"In the distance, machines come to transform Eden, day by day."
As a longtime member of the Royal Guard's night shift, Flash Sentry was well used to rising with the moon, and falling asleep at daybreak. His predilection for late nights served him well after he gained his officer's commission; his rank, and the commensurate increase in salary, came with a command position in the Night Guard's second shift. Most officers would deride such a command as mind-numbingly dull, not to mention uncomfortably chilly.
Generally, Flash didn't mind cold, or monotony. But tonight, his normal duties had been compounded by the Captain dropping a bunch of other work onto his shoulders that not even he wanted to deal with. Some of it was easy: rubber-stamping duty rosters was kind of fun. Less fun was reviewing and revising defense measures with the Princess's menagerie of professors and mages, an old, cobwebby bunch he didn't particularly care for.
Still, if it helped his star rise even more, he wouldn't complain. Taking on extra work so that the Captain could spend the day with his wife wasn't the most conventional way of advancing in rank, but ingratiating himself with Shining Armor certainly couldn't hurt, could it?
Who knows? Flash thought, snapping open his wings and soaring off the wall. I stay on his good side, and maybe he won't mind me asking out that sister of his.
But reflecting on his prospects with the unattainable sister of his commanding officer could wait for bedtime. His shift was almost over; there was just one last bit of business to complete before he could stand relieved. So, he shrugged off thoughts of mares, and circled down to the barracks at the base of the southern watchtower. Sergeant Chiptooth waited for him below, saluting crisply as Flash alighted.
"Anything to report?" Flash fought to keep the tiredness from his voice.
"I'd like to say it was another slow night," said Chiptooth. The leathery-winged thestral was a ten-year veteran of the southern watchtower. Contrary to his name, an epithet he'd been saddled with in his youth, he had impeccable dental health. "But we've got curious happenings out in Ponyville, off in the distance."
"The fog. I've seen it." Flash frowned. "Standing orders are to ignore Ponyville, except in emergencies."
Chiptooth's eyes narrowed. Before Flash's commission, Chiptooth had been wont to remind him that his decade's worth of experience meant he didn't need regulations recited to him. He said so less often now that Flash was his superior, but he still found ways to without saying anything.
Flash stared the sergeant down. "Anything else?"
"Those patrols the Princess ordered, along the southern face of the mountain – they were due back half an hour ago. Bitterfeather's flight, sir. No reason they should be gone so late."
Chiptooth had the right of that. Bitterfeather was a pain in the ass, but he was also organized, punctual, and could take care of himself – as could the ponies who flew with him. If he was overdue...
This last day has been the strangest since I enlisted, Flash thought.
The fog-bank in Ponyville, the Princess's sudden call for increased scrutiny of the mountain and tighter patrols, not to mention Luna's antics in the Royal Garden. Nopony knew what that was about. Something was going on – a second changeling attack, or something just as bad. He hadn't been briefed on anything, meaning the problem was outside of his pay grade, and nothing would be served by asking questions he wasn't supposed to ask.
And yet... he was the duty officer, wasn't he?
For the next half hour, anyway.
"Let's put together a search-and-rescue flight," said Flash. "We'll start with their last known—"
A voice at the top of the turret cried out, startling Flash. "Lieutenant! Sir, you'd better come look at this!"
Flash exchanged a look with Chiptooth, and the two immediately took to the air.
They found a trembling watchpony, his eyes wide. With shaking hooves, he offered Flash a pair of binoculars. "Look south, sir."
Accepting the binoculars, Flash braced his barrel against a merlon, and directed his gaze to the south.
He spotted them immediately: vaguely cylindrical shapes, glinting in the moonlight, topped with whirling blades, their motion too fast to track. Airships, made of metal, with no balloon to lift them, flying in formation and drawing closer the longer he stared.
Flash added this to the list of strange happenings throughout the day, the wheels in his mind turning as he connected the dots. The heightened security, Luna in the garden, the extra patrols...
And they're coming from the southern face of the mountain. Flash swallowed. Where Bitterfeather's patrol went missing.
"Lieutenant?" said the watchpony, in a voice drawn high with fright. "What do you think? What should we—"
"Lad," Chiptooth grunted. "Know your role, and be quiet."
Flash thrust the binoculars into the chest of the watchpony, and turned to Chiptooth. "Wake the Captain – the Princess, too."
"You want me to talk to the Princess?" Chiptooth grunted. "The chain of command—"
"Forget the chain," Flash snapped. "Go directly to the Captain, and to the Princess, then report back here. Looks like we'll all be pulling an extra shift this morning."
A shame – he was quite looking forward to getting some shut-eye.
Chiptooth nodded. "And you, sir? If you'll pardon an old enlisted pony's asking?"
Flash fixed him with a level, authoritative gaze. "I'm going to intercept them."
Something flickered across Chiptooth's face – a look of disapproval, a hint of a frown. But true to form, the old guard obeyed. He saluted, unfurled his wings, and fluttered off into the night.
Flash ordered the watchpony to hold his position until relieved, and barked out commands for the rest of the barracks to assemble outside. They came quickly, in an orderly fashion, sweeping down from the ramparts and out from the barracks to form neat ranks.
"We have a situation," Flash said, pacing along the front row of guardsponies. "Something's approaching Canterlot rapidly – some kind of airships. We're scrambling fliers to intercept them."
He stopped pacing, and looked out at his tiny command.
"I need ten volunteers."
He got thirty. He left with ten, anyway – somepony needed to hold the tower.
Borne by a southerly wind, eleven pegasi soared to meet the airships, collapsable spears pegged to their armor. Flash could hear the sound of something chopping through the wind, a cacophony that threatened to split his head from the inside, growing louder and louder the closer he came to intercepting the airships.
Half a mile out from Canterlot, and high up in the air, Flash ordered his command to a halt, and deploy in formation. Two five-pointed stars spread out directly in the machines' flight path. Flash was in the center, the vertex where the stars' arms met.
Standard procedure for intercepting an unknown flier was to challenge them verbally. These were airships, though – airships with perfectly enclosed hulls, no upper decks, and no one to challenge. He wasn't planning to waste his breath on something that couldn't even hear him. The sight of ten guardsponies, arrayed in the air with weapons drawn, would convey the challenge plainly enough.
"Spears!" he shouted.
The air filled with the clicks of telescoping pieces snapping into position. Flash brandished his own and took a deep breath, sweat beading on his forehead, and running down his skin.
