, Doc.” I took the satchel he offered to me, loaded with maybe ten magazines at the most. “Look, I’ve just found out how serious this mission is, and I’d just like to say I appreciate what you’ve done for me all these years. You’ve made life a little less boring for me, testing out all your little toys has been fun.”

Doc stomped a hoof on the ground and nickered crossly. “Look Lieutenant, you made a promise and I’m holding you to it. You come back alive, and with my data and weapon, or you’ll have earned my wrath. Believe me, you don’t want to earn my wrath,” he said, moving in close to glare at me.

“All right, then,” I said, gripping his hoof one more time for a shake, before heading out of the briefing room behind the twins. We stopped briefly at the armory to collect their weapons and ammunition for mine. While the twins armed themselves with a pair of Novasurge rifles apiece, I slung as many belts of 5.56 ammo as I could into the battle saddle’s autoloader, and crammed a bunch of microspark cells into any spare pouches I had in my flight barding.

We stepped out of the armory and into the brisk night sky, strapped head to hoof with death dealing weaponry and ammunition. Pausing, I looked wistfully up at the stars twinkling in the night sky before turning my focus to the full moon. Some ponies told me they could see a mare in the moon, but I couldn’t see anything. Could be I was blind. Nah, I was recon, I had eyes like a hawk. I probably just had a woeful lack of imagination.

“Lieutenant! We’re on the clock, now. Get a move on, trooper!”

The twins hovered idle above me, waiting while I stood there like a dope. “Well,” I said, unfurling my wings. “Let’s go stir up a hornet’s nest.”

We flew in a loose formation, Gust in the lead and to the left, Gale in between and to my right, and me bringing up the rear, dead center. It was a long flight out to Maripony; not as long as it would take Nova’s squad to get to Hoofington, but there was a considerable amount of time to kill on the way.

I activated the infrared spell on the ScoutBuck and amused myself by scanning the desolate, barren wasteland below us. There were twinkling lights of small towns and encampments, ponies trying to eke out a living on the cards fate had dealt them. Here and there was a campfire where a group had settled down for the night, and even some caravans were still on the move, trying to get to their next stop as quickly as possible, so as not to be hit by raiders.

Ugh, every time I saw it it got more and more depressing. I’d seen a lot of messed up shit on reconnaissance detail, and it never got any easier to deal with. Every time I saw something that made me physically sick to my stomach I told myself I’d leave the Enclave behind and do something about it, but when push came to shove I was always chickening out. Still though, I felt like one of these days something would actually manage to push me over the edge. What that would be I could only begin to guess at.

The ScoutBuck’s map marking function had been notifying me each time we passed a location of significance, and something caught my eye as we started to pass over the ruins of Ponyville. I jerked to a stop to engage the ScoutBuck’s zoom function, and focused the screen on a small scuffle that had broken out by a bridge.

“What is it, Lieutenant?” The twins had noticed I was no longer in formation, and had swept around to hover nearby. I held up a hoof for silence and gestured towards the disturbance.

It looked to be a fight between raiders and slavers, but that wasn’t what had caught my eye. What had made me stop were the two ponies the slavers had been transporting. Both were unicorns, but one of them was wearing Stable-Tec utility barding with a big 2 on the back. She had to have been fresh out of the stable, her barding was spotless, and had no rips or tears in it.

As I looked on, she undid her shackles in a deft display of telekinetic prowess and got to work on the other unicorn’s before she was interrupted by a pair of raiders crossing the bridge. It was a quiet night, and their voices carried all the way up to where we hovered idle.

“Looks like we got ourselves some prizes!” One of them, another unicorn, exclaimed in glee as she approached.

“Help us?” Said the stable pony meekly, she sounded scared out of her gourd. To be fair, she had every right to be. Raiders were certifiably insane. You could never predict what they’d do next, but there was one thing you could always count on: their penchant for violence. It was unquenchable and knew no bounds.

“Oh, I’ll help myself to you, all right!” The unicorn shrieked, and she delivered a swift kick to the stable pony.

Something inside of me snapped at that moment. Up until now, I’d never given a flying feather about doing anything to stop all the injustice I saw beneath the clouds. Sure I whined and bitched about it, but as a soldier, it was my duty to follow orders and nothing more. Watching that innocent little stable pony catch a beatdown from a raider, when she probably had no idea how brutal and unforgiving the Wasteland could be, caused something to click into place.

