“Sir.”
The commander looked up from his paperwork. Lieutenant Evening Shroud was standing in the doorway of his office. Jackson set down his pen.
“Lieutenant.” He greeted.
Shroud looked the man over. His tattered and stained suit from the day before was gone. In its place was a pristinely pressed, clean, navy-blue uniform. On the left side of his chest was his nametag, “Douglas”. On the right, his ribbons were neatly arranged in a grid formation. His black shirt and white tie contrasted well with each other. On the table next to him was a white and black service cap with a gold band.
“You clean up nice.”
“Thank you.” The commander sat-up, grinned and straightened his tie proudly and theatrically. She smiled at his antics. He sat back in his chair normally. “What can I do for you?”
“The princess has requested to see you.”
Jackson’s grin dropped.
“Me?”
“Yes, you.”
“Are you sure?”
“I’m positive, sir.”
“Right.” Jackson sighed. He stood and grabbed his cap. “Lead the way.”
The Lieutenant stepped into the hallway, and the commander followed. He stopped for a moment to lock the door, and then gestured for her to lead. They walked down the hall, the orange unicorn in front. The commander followed her through a series of twists and turns through the castle. There was a lot of guards lining the hallway, as they always do. But the further they went towards their destination, the more confused he was.
“What are Princess Cadence’s guards doing with Celestia?” He asked.
The lieutenant ignored him. Knowing he wouldn’t get anything from her, he shook his head and kept his mouth shut.
The two eventually found themselves outside the ornate doors of the royal chambers. But not Celestia’s. The door to this one bore the crest of Princess Cadence. Jack looked down to his side at the Lieutenant. She kept her eyes forward. The two royal guards on either side of the doors saluted. The one on the left of Jack walked up to the door and knocked.
“Your majesty. Commander Douglas is here.” He called through the doors.
“Send him in.” A much younger than Celestia voice called back. The guards pulled the doors open, and ushered the two in. Commander Douglas went in first, and Lieutenant Shroud followed.
In the center of the room, a set of chairs and couches were arranged around the fireplace. A fire was burning, which threw orange light around the room, providing a soft, warm glow. On one of the couches sat Princess Cadence, sipping tea.
“Thank you, lieutenant. That’ll be all for now.” Cadence said. Lieutenant shroud bowed and left, doors closing behind her. Jackson was left standing alone at the front of the room.
“Have a seat, Jack.” Cadence said.
He took a seat on the couch opposite her.
“Would you like some tea?” Cadence asked.
“No thanks, I’m fine.” He said. He took stock of the situation and figured he was about to be questioned. He sat back on the couch, waiting for the interrogation to start. The two were locked in a bizzare couch standoff akin to the Cold War. No one moved or said a word, not wanting to incite the show that followed. Jackson sighed and caved.
“What am I doing here, Cadence?” Jackson asked. Cadence slowly lowered her tea.
“Why do you think you’re here?” Cadence asked. Jackson laughed and shook his head.
“You can’t use my own tactics against me.” He said. She raised an eyebrow and smirked, not saying anything. Jackson soffed and shook his head. “Alright, fine. I think I’m here because you haven’t seen me in four months and you miss me.”
Cadence stared back at him, grinning smugly.
“No.” She said simply. “You and I both know that that’s why you’re not here.”
“Well then why am I here?”
Cadence’s smile faded away.
“Maybe the part where you broke my aunt’s heart.” She said.
Jackson nodded slowly.
“Yeah, that was gonna be my second guess.” Jackson looked Cadence in the eye. “Cadence, you know that that was never my intention.”
“You thought faking your death and then coming back after four months and acting like nothing was wrong, wasn’t going to go poorly?” Cadence shouted. “I mean come on, Jack, I thought you were a tactician or something.”
“Okay okay okay, just let me say something, first. Okay?”
Cadence leaned back. Jackson nodded.
“You need to understand the circumstances, which is precisely we did when we planned the whole thing.”
“Who’s we?”
“Me and the then First Sergeant Shroud, but is now First Lieutenant Shroud.”
“First Sergeant, come with me.”
Jackson turned and left the group quickly.
“S-Sir, I can’t just do that.” Shroud hurried to keep up with the tall man’s pace. “It wouldn’t be right. What is the princess gonna say?”
“Hopefully, she’ll be saying ‘I can’t believe he’s dead.’”
