01 - SAPR and Fraternization

CHAPTER ONE: SAPR and Fraternization

“As your Sexual Assault Prevention and Response victim advocate, I implore you to always ask for consent and never hesitate to tell me if you think a sexual assault has taken place...”

“You know what’s great?” Summer Breeze asked as the three of us trotted down the cloudcrete sidewalk.

‘Pussy,’ I thought to myself, keeping quiet otherwise so as not to sound crude. Unfortunately, the large buck next to me had no such intentions. His two-celled brain wasn’t capable of stopping his idiot mouth from speaking.

“Your mom?” Wing Masher guffawed at his own dumbass joke before adding a half-witted: “In bed?”

“Well besides that,” Breeze replied nonchalantly, giving him a cool look as she tried to maneuver the conversation back to her favor, “Though not really for a buck like you. She’s gay.”

“Still a MILF,” Masher snorted back, grinning with that signature idiot look of his. Part moronic, part teasing, and all annoying, it never failed to get her. I knew that this time was no exception as a scowl crossed her features.

Immediately her cool attitude crumbled. “Fuck you,” she growled, flipping him a rude gesture with a wing, “Anyways, since neither of you have enough brainpower to give a forecast in a thunderstorm, I’ll tell you...” she paused, gesturing upwards and away with a forehoof. Her features brightened, “shore leave!”

Great, cloud-built buildings rose like monoliths above us. The dancing, neon lights of clubs, bars, and restaurants outdoing the dull, flickering glow of numerous lamp posts. Pegasi, most of whom flew above us, called out often greetings or waved at the three of us as we were forced to trot slowly below. The air was cool and refreshing, filled with the scents of the night and all the secrets it hid. The cloudy ground was soft and yielding underhoof, comfortable to walk on all day.

All far better than the musty, old smells and cold, cramped p-ways of our Thunderhead cloudship, Overcast. It was good to get off the ship, that I could agree with. But there was one thing that I just couldn’t stand...

“Hate dress whites, though,” I grumbled, readjusting my gigline for what felt like the hundredth time. “Colonel ought to let us out in our civvies!”

“Yeah, well that’s just ‘cause you’re a shitbag,” Masher grinned, chuckling. I ignored him and the usual urge to knock his stupid grin off his stupid face. More because I knew he could pound me into paste than any form of ‘taking the high wind’ of the issue.

Breeze shrugged. “Ponies don’t buy you as much stuff if you’re in civvies,” she said, returning a smile and a wave to some civilians across the street. That much was true, our dinner and a few rounds of drinks had all been happily paid for by smiling civilians. Our only real payment had been the smiles and nods we gave them after they thanked us for our service over and over again. Still, though, I had some bones to pick with the fancy, white uniforms.

“Yeah, well, you can’t really fly in them, the shoes hurt my hooves, I gotta wear the damned trousers way too high, and this!” I tugged at the kerchief around my neck, “frickin’ this!”

“What?” Masher gave me his grin, getting a rolled pair of eyes in return. Oh boy, here it comes. “Can you not tie a knot very well?” he laughed again at his own ‘clever’ pun, the only one who ever did.

“Go piss on a lightning bolt, Masher,” I replied with a dismissive wave.

“Oh, quit bitching, hotel’s right here. You can take that thing off when we get to our rooms,” Breeze chastised. She gave her sharp uniform a quick look, “Though I can’t say I agree with you, a little dressiness never hurt anypony.”

‘Only if you don’t consider my dick to be anypony!’ I thought, my eyes drawn upwards to the approaching building.

We were checked in quickly with another round of ‘thank you for your service!’ from hotel staff and a few others in the lobby, and promptly stepped into the elevator.

Quiet music played as we rode up to our floor. Our Commanding Officer, Colonel Autumn Leaf, had authorized the command to buy out the top few floors for all of us enlisted ponies. Probably something to do with boosting morale. Shit had been picking up recently, lots of logistics: fuel getting moved around, more ammo for our weapons, increase in drills and training. There was one thing on everypony’s mind and it was enough to spawn hushed rumors in the smoke pits and galley:

What was coming?

Well, for the moment it was simple as I looked to the two others riding the elevator with me.

Breeze was going to share a room with her buck, Masher would probably call up some sleazy whore to suck him off, and me? Well, I had my own plans for the night. And they most certainly didn’t include my dress whites.

Ding! chimed the elevator, we stepped out as the doors slid open.

“Ugh, I’m tired!” Masher said as we made our way down the padded hallway, counting off rooms.

“You’re always tired,” I countered with a quick half-smile, “Goes with being a fat toad.”

“Hey!” Masher retorted, only half-offended, “I’m just big-boned, you skinny, little runt!”

“More like just a big bonehead!” I countered, smiling. “Now I may be a little one, but I do have at least one big bone!” I added, switching to a three-legged trot as I gestured down between my hind legs with a forehoof.

“SAPR!” Breeze mock-gasped, giggling.

A door to our right slammed open, an angry, uniformed mare glaring out at us, “Who’s SAPRing in my p-way!?” the three of us froze at her voice, memories of bootcamp flooding back into our minds.

If ever a name didn’t fit a pony, it was Chief Air Sergeant Wind Whisper. ‘Whisper’ was about the last thing that came to mind whenever you caught wind of her. And it didn’t help that she happened to be the one snarling orders every time we took our skytank out for an exercise.

“Well!?” she glared between the three of us, “Am I gonna NJP all three of you sorry excuses for a tank crew or are you gonna spill the beans? C’mon, we’re all blue falcons here, right!?”

Right.

Both Breeze and Masher simultaneously lifted forehooves to point right at me.

“Very well,” Chief Whisper growled, dark red eyes locking onto my own, “Wingpony Sky Skiff,” she addressed me, stepping aside and gesturing for me to enter, “Step inside, prepare for personal inspection.”

I held back a sigh that would’ve only made things worse, stepping into her room. The door slammed hard behind me, separating me from my treacherous fellows. Chief’s own dress whites were flawless, a hefty set of ribbons riding upon her breast.

“What are you looking at, Wingpony!?” she demanded, glaring at me as I eyed her chest candy, “How about you come to attention?”

I obliged, staring into nothingness, tail cocked at forty-five degrees, wings held straight back against my sides, head and ears erect, and hooves touching beneath me with toes pointed forwards. All checkpoints met, the perfect—uncomfortable—attention. As satisfied as she could be, she began her inspection.

“Why aren’t those shoes shined, Wingpony?” Chief Whisper snarled, tearing her eyes from my dress shoes and shoving them in my face. I detected the slightest trace of alcohol on her breath.

“I’m not very good at shining my shoes, Chief,” I replied, keeping my military bearing as sharp as a winter’s gale.

“I don’t think you’re very good at this whole Enclave thing!” she growled back, grilling me with her gaze as she stalked back and forth before me, “What are the requirements for dress shoes, Wingpony!?”

“Whole shoe polished to a shine, Chief,” I replied in rote.

“Hm,” she said simply, pausing my grilling for only a moment. I felt her eyes on my wings, “do you have a no-preen chit, Wingpony?”

“No, Chief,” I informed her. There was no point in lying, “I preened my wings last night after taps, I always—”

“Do I look like I give a gust?” she growled, waiting for a reply I was too smart to make, “You’re unsat, Wingpony! You got anything you wanna say for yourself?”

“Chief?” I asked, still staring ahead.

“Spit it out, Wingpony!” she snarled, glaring into my face.

One of my ears twitched back towards the door as I kept my face an emotionless mask, “I think we’re clear.”

For a moment she was silent, then white showed in my peripherals as she grinned widely. One of her hooves found my flank and traced its way down. She leaned in close, lips making my ear twitch involuntarily. Her voice had dropped from grilling to sultry, “This concludes your personal inspection…” her hoof made its way down between my hind legs, stroking my crotch through the thin polyester.

Well, wouldn’t ya know. My pants could get tighter!

Her hoof found the zipper, tugging it down before slipping inside the opening. A few light strokes had my cock nearly uncontainable within the confines of my uniform. A light nicker escaped my lips as I felt her take it in her hoof.

“What took you so long, Wingpony?” she asked, pulling her hoof out with her prize in tow. My erection twitched as her hoof traced up its growing length, flooding my mind with buzzing excitement. “Whatever happened to fifteen minutes early?”

“Well, I—” I began, relaxing as I turned to her.

She exploded immediately, hoof dropping from my shaft: “Did I tell you you could come out of attention, Wingpony!?” her voice blasted my ears back against my skull.

I was startled as she went from sexy to sergeant at the flip of a switch. I snapped back to attention...or as best I could with my rock-hard cock hanging unsheathed beneath me. Half words and gibberish sprouted from my lips as I tried to compose a proper answer, but none was needed as her stoney scowl relaxed back into an easy grin.

“Just screwing with you, Skiff. At ease,” she allowed, letting me breathe easy.

Speaking of screwing, though...I grinned, hopping forwards and engulfing her lips in my own. She let out a surprised ‘Mmf!’ as I speared her lips with my tongue, trying to make my way into the moist embrace of her mouth. Pressing into her, I drew her closer with my right forehoof, feeling her heart fluttering through her breast, almost in sync with my own.

But her wings flapped suddenly, forehooves shoving me away as she gasped for breath. I frowned at her, arousal ebbing slightly beneath me. What? I pouted at her like a kicked puppy.

“Council’s sake, Skiff!” she swore, our lips parting as she shoved me back, “Get off me! You’re gonna mess up my uniform!” she gave me a quick smile, turning to her bed, “Damn, you’re horny, let me get out of this before you jizz all over it or something.”

“C’mon, they’re whites!” I retorted with a chuckle, “Who would ever know?”

She rolled her eyes at me before dropping them down from my face as she eyed my fifth leg. She slipped out of her dress shoes, wings dropping to her belt.

“You just gonna stand there or strip, Wingpony?” she asked, a hint of her authority lacing her voice.

Oh yeah, dress whites.

I slipped out of the jumper first, tossing the kerchief away. My head got caught around the neck opening—the material straining as I growled—as I tore it off me. It followed my kerchief in a messy pile on the floor, getting a look from Whisper. I made a mental note to pick them up and fold them...eventually.

“So how was your day?” I asked, keeping myself stiff with a quick rub from my wings.

“How do you think, Wingpony,” she stressed my rank, sighing as she eyed the patch on her shoulder: three purple wing chevrons beneath a gray cloud with a lightning bolt. She’d already dropped her bottoms, setting them folded neatly on the nightstand. It was a pity her hind end wasn’t towards me, little Skiffy junior was getting soft again, “Paperwork for Senior Chief, problems from Air Sergeant Fluff, then wind-blasted engineers nearly crushed some poor boot with a tank and of course I had to write all the counseling chits...” another sigh escaped her, “...typical senior enlisted crap. Had just enough time to grab a drink before I stopped here.”

“Heh, well, junior enlisted for the win, then,” I chuckled, undoing my belt and button, then stepping out of my bottoms, naked before her. I watched as she slipped out of her jumper, folding it neatly with her wings and setting it atop the bottoms, “Nice to get off the ship, night’s been good so far,” my smile widened, “hope to end it with a bit of a bang.”

That got a chuckle out of her as she turned to the bed, giving me the grand view of her slit and pucker. Skiffy junior found himself suddenly at a very stiff attention as she glanced back over her withers, tail held high and aside to keep my view unobstructed.

“To my rear, march,” she fluttered her eyelids at me, mounting the bed. I followed, my orders clear. A wild nicker escaped me as I moved to mount her, but her tail brushed me aside before I could enter her. She tisked at me, tail brushing quickly against my face as she performed an about face, “I think this slot needs a little polishing before you get your tool in,” she sat down, falling onto her back with her hind legs spread wide, “start with your tongue.”

“Roger that,” I replied, giving a quick salute before dropping my snout to her ready pussy.

Prodding her slit with my snout, I inhaled deeply, taking in her scent before blowing out my hot breath against her. She shivered at the feeling, tail twitching beneath her, teeth digging into her lips.

I didn’t go straight in, meeting her eyes as I dropped my mouth to her bellybutton, kissing her warm, blue coat there. She gave a soft nicker as I moved downwards, kissing between her two small teats. She squirmed as I took one with my lips, rolling it about, licking at the fleshy nub with my tongue.

“Oh, get on with it!” she growled.

I dropped my snout to her moistened opening, giving her vulva a soft set of kisses, each eliciting a moan from the mare. She hated foreplay, and I knew it. No time for buildup, just get to the climax was her slogan. And how I loved defying it.

I nuzzled at her opening, testing the waters with my nose, giving her quick laps with my tongue. A gasp escaped her lips, hind legs going stiff and hooves curling as I began to build her up.

“Just—mm—get in there!” she gasped, spread hooves quivering, wings pressed tightly into the sheets.

Slowly, I parted her with my tongue, lapping at her like a hummingbird might taste a flower’s nectar. She squirmed as I found her nub, teasing it. Slowly, I began to speed up, my cock throbbing hard beneath me at the taste of her.

