Disaster Across Equestria

by Snaperkids

Politics

James looked around at the room he now found himself residing in. It was an empty room, walls either bare or decorated with the signs of deterioration, no windows, a lamp as the room's only source of light, and a single small table with two chairs, of which he took one to wait in. This entire day had been weird and it had only been an hour. After waking up he had gone through his usual routine, first, drop off post-op paperwork and complete today's pre-op forms, afterwards he went to breakfast, past there things got strange. Two officers of a branch he couldn't identify came bearing a summons for his presence. After giving orders to Emma and Mark to get the team to briefing he followed the officers to this room and given orders to wait. That had been about fifteen minutes ago and he had long grown impatient.

Suddenly he heard the door behind him open. Out of pure reflex he reached for his gun expecting a fight. Instead of this however he heard an all too familiar voice. "Ya always were a hothead Lucky. Though I see ya made something out of it, now that you’re Fleet Admiral," the new party quipped. James relaxed with a sigh of relief, for, though it had been years, he knew the owner of that voice.

"Commander Kathleen Renee Shepard, how have you been?" he said ecstatic at seeing his old friend and CO again.” More importantly, what are you doing here, Kathy?"

"I've been doing fine. Though why I'm here is actually a much more complicated question to answer. Take a seat." James knew what that phrase entailed, for he knew she knew him well enough that he hated getting news while sitting down. He opted to remain standing instead.

"What's this about?" he scoffed, irritated at having to be dance around bad news.

"Well as you know the Committee on Planetary Interference was established in order to regulate the interference of the Council on the political functions, economic stability, cultural metamorphoses, and technological development of planet’s inhabitants. You also know that they are also tasked with monitoring the United Galactic Fleets movements."

"Yes. Yes, I know all of that I helped form the committee. What does this have to do with me?"

"I'm getting there, just hold on. If you haven't heard about three months ago I was reinstated as a Spectre after completing a covert assignment, the details of which are still classified. I was assigned to one of the members that deals with a lot of biological research. When we discovered an unauthorized ejection of a biohazard class 12-C containment vessel and tracked it here, we informed the Committee. Their response was to this was to redefine your role in responding to it. They sent me to carry this message."

Shepard hoofed James a sealed envelope. Inside this envelope was a piece of paper with his new objectives and role. It read:

To the position of Head of Quarantine Squad Operations:

Your operations have been reevaluated and, after much consideration, we as a collective feel that your initial objectives risked immense interference upon the natives; therefore your new role is to:

• Destroy any remnants of the pathogen
• Contain the area which the pathogen has already infected
• Recover the pathogens containment vessel

We hope these changes are not too difficult for you to accommodate.

Respectfully,

Ronald K. Pontechnak,

Chairman of the Committee on Planetary Interference

After finishing reading the letter, James took a seat in silence, trapped in thought of how to work around these new restrictions. "These are completely impractical," he finally scoffed. "They don't take into account for the anarchy or the fact that the pathogen was released from its container."

"Unfortunately I already knew that when I was assigned to oversee your operation, but what do you want me? They expect me to send them updates on your progress."

"Report our progress then just neglect to mention what they don't need to know."

"And when they find out about this? What then?"

"Let me take care of that," on this note their meeting adjourned. James left to finish preparing for his squad's mission and within an hour they were out in the field.

Immediately after they had moved out of earshot of the base James was flooded with questions about what the meeting was about. These questions were quickly dispatched quelling everyone’s concerns. "Now let’s get going we have a fairly dense area to clear with a lot of area today," James said leading the way to the sectors they were supposed to clear that day.

That day started out rather uneventful, repeating a routine clear and secure maneuver for urban environments, but after lunch things started to get interesting. It first started with a Scavenger drop ship deploying troops; however things quickly snowballed out of control as infected hosts quickly surfaced and began launching attacks wave after unrelenting wave.

"Fall back, we need a better position," James barked out knowing that there current position was indefensible. They were falling back, still laying down suppressing fire to keep the hordes away, when the most horrid and gut-wrenching sound filled the air. The shriek of pain from a team member.

James turned to see they had been flanked by a group of about five infected ponies. Without a second of hesitation he readied his weapon and fired upon the group which quickly retreated.

"Emma, any luck finding somewhere we can hold up in," James inquired his partner knowing they desperately needed a defensible location to administer first aid and call for support.

"Found one. Thirty meters south-southwest, I’m sending you a waypoint now."

"Let's move." The following minutes felt like hours, the air filled with the sound of suppressive fire as the squad fell back.

Finally out of the fray, the squad could relax. James looked at the time, an hour till they had to return. "Silence push E-5-19, I repeat silence push E-5-19," James called into his radio. "This is field team lead 0-0-2-3 calling for tactical support. We are pinned down by hostiles and need air support for an emergency withdrawal. Do you copy?" James waited for a response to his plea for help; however after several minutes with no response he knew his transmission was not received.

"No response, they must be on radio silence," responded James to Mark's query about the request for support. Minutes had passed with nothing more than white noise in response prompting Mark to call a team leader meeting to figure out a plan of action. "We better start setting up camp. Without any type NW-7 attachments or advanced scans, trying to get back to base would be a suicide mission."

"Okay, let's get started then. We have a long night ahead of us," Emma spouted out in a pseudo enthusiastic tone.

Author's Note:

Commander Shepard was used not to infer a crossover with the Mass Effect universe but because it was the only surname that I could think of that sounded nice. It's not a crossover, it's a reference at most. Sorry for the letter formatting the old text in square braces was my formatting when writing. The current formatting is the best I could do.

Comments

[Snaperkids]

1223853
You sensed wisely good sir! You have my respect for your reference sensing abilities.