“Are you serious?! You’re actually going to do this? To her?” Shroud yelled. Jackson stopped and turned to her, kneeling.
“Eve. Let’s look over the alternatives.”
“Alright. Let’s. Number one, we tell the princess and get proper clearance and permission for the operation,”
“Caught in a bureaucratic red tape nightmare of filing the reports. Getting clearing from not only the princess and her military advisors, but Yakistan’s government and royal family as well as the entire rest of the international community. It takes at least two months to just clear the Equestrian military advisors, and by that time the information that this band of diamond dogs got snuffed made it up to him and by the time we finally get all the red tape sliced, he’s already cleared house, wiped his tracks, and made it to some other remote part of the world. We lose him forever.”
“O-Oh.” Evening Shroud said. “You really thought that ahead.”
“Yeah, I’ve done this before.”
“Right. N-Number two. You...You…” Shroud stuttered. Jackson shook his head.
“Alright, fine. I’ll do your job for you.” Jackson raised an eyebrow and spread his arms. Shroud sighed and nodded. “Option two, we only let our country know, keep the whole operation under the highest top secret classifications physically possible, and do everything with the red tape of Equestria. Cutting the tape takes just the two or three months to clear military advisors. As I said before, the bomb maker makes his great escape.”
“Okay, well what if we ensure that nothing gets up to the bomb maker?”
“Well to even do that we’d have to divert resources from the overall investigation to finding other clans and clearing them out to snuff them. Slows the investigation by us losing some of our intel officers to them finding those camps.” Jackson stood back up and walked towards the entrance to the cave. Shroud followed, trying to keep pace again. “Now let’s say we get all the way up there, and we execute this operation. Inevitably something will go wrong, someone will leave something somewhere, someone will find it, and Equestria will be left to pick up the pieces for the international community and they’ll be asking for Celestia’s head for illegally executing an operation on foreign soil.”
“You are looking too far into this!” Shroud shouted.
“No!” Jackson yelled. He stopped and turned around. “No I am not! The lives of hundreds of people rely on this! Equestrian lives! One of which is the goddamn princess. So you say that I’m overthinking this and that this is all excessive, but I see it as saving Equestria’s mostly flawless reputation. I’m not fuckin’ around with that sort of thing.”
Shroud reeled back from the sudden aggression, and stared at her commander. He straightened himself, and sighed.
“Look, this is my choice for this. I’m expendable.”
“No, you’re not.” Shroud interrupted.
“Yes, Shroud, yes. I am expendable. You wanna know why? Because no one in the whole world knows that I even exist! No one cries when I’m dead!”
“Bullshit! You know that’s not true!”
“I’m out of options! I’m out of time! So are you doing this or not?” Jackson stared at Shroud. When she didn’t respond, he threw his arms out to the side. Her mouth opened and closed, no words coming out. Finally, she sighed and dropped her head.
“Alright.” She reluctantly whispered. Jackson shook his head slowly.
“Look, I’m sorry, Eve. Really, I am. But come on, we gotta do this. And I need you to help me.”
“Let’s just get it over with.”
“And then after that, I got a body roughly the same height and build from the body line-up outside the cave. She worked her magic… literally, I suppose.” Jackson shook his head, and leaned back. “Then the rest of story is history.”
Cadence watched the man across from her, face betraying no emotion.
She’s gonna make a damn fine politician someday. Jackson thought. Cadence nodded slowly.
“You say that the rest is history.” Cadence gave a fake, strained grinned. “What is the rest of the story.”
Jackson gave a genuine grin.
“Some other time, Cadence.” He said. Cadence’s fake grin dropped.
“So you did it for Equestria?” Cadence asked. Jackson nodded. “You did it for Celestia?”
Jackson nodded again, still not speaking.
“You’re an idiot.” She said with finality.
“I prefer the term ‘Savant’.” Jackson said.
“All of the other plans were thrown out only because you made up excuses for the, as you call it, “Red Tape” that would prevent you from doing your job.”
Jackson raised an eyebrow.
“And are you trying to say that all of that wouldn’t have happened? That we’d have been able to just call it in and head out?”
Cadence shook her head.
“No. You wouldn’t have.” She said. “Jack, I just want you to understand something. You’re not this unknown man of mystery that won’t be missed if he dies. You’re are… or was, almost in a relationship with a royal family member. You have a family here, whether you understand that or not.”
Jackson nodded. He laughed softly and shook his head, looking around the room. He fixed his eyes on some object far on the other side of the room.