“What is—ohhh fuck! Yes!” she gasped and squirmed as I drove my tongue fervently into her, digging the wet taste-organ deep inside to get at her leaking honey pot, “Your—mm—your phonetic—oh!—alphabet!” she cried out, barely capable of coherent speech.

‘We’ll see how long she lasts,’ I mentally chuckled.

“Apple!” I called out from within the confines of her slobber-filled cunt, letting the vibrations travel up inside her, “Bridle! Colt!”

“Mmm!” she nickered, wings jutting stiffly into the bed’s mattress. Her hind legs were spread wide to give me easier access, hooves curling with carnal pleasure.

“Dam...Ergot...Flank...Geld...Hoof...” I continued, loving the way she squirmed against my tongue, biting down on her lip as if that would help her last longer.

It didn’t.

By the time I said: “Rodeo…” her cunt erupted as an orgasm wracked her frame, seeping down past her tail and filling the room with the scent of her sex. I lapped at her dripping slit, making her squirm further as pleasure wracked her frame.

I rested my chin on her crotch, watching her across her fluttering breast. Her eyes met mine as her orgasm subsided, a half-grin on her face. Before I could ask what was up, a yelp escaped me as she shoved me back, pouncing atop me and silencing me with her lips. My struggles ceased as I granted her access, tasting the inside of her mouth with my own.

She broke contact after a moment, dropping her eyes to my erection. Backing off me, I let out a soft gasp as her lips engulfed my member. Her tongue swirled wetly around the tip, a delighted whinny escaping my lips as I thrust softly into her mouth.

One of her wings dropped down between my legs, the soft feathers brushing up against my balls, curling to cup them. Her lips retracted as precum dribbled from my throbbing shaft, her other wing curling around it as she began to stroke me up and down.

A rush of cum exploded out of my cock as she leaned in to kiss me, a short gasp letting her brush her tongue freely against my own. Her wing guided my orgasm, spilling seed across my trembling breast and down across the bedsheets.

“Mm…” I purred into her mouth, cock dribbling to a halt. I felt my softening erection begin to retract when her wings gripped me tighter, stroking with renewed vigor to keep me hard.

“Not just yet,” she smiled down at me, straddling my prone form and giving my nose a kiss once I was ready again. I grinned up at her as she looked down between us, guiding herself down onto my rock hard shaft.

She sat down as my tip entered her, sliding up the walls of her love tunnel to the sound of her soft moan. Her hooves pressed down upon my cum-stained breast as she assumed a cowgirl position, smiling down at me as she began her ride.

The inside of her was lubricated and ready against me, engulfing my cock like an envelope would a letter. We rutted deep into the night, the cloud bed huffing and puffing softly along with us.

I came twice before her back arched, the slick movement of her hindquarters against my shaft ceasing as she rode out her own well-earned orgasm. I got in another few good thrusts of my own, pushing myself over the edge and emptying into her a third time with a groan of ecstasy.

She slid off me, letting my cock fall limply to my chest and sidling up next to me with a pleased little nicker as my seed dripped out of her. I rolled over to nuzzle into her neck, nipping at one of her floppy ears as we shared in each other's warm embrace.

“Was it good, Chief?” I asked her, giving a small peck on her cheek.

“It was sat, Wingpony,” she chuckled back, kissing me yet again as she stroked my chest with a hoof, “However, comma…” with a final peck on my lips she stood and hopped off the bed. I watched her hind end as she turned towards the bathroom, stroking myself with a hoof as I felt a soft stirring in my loins, “...it was also very messy, so I’m going to need a shower.”

The door closed shut behind her, the shower starting up a few moments later.

The bed made a soft, poofing sound as I rolled back onto my back, the scents of our sex filling my nostrils. A hardass on the outside, she got me hardcocked on our secret, little sojourns behind closed doors. I sighed.

If only they didn’t have to be closed doors, but fraternization policy was both clear and strict: no junior-senior enlisted couplings. If we ever wanted to be open about our relationship it’d need to be when one of us was out of the service, or when we were both on the same level in the service.

I’d come in as a measly little E-3 with a hoof-full of college credits and even after my five years of service I’d maintained that paygrade. Meanwhile she’d advanced to E-7 in her eight years, making the former scenario the more likely of the two. It wasn’t that I tried to be a shitbag, I just...I dunno, wasn’t as good as she was!

A soft sigh escaped me. I’d taken the E-4 exam seven times already and I knew I’d get it eventually, but until I got a higher paygrade we had to remain separated in the open.

Even then, though—my eyes turned towards the bathroom door—what was I to her? Just a good lay? A chance to beat the dumb frat policy? A living dildo? She liked me, that was for sure, but was it all just for the sex...or could something more bloom from it once the frat policy was no longer a problem? We both had birth cards—courtesy of military service—and both of us were single, was a family something I could look forward to down the line?

The shower was still running.

“Eh, screw all this sappy shit,” I grumbled, “Does she love you, too? Who knows?” a small grin spread my lips, “Night’s not done just yet…”

I rolled off onto the floor, trotting over to the bathroom. The door wasn’t locked, wisps of steam spilling out as I entered.

“Come to join me?” her silhouette asked from behind the shower curtain.

“Waste less water if we share,” I grinned, meeting her own smile as I parted the curtain and stepped in. Her coat was wet, mane plastered down against her skull. She smelled clean as another kiss was passed between our lips, hot water rushing over me.

I mounted her as she reared up to adjust the shower head, her surprise evident as I entered her from behind. She dropped back to all fours, smiling back at me as I rutted her, thrusting into her as water spilled over us.

A low nicker escaped me as I came inside her, warm seed erupting out of her pussy, running down her legs and down the drain with the flow of water. I remained inside her for a time, getting in a last few humps before my retreating stallionhood returned to its sheath, spent.

I brought up my wing, helping finish her off with my feathers. She gave a loud cry, collapsing against me as my feathers pressed up inside her. She didn’t last long with the build up my cock had given her and soon enough a whinny exploded from her lips, mare cum washing down my wing with the rush of water.

We traded nuzzles for a time, happy to take more than the typical two minutes we would be entitled to on the ship. But eventually the water went off and we stepped into the steamy bathroom.

“That thing with your wing at the end there, I liked that,” she said as we began to towel off.

“Just returning the favor,” I replied with a smile, making a masturbatory gesture with my hoof. She chuckled, giving me another quick kiss.

After a quick change of sheets we traded nuzzles on the bed, warm bodies pressed together under the covers. I stroked her soft, pink mane as she rested her head against my now-clean chest, some of my earlier doubts coming back to me as she fell asleep.

I brushed my doubts away with my eyelids as I closed them, finding myself soon happily asleep.

For those of you who skipped the steamy stuff: the key points are Skiff is currently having secret sexual relations with his superior, something that is very much frowned upon in the military. However, he's not sure if it's just casual sex or if it's something more that could blossom into a full-on relationship (though he quietly hopes that it is the latter).

02 - Ground Pounders

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CHAPTER TWO: Ground Pounders

“What’s the difference between a ground pounder and the crap he takes? The crap smells better...”

It happened during lunch the very next day.

The ship’s galley was both noisy and smelly; we could thank our shitbag culinary specialists for the latter. They could make some decent food, but on most days—like today—the food was garbage.

Masher made a face as he stuck a spoonful of rice into his maw, quickly spitting it back out on his plate. I had at least had the decency to spit into a napkin after my first bite.

“Yep,” I commented, stirring the small white specks about with my fork, “Today’s one of the days when the CS’s say: ‘hey, I’ve got a wonderful idea!’” I continued as Masher pawed at his tongue, “‘How about we take all our salt, and I mean fucking all of it, and dump it into the rice!’”

“Mm-hm,” Masher spat again.

It was then that the 1MC squawked to life: “General quarters, general quarters! All hooves, mount your battle stations!”

“Aw shit!” The buck next to me, another crewpony named Dusty Day, choked on his drink as we all hopped to our hooves and rushed off as the announcement repeated.

“The hell is going on!?” someone rushing with us cried out.

“Not a clue!” I shouted back.

Somewhere deep down in the bowels of our ship, the engine thrummed to life.

“Hey! Hey! You guys hear!?” a mare that joined us from a branching p-way called as she joined our rush, “High General Harbinger went on a diplomatic mission below the clouds, equinitarian aid to the ground pounders or some shit!”

“Who the hell cares?” a buck behind me called back.

“It’s why we’re in general quarters, dipshit!” the mare growled back at him, not losing pace. “When he arrived, it was a trick and the ground pounders balefired him! Took out four raptors!”

“They balefired a High General!?” a mare ahead of me exclaimed, incredulous.

“Who!? Who fucking did it!?” Masher snarled from beside me.

“Nopony knows! Think it was some slaver terrorist on the surface or something. In any case, from what I hear, we’re going to teach those ground pounders a lesson!”

* * * * *

Senior Chief Air Sergeant Icy Blitz called muster for our division. Chief Whisper had to join her snarling shouts with his before the hushed hubbub was silenced.

“Thank you, Chief,” he addressed Whisper, then turned his eyes to the rest of us, “I’m sure all you stupid fuckers have questions! Shut the flying fuck up and I’ll fucking answer them, capisce!?” He glared about as we gave him our undivided attention, “Nearly an hour ago, we got sensor readings that some fucker on the ground lit off a balefire bomb, right beneath the Raptors Intangible, Blue Dawn, Circinus, and Wind Rider, which were on a diplomatic mission—”

“Senior Chief! Please tell me there were—” some dumbass in the back began to cry out.

“Hey, how about you lock it the fuck up before I pound your ass into a fucking paste, you fuck!” Senior Chief Blitz butted back in, “We don’t fucking know if there were any survivors, but we’ve got cloudships going in to check it the fuck out. In any case, the Council’s deciding what the fuck to do, and we’re officially on FPCON Delta. Colonel wants us on one minute standby until further notice, so get your lot of scrawny, fucking asses to the hangar and get those skytanks prepped! Fly steady and fall out!”

* * * * *

It didn’t take long to get to the hangar, different crew teams heading to their respective vehicles. Ours was further forward, a Type VIII Model B, designated the “Harrier.” It was a dedicated ground attack variant with a hundred thirty millimeter magical plasma cannon mounted on the top and BaWS—Beam-emitter Weapon System—banks on both sides. Her internal compartment was crammed with fuel cells and fire control computers. She could fit eight ponies maximum, giving the four of us just enough space to be comfortable.

Masher slapped the controls and the rear door opened with a hydraulic hum. He stepped forwards, inserting his wings into the driver’s control slots and starting up our skytank. Just ahead of me, Breeze strapped herself into the seat facing the BaWS bank controls while I took my seat at the controls for the main gun.

Chief Whisper stepped aboard with a signature glare, looking over all of us as she moved to the commander’s periscope. After a few short seconds a soft hum sounded off as our engine started up, lifting with a hiss as clouds were formed beneath us.

“Driver, online,” Masher reported, “Propulsion good, hydraulics good…” I tuned him out as he began to read off the skytank’s status.

“BaWS online,” Breeze said. I heard a soft whirring from outside as she toyed with the emitter banks, aiming them about before checking different readouts, “We’re cold, but everything checks out.”

“Keep us cold, don’t want any blue on blue,” Whisper said, “Gunner?”

That was me.

I finished strapping myself in, inserting my wings into their own slots and setting a hind hoof against the firing lever. With a few forehoof taps I had my own screen lit, a louder whir sounding as I twisted my wings and saw the view pan around, “Gunner online, cold, all’s well,” I said, flipping through my filters. The day-television camera was working fine, the night vision gave me a blinded, green screen, and the infrared gave me inverted white- and black-hot images before I went back to DTV. With a few taps I confirmed my fire control systems were operating normally.

“Roger, all online, all good,” Whisper called back, before tapping at her earbloom and reporting in that we were ready. Around the hangar bay, different skytanks and chariot craft were hovering in place, weapons moving about as their controllers tested them.

Now, we played the waiting game.

* * * * *

We were relaxed back to thirty minute standby and itching for a fight by the time our specific orders were finally passed down. The Overcast was headed to the Everfree forest. While intelligence seemed unable to make up their mind (as it seemed they always did), they assessed that the assassination of High General Harbinger was likely commited by the ground pounder known as Red Eye.

His citadel in the Everfree forest was our target.

* * * * *

“Oh, yeah!” Masher yelled as we rushed through the p-ways to the glorious sound of music, “Flight of the Motherfucking Shadowbolts!”

The 1MC crackled to life, the distinct voice of Colonel Autumn Leaf rising above the music. “This is it, ponies. This is the moment all your training and all your experience has prepared you for.” As we rushed with the flow, I felt adrenaline surging through me, the music and steely voice of our commanding officer getting me pumped. “This is the battle you were born for. It’s time to separate the pegasi from the griffins.”

“Yeah!” Masher roared beside me as we rounded a bend.

“It’s time to kick Red Eye’s ass, and teach him that crossing the Enclave, murdering our brothers and sisters, was his ultimate folly.”

“Fuck you, Red Eye!” Masher yelled out, hopping in the air and getting return calls from a few ponies rushing with us.