They want to play chicken, he thought, as the airships maintained their course and speed. They want us to break first.
Then the one at the head tilted forward, angling its blades toward the center of the ponies' formation. They weren't playing chicken – they simply didn't care.
"Break!" Flash cried, just before the machines were upon them.
Somehow, his volunteers heard him over the wind, and scattered in all directions. The pegasus on his left wasn't fast enough. A horrible ripping sound cut his yelp short as the whirling blades passed through him. The shredded remains of a pegasus whose name Flash failed to recall fell to the earth far below.
The guardsponies floated raggedly, with no semblance of formation, staring agog at the slowly dissipating mist that had once been their friend.
Flash's stomach heaved. He swallowed the urge to vomit, and flew past his fractured command.
"On me, everypony!" He soared after the machines, pride swelling in his chest as he heard wings beating behind him. "Break and engage at will!"
Flash came upon the rearmost airship, his front hooves curled tightly around his spear. With a roar, he thrust against the ship's metal skin. His spearpoint glanced off with a shower of sparks; another thrust yielded identical results. A look around told him that his volunteers had similar luck with their own targets.
They weren't hurting the ships, and they certainly weren't slowing them down. Hell, the pegasi were barely keeping pace with them, and they were all drawing dangerously close to Canterlot. Procedure called for the captain to cast a barrier spell as soon as possible, but either Chip hadn't reached Shining Armor yet, or the Captain was still charging and casting the spell.
Either way, they needed to buy him more time. Flash searched along his ship's hull for some kind of weakness, something obvious to exploit.
Then he found it: A gap in some of the side plating, a chink in the armor, near the machine's front – not very wide, but good enough for him to lodge the tip of his spear between the plates. And with enough leverage...
Flash smiled grimly and shot forward, scraping his spear across the machine's hull until it found that groove in the armor. He wedged his spearpoint in, braced his weight against the weapon's shaft, and pulled down, beating his wings furiously. Maybe he couldn't hope to hurt the ship, but he could at least drag it out of the air.
Another spear slammed into the wedge as one of his escorts added his weight to Flash's, then another grabbed the skids hanging on the airship's underside. They grunted, and pulled; Flash felt the weight of the ship shift toward him. He grinned, and tried to shout orders to the rest of his wing, but his words were lost over the thundering noise of the airship's blades.
Then another sound joined the cacophonous, rippling gale – a sharp rattle, like a firecracker. Plates on the sides of the other ships had swung open, revealing their interiors, and from inside, lights flickered in split-second bursts. The airships swatted Flash's volunteers through the sky, like a great hoof passing through a swarm of bothersome flies. They plummeted to the ground, perforated and bloody.
Then his spear suddenly slipped free of the hull, and Flash looked up to see a panel along its side sliding open. The lodgepoint for his spear was no chink in the armor, but the crack of a door. Someone was waiting behind it.
Flash had seen guns in museums before – he'd even seen armed griffon soldiers toting rifles. This was different from anything he'd ever seen. It was larger, built differently, and, in some ineffable way, scarier. And its point was level with his forehead.
There wasn't enough time to dodge, to snap his wings and maneuver away. All he could do was smile as a memory played through his mind, and regret panged in his heart.
Killjoy. I should have danced with you that night.
Before the first shots were fired within the walls of Canterlot, before dawn even broke on the city, an explosion ripped through Princess Celestia's School for Gifted Unicorns.
For decades, the campus had seen Equestria's best and brightest magical talents ascend to the echelons of the nation's most gifted mages. The lecturers, the headmistress, even the administrative staff, were talented, battle-hardened spellcasters. The changelings had tested them most recently, bloodied the youngest in their number, but the oldest remembered the invasion of the Nightmare Forces that precipitated the school's foundation. They weren't merely educators. They were one of the city's most vital lines of defense.
Then a bomb detonated in the faculty dormitories.
Windows shattered from the force of the blast, throwing razor shrapnel into the yard. Flammable chemicals and potions in nearby store-rooms ignited, and the explosion became a conflagration that threatened to swallow the entire building. Sirens wailed, and the fire brigade scrambled, escorted by a platoon of the Royal Guard, and armed with high-pressure hoses and rainclouds. They met a stampede of foals, students boarded at the school, dutifully shepherded out by the upperclassponies.
Firefighters and guardsponies marched into the school in search of anyone left behind. The confused rabble that had just escaped was left to gawk at the vicious glow shining through the windows, at the plume of smoke billowing high, obscuring stars and moon alike, at the upper floors of the eastern wing that sagged and threatened to pancake on top of one another.
Canterlot woke that morning to fire and screams, and a roiling storm of hysteria.
And into that storm, Pegasus Wings plunged.
Five Chinooks swept into the city, high above its gold-tipped spires and gleaming white walls. Ignoring the castle and its garrison entirely, the Chinooks broke formation, and spread out around the city limits. They lowered, until they hovered no higher than the tallest tower of the Canterlot skyline, just as Shining Armor cast his shield spell.
The sixth helicopter lagged behind its sisters, having been dragged out of position by the valiant folly of the late Lieutenant Flash Sentry. Yet it soared at top speed toward the city, intent on beating the dome of pink light slowly encircling Canterlot from the bottom up. The margin for error shrank with every beat of the pilot's heart, and when it became clear that he wouldn't make it into Canterlot before the shield finished ascending, he tried to bank away.
Instead, the Chinook collided with the shield. A brilliant flower of yellow and orange bloomed as debris and flash-cooked flesh rained outside the city walls. Both sides had traded fire and blood before the battle could begin in earnest.
The other five Chinooks aimed to tilt the body count in their favor again.
Door-gunners rained automatic fire upon the sleeping city. Heavy ammunition and rocket-propelled grenades ripped through limestone walls and columns, blasting them into fine, chalky powder. Bullets riddled houses and businesses, homes and hotels, choking streets with dusty debris in minutes, a thesis for the battle to follow.
The gunfire halted long enough for the Chinooks' passengers to disembark. Ropes dangled from the choppers' doors, and one by one, Pegasus Wings infantry descended upon the city. Where the door-gunners ignored individual ponies, save those in guard armor, these soldiers made no distinctions. They stormed into buildings, guns ablaze, or fired wildly in the rubble-strewn streets, whooping, hollering, and gunning down anypony unfortunate enough to land in their sights.
Sirens blared, and fires burned, as chaos engulfed the capital of Equestria.