“You know, Cadence. When I woke up in Equestria, I had no idea where I was.” Jackson smiled weakly. “I was in my dress blues and lost as hell. Then this big white horse came up and started talking to me, and I thought I was drugged out. But then I realized that no, I was not dreaming.”
Jackson rubbed his face with his hands.
“Eventually I come to terms with what I had, and arguably prosper.” His eyes met Cadence’s. “But I missed my family.”
Cadence met his gaze. Jackson’s smile turned warm.
“You all are my family, and I love and value all of you in your own ways. But this mission was bigger than myself, or all of you. I needed to go. I had to do this. And there was too many things going on. I panicked. In hindsight, yes. I made some bad choices, but in the end I succeeded. In any case, it happened. And I can’t undo that. So I’m here to pick up the pieces and fix my mistakes.” Jackson shrugged. “I would've done the same to my family back home. The world is so much bigger than me. It will live on without me. But it can't live on with psychopaths like that out there.”
Cadence said nothing. Jackson shook his head, smile falling. His gaze fell on the fire burning in the fireplace.
“Can I ask about your family?” She asked. Jackson looked back up, surprised.
“Uh, yeah. I suppose so.” Jack set his hat down on the couch next to him. "Anything in particular?"
"I just want to hear about them. You never talk about them anymore."
“Well, I spent a lot of time with my niece Jillian and my nephew Scott.” Jack shrugged. “Tried to be a good uncle and all that. I took them to the places around town that me and my siblings went to when we were kids. The whole nine yards.”
Jackson pulled his wallet out of his pocket. Equestria didn’t have paper currency, but he kept it on him from force of habit. He pulled a couple pictures out of the billfold and handed them to Cadence.
“I’m sure you remember them.”
Cadence nodded. Jackson smiled at the pictures.
“I guess it was I just missed having kids around me. So you and Twilight were kind of the ones who filled that hole.” Jackson stared off into the ground, his normally strong stature fading. “I had kids in my life for the first time since my sister moved to California. I always thought Joe was gonna have kids, and that I could be the cool uncle for them. I guess that kind of died with him.”
Jackson’s open hand started fiddling with the safety strap on his holster. Cadence became worried.
“Are you okay, Jackson?” She asked. Cadence looked down at his other hand. It was shaking, his wallet bouncing up in down with the rhythm.
“Joe would’ve been a great father. He treated the younger enlisted like his boys. They followed him until the end.”
“Jackson?” Cadence’s worry grew as he became less responsive. Jackson’s stare grew further. The shaking of his hands grew more violent. She reached out to him, and touched his hand. He ripped his hand back.
“Get the fuck off him!” He screamed, seemingly somewhere else in his mind.
Cadence reeled back, scared. The man stopped in his tracks and stared out the window. He pulled out his pistol and ran across the room, toward some unknown objective. Then, just as quickly as he started, he froze. He looked around the room, like he just realized he was there. He slowly turned around to face Cadence. She was terrified of him. He looked down at the pistol in his hand, and then back to her. His heart dropped, and he holstered his pistol and quickly stormed out of the room.
“Jackson, wait!” Cadence called. He didn’t acknowledge her, and the door slammed shut behind him.
“Wait, Commander!” Shroud jumped to her hooves from where she sat by the door. “What happened?”
“Return to your post, Lieutenant.” Jackson said over his shoulder, storming down the hall as fast as he could.
Shroud watched as her commander all but ran down the hall. His hands were clenched in fists. She turned around to the doors to the princess’s chambers. The two guards posted on either side looked at her, and shrugged.
The doors to the chamber was slightly ajar, the force of him slamming the door causing it to swing back open. The lieutenant peered through the crack, and she saw the princess inside, her back to the door. The lieutenant slowly walked through the doors.
“Your majesty?” The lieutenant called. The princess turned around, obviously distressed.
“H-Hello, Lieutenant.” Cadence said shakily. “I’m… I’m fine.”
“What happened, your majesty?”
Cadence shook her head.
“I don’t know. I asked him about his family back home, and he seemed to be fine. But then out of nowhere his hands started shaking and he seemed to come out of himself and just...” Cadence looked the lieutenant in the eyes. “I’ve never seen him do that before.”
Evening Shroud shook her head.
“I haven’t either.” She over at the couch. On the floor in front of it was the commander’s hat on the floor.
She walked over and grabbed the hat. She looked at the princess.