“We fight in the name of every pegasus ignominiously massacred in the Splendid Valley sneak attack…” We finally made it to the hangar, rushing to our skytank. Standing at the back, glaring out with the smoky yellow sky silhouetting her stood Chief Whisper. The sight of her, hard faced and resolute made my trousers a little tight. I would’ve kissed her full on right then and there if not for frat policy, “We fight in the name of our loved ones, our home and our Enclave!”

“C’mon!” she yelled when she spotted us, ducking back in after Masher. The hatch whirred shut behind us, “We’re gonna be late for the war.”

I threw myself into my controls, training taking over as I got my monitor online and my gun hot. Oh, yeah! Battle-boner activate! “Gunner, online and hot.”

“Roger that, all online,” Chief called back, twisting in her periscope, “Driver, take us out, fly steady!”

“Fly steady, hoorah!” Masher pumped his wings, lifting us up off the deck and out into the thick of it.

Skytanks and chariots and individual armored pegasi battled it out with alicorns amid bursts of triple-A fire spitting up from below. I eyed the battle through my cameras, switching to the alien landscape provided by my IR cameras. Other vessels swirled about, firing down and—was that a fucking dragon battling Raptors!?

“BaWS, free to fire, gunner standby for targets!” Whisper called from beside me before I could comment.

“BaWS copies!” Breeze called back, the hydraulic whirring of her weapons mixing with the zorching sounds as she opened up.

“Gunner standing by!” I called, waiting for orders.

“Tracer stream, small arms, it’ll deflect,” Masher reported, a stream of red dots racing up to meet us.

“Gunner, fly steady!” Whisper called back, “Gunner! Pillbox bearing—”

Whisper’s call turned to a pained cry as the small arms fire hit the skytank and passed right through our armor. The supersonic cracks made me jump in my harness as the rounds zipped past me.

“What the fuck!” Masher yelled, my guts lurching as he pulled us into a sharp turn away from the bullet stream.

“Ow, sh-shit!” Whisper cried out, blood seeping into her uniform in spite of a lack of physical holes in the cloud-fabric.

“Shit! Chief’s hit!” I cried out, reaching for my restraints and—

“No! Fuck!” Whisper waved me off, tearing out a healing potion and gulping it down. Her bleeding beginning to subside, “J-just a flesh wound...they passed clean through! How...”

“What just happened?” Masher called from the cockpit, glancing back over his withers as he twisted his wings, avoiding another stream of tracers.

“Don’t know, they must have some sort of magic...wind-blasted…” she searched for a word to describe what had just happened, “Armor negation rounds or something.” She hopped back into the commander’s seat, glaring through her periscope. “Driver! Armor’s worthless, go for full mobility!”

“Full mobility! Roger that!” Masher called back. Normally his job would be to position our more armored front and belly towards enemy positions, trading mobility for armor. But if our armor was worthless, then that hardly mattered.

“All right, let’s get some for the High General!” Whisper growled.

Before I could comment further on the matter, Whisper started calling out targets, drawing me back to my gunsights. “Gunner! MG nest! Two-five-two! Seven hundred meters!” Whisper called to me, “Give ‘em a supercharge!”

I shifted my wings, the turret’s motors whirring above me as the gunsight came to two-five-two. I elevated, finding the machine gun nest. Tracers spat out from it, slicing up towards a couple juking bombing chariots, “Eyes on!” I called, getting the firing solution, and tapping in the command for a supercharged round with a hoof. A set of numbers ran up towards one hundred—“Charging!”—the numbers hit a hundred, flashing from red to green. “Charged!”

“Fire!” Whisper commanded.

I stomped the firing lever and the skytank shivered as it discharged a massive, glowing burst of magical energy. The round blinded my infrared sensors briefly as it zipped forth, shrinking away. A white flare engulfed my target, slagging it in an instant.

“He’s dead!” Whisper called it. “Shift aim to two-three-five! Triple A! Five hundred meters! Area effect round!”

I found the new target, loading an area effect round, “Loaded! Ready to fire!”

“Fire!”

The skytank thrummed as it gave birth yet again, the round zipping out and flashing bright white on my sensors. The gun and ponies around it flashed into glowing goop when it hit and detonated.

“Tracer stream!” Masher called from the cockpit, “Brace for evasive maneuvers!”

My view of the destroyed triple A position turned to that of the cloud curtain as Masher twisted in his controls, spiralling and diving. I did a quick check of my systems: the supercharge had heavily heated the focusing gem and emitter system, but it was still far from the red.

“Aw, shit!” I heard Masher call, “This might—” he was cut off by a duet of supersonic cracks and the skytank jerked suddenly to the side.

“Driver!?” Whisper called out, glancing back. I followed her gaze, spotting Masher slumped across his controls, a great, red splatter covering one side of them. “Oh, fuck!” Whisper slipped from her controls, zipping to Masher.

“How is he!?” Breeze called out, not looking away as she returned fire with our BaWS banks, smaller pulses of magical energy flying back at the target.

“He’s...oh, shit! Not good!” she grabbed him, tugging back to get him clear of the controls. We continued to spiral downwards, the ground rushing up to meet us. I gulped.

“Pull up! Pull up!” the automated warning system called out.

“I know! I know!” Whisper yelled back, dragging Masher’s body away from the controls as we continued our death plunge. I pulled my restraints tighter around myself, hoping against hope that she’d get to the controls in time.

She didn’t.

“Damnit! We’re not going to—” she cried out, twisting herself in the controls in an effort to right the vehicle. My guts lurched downwards, vision tunneling from the powerful G-forces. Through the viewport I saw the ground rushing up to meet us...too fast, “Brace for shock!” she yelled.

We hit the dirt.

Gravity flung me in every direction at once, my restraints the only thing keeping me from splattering against the bulkheads of the skytank. Stars exploded across my vision and copper filled my nostrils as something smashed into me, making me eat my controls as metal screamed and screeched around us.

Somepony screamed, or was that me? I didn’t know as metal groaned and we tumbled end over end, my stomach rising up in my throat as I resisted the urge to puke. I could make sense of nothing but a blur of gray metal and bright buttons, giving a silent prayer that this wouldn’t end us.

It took me a few moments to comprehend when we’d finally stopped, my dizziness making the world spin. It took me a few more moments to realize that I was still alive. Frantically, I felt all over myself: snout? Check. Four hooves? Check. Wings? Check. Balls? Check.

‘Probably shoulda checked that last one first,’ I thought, pulling my hoof away from my crotch and fumbling with my restraint release, ‘Wings or hooves, I could live without. But the family jewels—’

The restraints snapped open and I immediately fell into the far bulkhead of our apparently tipped-over skytank. An ‘oof!’ escaped me as I impacted something too soft to be the armored interior. Why was it so soft?

“Gravity...why!?” I mumbled, lying there for a moment, “We were friends!”

Hefting myself to my hooves and wobbling there a moment I looked down to what I’d landed on.

I screamed.

Masher was most certainly not good. He’d taken two bullets to the cranium. The one that had spattered his brains against the controls had clipped off his ear and a goodly portion of the top left side of his head, spots of bloody gray showing through the wound. The second had shattered the left side of his jaw where it met his skull, dislocating it and giving his corpse a disturbing slack jawed look. He lay below me, bent over a bulkhead locker, leaking blood and brains everywhere.

I couldn’t help but shiver, gagging and retching as I fluttered a quick retreat, butt hitting the deck of our crashed vessel. From the smell and a stain on the hind end of his trousers he’d soiled himself, I’d heard dead bodies did that, but…

Dead bodies…

It struck me suddenly, like a gust of icy wind: he was dead! Masher was dead!

“Oh! Oh, sweet skies, no!” I cried out. No, no! He couldn’t be dead! He...he…

“Shit, ow!” a voice drew my gaze away as I spotted Breeze rubbing one shoulder. One of her eyes was bloody and she had a small cut on her snout, but other than that her restraints had kept her safe. She looked over from her controls, meeting my eyes, “You okay?” her eyes fell on Masher’s corpse, “Masher?”

“He...he…” I hiccuped, eyes darting from his body to Breeze. It was only then I spotted Chief Whisper, “Oh, no, no! Chief!” I stumbled over to where she lay.

A shard of metal had been peeled away from the pilot’s controls and now stabbed clean through her back and out her left side, far off center. She was breathing, but shallowly, and I reported her rapid pulse when I pressed a hoof to her jaw.

“Is she...” Breeze slipped from her restraints, trotting hesitantly to me.

“Sh-she’s alive, b-but…” I stuttered, unable to form words.

“Damnit!” Breeze snarled, “Damnit!” she kicked at the bulkhead, hopping quickly to the commander’s seat and grabbing the radio controls. She hesitantly clicked them on, ready to flick them back off if the lines were still laced with deathly demon static from the Lenticular. But all she got was silence, it didn’t take an intelligence specialist to tell the radio was FUBAR like the rest of the skytank’s controls.

It was then that Whisper sputtered and opened her eyes. From the way they bulged and quickly snapped shut, I could tell she wished she hadn’t. She bit down hard on her lip, stifling a scream of pain.

“Chief!” I yelled, turning quickly to Breeze, “Grab the first aid kit!”

“Ow,” Whisper whimpered, “What...how,” she winced, squinting painfully at me, “Gimme a...sitrep.”

“We crashed, Chief,” I reported, hooves quaking, “M-Masher’s...he’s d-dead,” I forced myself to say, “I...we...Breeze and I are okay, but—” my eyes dropped down to the spike of metal punching through her side. Breeze came quickly with the medical kit, but only stared helplessly after she opened it. Neither of us were trained medics, all we could do was secure the wound and wait for the cavalry.

But without a radio...

“D-don’t lie to me,” Whisper squeezed her eyes closed, “how bad?”

Breeze and I exchanged glances, neither of us capable of speech.

“Shit,” Whisper muttered, wincing, “gimme a shot of the good stuff.”

“Chief—”

“You said I had a rapid pulse, gimme some painkillers!” Whisper forced out a snarl, “One shot won’t stop my heart.”

Breeze jabbed the auto-injector into Whisper’s thigh, the penetrated pegasus visibly relaxing as the medicine hit her system. Blood continued to leak slowly from the wound.

“What do we do?” Breeze put on a steely expression, but her voice was shaking as she addressed Whisper.

“Mm...get the fuck outta my skytank,” she growled, “Get back to the Overcast.”

I was about to protest when a loud clang sounded from the rear hatch of the skytank. This time it was bewilderment that passed between Breeze and I. Could the engineers have come already?

“What was that?” Whisper growled.

“I’ll check it out,” Breeze offered, giving Masher’s corpse a clear berth as she made her way to the back. Meanwhile I hopped up, sticking my head into the pilot’s cockpit and peeking out the shattered and bloody viewports. I froze at the sight outside.

I turned quickly, yelling: “Wait, Breeze! Get ba—”

There was a massive BOOM! as the hatch caved in, the blast penetrating the metal and ripping into her. Breeze fell back, twitching, her face a mess of blackened burns and twisted flesh. It hardly looked equine.

The blast threw me back against the pilot’s controls, head banging hard against the bulkhead as a whine droned in my hearing. I groaned, the world spinning as voices shouted from what sounded like miles away. Across the deck, Breeze stopped twitching.

Dead.

The silhouette of a pony formed in the opening made by the breaching charge. My heart rate doubled in an instant as my wing groped quickly at my side. A unicorn stepped inside, and I realized that I’d never actually seen a unicorn this close before...or a revolver like the one held in her magic. First Masher...now Breeze...and Whisper was on her way out. Was I next!?

My wing jerked, pulling my own pistol free as the unicorn kicked at Masher’s corpse, my movement drawing her eyes to me. They darted wide as I flicked off the safety and took aim.

Not if I could fucking help it!

Bellowing out my rage, I vaporized the unicorn in a rapid fire blast of shots. The revolver clanged heavily to the floor. I leveled my weapon at the hatch as pink ashes settled, waiting for the next dead motherfucker to step through.

A scream escaped me as fire nipped at my shoulder, gunshots sounding from behind. Wheeling about, I spotted a pony on the other side of the viewports, aiming his weapon through the shattered glass.

Twisting towards him, I tongued the trigger in rapid procession, sending pulses of deathly energy back. The first two struck the shattered remnants of the pilot’s viewport, slagging the jagged edges and allowing the next series to strike the pony. He screamed, stumbling back as the first two hit him square in the face. His mane ignited, flesh sloughing away and eyeballs vaporizing as the third shot burnt off his lips and part of his jaw. He crumpled and didn’t get back up.

“Fuck you, buzzard!” somepony behind me yelled, the sound of hooves clopping over metal heralding another enemy’s approach.

I turned too quickly in the cramped quarters, striking my head against the side of the viewport. My pistol fell, but I grabbed it quickly with a wing—

Not fast enough.

Powerful hooves grabbed my hind legs and threw me backwards. More pain blossomed through my skull as my head was smashed against Whisper’s periscope. Ringing filled my ears and I struggled uselessly with stunned limbs to bring my pistol to bear.