Shining Armor galloped through the castle's halls, throwing open the doors to Princess Celestia's private chambers without pausing to knock. She was on her balcony, staring out at the city – at the smoldering school and the airships that blazed hot death into the city streets.
Yet the castle remained untouched. The enemy clearly possessed the means to take it, but instead, they directed their attention elsewhere. Why?
He cleared his mind as he snapped to attention behind his princess. She regarded him impassively, barely turning her head to glance at him, before staring out at the city again.
"Report, Captain."
"The enemy appeared over the city less than twenty minutes ago," said Shining Armor. "I was woken by a guardspony under Lieutenant Flash Sentry's command and—"
"Skip the preamble, Captain," Princess Celestia said curtly. "Tell me their strength and disposition."
Shining Armor swallowed – the Princess was usually far more meticulous than this.
"There are at least a hundred of them on the ground. They're using some kind of firearms – larger, more powerful, and with an incredible rate of fire. Their airships have armor too strong for our weapons or spells to penetrate, and their guns tear through our armor easily. I've never seen anything like them before – they're completely out of this world."
Celestia bowed her head just slightly, as though caving to an invisible burden. "I saw an explosion against the shield, just as it was going up."
"Yes, your highness. One of the airships was out of formation with the rest. It got caught in the shield, and was destroyed. Word is that Flash... that Lieutenant Sentry and his crew were responsible for that." He hesitated. "He and his entire wing... they were... that is to say, Sergeant Chiptooth holds the southern barracks."
Flash. That fool, that valiant fool. So brash, so brazen, so eager to get himself noticed. Eager enough to break the chain of command and fly out on what little authority he had, to challenge an enemy none of them knew about. It was a good death, a noble death, and a stupid, needless, pointless waste of life—
"Shining Armor. You're starting to hyperventilate."
The Princess's voice cut through Shining. He stopped to collect himself, practicing a breathing technique his wife had taught him early in their courtship. In, and out, slowly, pushing the anxiety away with a sweep of his hoof. "My apologies, your highness."
"No amount of training will ever prepare you for this kind of loss, my dear," said Princess Celestia, gently. In a harder voice, she continued. "The enemy's disposition?"
Shining Armor took one last slow breath to push the thoughts of Flash's death away.
"Five platoons on foot, spread throughout the city, each one covered from the air. But except for the bomb that went off in the school, their choice of targets has been bizarre: places like Restaurant Row, or Firefly Plaza, the stadium grounds and the surrounding tenements. Hell, I heard a report of soldiers storming the Hotel Horseshoe and shooting up the Old Redoubt, just before I got here. I'd expect them to target outposts, or infrastructure, but it's just random death and destruction without any pattern."
The Princess's ears pricked. She lifted her head and tore her gaze away from the view of the city, staring down at Shining Armor with an epiphanic expression. "Random death and destruction is the pattern, Captain."
Shining tilted his head quizzically. "Highness, I don't follow."
"Canterlot has no shortage of obvious prizes for an invading force. My school, the guard academy, the castle itself. In the event of an attack, we'd naturally move to secure those first and foremost. That's the reason for these random acts of violence – they're trying to draw the Guard away from more strategically significant locations, leaving them vulnerable to attack. I'd wager this isn't even the main force, either – that's still waiting in reserve, ready to strike once the board's set."
Shining blinked, somewhat in surprise. "Begging your pardon, Princess, but... how can you be—"
"I'm no stranger to war. And I'm not wrong." She looked out upon the city again, the glows from the shield and the fires throwing harsh light upon her face. "Still, diversion or no, we cannot abandon the ponies in those districts to fate."
"Agreed. Cadance and I took the liberty of establishing a perimeter around the train depot. A safe zone – we're trying to create a corridor in the city for the townsponies to retreat there. If it comes down to it, Cadance can lead an evacuation through the train tunnels." Shining bit his lip. "Your majesty... I'd be remiss in not pointing out that..."
His hesitation made the Princess turn toward him. "Speak freely, Captain."
Shining drew himself up. "We don't have sufficient numbers to fortify the depot, reinforce those districts, and hold the city. Most of the faculty in the magic school are dead, injured, or unaccounted for, and with the Expeditionary Force still in the frontier..."
He trailed off when he saw the Princess's wings droop.
Killjoy's five hundred ponies represented a significant portion of the Guard's total strength. Without them, Shining couldn't guarantee that the city's defenses could hold against even a conventional siege. He'd told the Princess as much when she first ordered him to muster the expedition.
The Princess perked quickly. "We do have the forces necessary to reinforce those positions and still hold Canterlot, Captain. The castle garrison stands at two hundred. Deploy them to the city at once."
Shining balked. "The entire garrison? Princess, forgive me, but... we'd be leaving the castle defenseless! The vaults, the treasury, the armory, the Elements of Harmony—"
"Vaults can be refilled, money reissued, weapons reforged, and no power short of Discord could ever breach the Elements' sanctum. We will lose the castle if we try to hold it against this enemy, and I'd sooner take the battle to the enemy than entomb myself in here."
She spoke with such conviction that Shining Armor wanted immediately to believe her. But she'd overlooked a crucial point. "If we empty the castle, then there won't be anypony to protect you."
The Princess smiled wryly. "Then I suppose I'll just have to join you out there, won't I?"
The significance of her words took a moment to break upon him. "Your highness—"
"I am not some pusillanimous noble, Captain. I have no intention of standing idly while my subjects fight outside these walls. I will live, or die, with Canterlot." Princess Celestia seemed to radiate with light, her coat aglow. "But I'll need time to prepare for battle, and that's time that we cannot waste holding the castle garrison in reserve. They must sortie, now. I assure you, I will be quite safe without their protection."
Shining Armor leaned forward, drawn toward her like a moth. "What are you planning?"
"You'll learn soon enough. For now, your orders are to divide the castle garrison, and deploy them to the districts currently under siege. The rest of the Guard is to hold their positions for as long as possible against the enemy's main thrust, and retreat to the train depot when the defenses are no longer tenable. Evacuate as many civilians as can be saved through the train tunnels, and tell Cadance to make for Fort Baltimare. She'll know what to do from there."
That meant activating war protocols, and undoing the Pax. Only Equestria's ruler could do that. Was this merely a contingency, or did the Princess assume the city was already lost – and herself, and Princess Luna, with it?