“I have to do something. I’m putting an end to this, now.” I started towards the fight, intending to strafe the raiders who were now trying to shoot the hooves off of the other captive.

“We don’t have time for this, Lieutenant,” Gale hissed. “We have a mission to complete.”

I ignored her, checking to make sure Rattler was ready to go.

“Grab him, Gust! Grab him before he starts an incident! Lieutenant, you will fly steady. You know all military actions go through the council first, and we are not to fire until fired upon, unless the target is a known hostile to the Enclave.”

I struggled against Gust’s hold on me. “Let me go! Ten seconds, just give me ten seconds, that’s all I need! Those ponies are as good as gone in ten seconds flat!”

From behind me I heard Gale’s Novasurge rifles hum to life and begin to crackle with energy. “You will fly steady, Lieutenant, or I will shoot you dead where you hover.”

Damn it, my wings were clipped. Either I could go help anyway and catch a pair of energy beams in the back, or I could turn away and hope the stable pony could manage to get the upper hoof somehow. My flight barding was made of thin cloth and had no armor plates, it would never protect against an energy beam. I’d be severely wounded or turned into a steaming pile of ash. But if I sat there and did nothing, odds were the poor unicorn would wind up dead. Me or her. Me or her. I clenched my teeth hard enough to crack one as I hovered there, my mind racing to make itself up.

“Fuck!” I wriggled free of Gust and streaked off towards Maripony. I wanted to help, stars, I did. But I didn’t want to die for it. My life was more valuable to me than that of a complete stranger’s. The faster I got the hell away from Ponyville, the faster I could forget about that poor stable pony I’d just left to fend for herself. She was a unicorn, that had to count for something, right? Right? Unicorns were crafty, she’d figure something out.

I tried my damnedest to focus on the mission, but that niggling little thought in the back of my head wouldn’t go away. I’d just left a pony to, in all likelihood, die. As a soldier, wasn’t it my duty to prevent exactly that? I’d been more concerned with my own life, when my sworn duty was to protect others. Granted she wasn’t a citizen of the Enclave, but that was neither here nor there. It was everypony’s right to live.

I poured on the speed in frustration, leaving the twins behind me as I flew ever closer to Maripony. If there was one thing that could calm me down, it was definitely flying. Preferably fast flying, it gave me a rush like nothing else could, and tended to make all of life’s problems seem insignificant.

“Reduce airspeed, Lieutenant,” Gale’s voice crackled in my ScoutBuck’s earpiece. What the hell, it was a radio transceiver, too? “Rejoin formation and tighten up immediately, we’re approaching the target.”

I checked behind me to see how far back they were before pulling a long, lazy loop, coming in behind them and sliding into my position in the formation.

“Let’s get this over with; I need to shoot something.”

We slowly approached the massive crater that had once been Splendid Valley. During the war, a balefire bomb had been detonated in the underground gem mining tunnels, producing a massive sinkhole. Somewhere in the crater would be the Maripony mining station, and we set out for it immediately.

“Eyes on. What do you see, Lieutenant?” Gale said, squinting through the darkness.

I used the infrared spell to comb the valley, but there were no signs of hostility anywhere. There weren’t even any blips on my E.F.S. That didn’t mean a thing though, alicorns could teleport, and it really wouldn’t surprise me if they had invisibility spells, either.

“Negative visual. No hostiles in sight.”

My heart was hammering in my chest as we approached the mining station. Something wasn’t right, here. We should’ve been beset on all sides by alicorns, but we hadn’t even seen one yet. Cautiously, we began to move inside, the sisters spreading out to give me a clear shot down the narrow passage.

“Give me a second here, switching to thermal.”

I had a hostile marked as a little red indicator on my E.F.S., but I couldn’t pin down the location. Swapping modes on the ScoutBuck, I felt my rapidly beating heart freeze cold. There was an alicorn standing just down the hallway, waiting for us.

“Get down!”

The sisters hit the dirt as I centered the alicorn in the ScoutBuck’s reticule. I triggered S.A.T.S. and found that I could only get off one shot with the coilgun. I suppose it made sense though; I’d need to swap microspark cells after the shot.