The pony, an armored, brown earth pony buck slapped my weapon away. It clanged off towards the back of the skytank. He smashed me across the face with a forehoof, my gaze drawn to Masher’s body lying beside me. When I looked back to my assailant, he had a knife in his maw.

I barely got my hooves up in time to stop it from going straight into my neck.

The earth pony snarled, drooling past the weapon as my hooves clamped down on the flat sides of the blade. But the earth pony planted his hooves firmly on the bulkhead beneath me as he forced the blade down.

My hooves trembled as they tried to keep the knife from plunging into my flesh. Terror squeezed my throttling heart up into my throat, a wet warmth spreading through my trousers as I lost control of my bladder. The earth pony was stronger than me, overpowering me, soon enough his strength would shatter my own and he knew it.

But then I felt a familiar shape against my wing: Masher’s holster.

My wing locked down on his weapon, tearing it from his holster. Flicking the fire selector to solid beam mode, I pressed the weapon’s sharp gemstone into my assailant’s unarmored gut. I squeezed the trigger with a pinion, forelegs about to give out.

The stench of burnt hairs filled the air as the beam met his gut. His scream was cut short as he vaporized, turning into sooty, pink ash that settled down over me. His knife and smoking armor tumbled down atop me and I shoved it all aside. A sob of relief escaped my lips, limbs quaking with a mixture of adrenaline, terror, and fatigue.

“Shit!”

I shoved my head up, spotting a final mare—another earth pony—staring at me in wide-eyed terror through our destroyed hatch. In an instant she turned and fled, crying for help.

She was going to bring more! I couldn’t let that happen. My hooves were under me in a flash, air filling my wings as I took off after her, transferring Masher’s pistol to my mouth. Yet I only got a pitiful whine when I tongued the trigger, a small red light telling me I was out. Damnit, Masher, why couldn’t you have kept it fully charged?!

Spitting an oath past the weapon, I tucked it away. I didn’t have any more sparkle packs on me. Very well, I’d have to do this the old fashioned way! I tucked my wings, diving down.

She glanced back a second before I struck her, too late to do anything about it. Her scream was cut short as I drove her into the ground, grabbing hold of her as I rolled.

The mare gasped in air that had been blasted from her lungs, bucking in an effort to get me off. Close quarters training took control of me as I wrapped one foreleg around her neck, using the other to lock it in place while my hind legs gripped her flanks. I rolled onto my back, keeping her atop me to prevent her from getting any traction with the ground, pulling back as tight as I could, hearing her choke against my leg.

Her hind legs kicked as she wet herself, struggling against me as I kept up pressure across her throat. She jabbed at me with her forelegs, elbows stabbing painfully into my ribs. I ignored the pain, keeping up the pressure. I couldn’t let her escape!

Her eyes bulged wide as she thrashed, tail whipping about. The smell of her in such close proximity made me gag, but still I held her as tight as a lover. Her convulsions began to slow as her oxygen-deprived brain began to give up, her elbows losing power, kicks turning to twitches before she finally went limp, passing out.

I kept up my chokehold a few moments longer, making sure she was really out before rolling her off me. Brushing myself off, I got to my hooves, veins throbbing with adrenaline as my heart raced through my chest. The mare had resumed her shallow breaths, lying still in the dirt.

Glaring down at the mare, I reached for my knife. Jerk up her head and open her throat, bleed her like a stuck...what was the phrase? Pig? Yeah, pig. But then my eyes found her flank. Or, more specifically, her cutie mark: a crude-looking splint. That gave me pause.

Was this pony a medical specialist?

And, more importantly: could she help Chief Whisper?

I took a moment, the gentle breeze tugging at my wings, ears twitching of their own accord as they scanned for sounds. One hoof rested on the hilt of my knife and the metallic tang of blood rested in my mind. Her blood...or Whisper’s…

I don’t know how long I stood there, mind conflicting between two raging thoughts. Without help, Whisper would die. Help I couldn’t administer and help that was too far away to do her any good...help that this random ground pounder might, and only might, be capable of providing.

She was the enemy, and perhaps my only hope of saving Whisper’s life…

“Damnit!” I growled, approaching her unconscious form.

I tore off her saddlebags, rifling through them and finding numerous medical supplies. So maybe she really was a medical pony. I growled as I undid the straps, reapplying them around her hooves to hobble her. I was taking no chances.

Once I was confident that she wasn’t running anywhere anytime soon, I drew Masher’s pistol with a wing. Sure, it wasn’t charged, but there was no way she knew that.

“Wake up!” I snarled, kicking her prone form. She shifted, face scowling and ears twitching, “Wake the fuck up!” I yelled at her, smashing her across the face with a hoof, then again when she failed to awaken.

She awoke with a scream, leaping to her hooves and hobbling backwards before tripping and falling back on her butt. Her eyes found the hobbles and her hooves scrambled wildly to undo them.

“Hey, quit that or I’ll fucking vape you!” I snarled, jabbing my pistol at her with a wing.

“Wh-wh-wha—” she looked around wildly, freezing as she spotted me and my weapon, “Oh, sweet Celestia! P-please, I—”

“Shut-up!” I growled back, “Are you a medical pony!? Answer me!”

“Wh-bu-bu-y-yes, I-what—” she fumbled for words, trembling as her eyes darted between my face and my pistol.

“You want me to fucking vape you, cunt!?” I snarled.

“Wh-n-n-no, please, don’t!” she held her hooves up as best she could, “please, I-I surrender! Don’t sh-shoot!”

“So you don’t want to get vaped?!” I growled.

“No! No, please! I—” she cast her eyes about, “what...what—”

“If you don’t wanna get vaped, you’re gonna help fix up my friend. You do that, I’ll let you go, got it!?” I glared into her face, “But you fuck with me, you fuck with her, and I’ll fucking vape you, turn you into a little pile of glowing ash, got it!?”

“Y-you need...” she trembled, licking her lips, “y-yeah, I...okay, I…” she trailed off with a whimper.

“Good. On your hooves, back to the skytank!” I gestured with my pistol, “If you try anything...”

“No! Please! I won’t, I won’t, I just wanna live, please…” she mumbled, getting to her hooves and casting me a fearful look as she began to hobble back towards the skytank.

So far so good.

* * * * *

“Skiff?” Whisper growled when I returned with the ground pounder in tow, making sure to secure any weapons the mare might be able to use.

“She’s a medical pony, she can fix you,” I jabbed the earth pony in the flank with my pistol, ‘I hope,’ I didn’t add. Always keeping my pistol on the mare, I used my other wing to grab the pistol out of Breeze’s holster, quickly swapping it with Masher’s and getting a scared glance from my prisoner. I felt calmer now that my weapon was hot, I could make good on my promise if she tried anything.

Whisper tensed at the mare’s lack of wings or uniform, eyeing her with a questioning wariness. But at the sight of her terror and her hobbles, she seemed to get the picture, “She’s the—” she winced, biting back her words as her eyes clamped shut.

“Fix her,” I snapped at the mare, gesturing with a jerk of my head. “She’s my prisoner,” I said to Whisper, “and she knows what the fuck’s gonna happen if she tries anything.”

“Th-this doesn’t look good,” the mare commented, casting me another fearful look before turning back to Whisper, “B-but I th-think I can—”

“You think!?” I snapped, making her ears go flat as she cringed, “I’ll tell you now, if you don’t I’m gonna turn you into a pink cloud of ash!”

“Okay, okay! I’ll do it, I’ll do it!” she cried back, her terror making me feel good, ‘This is what you get for fucking with my crew members, ground-bound scum!’

Still casting me glances as if I was going to eat her the second she turned away, the mare began to assess Whisper’s wounds. Whisper herself appeared to fight back the urge to cry out, gritting her teeth and squeezing her eyes closed.

“I-I’ll need m-medical supplies…” the mare stuttered back at me. I kicked the skytank’s first aid kit at her, making her jump at the loud clang it made. She grabbed it in her maw, bringing it closer to Whisper and hesitating a moment. She appeared extra meek as she looked back at me again, “I-I’ll need my h-hooves,” she gave me a fearful look.

“If you think I’m dumb enough—”

“Nngh!” Whisper groaned to get my attention, “N-o, Skiff...l-let...undo her forehooves...do, she!”

“Chief, if I—” I began.

“Fucking obey!” she yelled at me, gritting her teeth against the pain.

Grumbling, I glared at the mare. Drawing my knife with my free wing.

She looked as if she might wet herself all over again as I stepped up and sliced through her bindings.

“You try anything!” I warned, stepping back quickly, keeping the pistol centered on her.

“I won’t,” she mumbled.

‘But if you do...’ my pinion stroked the trigger longingly, waiting for her to give me an excuse.

“O-okay,” the mare breathed, looking through our first aid kit, “penetrating object…” she paused, examining the wound for a moment before turning to me, “I...well, we’ve got a facility. If we were there I’d have a much easier time treating—”

“Fuck no! You think you’re gonna take us fucking prisoner?” her tail tucked tightly as she cringed away from me, “No, you’ve got plenty of shit in there, plenty in your fucking saddlebags, too!” I gestured to the bags still strapped loosely to her sides, “Fix her!”

“You would be treated fairly!” she tried again in spite of my tone, “Please, the chances of success—”

“You wanna get fucking vaped!? Short for fucking vaporized!? Short for made into pink fucking ashes!?” she flinched as I got in her face, stepping up and pressed my pistol into the side of her head, “Fix her here!”

“Okay! Okay, j-just please-please don’t kill me! I’ve got a f-family...f-friends!” she whimpered, backing stiffly into a bulkhead.

That was the wrong, fucking thing to say.

“Oh, you’ve got friends, yeah!? You got a family, bitch!?” I snarled, grabbing her by the mane and shoving her face towards Masher’s body. “So did Masher!” I shoved her towards Breeze’s corpse, “So did Breeze!”

I smashed her across the face with my other forehoof, her head clanging off metal. It felt so good that I did it again, seeing blood spit from her mouth. She held up a hoof to fend me off, but I slapped it away, grabbing her by the collar of her dirty shirt and slamming her up against the bulkhead, pressing my pistol into her gut. Her eyes went wide and her bladder went loose again as I glared murder into her very, fucking soul, wing clenched so hard against my weapon that it should have broken.

“Wingpony Sky Skiff!” Whisper yelled, tone penetrating the armor of my rage, making me freeze up.

“Please...please...please…” the mare was whimpering, crying as snot ran from her nostrils and urine puddled at her hooves. I held her up a few moments longer, enjoying her terror, smelling her fear, before I let go.

“Shut up and help her,” I growled, stepping away.

“Okay...okay…” the mare continued to whimper, slinking back to Whisper on trembling hooves.

Carefully, she began her work, examining Whisper, who seemed to slip in and out of it on a whim. She checked her pulse, pulled back her flak jacket, cut off her blouse and t-shirt to get to the wound. The mare tested the metal shard with a hoof, lightly as she examined the wound.

“N-n-not so bad…” she mumbled.

“What!?” I snapped, making her jump and turn to me with ears down and head held low in a submissive pose.

“I...d-do you ha-h-ave,” she licked her trembling lips, “wire...er, b-bolt cutters?” she pointed back to Whisper, “It...it looks good, I-I mean where it’s going...n-no major organs or-or arteries,” she took a calming breath, “I-If I could cut it...her free from the ship…” she trailed off.

“Don’t you fucking try anything,” I warned, taking a few steps back and fumbling blindly with a small gear locker. I dug a set of gem-powered bolt cutters free and tossed them to her hooves.

The mare took them, trembling as she turned and snipped the end of the metal shard off. It took a few cuts to remove the far end, but Whisper was free, if still impaled. My heart fluttered up in my chest, watching on as the mare poked through the medical supplies. She looked back at me again.

“So l-like I said...it’s not going through a-anything major,” she licked her lips again, pausing briefly, “There’s st-still going to be a lot of bleeding when I pull this free…” she trailed off, looking back as Whisper watched her through half-lidded eyes, “Y-you might need to help me...apply pressure to the wound as I pull it out...”

That much I knew I could do, “Fine,” I stepped forwards, keeping my gun on her as I took an offered sterile wound dressing in my mouth, tearing the packaging open with my teeth.

“There might be a lot of blood...are you ready?” she gripped the piece of metal at Whisper’s back.

“Always ready to fly steady,” I snarled in sing-song, making her wince.

She began to pull, Whisper began to scream, and I began pressing the dressing into her wound.

Blood began to flow more freely as the metal came out, running down from both ends. The dressing soaked up a lot of it, but Whisper continued to bleed even after the metal came out. She shuddered as the mare pressed a healing potion to her lips.

“Drink, drink!” she said, letting Whisper gulp the purple liquid down her throat. She followed it with another as the bleeding began to subside, the wound beginning to close. A third had the hole nearly gone, but the mare held off here, pressing a dressing to the wound and securing it with gauze.

“You have more potions,” I growled.