Sensing his concern, Princess Celestia sighed. "I haven't given up, Captain, appearances to the contrary. In battle, one must consider all possible outcomes, and defeat is not just possible, but probable. Everything we're doing is a rearguard action; if we lose today, then we must ensure that we win tomorrow. Remember that."
A thousand concerns flew through Shining's mind. He voiced the one most important to him. "Will I see you again?"
She gave him another wry smile. And when Shining Armor realized that was all he was going to get from her, he reluctantly saluted.
"I have one last question, Captain, before you're dismissed." Worry flickered across the Princess's countenance. "My sister. Has there been any sign of her?"
At length, Shining replied – and with an answer he knew would only serve to hurt her. "No, Your Highness."
All traces of emotion vanished from Celestia's face. She gazed out from her balcony again.
"Then you are dismissed. Guard well the city, Shining Armor. You've honored me with your service."
The Princess extended a wingtip to caress his cheek, and Shining shivered at her gentle touch.
"And I'm proud to have called you a member of my family."
Canterlot gleamed in morning sunlight, tinted pink from the shield encircling the mountain's peak. Awash in Celestia's bounty, the Royal Guard at the front gate made an imposing sight. The sun glittered on the gold-inlaid quivers of the archers on the ramparts, on the speartips of the pike wall in the bailey below, on the wrought-iron bolts and frames of the ballistae and catapults behind them. They formed a shining fist of blades and mail, swords and spears and arrows, tightly clenched and drawn to strike anyone who tried to breach the city.
The city, having already been breached, crumbled behind them.
The guardsponies charged with the gate's defense held their positions as the day crawled on, the steady ascent of the sun accompanied by the unceasing cadence of the Chinooks' mounted machine guns. Blaring sirens drowned out the townsponies' frightened shrieks and screams as the castle garrison fought, frantically evacuating anypony caught in the crossfire. Across the city, they threw themselves against Pegasus Wings, coaxing out frightened ponies hiding in their businesses and residences, and directing everypony they could toward the train tunnels.
Nopony at the gate abandoned their posts to join the fighting. Though every second was agony to them, they held their positions, and waited for the blow the Princess foresaw.
Their patience paid off by mid-morning.
A cry went up from the watchtowers framing the main gate as something crawled up the mountain path. Archers drew and nocked their arrows. Ballistae and catapults swiveled into position, ready to fire through the semipermeable shield. A rank of pegasi took to the air in formation, deploying their collapsable spears. They hovered, just over the heads of the unicorn archers, poised to sortie and harass the invaders.
The APCs appeared first, ten in all, rolling in single file up the mountain path. A few hundred meters from the walls, they stopped and spread out in a semicircle. The two on the ends mounted rocket launchers; they fired salvos that exploded against the shield protecting Canterlot. The shield glowed brightly where struck, but withstood the barrage with little strain. The eight APCs in the line's center, equipped with heavy cannons, held their fire.
Rattled, but unharmed, the Guard responded with a volley of their own. Catapults swung and ballistae twanged; the shield rippled like the surface of water as boulders and spears passed through en masse, but the fusillade landed well short of the APCs. The archers, their arrows enhanced by unicorn magic, had more luck; their volley arced higher and farther, only to rebound off the APCs' armor.
As the armored vehicles soaked up the guardsponies' ineffectual attacks, a convoy of twenty covered trucks, troop transports and cargo vehicles, arrived from the mountain path and lined up behind the APCs. Five more, flatbeds with black tarps stretched tight over their loads, assembled in a rank behind the transports. Their brakes hissed, and they waited.
A brief, tense stalemate followed. The Guard, knowing they were ill-equipped to damage the Pegasus Wings armor, ceased fire. The APCs' guns remained silent, and no soldiers emerged from their cabins, or from the trucks. A light wind whispered through the pass, rippling the flatbeds' tarps.
Then another flatbed appeared on the mountain pass. This one had its cargo exposed: A bident fit for a giant, its skin a patchwork of metals, crudely assembled from whatever materials were available. A rat's nest of wires and cables connected the fork to massive batteries strapped to the side of the bed, and coiled into the truck's cabin through its back window. Arcs of lightning danced between the prongs, blue webs that flickered and crackled.
On this jury-rigged Frankenstein's monster of a railgun, an officer with an obscure sense of literary irony had painted the name "GROND" in blood-red letters.
The truck parked on the road, behind its fellows, in the center of the semicircle that the other vehicles formed. Hydraulics hissed, and the truck bed reclined until the railgun stood at a forty-five degree angle, leveled at the shield. The batteries whined to life with a low, bass note that pounded and throbbed in the guardsponies' ears. The lightning on the bident's prongs grew brighter, more intense, more chaotic; the bass note rose to a terrible, shrieking crescendo.
On the wall, the officer on duty shouted a desperate order. A line of spear-wielding pegasi sallied through the barrier in a desperate charge toward the railgun. They met a crossfire of bullets and explosive shells as the APCs's guns finally came to life. The unicorn archers, despairing at their comrades' swift end, fired at will.
The APCs shrugged off the arrows.
And Grond, unmolested, fired.
A blinding flash forced the guardsponies to shield their eyes; a piercing note, like metal rending, forced them to clutch their ears. Shining Armor's shield shattered like glass, and shards of pink light rained onto the yard below, winking into nothingness on contact.
As the Guard recoiled, blinded, deafened, and frightened, the flatbeds' cargo stirred. Their coverings bulged and strained; the ropes securing them in place tightened, then snapped. The breeze caught the tarps, and carried them off the mountain, exposing their cargo to the mountain air.
Trenton had not merely secured one XMG-IRVING unit for Pegasus Wings. He had brought the entire line of twenty-four prototypes. And now, for the first time since arriving in Equestria, the remaining twenty-three stretched their legs, reared to full height, and bellowed. In unison, they leaped from the trucks that had carried them up the mountainside, and sprinted toward Canterlot, trampling through a field of blood and bodies.
Most leaped over the walls. Their powerful legs carried them past Canterlot's battlements in a single bound; they landed in the yard and surrounded the pike wall that waited at the gate. Others scaled the walls, digging their clawed toes deep into the stonework to drag themselves up.
The first to reach the rampart hooked its toes over two merlons, and raised its head until it came nose-to-nose with a unicorn. She'd been shielding her face with an armored foreleg as she recovered from the railgun's blast, and managed to open her eyes enough to glimpse the machine standing in front of her.
The IRVING nickered. Something inside its chassis clicked.