The power of the gun as the shot fired made my teeth chatter on the battle saddle’s bit. With a satisfying boom, the coilgun fired its slug, and I grinned with pride for Doc as I saw the alicorn’s chest blow open in a spectacular fountain of blood and chunks of meat and bone. I quickly swapped a new cell into the gun, searching for any other alicorns that may have been lying in wait.

“Clear!”

The twins looked down at the body, then at each other before turning to me.

“That was too easy,” Gale whispered. “There’s no way that alicorn had a shield up, she wouldn’t have been expecting us to see her.”

“Well if they didn’t know we were here before, then they definitely know now,” I said, moving deeper into the tunnel. I had one more hostile target on the E.F.S., not too far from the entrance. I paused as I saw a brightly glowing blob on the thermal imaging spell and cut it off as I slowly approached, which meant I didn’t see the shimmering shield until I’d flattened my muzzle against it.

I motioned for the twins to give me a little space before targeting a lone alicorn in the center of the domed shield. Her eyes were closed, and she seemed to be wholly focused on maintaining her spell.

Once again, I queued up a shot in S.A.T.S. and let it fly. This time though, the outcome was drastically different. The slug punched clear through the shield, all right. What it didn’t do, though, was pulverize the alicorn like it had the first. The slug had spent so much kinetic force tearing its way through the shield spell, it was no stronger than an ordinary bullet by the time it hit my target. In the leg.  

My blood turned to ice water as I saw the alicorn’s eye snap open. It rose to its full, rather impressive height, and I stared transfixed as its horn began to glow. I dived to the ground on reflex as a beam of eldritch lightning forked out from the alicorn’s horn and headed straight for me.

Luckily for me, it passed directly overhead. Gale was not so lucky. She hadn’t dropped to the ground when I had, and the bolt struck her full on in the chest. I heard her gasp in surprise before she simply vanished. One second, she’d been standing there, and the next she wasn’t so much as a pile of ash left behind by an energy weapon.

Gust looked on in horror at where her twin sister had once stood. As I got to my hooves, I saw the alicorn’s horn beginning to glow bright again.

“We have to go, Gust! Now! Move!”

She was in complete shock. I would be too, if I saw my exact double vanish into thin air. She just stood there, mouth hanging open in horror, the beginnings of tears forming in her eyes. Damn it, we didn’t have time for this! I scooped her up, threw her on my back and ran for the exit. The second I cleared the doorway I was in the air. One good thing about having such a huge wingspan: it made carrying other ponies that much easier. Gust just held on and wept, her face buried into my neck.

I was constantly checking over my shoulder to make sure we weren’t being pursued. The fact that we weren’t was extremely unsettling. Why had Maripony been so sparsely guarded? Two alicorns were all they had watching the place? None of it added up. Maripony was supposed to be their lair, their breeding grounds. I’d have to mention it to somepony when I got back, maybe Astral. I was done with reports, debriefings, everything.

When I got Gust back to base, I was gone, done with the Enclave. I’d made up my mind. If our government was so inflexible as to forbid us from helping ponies in dire need without first submitting a pile of paperwork, then I didn’t want to be a part of it anymore. I could do more good as a vigilante in the Wasteland than as a reconnaissance trooper in the Enclave military. I meant it this time, too. No more backing out.

It was a much longer flight back to base than out to Maripony with Gust on my back, but when we finally got there, I alighted on the parade grounds and allowed her to slide off.

“How’re you holding up?”

She mumbled something as she got to her hooves, but I couldn’t make it out.

“Sorry?”

“I said: it’s your fault that Gale is dead!” She turned to face me, the barrels of her Novasurge rifles beginning to glow. “If you’d opened your mouth and told us to get down instead of saving your own flank, she’d still be here!”

She was right, of course. I felt awful about it, but I wasn’t just going to let her shoot me down, so I squared off against her, readying Rattler for combat.

“Don’t do this. I’ve already got the deaths of three ponies on my hooves tonight, I don’t want to have to add another.”

“Oh, like you care!” She shrieked. “You hated the both of us, I know you did! Don’t even try to tell me you care about those unicorns we saw at Ponyville, they’re Wastelanders.” She spat the word as if it left a sour taste in her mouth.