“Can’t overdose her. Too many healing potions after something like this and your immune system starts to shut down, can’t handle working on its own anymore,” the mare replied, looking fearful of retaliation as she finished off the bandage. After checking her vitals again, the mare gave Whisper another shot of painkillers, looking satisfied...if still scared.

“I...I did it,” the mare took a step back, glancing between Whisper and me, “Sh-she’s stable, I…” she licked her lips, “You’ll let me go now, right?”

‘Not a chance in hell,’ I thought, wing clamping around my pistol. She was a loose end, she’d just bring her friends back and—

“Yes...Skiff, let her go,” Whisper whispered weakly, as if reading my mind. She got slowly to her hooves, stumbling. I shoved past the earth mare to offer her support, “We’re not war criminals.”

“She’ll rat us out! She’s a security hazard, we can’t let her go!” I hissed back. And, technically, I already was a war criminal after beating and compelling a prisoner of war...not that I saw Whisper bringing that up in court.

“We’ll be long gone by the time she brings anypony back,” she replied in a hush, putting a hoof weakly on my shoulder, “That’s an order, Skiff. Let her go.”

I turned my glare to the earth pony mare, watching her tremble under my gaze. She looked ready to bolt, eyes darting from my face to my pistol. Somehow I knew both of us were aware that she couldn’t outrun my shots if she ever dared try...and maybe that was enough for me.

I lowered my pistol.

“Get the fuck out of here,” I snapped.

“Th-thank you…” she murmured, turning and fleeing.

“C’mon. We’ll return to the Overcast and come back with more troops to salvage and get their bodies,” Whisper winced, slumping against me as I helped her out and towards our freedom.

03 - SERE

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CHAPTER THREE: SERE

“Now, if you do manage to catch a radbit or other small rodent the quickest way to kill it for consumption is by breaking the neck, like so...”

Another explosion ripped through the air above as I finished off a healing potion, the wounds in my shoulder where one of the ground pounders had shot me closing up. The enchanted bullets had completely ignored both my flak jacket and uniform beneath, forcing me to shrug painfully out of my upper garments to see how badly I’d been wounded. A pair of AcheAway tabs were swallowed dry to help with the dull pain that remained. I didn't want to have to resort to painkillers yet.

“You’re done?” Chief Whisper asked after I pulled my blouse and flak jacket back on. I gave a curt nod, closing up the medkit, “Let’s keep moving, then.”

After leaving our crashed skytank a few things had become immediately apparent. Firstly, between us and the Overcast was a long flight through combat-filled skies. We might’ve been able to make it if we were in full power armor with class V self-healing ceramic plates, but all we had were our flak jackets and working uniforms, which didn’t really stand up to alicorn magic or triple A fire all that well.

Or enchanted bullets that would pass through class V armor without leaving so much as a scratch, I realized.

Second, even if we were armored up and ready to go, we were wounded. Even doped up on everything our brief prisoner had given her, it was still painful for Whisper to fly. She’d never make it to the ship in the state she was in, and I wasn’t feeling so hot either now that the adrenaline had worn off.

A third, and final, nail in the proverbial coffin was how the battle was turning. We’d come in with overwhelming firepower, but every now and again I managed to spot that dragon—a motherfucking dragon!—roaring about, spitting fire at the raptors. Those things weren’t called dragon killers without reason, but the beast seemed to be holding its own. Furthermore, the Overcast wasn’t looking too well off either, polished hull showing signs of damage. If the Enclave lost this battle while we were still stuck on the ground…

“Head in the game, Skiff,” Whisper drew me away from my worries, back to the dark depths of this evil forest, “We’re not out of this yet.” I nodded, expression grim, “If we can get far away enough from the action we can fly out of here and get to one of the rally points,” Whisper continued, verbally working through our problems and solutions, “From there, we can get back to the ship and help turn this clusterfuck around.”

‘If it can even be turned around,’ I didn’t say, wondering how long we’d last if an alicorn spotted us en route to our comrades.

“Second to that, we can find a spot to hunker down till the battle’s over. Enclave won’t leave us to the winds. You with me, Skiff?” Whisper asked over her shoulder, fixing me with a stern look.

“Yes, Chief,” I replied, following with my eyes and ears on a swivel, “but..but what if the rally points are all toast? This battle isn’t going according to plan, with the demon attacking the Lenticular and the wind-forsaken dragon—”

“I know,” Whisper growled, cutting me off, “We’ve gotta trust in our training, trust in our Enclave. We’re not about to roll over because the enemy is stronger than we planned.”

The enemy.

Rage boiled up like indigestion as I saw Masher and Breeze die again. Bullets ripped through soft flesh, a pony who always smiled. An explosive charge ruined the pretty face of a married mare. She’d been planning on trying for a foal during her next cycle.

They were gone, warm meat cooling on the forest floor.

Whisper had grabbed their tags and I’d grabbed their sidearms and spare sparkle packs from the lockers. Also tucked into my belt was the ground pounder’s revolver. Sure, I wasn’t skilled with non-energy weapons, but those were in short supply and every little thing helped.

We trotted on in silence for a time, steering clear of the violent reports of heavy machine gun fire. A small fireteam we might be able to deal with, but a machine gun nest? If the ground pounders didn’t turn the mounted weapon on us, they were sure to have enough small arms to put an end to two injured pegasi.

We walked. We dropped. We stopped. We crawled. We walked.

The cycle continued and my heart hammered in my chest, playing a similar tune to the constant reports of weapons fire. I slowed my breath and considered my training in an effort to calm my nerves and keep a level head.

Getting stuck beneath the clouds without the capacity to return was an eventuality that anypony with the right combat certification trained for. SERE training, it was called: Survival, Evasion, Resistance, and Escape. It was further broken down into A, B, and C-level training.

A-level we got in boot camp, just your basic book-smarts and understanding of the Codes of Military Conduct. How to be a model prisoner and what was expected of you if you were captured. I wondered how much of that actually applied to our current enemies. The codes hadn’t been written with slavers or raiders in mind.

B-level we’d got after aircrew training. Here we were taken to a spot of land above the clouds where the wild still grew and given the real pointers.

Survival focused on just that: how to make a lean-to to keep dry. How to make a buffalo fire pit so nopony would see your flames. Basic ways to identify edible flora and how to capture and prepare fauna if we needed an energy boost. It helped you stay alive when your kit was gone and your comrades were, too.

Evasion was where we were now: keeping out of enemy hooves for as long as equinely possible. It was easy now that they were all watching the skies, but once things started to settle we would need to book it to a safe zone. They always told us that no matter what the Enclave would never stop looking for downed soldiers until they found them or their remains. I wasn’t too sure I believed that, but it was a nice thought.

Resistance and Escape were more touched on in SERE C, but you either needed to be a high-level officer or an intel spook to get into SERE C. At the B-level they just re-hashed to keep a level head and follow your superiors in the event of capture.

That part I was doing quite well, Whisper’s shapely butt shifting beneath her haze-gray trousers as she trotted ahead of me. I almost missed the quick gesture she made with her wings, the two of us dropping low in the thick foliage.

Two armored equines burst forth, galloping past us close enough to see that one had a horn and neither had wings.

“...support at the next battery over! Took a hit from a bombing chariot and…” one of them was saying, his voice rising and fading away as he and his comrade disappeared again.

I hugged the dirt for a minute before Whisper gestured again.

We started to crawl.

* * * * *

The skytank idled in a clearing, hovering just above the ground on its bed of self-generated clouds. The hatch in the back was open, but the skytank was quartered away from our vantage point so seeing inside wasn’t possible. Its black and green armor plating was unmarred, not even a scrape on the hard surface...though with armor-negating bullets that wasn’t much of a telltale sign. How it had wound up sitting there in the clearing was a mystery, but the status of its crew wasn’t.

Three pegasi in bloody uniforms were slumped up against the starboard side of the skytank, the one facing us. I couldn’t identify them with the bushes in my face and deep down I really didn’t want to, I’d lost enough friends today, enough to last a lifetime.

The fourth was a mare named Sun Daisy and her screams had cued us towards where we were laying now, hidden in low brush at the clearing’s edge. It gave us a nearly perfect vantage point over the clearing, letting us watch the final two ponies with clamped jaws.

Neither of them had wings, both were armed and armored in Red Eye’s colors.

“I said: shut-up!” I could only hear the first soldier because he was yelling, the sound his hoof made when he smacked Daisy across the face was inaudible. Her screaming stopped as she lay limp in the dirt, quivering.

“Nimbus,” Whisper whispered beside me.

“What?” I whispered back.

“That’s the Nimbus,” she winced as she gestured towards the skytank with a wing, “Air Sergeant Fluff’s skytank,” her voice seemed distant, “Just the other day she was complaining about something...something stupid, I don’t even remember what it was now…”

Explosions and gunfire like distant firecrackers lit the air for a few moments. The two Red Eye soldiers discussed something, the first pressing Daisy down with a hoof. The second shook her head, her tone annoyed when she replied.

“She’s one of those bodies now...and I feel like that should make me feel sad or something,” Whisper started up again after a moment, “But all I can think about is that we’re going to need a new Lead Air Sergeant once this is all over.”

‘She was kind of a shittly LAS,’ I almost said.

“What’s our next move?” I asked instead, belittling the dead could wait until we were safe.

“We keep watching,” it pained her to say that, her eyes watching Daisy and her captors, “No idea how many of them are there, but this is our best shot. Once we get an opening we get that skytank back and gun it to safety. I’ll drive, you’ve got the gun.”

“And Daisy?”

Whisper was silent for a moment, biting her lip as she weighed our options. Some would argue that the right thing to do would be to get her back, no matter the odds of two messed up crewponies beating two heavily armed soldiers. But that would get us killed.

On the flipside, we could wait until the enemy soldiers left, probably with Daisy as a prisoner, maybe with her body resting against the skytank with the rest of her crew members. Neither of the soldiers would be able to pilot the skytank, that required wings, so they would either leave it be or try to scuttle it.

Daisy started screaming again, both of our eyes going back to her. The second soldier had an annoyed look on her face, her horn ignited and pinning Daisy’s limbs down. The first…

“Don’t you even think about it, you fucking pig!” Whisper hissed, unheard by the soldiers.

The first was about to rape her.

He was pulling at her flak jacket with his maw, yanking the velcro open and forcibly tearing it off the screaming mare. He grinned down at her, then bit down on her blouse. The buttons popped off as he pulled it open revealing the dark purple t-shirt beneath. Daisy’s screaming reached a crescendo, both of the soldier’s ears flattening back until the soon-to-be-rapist struck her hard across the jaw.

“Stop now,” Whisper growled quietly, glaring as if she could will the buck to stop through sheer force of will.

“Chief?” I asked, but she didn’t respond.

The first soldier tore at Daisy’s belt, pulling it out of its looping and flinging it away. The second soldier watched it land in the dirt with her annoyed expression before turning back to the pinned Daisy. Her comrade yanked Daisy’s trousers down to her ankles, stopping to take a deep sniff at her undergarments. Daisy was conscious enough to tuck her tail up against her backside, but the soldier just pinned it to the ground with a forehoof, the other one reaching beneath him and dropping his pants to his ankles. Unlike Daisy, he wasn’t wearing any underwear, his erection impossible to miss. His maw dropped down to Daisy’s underwear and pulled slowly…

“I’m going to eat my gun if I have to stand by and watch this,” Whisper growled, grabbing her pistol and flicking the safety off. She looked at me for less than a second, eyes telling me that she wasn’t going to give me the order that would get me killed to try and save Daisy’s honor.

She didn’t need to.

Daisy’s undergarments were down her ankles and the second soldier was turning her eyes away as we burst from cover and began to close the distance. It would’ve been ideal to fire from our hidden position, but our pistols didn’t have the range or accuracy to make the shots we needed to make.

The second soldier spotted us first, her eyes shooting wide and her body turning towards us. Her magic faded from Daisy’s limbs, consolidating around the rifle slung against her breast. The beam of my weapon shot out over her shoulder and I corrected my aim onto her snout, the solid beam better than any sighting system. Her eyes snapped closed, a painful look on her jaw, as I burned away her sense of smell. Her weapon chattered loudly, but without her eyes directing it, the shots went wide and after a piercing scream through blackening lips she crumpled to the ground.

The first soldier reacted slower, his mind having to switch from rape to retaliate. His weapons were attached to his battle saddle and with his pants around his ankles and his penis stiff beneath him his mobility was shit. Still, as Whisper’s shots splattered against his heavy armor, he managed to get his guns to bear on us, a grin on his face as he grabbed his firing bit and tongued the firing mechanism.

Daisy was the only reason we survived.

No longer pinned down by the second soldier, all four hooves came up into his body. Her forelegs targeted the machine guns on his battle saddle, forcing their barrels up and away from us as they fired. Her hind legs targeted his crotch, crushing his unguarded testicles up into his body hard enough that his hind legs came up off the ground.

His mouth came off the firing bit and he toppled over with a wheeze. Daisy scampered away with a wild look in her eyes, tripping on her trousers and curling into a fetal position with a sob.