The unicorn's scream ended abruptly as a stream of napalm swallowed her.
Swiveling its head left, the IRVING turned its flamethrower onto the other archers. To its right, another IRVING reached the rampart, and sent jets of fire along its length. Together, they cleared the wall of its defenders, and filled the air with the stink of burning flesh and fur. More scaled the watchtowers; manipulator cables wrapped around guardsponies necks, strangling them, snapping their bones, and tossing them like rag dolls over the walls.
In the yard, the IRVING waded through the pike wall at will. Three-toed feet pulverized heads and bodies, and claws rent through plate and mail like tissue paper. The Guards, still half-blind and deaf, fought back feebly. Spear thrusts glanced off the machines' plating and tough, leathery hide. One enterprising sergeant, an earth pony, managed to lodge his own spear in an IRVING's thigh, only for the machine's manipulator cord to tug it out and skewer him.
As the guardsponies died at their feet, the IRVING turned their flamethrowers on the siege engines. Catapults and ballistae burned like torches, their ammunition glowing red-hot from the intensity of the flames. Clouds of smoke choked the ponies still standing, while ashes, caught in the breeze, fluttered like summer snowfall.
The call to retreat came from half a dozen ponies; with no clear chain of command in place, nopony thought to question from whom their orders should come. In a bedraggled, disorderly rout, the remnants of the companies stationed at Canterlot's main gate – anypony still on their hooves, anypony who could escape – stampeded toward the train station.
In the yard and along the walls, among the corpses of the fallen and aglow in the light from the fires they'd spread, the victorious IRVING turned their heads skyward, and howled.
The gate at Canterlot's outer wall had no portcullis, only a pair of doors carved from the same marble as the rest of the walls. A painted relief of the sun at its zenith, held aloft by an ornate carving of Princess Celestia, greeted any and all visitors to the city.
A salvo obliterated the gate, and its relief, and its alicorn carving, reducing the whole thing to a loosely hanging mass of blackened stone. What remained shattered when one of the vehicles ploughed through at full speed, knocking the gate off its hinges and scattering it among the rubble and corpses.
The APC drove through smoldering fires, ran over the pulped bodies of the wall's defenders, past the IRVING that had slaughtered them, and finally screeched to a halt. The rest of the vehicles followed – the armor first, then the covered trucks. The flatbeds that had carried the IRVING platoon sat abandoned outside the city gate.
The APCs formed a ring with the trucks in the center. Their turrets swiveled, scanning the city, as their back hatches opened, and soldiers deployed between the armored vehicles. More troops, armed to the teeth with rifles and machine guns and RPGs, emerged from the covered trucks, and took up positions among the other troops.
By human standards, this assemblage of outdated vehicles and infantry with archaic assault rifles, would be a meager rabble. To a city protected by spears and bows and catapults, they were a steel-plated juggernaut.
Surrounded by his men on all sides, Macbeth finally emerged. He'd been riding in the APC that had first crashed through the gate, explicitly demanding the privilege of battering through the marble visage of Celestia, and now strutted down the vehicle's ramp with his head held high. His face lit up when he saw the destruction he'd brought to Canterlot; he closed his eyes, inhaled deeply through his nose, and released a long, slow sigh of contentment.
Then he looked over his shoulder, and called into the APC's cabin.
"Lieutenant! Come out here and take a breath. You know what that smell is?"
Lieutenant Delacroix joined him on the ramp, an MRS carbine hanging from her shoulder. She wore a headset that she constantly fiddled with, pausing only to punch commands into a keyboard mounted on her left arm.
"Napalm, sir?" she said distractedly.
"No, no." Then Macbeth thought about it, and shrugged. "Well, yes, I suppose, but that's not exactly what I was referring to. It's victory, Lieutenant. It's progress – change."
Delacroix stopped pressing buttons, frowned, and took a cursory look around the yard. "Just smells like napalm to me. Sir."
"Of course. Humans – no sense for the dramatic." Macbeth scoffed, and looked again at the pile of corpses the IRVING had left behind. "So, this is what passes for siege defense in Equestria these days."
He spat off the side of the ramp.
"You see their folly too, don't you, Lieutenant?" Anger seethed in Macbeth's voice. "A battery of cannons, here, along the wall, could have held us at bay, even with our technological advantage. Equestrian tanks could never rival our armor, but if they'd sortied instead of those pegasi, they could have disabled the rail gun, forced us to batter down the shield with cannons and grenades, and given their infantry a chance at an orderly retreat."
He paused for Delacroix to respond. She didn't.
Annoyed, Macbeth coughed, and raised his voice. "Instead, Celestia's finest thought to meet our advance with archaic toys. Did they think their valor, their sheer gall, would save them? Surely, the survivors realize now how wrong they were. The rest will learn, too, soon enough. When the ponies of Canterlot see our armor rolling through their streets, our war machines paving the roads with corpses, they'll know that the future has come to..."
Macbeth turned to look at Delacroix as his speech reached a climax, and found her back to him.
"I'm sorry, Lieutenant, am I boring you?"
"I'm trying to raise Commander Cain, sir." Delacroix tapped her mic experimentally, and held her headphones with her right hand. "Repeat, Birnam Wood has come to Dunsinane. Respond."
Seconds passed as she waited. When no answer came, she let her hand rest on her carbine's barrel.
Macbeth grinned, baring his mouth of rotten teeth. "Should I start from the top?"
Ignoring him, Delacroix shook her head. "I've been checking in since we left the mountain junction, but he hasn't responded once. And I can't raise Captain Smart in Ponyville, either."
"Your radios have always been somewhat unreliable, haven't they?" said Macbeth.
"Sure. But I can get through to the choppers, and to Dr. Rokubungi at the junction." Delacroix stroked her chin. "Any problems Smart and the Commander are having must be on their end."
Macbeth's hooves clanged on the APC's ramp as he trotted back toward Delacroix. "Paper Mongoose's silence is hardly unexpected."
Delacroix raised an eyebrow. "And the commander?"
To that, Macbeth only offered an oily smile. He patted Delacroix on the hip, failing to notice her cringing away from him.
"We've our own job, Lieutenant. Let's leave the others to theirs."
"With all due respect, I don't need to be told to do my job. This is my command, not yours. Sir." Delacroix nudged past him, striding down the ramp, and onto the charred surface of the yard, typing into her mounted keyboard with quick strokes.
