Artie’s Choice
The bar was called The Screaming Stallion and it wasn't one of Artie's favourites. Run by an old Starfleet trooper who had lost a hand in the Crystallite war it was, not to put to fine a point on it, a dive.
That was why he came here after losing a soldier in battle. It was a place that very few people would actually think to look for him when he wanted to be alone.
Which was why, as he stepped through the door and delicately walked around the nasty looking stain on the wooden floor, he was surprised - astonished, even - to see a familiar pink mare sitting at the bar with a glass of something cherry red held in her hands. Her head was bowed, and her mane looked as though it had deflated a bit from its usual poofiness.
None of her friends were anywhere in evidence, which didn't surprise him. If Rarity ever saw the state of this place - said current state included one guy passed out on his table and another who looked as though he'd been playing the slot machine he'd forgotten to eat, or sleep, or take a shower - she'd probably have a fit.
Actually, that was probably too hard on his part. He was starting to get the impression that perhaps he wasn't giving Rarity enough credit. Not that she'd actually be comfortable in a place like this, but, well...let's just say he'd maybe been a little hard on her, and on all the members of Friendship is Magic. They weren't what he'd call professional soldiers, but they had the stuff. They'd proven that.
One of them had died proving that, which had brought Artie to The Screaming Stallion only to find that Pinkie Pie had beaten him to it. She was sitting at the bar alone, with no sign of her friends. He guessed that was because they didn't know she was here. They...they didn't seem the kind to abandon one another otherwise.
He stood for a moment, watching her. Not staring but...deciding. Part of him wanted to leave her alone, the way that he liked to be left alone after he lost someone; another part of him felt that he ought to go up to her.
It was the latter part that won out. He walked softly across the wooden floor and sat down at the bar beside her. The orange lights fell down upon them both as he leaned one elbow upon the sticky wood. "I didn't expect to see you here. I wouldn't expect a mare like you to even know about this place."
"I didn't," Pinkie whispered. "I just...I started walking and...and I ended up here."
"Huh. Small world, I guess," Artie said. "Although...I'm surprised you stuck around."
"I wanted to be alone," she said, still whispering.
Artie ignored the reproach. "How long have you been here?"
"I don't know."
"How did you assessment with Lightning go?"
"I don't know."
"No, I guess it is a little early for that," Artie said.
A silence descended between the two of them. Pinkie didn't look up. She kept her head bowed, her eyes hollow-seeming and dull, as though the light had been burned out of them like the fires that had ravaged Twilight's funeral pyre and then died, leaving only ashes. Maybe it was the light in this dingy bar, but it almost looked as though her coat was a little grey.
Poor kid. She wasn't that much younger than he was, but Artie had never felt the weight of his experiences more than he did right now, looking down at this mare trying to process her first loss.
And he had no idea what he could or should or ought to say to her. He'd lost people in the past, sometimes he'd even lost whole squads, but he had never...he'd never lost a friend. Not a true friend, anyway. There had been people that he liked, people that he drank with, people that he played cards with aboard ship while there was nothing else to do, people who sat still long enough for him to make sketches of them...he'd lost them all. But he had never lost someone so close that the loss had taken a chunk of his heart with him. Not the way that she had.
He'd been lucky that way...or she'd been lucky to have a bond that strong in the first place. He couldn't quite make his mind up on that score.
And so he had no idea what to say. Perhaps he still wouldn't have known what to say even if he had understood, really understood, what she was going through. Or maybe...what did it matter. It didn't help him to help her.
Artie looked away for a second. "Listen, Pinkie...I know that there's nothing that I can say that will make you feel even remotely better, I know that there's nothing that I can say to help you but I wish there was, I wish there was so much because...because seeing you like this...it makes me sad, and it makes me want to do something about it."
Gods and the Grand Ruler, could you have sounded like more of an idiot?
Pinkie looked up at him. "Thanks, Artie. That...that helps, a little."
Artie blinked. "It does."
Pinkie nodded. "Just a little, but yeah. Thank you."
"Uh...sure," Artie said, wondering what it was in that surge of nonsense that had gotten through to her. "Any time. Now what do you say we get out of here? A dive like this is no place for a nice mare like you."
Why didn’t you save me, Artie?
Captain Artie Bristles was snug in the confines of his drop pod, waiting for the cruiser Scorpion to achieve a position over his objective. When that happened, he and the eighty other ponies of Echo Company, 101st Airborne would drop right on top of the bandit camp and lay it to waste.
Opposition was predicted to be light. They weren’t particularly well-equipped bandits, just a troublesome nuisance. And Starfleet would deal with them, as it dealt with all such troublesome nuisances.
He flicked one of the switches on his pod, patching him through to the rest of his company. His company. It had been eight months and the word still sounded strange to him. His company, his command. He still wasn’t entirely sure what he’d done to earn it…but he hoped that somewhere, wherever he was, grandpa was proud of him for how far he’d come.
His company. His command. His ponies to lead to victory.
His to keep safe. His to protect.
“Echo, this is Scorpion actual we are over the target position now. You have green light to drop at your discretion.”
“Copy that, Actual, I want to wait for the latest drone flyover to come in before I drop, it shouldn’t take long,” Artie replied. He flicked a switch on his pod console to patch him through to the rest of the company. “Okay, Echo, we are over the drop zone now. Get set for a combat drop because we are feet first into hell going down on my mark. Get ready.”
His monitor showed the footage from the latest drone flying at high altitude over the target. It was about to pass over the drop zone any second…now.
Artie’s eyes widened as the image on the monitor showed something quite different from anything that the intelligence reports had led him to expect.