“Wait!” the soldier wheezed as Whisper stomped up to him, pinning his firing bit to the ground and dropping her pistol into a wing. I covered the second soldier, not sure if she was still alive, and yanked her rifle away.

“Say again?” Whisper asked him.

“Wai—” his plea turned into a choking sound as Whisper pressed her pistol into his mouth and squeezed the trigger twice. It wasn’t enough to vaporize him, and I suspected that that was the point as I watched the buck choke and writhe at the beyond-hot energy that burned out his throat. His erection faded and he emptied his bladder into the dirt as the light began to fade from his eyes. Whisper pulled her weapon out of his mouth and burned off his bruising balls with a final squeeze of the trigger. We both hoped it was the last thing he ever felt.

A calm fell over the clearing, distant gunfire a soothing background noise by now. Fading adrenaline brought back pain I’d forgotten about, making me slump for a moment before a sudden realization struck me.

“We’re alive!” I exclaimed, Whisper jumping at the sound of my voice. Her grimacing wince told me she was coming off her adrenaline high like me. She took a moment to collect herself, blowing a breath out past her lips.

“Go pull tags,” she waved her pistol towards the three pegasi slumped against the Nimbus. A look of surprise splashed across her face as she realized she still had the weapon out and she tucked it back in its holster, “Let me handle Daisy.”

I turned to where the mare was lying, her body wracked with silent sobs. She was still curled up in a fetal position, her tail tucked against her bare backside. Her back was to me, but I could only imagine the look on her face.

I started to move, but then remembered the second soldier I was covering. She hadn’t moved, face a blackened mess almost like Breeze’s had been, “What about this one?”

“She still alive?” Whisper halted on her way over to Daisy. When I shrugged she drew her pistol and put three rounds in the mare’s face, her body vaporizing into pink ash. Whisper holstered her pistol and started moving to Daisy again.

“We’re not war criminals.” Whisper had said. But again I saw how the mare had held Daisy down while the buck stripped her. Was it really a war crime if they’d been committing one first? Did they cancel out?

I shook away my thoughts and cantered over to the skytank, slowing back to a trot for the final few paces, my nose wrinkling at the smell of blood and waste. All three ponies had been propped into a seated position, holsters and flak jackets removed and pockets inverted.

The first in the grisly lineup was a buck with a bulge in his trousers that would have been embarrassing were he still alive. The term: ‘angel lust’ popped into my brain from somewhere weird and I looked away. Two bloody circles on his uniform told me he’d been struck twice in the upper chest, a third bullet had taken a chunk out of his throat, and a fourth had taken off his scalp and turned his brains into mush. It took me a second to place the listless eyes and bloody mane as those belonging to Dusty Day, but the ID tags confirmed it.

He’d been eating lunch with Masher and me, now both of them were dead. A weird sensation trickled up my spine and I looked around the clearing. Nothing but the remains of Red Eye’s soldiers, Whisper, and Daisy were there.

I turned back with a shiver and moved to the next body. It was Air Sergeant Tufty Fluff, slumped back with two bloody holes in her breast. Death had done her no kindnesses, a dumb look on her homely face and a urine stain in the seat of her trousers. A distant thought occurred to me as I pulled her ID tags: she wouldn’t need to worry about taking the physical readiness test anymore. No more last minute wing-up sessions and dieting for her. Now she didn’t need to worry about anything.

The last pony in the lineup was Rosy Pose, bullets had traced a diagonal line from her gut up to one shoulder. The lower holes put out a sickening smell so I pulled her ID tags quickly while holding my breath. Looking at them while trotting towards Whisper, I realized with a strange feeling that Pose and I had the same blood type: Ka-.

Looking up from the ID tags, I saw Whisper shaking her head at me, pointing with a wing back to the skytank. Glancing at Daisy’s quivering form, I nodded and changed course.

The interior looked like a murder scene, and technically it was.

“Is it murder if you’re at war?” I asked nopony in particular, getting no reply.

Blood splattered the overhead, red lines of it running down the port and starboard bulkheads. Further puddles were drying on the floor, numerous red hoof marks and what were probably drag marks ran through it. The metallic smell of it all turned my stomach so I breathed through my mouth as I hopped over the worst of the blood and got into the pilot’s seat. For a split second, I worried that Masher might poke his head in and say something about me being in his spot, but then I remembered why that was impossible.

Sorrow choked its way into my throat and my hoof went up to my mouth to stifle a sob that burst unbidden from my lips. Wing Masher, master of dumb jokes that only he laughed at, a pony of few manners and fewer aspirations, was dead and gone forever.

That was a long, fucking time.

I scrubbed away snot and tears with my forelegs, trying to focus on where I was, what I was doing. I was in the pilot’s seat of the Nimbus, Air Sergeant Fluff’s skytank, another Type VIII Model B “Harrier” like the Stratos. We had all cross-trained for each position for the exact scenario that I was in now, crew casualties necessitating a gunner to be a driver. Daisy was the driver of the Nimbus, it only made sense; the Nimbus must’ve taken a tracer stream like we had, only with the inverse effects. How had intelligence not know about the magical bullets? How could they have? How many lives had been lost because of it?

At least four.

“Skiff, how’s she looking?” I jumped at Whisper’s voice behind me, banging my head in the small space. I twisted about, rubbing my head, to find Whisper strapping Daisy into the BaWS bank’s control seat. Her trousers were back up, but her blouse had been left behind, her purple t-shirt tucked loosely into her beltline. Once the shell shocked mare was secured, Whisper broke out a silvery emergency blanket and wrapped it around her, “Skiff?”

I flinched again but didn’t hit my head this time, looking back into Whisper’s querying eyes. Concern rested there, an emotion I hadn’t seen on her face before.

“You okay?” I didn’t flinch that time.

“Yeah, um,” I turned back to the controls, realizing I’d never checked the vehicle’s status.

“Skiff, take gunner,” the commanding tone in Whisper’s voice had rounded edges. Without comment, I slipped my wings out of the pilot’s controls, the two of us squeezing past each other. Whisper took the driver’s seat, I secured myself into the gunner’s seat, doing my best to ignore the blood splatter covering it.

Quiet clicks and clacks turned my ears towards where Whisper was doing pre-flight checks I should’ve done. Embarrassment colored my cheeks so I quietly checked that the main gun was online so as not to feel entirely useless. Aside from the blood, everything checked out, the previous gunner had loaded up an area effect round, never to be used.

“Gunner online, hot,” I reported.

“Roger, gunner online, glad to have you back,” Whisper replied, “One bad sneeze would put us down so we’re not going to risk demon-static on the radio. I’ll see if we can’t make it low and fast to one of the rally points, get our shit patched up and get back to the Overcast.” Whisper settled herself into the pilot's controls now that the pre-flight checks were complete, “You mind getting the hatch? Gonna take a minute to get this thing back up and—” her voice cut out.

“Chief!?” I yelped, turning to her. But she wasn’t slumped over the controls or otherwise dead. Movement in my peripherals drew my eyes to my cameras, seeing a small group of Red Eye soldiers trotting carefully into the clearing with a multitude of heavy weapons raised. The only reason we were still alive was because our front was towards them, the open hatch hidden from their view.

One of them had wings.

She also had a horn.

“Don’t move the turret, whatever you do, don’t move the turret!” Whisper hissed back at me, “Get out of your seat and use the manual winch to get the hatch closed, don’t use the motor, they’ll hear it.”

I nodded, though Whisper’s eyes were glued to her viewports so she wouldn’t have seen it. Slipping my wings carefully from my turret controls, I moved back to the hatch controls, popping open the emergency winch and hoping it was properly lubed. If it so much as squeaked, we were done for.

I held my breath as I twisted the winch, the hatch slipping silently closed.

“Search the area, somepony clear that tank, she couldn’t have gone far!” someone ordered from outside. My wings and forehooves started to burn as I employed all four to work the winch faster.

I gasped for air once the hatch clicked shut, throwing the manual lock a second before I heard someone knock on it. The fact that they didn’t just shoot through it told me they probably hadn’t seen it close.

“Hey…” a faint voice startled me from the other side of the hatch, “didn’t we leave this open?”

My gaze snapped back to my cameras, seeing everyone outside, alicorn included, start to exchange worried glances.

As one they raised their weapons.

And I put my hoof down.

The skytank lurched to the side as I pressed the firing lever, hurling a ball of superhot plasma into the clearing. My cameras flashed white as the round detonated, a loud whoosh sounding from outside as the air itself vaporized into a brief vacuum. Had the hatch not been sealed, we would have been glowing goo.

“Holy shit!” Whisper exclaimed as I leapt into my controls. The infrared and night vision cameras were toast, but after a reset my DTV came back in grainy glory. I panned it over the clearing, not even seeing goo piles in a wide circle around us. Some of the trees on the outskirts were on fire, many nothing more than empty holes in the ground were their roots had grown. Thank the four winds for area effect rounds.

I stopped panning as I saw something weird in the middle of the clearing. A strange, translucent sphere that the camera couldn’t get a good image of. Frowning at it, I felt my butthole pucker when it faded to reveal the alicorn, her green coat unscathed. She glared first left, then right, then right into my camera.

“Alicorn’s still alive!” I got an error when I tried to load another round, my controls winking red for the main gun. The point blank area effect round had toasted the focusing device and the BaWS bank on the starboard side of the skytank, “Shit, gun’s down!”

Clang! the hull reverberated around us, Daisy letting out a sharp scream.

Looking back at my cameras, the alicorn’s horn was lowered towards us, glowing bright and then flashing. Another loud clang reverberated through the hull.

“Get us out of here!” I yelled.

“Can’t!” Whisper called back, an edge of panic in her voice, “that round you shot vaporized our clouds. We’ve gotta regen them and it’s dry as hell outside, gonna take a minute!”

“Do we have a minute!?” I called back.

There was another loud clang and the starboard bulkhead buckled inwards a little. The alicorn smiled on my camera, horn lighting up again.

“How about the coaxial?”

“What!?” I asked.

“Try the co-ax!” Whisper yelled.

I checked my boards, the coaxial beam machine gun was yellow. Starting to overheat, but not toast. I switched over from the main gun and brought the crosshairs on the alicorn. My hoof went to the floor, a burst of energized particles spitting out in rapid fire. I only got a five second burst before the gun cut out, red warning signs telling me it was overheating.

It didn’t matter, the alicorn’s shield had come up the second I put the crosshairs on her.

“Cunt!” I spat at her, knowing she couldn’t hear me.

“You get her?” Whisper sounded hopeful.

“Nope, shield,” I reported back.

“Damnit!” Whisper hit something and I saw the Alicorn’s shield come back down, then flash back up after a moment. The co-ax had overheated, but she didn’t know that, she was testing to see if it was safe to drop her shield…

Because she couldn’t attack us and defend simultaneously! The tactical part of my brain tried to figure out the best way to use that knowledge.

“I need fifty seconds!”

“I can manage that!” I replied, flinching when the alicorn fired another telekinetic blast at us. It seemed weaker than before, she hadn’t charged it as much, her shield back up in an instant. A red light flashed to yellow and I fired a quick burst from the co-ax, not letting it overheat this time. The alicorn’s shield was back up, but when it faded she was scowling and a black mark colored one shoulder. “Tagged her shoulder!” I reported, “How you like that super hot plasma, bitch!?”

Not very much, it seemed, as the translucent sphere containing her lifted off the ground. I tracked her, hoof hovering on the firing lever. Was she retreating? Then she was gone from my camera, the turret unable to track her as she went past its maximum elevation. Normally such a thing wouldn't be a problem, with the skytank’s ability to pivot and rotate to get the desired angle. But stuck on the ground and unable to move...

“Shit, she’s above us!” I called out, “No elevation!”

“Copy!” Whisper called back as a louder clang reverberated through the hull. Our top armor was the weakest and it showed as a downwards bulge in the overhead.

“Don’t wanna die! Don’t wanna die! Don’t wanna die!” Daisy started chanting as another clang punched down into the overhead, the bulge deepening.

“Chief!” I called out, too afraid to care about the raised pitch of my voice, “We need to get out of here!”

“No shit, Skiff!” Whisper called back, “C’mon! C’mon!”

Clang!

“Hull breach! Hull breach!” an automated voice warmed, the bulge having turned into a thin slit through which light was starting to trickle through.

Daisy screamed.

Then my stomach dropped, vision tinging black as we shot straight up into the air. A scream burst out of me, thinking the alicorn had grabbed us, but then we pivoted and rocketed off and I knew we were under power again.

“We’re back up! We’re back up!” Whisper reported, “Bogey on six! Gunner engage!”

Training had my gun sights scanning our rear, switching to IR before remembering it was toast. I switched back to DTV, seeing the alicorn flapping after us. I let loose with a burst from the co-ax, but the shots went wide and the yellow light flashed to red.

“Stabilization’s fucked!” I called to Whisper, confirming it on my board as a blinking light that should have been solid.

“We can’t take her to a rallypoint!” Whisper growled, half to herself. My camera view lurched down to the ground as Whisper took us up at a sharp angle, “She’ll slaughter everyone there and with that fucking demon static on comms we can’t call ahead and warn them.”