My ears started to burn again; she was really hitting all my sore spots. “What the fuck do you know!? I as good as let those two unicorns die by flying away! It’s been eating away at me all fucking night, and I won’t have it on my conscience. I’m done with the Enclave. I’m going down to the surface, and no one is going to stop me, least of all you.”

She broke into a wide grin, and I could tell she’d cracked like an egg. “I knew it, I always knew you were a traitor. This is delicious. I’ll have your head on a platter and present it to your father. Should be worth a promotion.”

“You won’t get the chance,” I said grimly, and targeted her head in S.A.T.S. I let the spell go, and watched her head pop like a grape under a hail of fire from Rattler. Turning, I left her corpse to bleed out by the flagpole in the center of the parade grounds, staining the grey clouds with a growing puddle of red.

Stars, what the hell was I becoming? Defecting from my government, shooting my own pegasi brethren in cold blood? I’d heard the Wasteland changed ponies, but I only ever dipped below the clouds during recon sorties. Either it was an incredibly potent influence, or I’d always been a terrible pony.

I made my way quickly toward the main building. I needed to talk to Astral before I left. For the second time that day, I hammered on her door and barged in. She looked up from her work when I entered, and her expression shifted from frustrated to horrified at the speed of light.

“Mach, you look terrible, what happened?”

I shook my head, cutting her off. “Shut up, I just need you to listen. I have something to say, and it won’t be easy to hear. The lives of four ponies are on my head tonight. We saw a group of raiders attack a band of slavers transporting their fresh catch, and instead of defying orders to help them, I continued on with the mission. Later on in Maripony, I failed to let my squad know to take cover, and Gale was taken down by alicorn magic. And just now…” I swallowed. This one would be the toughest for Astral to hear. “Just now, I had to kill Gust. Watching her sister die sent her over the deep end, and it was her or me.”

She took the news a whole lot better than I had expected her to.

“You did what!?" she exclaimed, her expression twisted in a mix of horror, fury and if I didn't miss my guess, nausea. "Gust was your superior officer! Mach, you'll be executed for a crime like this!"

"No. I won't," I sighed, and met her gaze. “I’m leaving, Astral. I realized something when I left that stable pony to her fate down there. Those ponies in the Wasteland need as much help as they can get, and we’re doing nothing for them. Thunderhead has the right idea with the Volunteer Corps, and I’m going down there to do my part. If the Enclave doesn’t want to help after two hundred years of sitting around on their asses, then I’ll do it for them. I may be just a soldier, and my stock-in-trade may be death, but at least I know how to keep my gun pointed at the bad pony.”

Astral sighed and ran a hoof through her mane. “I had a feeling you’d actually follow through with your complaints someday, it was only a question of when. Look, I can’t help you out of this one, but what I can do is promise not to make things even more difficult. Frankly, I don’t know what you’re doing wasting time here in my office, you need to be gone before somepony realizes what’s happened. You need to leave, like now.”

I moved around the desk and threw my hooves around her neck, pulling her in close for a hug. “I love you, sis. You keep on doing what you’re doing, and someday you’ll have more stars on your cap than the old buck. Make me proud. Make us both proud.”

I started to leave but paused at the door, turning as Astral called out from behind me, her hoof to her forehead in a salute.

“Lieutenant! I have one last order for you. Come back alive.”

I spun and returned the salute. “You know as well as I do that I can never come back now. But I’ll sure as hell keep on living until I personally right every wrong I possibly can.

“Apologize to Doc for me,” I said on my way out the door. “I’m keeping his gun.”

The base’s sirens began to blare as I bolted for the door. “Shit!” I picked up the pace and burst back out onto the parade grounds, sliding to a halt when I saw the group of ponies waiting for me there. My stomach twisted itself into a knot with dread as the group of power armor-clad troops parted to let somepony approach.

“Hi, Dad.”

General Immelmann just stood there glaring at me. I’d never seen him this mad before in my life. “Second Lieutenant Mach,” he began in a spectacular fashion. That was my dad all right, stars-gifted orator. “For the crimes of insubordination, intent to commit dereliction of duty, theft of prototype government property, treason, and murder in the first degree, you are hereby sentenced to branding and summary execution, effective immediately.”