“Are you going to be alright?”
“Yeah, I’m fine. Just... make sure he’s alright for me, please?”
The lieutenant nodded.
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Commander, sir?” Shroud knocked on the door. “You left your cover on the floor in the princess’s chambers.”
Shroud crept through the doors of the man’s chambers. A fire was burning in the fireplace. An arm hung off the edge of the chair.
“Sir?”
She came around the chair and saw the man in slumped against the back. His jacket was thrown on the coffee table. His other hand was clutching his pistol.
“Oh no.” She whispered. “Oh no no no no.”
She hurried over to his side, looking him over. The man snored, causing the unicorn to jump back in surprise. She looked at the man, and laughed softly, relieved. Her horn lit up, and she pulled the pistol from the man’s grip. The man didn’t stur, and she set it down on the far end of the room on his desk. She smiled at him as she left the room.
“Goodnight, Jack.”
“Good night, Jack.”
“Joey, you know that doesn’t work the same way as good morning, right?”
“Says you.”
Jack laughed and slapped Joey on the back.
“Come on. We’ve gotta get to the convoy.”
“Alright, alright.” Joey laughed.
The two men walked side by side down the side of the building. The portable lights scattered around the FOB lighting up their path. Both men were wearing tan digital camo fatigues with a dark solid tan plate carrier over it. The bottom of their pants were bloused over their dusty combat boots that matched the sandy ground. Atop their heads were matching helmets with goggles and an earpiece leading down to their short range radios. On Jack’s jacket, there was a captain’s rank symbol in black, and Joe’s was a first lieutenant symbol in black. They both carried a M4A1 with various attachments on them.
“Alright. Second platoon’s HQ truck is over there. Stay safe, Joe.”
“Thanks ma!” Joey yelled, acting like a child. Quite a few laughs came from the enlisted men in the vehicles already. Jack laughed and threw a pebble at one of the trucks.
“Alright, shut it.” He called to the men.
“Yes sir.” They chorused back, still laughing to themselves.
Jack shook his head and walked up to his humvee at the front of the convoy. As he walked up to the door, he swung his M4 off his shoulder and wrapped the sling around the stock.
“RPG! RPG!” A man screamed. Jack snapped his head around just in time to see a rocket slam into the roof of a humvee. The blast shook the car, and killed everyone inside. Gunfire erupted and lit up the sitting convoy.
“Go go go! Start moving!” Jack called to the front car. The front car sped off, two more and a truck right behind it. The fifth vehicle started to pull out, but another rocket blast hit it and blew it up. The rest of the convoy behind it was blocked. Jack cussed and dove behind a stuck humvee as bullets started cracking around him.
He peered out from behind the humvee and started firing at the assailants coming towards the base. He noticed one group of people on the other side of the convoy pulling back a wounded man. He turned around to some of the other men around him.
“Cover them!” He called. The men nodded and unloaded on the insurgents. Jack watched as the men started pulling bodies and wounded men back. A couple more men ran out to help with the efforts. Jack noticed one of them was a lieutenant.
“Lieutenant, get your wounded and get the fuck back here!” He called.
“That’s the fuckin’ plan, Jack.” A familiar voice called back. Jack stuck his head back out and looked at the Lieutenant. It was Joe. Jack nodded to himself, and kept up with the covering fire.
An insurgent sprinted through the fire and men, seemingly not caring if he lived or died. Jack set his sights on the man and pulled the trigger.
*Click.*
“Son of a bitch!” Jack called. He quickly pulled the mag out.
“Allahu Akbar! Allahu Akbar!” Shouting came from where the men were pulling wounded out. Jack slammed the magazine back in place and stood up, ready to fire. He stopped as he saw Joey tackle the suicide bomber. Jack sprinted towards the bomber.
“Get the fuck off him!” Jack screamed.
“Captain!” A man from behind him called.
The bomber’s explosive vest detonated. Jack was thrown back from the blast and landed on his back. The world swayed and shook, Jack’s vision cloudy and dark. He was wavering from consciousness and could only faintly hear voices and shouting.
“Captain’s down! I repeat, captain is down.”
“FOB Kilo is under attack! Golf Company has suffered numerous casualties. Two officers down. Lieutenant Carter is confirmed dead, Captain Douglas is injured. Requesting immediate support!”
“Come on, sir. Get up. Get up! We’ve gotta go! Get up! Sir! Sir!”