“Back to the battle, then? Try and shake her in the chaos?” I asked.

“Again: no radio and no main gun. We’re an easy target and we can’t communicate with our people, we’re just as likely to get more heat than lose her. Gonna try for the cloud cover, unless she can shoot radar out of her ass she won’t be able to follow us if she loses sight.”

G-forces pulled at my restraints as we rocketed up into the sky. I tried to track the alicorn down with my gunsights, but without the turret stabilizers working right I couldn’t track her for longer than a second or two. I sent off a volley of shots, but they all went wide and the gun overheated again.

“Brace for high-G maneuvering!”

The Nimbus passed imperceptibly into the bottom of the cloud cover, the ground and our pursuer flashing into white clouds on my camera. I just managed to cram my hooves against my controls as Whisper twisted her wings and sent my stomach into my throat. We turned and corkscrewed back down into the clouds, skimming the top and accelerating again at high speed.

Cloud-tech sensors would have detected our penetration and logged it as routine via handshake routines in the Nimbus’ own cloud-tech. The alicorn’s penetration, however, would be logged as abnormal as she followed behind us. If we’d been closer to a cloud city or dedicated sky farm there would have been defensive technology that could zap unauthorized penetrators out of the sky. I wondered what it would do to an alicorn.

“Bogey’s back on six, got eyes?” Whisper called back to me.

My gun swiveled and I caught a glimpse of green against white.

“Intermittent! No go for the co-ax,” I replied as a quick maneuver made me lose her again, “She following on radar?”

“She’s keeping up!” Whisper reported back, “See if we can’t shake her.”

We dove back into the cloud cover, Whisper’s viewports and my cameras ghosting to white. This high up the chance of us hitting something would be slim to none, but I still saw Whisper’s head drop to the pilot’s controls, flying on instruments alone.

We juked left and right at random intervals and angles, then Whisper picked a direction and stuck to it. Maybe, like with any battle of predator and prey, if we just kept away from her long enough the alicorn would give up and seek out an easier food source. Our hydrogen fuel cells were almost full and able to recharge off of the clouds around us. I didn’t know the exact figure, but we could accelerate like this for hours at least. Alicorns were tough, too, but eventually she’d need a sandwich (or whatever it was alicorns ate) to recharge her energy.

The fact that we started to slow after a good ten or twenty minutes told me that was probably the case.

“She’s falling back on radar,” I couldn’t miss the stark relief in Whisper’s voice, “bringing us down to something more economical. We’ll keep this up for a while and then see if we can’t try and find a safe spot to hunker down and wait for help.”

* * * * *

After trotting about on the ground for over an hour, ducking into the dirt and sweating bullets as wingless ponies trotted past us, getting to relax back on fluffy clouds with the warm sun above should have been beyond blissful. We were safe now, far from any fighting with an old emergency distress beacon pinging SOS into the sensors of the cloud cover.

But whenever my eyes drifted shut somepony died.

Enchanted bullets proved that Wing Masher did, in fact, have a brain.

An explosive charge caved in the Stratos’ hatch and Breeze’s face with it.

I even saw the unicorn I’d shot in our skytank, the mixture of shock and terror that had shot across her face in the fraction of a second before her body turned to ash.

Over and over again, a series of short videos stuck on repeat inside my head until I gave in and propped myself up gingerly with my uninjured side. The other side hurt and my shoulder was starting to go stiff, but I’d already taken the maximum dosage of AcheAway.

Laying on her right side next to me, Whisper had managed to fall asleep. It would have been adorable if not for the way her breath rose and fell with quakes and her face squeezed and contorted.

Did we have Wartime Stress Disorder now? Everypony talked about it sometimes, the self-assured hotshots scoffing at the idea that they’d feel bad about killing another pony. I’d quietly subscribed to the idea that I was tough enough not to be scarred by killing enemies of the Enclave.

But the buck who’d shot me fell backwards off the Stratos as I turned his face into a nightmare of burning flesh.

Surveying the area, I spotted the Nimbus resting silently where we’d parked it, the distress beacon just beside it. Daisy was still inside the skytank, shivering and shaking her head when we tried to coax her out. The hatch was cracked open for her and all weapons had been removed from the interior. Whisper had done her best to calm the mare, but she had gone condition black and needed to sort things out on her own.

The old distress beacon was standard issue for all clouships larger than bombing chariots. It was little more than a block of cloud-tech wired into the ship for power and into the cloud cover for transmission. Interfacing with the perimeter breach sensors, it would ping out SOS to the nearest monitor station until the Nimbus ran out of power, but the Enclave would come for us long before that.

I laid back down, the clouds soft beneath me and sunlight warm against my face. Again I let my eyes fall closed, furrowing my brow as I focused on counting up and down from a hundred. In my mind I traced out each number as it shot into my head.

‘One... two... three... four…’ two wet splats and Wing Masher died. I bit my lip, ‘Five... six... seven... eight... nine... ten…’ I saw the wastelanders outside, calling for Breeze to get back from the hatch, ‘eleven... twelve...’ I got to twenty-one and Dusty Day choked on his drink in the Overcast’s galley, then he was a body against the side of the Nimbus, ‘Twenty-two...twenty-three…’ at forty-nine the large earth pony was driving his knife towards my throat, then he was ash cascading down atop me, ‘Fifty... fifty-one…’ when I reached one-hundred my concentration slipped and the alicorn was glaring into my camera, her horn flashing and Daisy screaming, ‘Ninety-nine... ninety-eight…’

I wasn’t sure at what number I’d managed to fall asleep, but when a shadow fell over me I was awake in an instant. Some long-forgotten instinct from a time before taxes when rocks and spears were all the rage.

My first bleary thought was relief, the Enclave had finally found us. They’d cart us all back to base for medical treatment and a debriefing. With how stiff my shoulder was, I’d kill for a cortisone shot right now.

The alicorn grinned down at me.

“Augh! Fuck!” I couldn’t help the shrill sound of my voice as I screamed and rolled onto my hooves, scrambling for my sidearm for all the good it would do.

The alicorn was faster. Pain blossomed in my chest and my hooves came off the clouds as her telekinetic strike hit me. My unholstered sidearm went flying away as I tumbled back across the clouds.

“Skiff!” My wings flared open, stopping my mad tumble in time to see Whisper cantering backwards, wing reaching for her weapon.

The alicorn was faster. Her long horn flashed and I cringed at the sight and sound of Whisper’s front right knee bending sharply backwards. Whisper’s eyes rolled up into their sockets and she toppled to the ground.

I tried to call out, but I couldn’t breathe, barely managing a wheeze that drew darkness into my peripherals. Trying to gulp down air past what was likely a broken rib, I rushed towards the Nimbus. If I could get to the turret controls…

But the alicorn was faster.

Pain shot up through my wing, arcing up and down my spine as I was flung into the port side of the skytank. Then I was laying on the clouds next to it, the moments between me hitting the skytank and crumpling to the clouds lost to mind-numbing pain. I gulped down air and whimpered like a foal at the throbbing sensation in my surely-broken wing, then I was flying again, hoisted up just above the cloud cover.

Focusing past the pain brought the alicorn back into view. The black marks on her shoulder confirming that it was the same one from below. Her glowing eyes moved from me to my left and when I followed her gaze I saw Whisper, blinking painfully as she regained consciousness.

“Two little gnats caught tight in a trap,” the alicorn grinned.

“We give up! You’ve won!” Whisper ground out past the pain of her crippled knee, “We surrender!”

“I should pluck off their little wings and toss them to a spider,” the alicorn didn’t seem to hear Whisper, “Maybe that’s just what I’ll do!”

Darkness swallowed me for a moment as her magic pulled at my broken wing, then I came back screaming, tears of pain streaking down my face and blurring my vision, “Please, stop!” I pleaded.

“But why should the spider have all the fun?” the alicorn ignored me, and suddenly my limbs were freed. For a fraction of a second I thought she’d finished with her cruel fun, then I felt her magic constrict around my throat.

Air that I had desperately struggled for just seconds ago was now refused to me. My forelegs came up to my neck, but there was nothing to grab or pull away. Her magic was nothing more than a tingling sensation that compressed my throat. My wings came up automatically in an effort to fly and I nearly fainted as pain flashed up my broken one.

Dark spots filled my vision and a warm spot spilled though my trousers, my body thrashing almost of its own accord. If I turned my head and focused I could just make out Whisper’s own strangling form. I would have bellowed out my rage and my terror as I saw her dying right next to me, but I couldn't even squeak with the alicorn’s magic strangling me.

I wanted to scream that we’d be okay, assure her that we’d make it through this together.

But most importantly, I wanted to tell her that I loved her.

My mind faded to nothingness.

When I gasped for air I wished I hadn’t as it shot hot fire through my chest and brought back all of my pain. A violent fit of coughing overtook my urge to breathe again and I saw blood splash down through the clouds at my hooves. I was in too much pain to care, I just wanted to lie here for the rest of eternity.

“I’ve got a better idea,” the alicorn informed me, and alarm shot through my brain as I felt her tugging at my pants. Was she going to rape me with her horn!?

But when I wheezed and looked up, I saw the revolver I’d kept tucked in my waistband floating in front of the alicorn. She fumbled with it briefly before getting the cylinder to swing out, her eyes filling with glee before she snapped it shut. A fit of coughing drew my eyes to Whisper as she lay sprawled beside me, bringing up her uninjured forehoof to rub her throat.

“Chief!” I wheezed out. We were about to die and she needed to know, “Please—Chief!”

“It’s going to be…” she coughed off to one side, “It’s going to be all—”

“I love you!” I cut her off, stunning her into silence, “I don’t...don’t fucking care if I was just a good lay to you or a dick on legs or some cheap sex toy. Maybe that’s how it started but I really—”

SILENCE!

My voice choked itself away in my throat as the word pierced my skull like a bullet.

“Very good,” the alicorn purred from behind me, “Now, you will...

STAND, her voice reverberated between my ears. A thought that was almost my own. But I really didn’t want to stand. My side ached and my wing hurt like nothing I’d felt before. The clouds were just so soft and I—

STAND!

A cry burst out of my lips as a thousand shimmering blades drove into my skull. My wing and my ribs were nothing but mild aches in comparison to the hell burning behind my eyes. Shaking and shivering, I drove my hooves into the cloud cover and swayed about as I found my balance. The pain in my skull abated...that hadn’t been so hard—

TAKE THE GUN!

The ground pouder’s revolver hovered in front of my face. Compared to standing, taking it was such an easy task.

“Skiff…” Whisper wheezed, her eyes darted quickly between my own, searching.

POINT IT AT THE PEGASUS.

Point it at...Whisper? But that wasn’t safe. That broke rules two and four of weapon safety. Always keep your weapon pointed in a safe direction and never—

POINT THE WEAPON AT THE PEGASUS!

I bit down on the grip to try and stifle the searing pain as it burned into my skull. The desire to do as instructed...the pain of disobedience...a strangled scream escaped me as I put the sights on Whisper’s chest.

PULL BACK THE HAMMER.

“Please no…” I mumbled through the mouth grip, feeling hot tears streak across my vision. Whisper’s eyes shot wide in alarm, darting between me and the alicorn.

“Skiff? Skiff!” she struggled to her hooves, then whimpered and collapsed back down as the alicorn twisted her crippled leg painfully with her magic. Whisper fought past the pain, growling through gritted teeth, “Whatever she’s making you do, fight it!”

PULL BACK THE HAMMER!

"I can't!" I sobbed, my good wing rising to pull the hammer back into position. Whisper was nothing more than a blue and pink blur, her eyes fading away into her face, “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I—”

SILENCE!

A whimper escaped me as my voice was strangled away.

PUT YOUR TONGUE ON THE TRIGGER.

There was no use in resisting. The weapon trembled in my quivering lips, Whisper nothing more than a blurry blue shape against the white world. I only hoped the alicorn would kill me swiftly afterwards.

“It was never about the sex,” Whisper whispered, “I love you too, Skiff.”

NOW PULL THE—

There was a soft whirring sound to our left and for an insane moment I wondered what Breeze was doing with the Stratos’ BaWS banks.

Then the air filled with the stench of ozone and burning hair as Daisy opened fire with the Nimbus’ port-side BaWS banks. This close to the skytank, the rapid-fire pulses of magical energy didn’t need to hit me to scald my flanks and dry out my eyes.

The alicorn screamed as her mental grip faded from my skull, letting me drag the revolver's sights away from Whisper. I pivoted, squinting against the unending stream of hot energy burning out of the Nimbus and searing my retinas. My heart fell when I saw the alicorn had her shield up, though she was sagging beneath it with most of her left wing burned off. One eye blazed with hatred and I knew that the second the emitters overheated we were all going to die horribly.

I wanted to scream, except I still had the revolver in my mouth.

The revolver from beneath the clouds.

With armor-negating bullets.

But what did armor-negating mean, exactly? How did the bullet know what was armor and what was flesh? My blouse wasn’t armor, but it had passed clean through that without a scratch. And how could it tell the difference between wires and hydraulics and armor in a skytank? It had to ignore all three of those things, and much more, to get to flesh.