My jaw hit the floor. “Branding? Branding?  You want to brand me a Dashite when you’re just going to kill me immediately afterward? I don’t think so.” I may not have been all that attached to my cutie mark, but damn it, it was mine. It was a part of me, and losing it would be like losing a limb. “You can have my cutie mark when you burn it off my cold, dead flank.”

“A traitor like you has no right to a cutie mark!” My father growled.

Unbelievable. I always knew he’d hated me, but I never expected this from him. “You’d physically maim and murder your own son to save face?” If looks could kill, I’d have been a steaming puddle right then.

“I have no son.”

If it had been meant to hurt, it really didn’t. There was no love to be lost between us. When he wasn't criticizing the way I did every little thing and screaming at me to do better, he was just flat-out ignoring me. When my sister had been born, she'd immediately become his favorite and after years of putting up with his bullshit and watching my sister get all of his affection, though I bore her no ill will and still loved her to pieces, I’d stopped thinking of him as a parent.

We stood there for a short while, just glaring at each other, before I allowed a grin to creep up the corner of my mouth. I gave my wings an experimental test flap, and felt my smile widen as the squad of Enclave troopers tensed, fixing their weapons on me more carefully. I couldn’t really explain it, but I had the strangest feeling that everything would turn out okay in the end.

“I hope you’ve got an ace up your sleeve, dad. You know nopony in the Enclave can catch me.” It may have sounded like boastful bragging to anypony but my father, but he knew the truth. I saw him swallow uncomfortably, and he turned to one of the troopers.

“Radio the Wonderbolts. Do it now, quickly!”

Ah, that made sense. The Wonderbolts were the Enclave’s deadliest squad of assault troops, and they specialized in hunting ponies down. When they weren’t too busy putting on airshows, that is.

“The Wonderbolts, dad? I’m impressed. You filled out that much paperwork to set the Enclave’s premier hitponies after me? And here I was thinking you never really cared about me.

“Well,” I sighed insincerely, “it’s been a time and a half, but I really must be going.” I began to unfurl my wings, but stopped dead as I felt a cool metal barrel press itself against the side of my head.

“Y’ ain’t goin’ nowhere, LT.”

“Duster…” This wasn’t going well. All these troops had me pinned down, the Wonderbolts were on their way, and now one of my dearest friends had his gun to my head. The pressure of Duster’s gun against my skull slackened a bit as a commotion began behind the armored troopers.

“Get out of my fucking way! Move the hell over!”

I’d recognize that particular brand of rage any day of the week. Solara was coming. As I watched a furrow run through the group of troopers, she knocked one of them flat on his ass and leveled her dual energy pistol-equipped battle saddle at me.

“What the fuck are you doing, Mach? You killed Gust! And you’re planning on going down to the Wasteland?”

“Solara, I-”

“I don’t want to hear it!” She shrieked, and chomped down on her battle saddle’s bit.

I didn’t have time to move as the energy beams streaked towards me, and as a result, one of them burned its way clear through the top half of my left ear. It hurt like a bitch, but I’d live. For a little while longer, at any rate.

I felt my heart wrench as she stood there, her teeth clenched around the bit, tears streaming down her eyes. “Why?” She sobbed. “Why are you throwing everything away like this? We had a good life together.”

“Because,” I said, looking up at the multitude of stars twinkling in the night sky. “We didn’t have a good life. We were making the best of a bad situation. Wake up every morning, go out on a recon sortie every night, repeat every stars-damned day of the year.

“Because we’re safe up here in our cloud home, but those ponies down there in the Wasteland aren’t. The majority of the pegasus population can be content to ignore what they can’t see, but us reconnaissance troopers have to see it every damn night. Because tonight, for the first time, I caused the deaths of two of those very Wasteland ponies due to my inaction, which was a direct result of our ass-backwards government.”

My speech received mixed reactions. I suppose my oratorical skills didn’t quite match my father’s yet. Some of the troopers shifted uncomfortably, some nickered in disgust. My father just stood there, shaking with barely contained rage.

I moved cautiously over to wipe the tears from Solara’s eyes and tip her chin up. “Hey, you’ll be okay, you’re one tough mare, you don’t need a big strapping stallion like me to look out for you. And hey, you’ve given me something to remember you by.” She giggled as I twitched the remaining half of my left ear.