The IRVING deployed in response to her order. Grunting like cattle, they leaped from the blackened battlements, abandoned the piles of dead guardsponies, and dispersed throughout the city, traversing the streets and scaling buildings in great leaps and bounds
Four remained, standing like sentinels as Delacroix addressed the soldiers.
"Alright, let's review. First, the rocket launchers'll be here on standby. Think before calling in a strike, though; we only have so many rockets. Second, check your fire – if it isn't wearing armor, and it isn't coming right at you, don't pull the trigger. We don't have enough ammo for a rampage. Third, and I cannot stress this enough, stay out of the lizards' way. Don't get underneath them if you can help it. They have a blind spot between their legs. We clear?"
Two hundred voices chorused back, "Ma'am!"
Delacroix nodded, satisfied. "That's that. Let's wrap this up."
The APCs' engines revved, and they peeled away. Three went straight ahead, following the road that led to Canterlot Castle. Four others picked four different directions, to rearm and reinforce the companies that had deployed in the initial heliborne assault. Loose, staggered columns of infantry trailed after each, leaving a token force to defend the artillery.
Delacroix and Macbeth remained with an escort of eight soldiers, four IRVING, and one APC. They watched the company move out, the client regarding his retinue smugly.
"Speech was a little dry, if you ask me," he said. "You should read Shakespeare, draw some inspiration."
Declaroix ignored the comment. "Sir, I'd be remiss in pointing out that this plan will fail if I can't get in touch with the Commander. If the Princess calls our bluff—"
"Trenton prepared us for that eventuality." Macbeth indicated the blood-spattered machines with a grandiose sweep of his hoof. "They will obey my commands, won't they?"
"Units 01 through 04 will react to verbal orders, yes. You tell them to kick the Princess to death, they'll do it, or die trying." Delacroix fiddled with her radio again. "I'd feel better if it didn't come to that. As I understand it, just one of them had trouble with six ponies."
"And an unusually gifted human, don't forget. I'd feel better if we could wring more than one shot out of that marvelous cannon that brought down the shield." Macbeth cast a lingering look toward the broken gate. "Blasting the top off Canterlot Castle in the middle of negotiations would be worth it for the look on Celestia's face alone."
"We only had one non-nuclear round, and it's a miracle we even got that off without the railgun exploding." Delacroix snorted. "We'd better hope we don't need a second shot. I can't guarantee that we can break through another shield with conventional munitions, and still have enough ammo to win."
Macbeth shook his head. "They saw what good their shields are against our firepower; for all they know, we can take them down at will. And the shield spell is always taxing on the caster. I think we've seen the last of that little trick."
Delacroix chewed her lip. "I hope you're right. For all our sakes."
"Have I yet to be wrong about anything?" Macbeth chuckled. "Now, Lieutenant. Won't you let me take you on a tour through my hometown? It's been years, but I believe I still know my way around."
Delacroix grumbled, and shook her head. She beckoned for her escort to fall in, and they assembled, four troops ahead of the APC, and four behind. Macbeth and Delacroix were in the center, behind the armor, and flanked by the remaining IRVING.
"No peace in our time, right?" she said grimly. "Let's move."
Slowly, they advanced down the boulevard that led to Canterlot Castle. As the city around them burned, Macbeth breathed deep the smell of victory, and held his head high, hamming it up as the avenging prodigal.
Swathed in layers of clothing, and heavily burdened – by Trenton's sword and his own submachine gun, by the crude vest he'd thrown together and hidden under his cloak, by the detonator that hung in his pocket like a rock – Alistair Cain sweated through his dress blues. He stood on the catwalk inside the ruined cathedral, a Cuban cigar clenched between his teeth, and stared through the crumbled western wall at the Castle of the Two Sisters in the distance. A gentle wind rippled the tails of his heavy overcoat.
Beside him, REX's jaw hung open, its cockpit exposed and waiting.
He held a photograph of a girl in a blue dress, creased and folded to hide part of the image. Every pull Cain took from the cigar lit the photo with a dull, orange glow, and every puff of smoke obscured the girl's face in a thick, gray haze.
Cain slowly, tenderly, traced his thumb over the girl's smiling face.
Footsteps from the ground below echoed up to REX's gantry, and clanged on the metal stairs. Cain unfolded the creased photo, and fixed his gaze on the image of the boy he'd been trying to hide. He puffed his cigar, pulled it from his mouth, and pressed its smoldering tip against the boy's face, watching with satisfaction as he burned away.
"Commander."
Static filled Trenton's voice – more static than usual. Cain judged that he was standing at the far end of the catwalk, just by the stairs. He heard no more footfalls – not yet, anyway.
Cain bit down on his cigar again and savored another long drag. His fist closed around the still-smoldering photo, crushing it in his palm and singing his skin. Then he opened his hand, and let it fall through the hole in the cathedral's western wall, to the abbey's cobblestones.
"You're back." Smoke thickened Cain's voice. "Figured you would be."
"I cannot say the same for you." Trenton's feet clanged on the catwalk's metal, stiff and even, as he walked closer to Cain. "Who commands in Canterlot?"
"Delacroix. Choppers should be getting close to Canterlot right about now. Me? I wanted to stay behind, catch up with you a bit. You have a lot you need to answer for."
"I would be more than happy to account for my actions, Commander, once this operation is complete. We are on a timetable, and Metal Gear requires a pilot."
"On the contrary, we have all the time in the world to talk." Cain chewed the end of his cigar. "Did you kill my XO?"
"I've already explained the circumstances of Captain Case's disappearance."
"Yes, of course. Timberwolves got him, and his platoon. Convenient." Cain snorted. "Should have asked the kid to verify that story when we had the chance."
"That man killed the fireteam. Timberwolves killed Captain Case. I had no part in any of it."
"You didn't say a word about 'that man' when you told us about the patrol. But you must've known he was here before any of us did. Working with those ponies." Cain puffed out a thick cloud of smoke. "Did you smuggle him into Equestria before we deployed in force, or after?"
"I had no knowledge of—"
"You knew, and what's more, you colluded with him. You stopped me from killing him when I had him dead to rights, stole company property, and smuggled it to him when you knew we had no way of stopping you." Cain shifted the cigar to one corner of his mouth, and spat from the other. "Tell me I'm wrong."
Trenton's voice made a whirring sound that Cain had never heard from him before. "You sound paranoid, Commander. Delusional. Have you been losing sleep? Perhaps you should not be operating heavy machinery."