So was it an armor-negating bullet?

Or a flesh-sensitive one?

Alicorn shields weren’t made of flesh.

I leveled the revolver as the BaWS banks finally overheated, cherry red tips jabbing towards where the alicorn stood in her magical armor. The alicorn glared at me, staring back down the sights of the ground pounder's revolver.

I had nothing to lose.

BLAM!

The revolver roared in my ears, deafening my hearing into a dull ringing sound as it jerked my head back. My teeth hurt from the sensation and I sorely missed the soft vibration that my service pistol made when it was fired.

The alicorn’s blazing hatred flashed into surprise as she stumbled back a step, her shield flickering out. She looked down at her side, finding a dark red line of blood pumping out of her shoulder.

“Oh,” she said, swaying on unsteady hooves.

Then she toppled over, her sides deflating with a wet wheeze.

They didn’t rise again.

I felt like I was supposed to say something. Ponies in radio dramas always said something cool when they killed the villain, saved the day once and for all.

But instead I just threw up, my legs shaking perilously beneath me. I didn’t even care as I saw the revolver swoosh through the clouds at my hooves, followed quickly by bitter bile and blood. Wait, I was puking blood?! Shit, that wasn’t good.

Daisy stumbled out of the Nimbus with a string of curses I couldn’t quite follow, her coat slick with sweat and her hooves shaking worse than mine were. She came to a halt, mouth agape as she stared down at the dead alicorn, as if she needed to see it with her own eyes to believe it.

“Medkit!” Whisper called tentatively, favoring her swelling foreleg as she trotted up beside me.

“I feel like I’m going to collapse if I move.” Had I just said that out loud? It sure sounded like my voice and it was true, my legs wobbling treacherously beneath me. If I so much as flinched I was bound to tumble down through the clouds, back to the wasteland below.

“Oh, fucking shit in my mouth, right!” Daisy scrambled back inside and returned with a medkit, “Cocks of the Council fuck my holes raw, I am so sorry! I should’ve fired sooner...but I was just…fuck, I hate my stupid, worthless guts right now!”

“It’s all right,” Whisper consoled the mare, grabbing the medkit and quickly snapping it open. She pressed something to my lips and had to order me to drink before I did, slugging back the health potion and feeling some of the pain in my chest abate. Two more joined it in my belly before Whisper spoke again, “You still leaking anywhere?” She peered over me.

“Pissed my pants,” I admitted, “Second time today.”

“Blood, Skiff, are you still bleeding?” Whisper specified with just a hint of impatience.

“I wish I knew,” I said, turning my head to look at her worried face, “Ah shit, am I dying?”

“Just shock, I think. Let’s get you laid down, c’mon,” I wasn’t sure what made me whimper as Whisper laid me down on my less injured side, laying an emergency blanket gently atop me. She sent Daisy into the Nimbus for something and her warm lips kissed my forehead, bringing some clarity back to my mind, “You know what the worst part about all this is?” I barely managed to shake my trembling head, “Gonna take a while to heal these wounds. We won’t be able to screw for a whole, long while, lover buck.”

Despite everything, all the hell we’d just been through and all the bodies we left below, I smiled, “That’s gonna suck.”

04 - Epilogue

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EPILOGUE: The War of Falling Feathers

“The war is over, but it would appear that the war was just the prologue t’ another bloody chapter in Equestrian history...”

The hours it took for a search and rescue party to arrive were immeasurable and filled with pain. Every breath was agony and every small movement elicited tears from my eyes, but finally Daisy gave a whoop of joy, leaping into the air and waving her hooves.

Medics using words like “You’re going to be all right,” and “Just hang in there, buddy,” hopped out of the rumbling vertibuck with stretchers and saline bags. They gave the alicorn’s body a wide berth, keeping their shocked expressions and quiet voices professional.

I couldn’t help but whimper as they got me on a stretcher and bore me back to the vertibuck. A sweet smell filled my sinuses as they strapped a mask over my face and my demons let me sleep dreamlessly for some unknown time.

When I awoke I was undressed but clean, laying on a somewhat stiff cot. Fresh bandages wrapped my chest and a simple cast immobilized my wing. A pair of uncomfortable catheters carried away waste and an IV line fed fluids into my foreleg. Seeing my own limb shot a flash of memory into my head, the alicorn’s horn flashing as Whisper’s knee bent sickeningly.

Sitting up sparked pain in my chest and a soft wheeze from my lips so I turned my head about, wincing at my stiff shoulder and neck. Pegasi filled the cots around me, but from where I lay I couldn’t see if Whisper was one of them.

White cloud-fabric of the medical tent rustled around me, tugged gently by the wind and I managed to sleep once more. The demons I’d met below ensured it was a restless sleep.

Alarmed voices stole me from my nightmares. From what I could piece together from them either balefire bombs or megaspells or something was tearing open the cloud cover. Anywhere from twenty to twenty three to upwards of fifty such events were taking place right now! None of them were nearby, but regardless we were being evacuated.

The dull thumping of a Raptor’s propellers made the medical tent ripple like the prelude to a storm as everypony was carted out with all possible haste. Sunlight struck my face as I was carried out on my cot. I caught a glimpse of the Raptor’s name: Cassiopeia before its empty hangar swallowed me up, a cacophony of quiet voices echoing in the wide space.

The Raptor took off without incident some time later, the floor tilting slightly and vibrating even as the hangar doors groaned shut. The soft lights of the hangar faded to darkness above me.

The hospital bed I woke up in was mine for the next six weeks. Metal rods were required to fix the shattered bones in my wing and I wouldn’t be able to fly with it for months if I was lucky. A radio on my bedside table and the orderlies were my only source of news, helping me piece together the terrible events that had transpired after our escape into the clouds. The Overcast had been destroyed, the survivors scattered or dead, no wonder I hadn’t heard from my chain of command.

A few days in a card arrived from my parents, worried sick and terrified after they’d heard my ship had gone down. They wished for nothing more than to come and visit, but a travel ban was in effect due to what the airwaves were calling megaspell attacks. I wrote back a quick letter, assuring them that I was fine, not to worry.

The end of the first two weeks brought the bitter start of the civil war, the War of Falling Feathers as some romantic coined it. The Raptor Cassiopeia came up on the radio, either destroyed or captured by Dashites, but I couldn’t remember why its name was familiar to me. Whatever the case, I wanted out of my bed, to stop the rebel Dashites from overturning our government.

But it was more complicated than that.

At the end of week four my surgery was finished and physical therapy was getting my wing muscles back into shape. While I was doing this, the Story of the Lightbringer caught onto our airwaves, courtesy of the ground-pounders below. The talking heads on the radio either discredited it or used it to demean the Enclave’s lying government. Some of the orderlies started giving me reproachful looks and no one thanked me for my service anymore.

Tight control of the airwaves meant I didn’t get more than snippets of the unedited story, but what I overheard made me hope it was propaganda bullshit. My hopes weren’t helped by the reactions of my fellow pegasi out on the streets.

A local news station was attacked when it tried to rebroadcast the story with live commentary demeaning and poking holes in it and riots roared outside the window. The hospital went on lockdown, but the mob wasn’t interested in raiding the place. The local garrison was called in, but when they were ordered to fire on the mob, they turned on each other instead. The survivors joined the mob as it marched off towards the government buildings.

I wasn’t sure what to think about it all, but the idea of burning rebels out of the sky had lost some of its appeal.

What if the Lightbringer was right to do what she did? What did it mean if the government had lied to us for the past two centuries? Did I stay loyal to my oath of service, follow the orders of the High Council and those appointed over me? But what if I had been in the garrison when they were ordered to fire on civilians? Could I have done that? Would I have? Was that what was right? Or was the Lightbringer right to tear down the clouds and give the sun back to the ponies below? But if she was right then what had Masher and Breeze and all the rest died for!? They had to have died for something, damnit! My thoughts chilled to the answer to that final question, and I tried not to think about it...

These thoughts and others like them joined forces with my demons to keep me awake most nights. Sitting at the window, I stared up at the star-speckled sky, wondering what it might’ve been like to have grown up without it.

Chief Whisper found me at the end of the fifth week. Sheer joy flooded my mind when the orderly let her into my room, glaring pointedly at my injured wing when I rushed over to embrace her. She smiled and returned the hug, her hoof pulling me in tight like I might float away.

My joy faded as I took a moment to actually look at her haggard face.

She looked even more at odds with what was happening in the streets than I was. Her short mane hadn’t been cut in some time and her black service uniform needed some ironing. Her wounded foreleg was still in a light cast, but she wore it well. I patted the bed beside me, but she hesitated a moment and then took the lone chair in the room.

When I gave her a pout she didn’t seem to see it, fiddling around with her cap in her forehooves. She had something she needed to say, so I swallowed my words and let her say it.

“Daisy went over after the rebel’s first broadcast.” Her voice was quiet now and she struggled to look at me. “She left me a note. I was so…angry when I read it, I wanted to fly out there and find her and wring her stupid neck and brand her flanks myself…” she trailed off, but I could tell she wasn’t finished. “She stole...she took the Nimbus; amazing that they managed to fix that bird up.” She smiled, a mixture of nostalgia and grief. I was right there with her. “But then the Lightbringer’s story…” she cast a glance to the closed door of my room. “I’m terrified that she’s right!”

“Daisy?” I queried.

“Daisy, too, I guess, but the Lightbringer, Littlepip or whatever her real name is…” Whisper had trouble returning my gaze, her hooves were starting to tremble and she set her cap down on a table beside her. “But if she is...fuck, Skiff! All this time...”

“Whisper…” she didn’t berate me for not using her rank. I thought about how to console her, what I could say to bring the normally stalwart Chief back. But it took me too long to find the words and she started up again.

“They pinned a medal on me,” she jabbed a hoof into her breast like the idea of it was akin to being shot, “the Shooting Star,” my eyes shot wide at that and I held back an impressed whistle, “for ‘gloriously leading two skytank teams and inflicting heavy enemy casualties before returning our vessel to the clouds!’” her voice had a mocking edge as she recited the words, “But if the Lightbringer’s right? Skiff, we’re the villains! We didn’t win the war against the wasteland! I just...I got...Masher and Breeze...killed for nothing! And they pinned a fucking medal on me like that’s supposed to make everything right! Like it’s some sort of fucking consolation prize!” some of her usual volume and rage returned as she glared down at her hooves.

“Chief…” I tried again, but she turned away as if she was embarrassed by the word. It gave me time to think over what I wanted to say, shooting down most of my options. ‘It’s not your fault.’ ‘Don’t blame yourself.’ ‘We did the best we could.’ ‘They didn’t die for nothing.’ “I miss them.” the words and the tears came unbidden and Whisper nodded and wiped her nose on the back of her sleeve.

The mare struggled with her next words, looking between me, her hooves, and the room. Then her gaze fixed on me and I was back in the bushes as one of Red Eye’s soldiers was preparing to rape Daisy. Whisper wasn’t going to order me to do something that would probably get me killed.

“Skiff, I didn’t just come here to say hello...I came here to say...” she hung her head and I watched the gears turning there for a moment. When she looked up her eyes were filled with determination, “Daisy needs a tank crew...”

My eyes went wide, darting to the door for fear of someone hearing her say the words that would get her branded. Me, too, if I didn’t report her.

“Just hear me out, okay?” She caught my weary expression, guilt flooding her features. “Nothing can make what we did below the clouds right, nothing can bring Masher or Breeze back, or Fluff or her crew, the Overcast, the Stratos...but that doesn’t mean I can’t do the right thing now.” She sat up straight in her chair. “I’ll love you regardless of whether or not you come with me, but I...I need to do this, Skiff! And I don’t want to do it alone...”

“Whisper.” She froze as I spoke her name, her eyes locking onto my own. There was terror in there, and hurt, but it all evaporated into a smile when I spoke. “We’re still gonna need a BaWS gunner.”

She tried to stifle a sharp sob of joy and then her lips were against mine, pressing me gently back into the bed. I glanced past her face to the door, not caring that it was unlocked, it would take too much time and I was already stiff as a board.

And we had five weeks of fraternization to catch up on.

The end.

Author's Notes:

I started writing this story back in 2014 as a one-shot inspired by one of the Fallout: Equestria group projects from around that time. No idea what became of that group project, but after some lovely feedback from my editors, I decided to break the one-shot into the first two chapters and then write the last two to finish things up and turn it into a short story.

I largely forgot about this story until only recently, focusing on another Fallout side-fic of mine instead. It feels weird now that this one is done, but fear not because while the story of Sky Skiff and Wind Whisper is over for now, they will appear again in an upcoming story: The War of Falling Feathers, which will cover the events of the Enclave civil war. Knowing my track record, it may be some time before that one comes out, so stay tuned!

Fallout Equestria: The Bodies we Leave Below

by Salted Pingas

01 - SAPR and Fraternization

02 - Ground Pounders

03 - SERE

04 - Epilogue