“Has everypony lost their minds? Have you forgotten what we came here to do?” My father was beside himself now, and I noticed that he’d acquired a Dashite brand from somewhere. “You there!” He snapped at one of the troopers. “Get that chemical so we can get this over with.”

They began to approach me with the brand and the cutie mark removing chemical when I heard a faint rumble in the distance. Trying to keep an eye on them while I switched the ScoutBuck over to thermal imaging, I scanned the sky and spotted the fast moving streaks that were the Wonderbolts. Contrails of thunderclouds followed in their wake, and the small discharges of lightning made them highly visible on the ScoutBuck.

“Well, that’s my cue to leave!” In a flash, I had my wings to full span and I’d launched myself into the air, while the armored troopers slagged the spot on the ground where I’d once been standing.

I’d really have to push it if I wanted to outpace the Wonderbolts. As I headed away from the base, I reflexively oriented myself towards Ponyville. If I was going down to the Wasteland to help ponies, then I’d start by burying those two unicorns if they hadn’t made it out alive.

I snuck a peek over my shoulder and saw the Wonderbolts’ formation swoop around to orient on my tail. I sped up a bit more as they started to gain on me, feeling the cool night air whip past my face. My blood was racing now, I hadn’t gone this fast in years, there’d been no reason to on a recon op.

I growled in frustration as I craned my neck over my shoulder one more time to check the Wonderbolts’ proximity. Gaining, as expected. Damn it, why couldn’t the E.F.S. show distance to target? Or even have 360 degree coverage? I pushed it a little harder, hoping I wouldn’t have to resort to my ace in the hole. If they found out about that, they’d pursue me even more aggressively than they were already.

The wind was really whistling in my ears now, and it was starting to make my muzzle flap wildly, but still the Wonderbolts closed the distance. Well that was it then, they’d forced my hoof. With another burst of speed, I threw everything I had into flying as fast as I possibly could. I’d only done it a hoofful of times, but it wasn’t something you forgot how to do.

The very air itself pushed at me as I sped faster and faster, but I pushed back just a little bit harder, and I felt it break before my hooves in a spectacular thunderclap of noise- a sonic rainboom. Well technically, my “rainboom” was more of a “redboom”. I suspected that as the only pony with that iconic prismatic mane, Rainbow Dash herself was the only pony capable of producing an actual rainbow with a sonic boom, but the name had stuck.

Only a handful of Enclave pegasi could break the sound barrier, and unfortunately for me the Wonderbolts were most of them. However, I had the element of surprise on my side. Only one pony knew I could pull off a sonic rainboom, and he evidently hadn’t informed the Wonderbolts.

“Thanks, Dad.”

I heard a series of thundering booms behind me as the Wonderbolts fought to catch up, but it was too late, I’d gained too much ground already. Instead, they resorted to trying to shoot me out of the sky. I dived and rolled away from most of the shots, but given the law of averages, and the sheer volume of fire they were throwing at me, one shot inevitably struck my wing. I struggled to keep myself steady, but I spiraled out of control, and plummeted toward the ground at phenomenal speed.

When I hit the river, I skipped like a stone so many times I lost count before plowing into a muddy bank. The pain was indescribable, and I fought to maintain consciousness as I intercepted the Wonderbolts’ communications on my ScoutBuck.

“I can’t believe that traitor could pull off a rainboom. What was Immelmann playing at, keeping that a secret?” I heard one say.

“He probably didn’t even know. You’ve seen how much he hated his own kid. Should we go down there and confirm the kill?” Said another.

I heard the first one inhale with a hiss. “Did you see him skip like that? Hitting the water going that fast, there’s no way he survived. Besides, I’m not going any closer to the surface than I have to.”

I was flooded with relief as I heard the sound of their contrails fade into the distance, and allowed my head to fall forward into the mud as all the remaining strength seeped from my body, sending me into sweet, pitch-black oblivion.

Footnote: Level up.

New Trait: Air Superiority – While in flight, your Agility stat is automatically raised to 10. However, indoors or on the ground, you suffer a penalty of -2 Agility.

New perk: Reconnaissance – At night, you gain +1 to your Perception stat.