"Well, you did steal my bike. I had to replace it with something. Why not Metal Gear?" Cain finally turned to face Trenton – burdened as he was, he moved gracelessly.
His first glimpse of Trenton came as a shock. Grime and smoke streaked his exoskeleton, and his head bore a sizable dent. He wore a pristine vest over it – the only part of him not shredded, stained, or otherwise damaged. There'd been a spare in his locker, Cain recalled.
"I took your motorcycle, and you took my sword," said Trenton, stepping forward. "I'll consider it an even exchange if you return Metal Gear to me."
Cain took one last drag from his cigar, then flung it over the edge of the catwalk. Wordlessly, he unslung his MP-7, and leveled it at Trenton.
The light in Trenton's eye sparked and flickered.
"Really, Commander? I'm glad we're not bothering with pretenses anymore, but come to your senses. If I want to take that machine from you, do you truly believe there is anything you could do to stop me?"
"Probably not. Then again, I don't need to. Nobody is taking Metal Gear anywhere." Cain took a slow, deep breath. "I formatted the onboard computer."
"Indeed?"
"That's right. This thing can't fight anymore, can't even move. Defense systems, the onboard sensor suite, the entire operating system – everything is gone." Cain smiled thinly. "Including the launch angle and trajectory for Manehattan."
"This is retaliation, is it?" Trenton kept his voice carefully modulated, betrayed nothing. "If so, it's poorly planned. Your men need the nuclear missile to bluff Princess Celestia. Without a credible threat, they face a losing battle."
"You're wrong. They might take some licks, but they'll pull through. Macbeth will get his kingdom, and the troops... well, they've been itching for some pillage and plunder for a while now. Everyone gets what they want." Cain licked his lips. "Everyone but you, that is."
"And what about you?" Trenton purred. "You've sabotaged your own assurance of victory for a chance at checking my grand betrayal. Is that what you want, Commander?"
"It's not about what I want. It's not even about you betraying me. This is bigger than just you and I. This is about a debt you owe."
"A debt that I owe?"
"To MSF. To everyone who died on Mother Base. Everyone you betrayed."
Static hissed in Trenton's voice. "You are delusional."
"No. If anything, I'm seeing clearer than I have in a long, long time." Cain took a cautious step forward. "I've been doing a lot of thinking lately. You remember the day that Paz died? The first time, I mean – the day you let her hijack ZEKE."
Trenton tried to say something, but his voice caught, and Cain delighted in thinking that he'd finally caught the ninja off guard.
"I'm only bringing it up for context; that's not the point of the story." Cain took another slow, steady step. "I left MSF right before the end – days before Cipher hit Mother Base. And I never told anyone this, but it's because of what happened that day. Hearing everything Paz said, about us, about her mission, watching her fall into the Carribean... I didn't have it in me to stay anymore."
"So that's why you returned to Britain," said Trenton. "I hadn't wondered."
"Never thought much about me, did you?" Cain took a deep breath. "Well, I thought about you. And I thought about her. For more than half my life, not a day's gone by that I haven't thought of that girl, plunging into the Carribean, washing up in Cuba... and of you, Chico. Her runt in shining armor, rushing off to save her in the dead of night."
"Come to the point, Commander," said Trenton, unmoved. "Much as I cherish our talks, I have no time to reminisce with you."
Cain smiled tightly. Silently, he reached into his breast pocket, and drew out the old, battered Walkman.
Once more, he'd caught Trenton off guard. His eye flashed, his gaze fixed on the Walkman, as Cain raised it in the air.
"Seeing this come out of your locker brought back a lot of memories for me. You must feel the same way. Must be why you still have it." Cain gave the Walkman a little shake. "You know, I always thought Paz was the one who ratted us out to Cipher – her and Emmerich, both. And all that time in Zanzibar Land, the Boss never breathed a word about the night we lost Mother Base. So, you show up out of the blue with a job for me, saying it was Paz, what am I gonna do but believe you? Anyone who'd disagree is long dead. And dead men tell no tales."
His thumb mashed the PLAY button, and swallowed a lump in his throat.
"But, as it happens, angels do."
A girl spoke, her thin, plaintive voice masked by layers of white noise, and almost illegible through the Walkman's ancient speakers.
"...Chico. I am borrowing your recorder. Hope you do not mind. I know it hurts right now. But it will all be over soon. Just thinking that helps keep the pain away."
The tape fizzled and crackled; the voice vanished, subsumed by white noise. It cut, in and out, with the sounds of a lash against bare flesh, a woman's anguished screams, and an incongruously cheerful song underscoring it all.
Cain's thumb shifted to the REWIND button; when he released it, a boy's brittle voice took up where Paz left off.
"...Out at sea... Staff of three hundred... but usually there's..."
The tape was like Trenton's voice, choked with static and thick.
"ZEKE," the boy whispered, soft and so broken. "Metal Gear..."
A man replied, deep and smooth. "See? That wasn't so hard."
Cain crushed the STOP button, his face placid, his knuckles white around the Walkman. Trenton stood, rock-steady and silent.
Opening his hand, Cain let the Walkman fall. Then, bracing himself, he squeezed his MP-7's trigger.
Trenton vaulted over the railing, a split-second ahead of Cain, and dropped into the cathedral below. Cain's bullets tore harmlessly into the far wall, punching holes into the ancient stonework.
Cain swore, and ran down the catwalk, to the spot where Trenton had jumped. Slowly, carefully, he swept his weapon across the cathedral floor, his eyes on his sights, his finger on the trigger, his heart hammering under his layers of clothing.
From behind came a rush of air, and a metallic thud.
Cain whirled, firing off a burst, but the back of Trenton's fist crashed into the submachinegun's barrel and knocked the weapon from his hands and over the rail. Then Trenton swung the same fist in toward Cain's face.
Cain caught him by the wrist, but the force of the attack dropped him to his knees. Clenching his teeth and gripping Trenton, he drew the sword on his back and thrust upward, stabbing through Trenton's vest and exoskeleton like butter.
Trenton stiffened, and Cain allowed himself a moment's satisfaction at hurting him.
His sense of victory curdled to horror when Trenton grabbed the sword's blade, wrenched the weapon from Cain's hand, and impaled himself to the hilt. He showed no reaction, no sign of pain.
Then he caught Cain by the throat, spun, and threw him down the catwalk.
Cain slammed into the railing at the far end, the metal bars bending from the force of impact. Breathless and pained, Cain struggled to his feet, as Trenton pulled the sword free of his belly. without flinching.
Cain blinked, and in the moment that his eyes were closed, a length of cold steel pierced his gut, and emerged from his back. His eyes bulged open, wide, and he drank in the sight of Trenton's face, inches away from his own..
Through the haze of pain, the sharp, cold agony filling his body, Cain reached into his coat pocket, and closed his fingers around the detonator.
"Fry, you son of a—"
His curse died on his lips, cut off by a shrill, agonized scream. Trenton grabbed his hand, pulled it from his pocket, and wrenched his arm until his wrist snapped and his elbow popped free of its joint. Cain's fingers went limp; the detonator clattered to the ground, and rolled to Trenton's feet.
"You didn't truly believe that such a puerile trick would work, did you? I could see the C-4 under your coat from the ground floor."
Trenton kicked the detonator off the railing, and ripped the sword free. Blood spurted from the wound, spattering his once-pristine vest.
Cain bit back a second cry of pain as his legs buckled, and he dropped to the catwalk. He sat with his back against the railing, helpless, breathing shallowly. Cain tensed as Trenton reached toward him, and relaxed when all he did was pull the sword's sheath from his back.
"I feel that I should mention something," Trenton declared. "Formatting Metal Gear's onboard computer is not the decisive blow you thought it would be. I can restore its operating system from a back-up stored in my nanomachines. A tedious process, to be sure. But little more than an inconvenience."
Trenton wiped the sword's blade off in the crook of his arm, staining himself with a mixture of red and white blood, and slammed it back into its sheath.
"So, you may die knowing that you've accomplished nothing." His voicebox clicked. "An apt ending to your career."
The insult struck Cain like a second sword in his gut. He struggled to straighten himself against the bent, crooked railing, coughed through the blood rising in his esophagus, and glared at Trenton through his dimming vision.
"What's your game here, huh?" he managed to cough out. You fire that thing, Macbeth takes over Equestria, and you take over the army? You think my men'll just ignore what you've done here today?"
He filled his mouth with as much blood as he could, and spat the whole wad at Trenton's foot.
The ninja regarded him bemusedly.
"A starving dog is loyal to nothing but its next meal," he said. "It matters not who feeds them."
"You'll never understand," Cain snapped. "My men have a cause. A reason to fight. A reason they're loyal to. You can kill me if you want, kill my officers, too. But the troops won't fight for you, or for Macbeth. They'll see you dead."
"Why? For what? You, and your legacy of failure?"
"I built this company from nothing."
"No. Big Boss built Zanzibar Land. You scraped the rotting meat from its bones, and called it an army." Trenton's head tilted. "You're more deluded than Macbeth."
Cain snarled, and tried to lunge for Trenton. Pain forced him back down; he cringed, clutching his wound and moaning, as a fresh gout of blood spurted at Trenton's feet.
"Don't you preach to me like you knew what Big Boss fought for," Cain gasped. "Don't even mention his name. You betrayed him, just like everyone else you ever fought for. The Sandinistas. MSF. Me! That's your legacy! You're a lifelong coward, and a turncoat!"
"I have betrayed nobody, and nothing," said Trenton calmly. "But you? You have betrayed what you fought for. Big Boss knew that men need a cause in order to make war, and he also knew he had no cause to give them. So he made war, itself, the cause, and gave his men purpose. And they loved him for it. What did you give yours, again? Ah, yes."
He squatted in front of Cain, and leaned in close.
"You gave them a brand – the glorious name of Pegasus Wings – and made sure they were more loyal to the promise of a payday than anything else. Small wonder you're dying here, alone." He bowed, and shook, his head. "But it doesn't matter. You are wrong about my purpose, as you have been wrong about so much else."
"Then tell me the truth," said Cain. "Be honest with me, and tell me what you really want."
"To create the world he envisioned. If not quite the way he envisioned it."
Trenton stood, and swept his sword toward Metal Gear, tracing the length of the missile module.
"I could not have obtained and transported this weapon here without you and your meager resources. And I could not have recruited you without Macbeth to act as a client. You brought Metal Gear this far, and I thank you. But you were never anything more than a means to an end, one piece in a larger game. And now, it's time for you to leave the board."
Unable to think of a rebuttal – and quite certain that anything he said would sound as pathetic as he looked – Cain could only choke out a laugh, one thick with blood and smoke.
Somehow, he found the strength for one final insult.
"I always fucking hated you, Chico."
Trenton stared at Cain for a long, silent moment. Then he stepped forward, took him by the collar, and hoisted him into the air, sending fresh agony through Cain's body. This time, he couldn't resist the urge to scream in pain.
The ninja waited for the scream to ebb before speaking.
"I am not Chico."
The pain abruptly vanished. Cain felt numb, lifeless, the hole in his belly forgotten.
"Ricardo Valenciano Libre died in the Carribean, another victim of Cipher's massacre," Trenton continued, perfectly polite and poised. "I never fought for the Sandinistas, or the Militaires Sans Frontiers. And so, I never betrayed either."
"An imposter...?" Cain swallowed another mouthful of blood. "Why?!"
"Because it served my purpose. I needed you, Commander. No soldier of fortune would ever have taken on a mission like this one without the looming threat of bankruptcy, nor would anyone else have believed Equestria to be anything more than a fable. You knew better, though, didn’t you, 'Swordfish?'"
He dangled Cain off the edge of the catwalk.
"Even that wouldn't have been enough for you to cast your lot with Macbeth's, to gamble everything you built. But if a comrade from MSF, even someone you hated, someone like Chico, presented you with that offer? Well. You'd do anything to relive your glory days. And I could play no other role as well as him. Certainly not well enough to fool you."
Cain looked over his shoulder, at the abbey grounds stretching out behind him. In Trenton's grip, he felt weightless, untethered, free.
"You were right about one thing, though," said Trenton. "Chico did betray the Militaires Sans Frontiers. Under duress, if that makes any difference to you. I suspect it doesn't."
Rolling his eyes toward Trenton, Cain spat his last words like a curse.
"Who the hell are you?"
Trenton pressed his face against Cain's, and lowered his voice to a hiss.
"My name is Pacifica Ocean."
Trenton drew his arm back, and hurled Cain through the shattered western wall.
Far in the distance, a fiery flower bloomed upon the pink shell enveloping Canterlot Castle.