He shut off comms to the company and patched himself back into to the ship. “Scorpion, this is Echo command, are you seeing what I’m seeing?”
“Affirmative, Echo. You’re still clear to drop.”
“Clear to-“ Artie was stunned into silence for a second. “You can see this, right? There are at least a dozen anti-air turrets down there just waiting to blow the crap out of our pods in mid-air. And anyone who actually survives to make landfall is going to get slaughtered by those tanks down there. One airborne company against all that, that’s suicide! What is command thinking ordering this mission?”
“A good soldier goes where he’s sent and does what he’s told. You are clear to drop.”
Artie felt as though the cold of space had frozen his pod with him inside of it. On the one hand, he had his orders and his orders said drop. His orders were to descend upon the camp and destroy it, and nothing about the orders that he had been given allowed him any discretion in the matter whatsoever.
On the other hand he knew, he knew with absolute certainty that if he carried out his orders then he was not only signing his own death warrant but, more importantly, that of every single pony under his command.
And orders or no, duty or no…that was a step too far.
Artie Bristles believed in Starfleet. He believed in heroes like his grandpa. He had joined the service because he wanted to do his part and protect the galaxy, because he wanted to defend justice and righteousness and uphold the ideals of Unicornicopia. He was proud of what he’d accomplished in the fleet so far.
But he hadn’t signed up to lead good ponies to their deaths.
They were his company, his ponies. His to lead, and his to protect.
From the enemy, and from poor decisions.
“Negative, Scorpion,” he said. “Drop is cancelled.”
“Repeat that, Echo, did you say cancelled?”
“Yes, cancelled, I am not going to order my troops into a suicide mission,” Artie declared. He flipped the switch to talk to his company again. “Echo Company, red light. Disembark from your pods there will be no drop today.”
“You don’t have the authority to do that, captain.”
“I just did.”
“There will be consequences for this.”
“I’m sure there will,” Artie said, even as he had no real idea what those consequences might be. They might even put him to death for all he knew.
But at least he wouldn’t be taking any of his troops with him. At least he would have saved them,
Why didn’t you save me, Artie?
The question echoed through Artie’s mind as he stood on the rocky ledge looking down at all of Twilight’s friends. Twilight’s question, the one he hadn’t had a real answer to. He’d had to resort to a lame comeback accusing her of being petty about the fact that she’d died.
Admittedly, the fact that she was reacting by killing a whole load of people was a bit out of character for Twilight, but it didn’t change the fact that he hadn’t been able to come up with a good answer to her question.
Why didn’t you save me, Artie?
Because…because…why hadn’t he saved Twilight? Why hadn’t he gone after her, gone with Lightning, backed her up when she needed him to? Because he’d been ordered not to? He’d been ordered to make the jump on Draylon IV but he hadn’t done it. He’d said ‘screw the orders’ and made his own call to save the lives of the ponies under his command. Now, Twilight wasn’t technically under his command but she was a part of his team and lower ranked than him so princess or no, friendship is magic or no, that made him his. His to lead and his protect.
But he hadn’t protected her.
He’d watched the guilt of that eat up Lightning, but he hadn’t ever really felt guilty himself. He’d felt upset, sure, but guilt…why hadn’t he felt guilty? Why hadn’t it been devouring him the way that it devoured Lightning? The old Artie, the Artie who had called off the drop on Draylon IV because the intel was a bunch of BS and the mission was suicidal, would have been consumed by guilt. That Artie had felt the loss of each soldier like a gut punch. That Artie probably wouldn’t have hesitated to the go to the aid of a sister officer in trouble. Had he lost that part of himself along the way? Had he become the kind of selfish, callous senior officer he’d so loathed? Had he become the kind of guy who would go along for the sake of his career, not making waves even when he could see trouble right in front of him?
Why didn’t you save me, Artie?
I don’t know, Twilight. I just…I don’t know, and I’m sorry. I should have done more. I should have done…anything.
He’d joined the Starfleet because he wanted to be a hero, and he’d thought that once he got away from the regular forces and started serving under Lightning that he had finally achieved that ambition: killing monsters, fighting boss villains, getting a regular character inspired by him in the TV show (even if he didn’t really get a chance to do very much on a regular basis); he’d wanted to be a hero but it seemed that somewhere along the way he’d become a careerist and a gloryhound instead.
He’d wanted to be a hero, and he’d convinced himself that he was one…but he wasn’t. And he never had been.
Why didn’t you save me, Artie?
And now he was standing on a rocky ledge while Starla threatened Twilight’s friends with death.
Starla who had already condemned hundreds of ponies to their deaths.
Let’s finish what we started.
Why didn’t you save me, Artie?
Rhymey was our brother.
I will kill each and every one of you.
Why didn’t you save me, Artie?
I was kinda jealous of the way so many people looked at you.
Why didn’t you save me, Artie?
“Well,” Starla demanded. “What’s it going to be?”
Rainbow growled. “You complete and utter-“
“Righteous anger, if that’s what you’re attempting, comes ill from the tongue of a traitor,” Starla replied. “Not to mention a murderer.”
“I didn’t kill Rhymey!” Fluttershy cried. “I didn’t…I didn’t know what…I loved him.”
“A likely story!” Starla snapped. “You people have worked at the downfall of our race since the moment you first cast your spell over our gallant knight.”
Rainbow looked as though she was about to choke. “You…you come here, you take over our world, you trample everything we loved into the ground and we’re the bad guys?”
“We offered you leadership!” Starla roared. “We offered a firm and guiding hand and you have repaid us by spitting in our faces! Answer me now, what’s it going to be? Surrender or death?”
“We won’t let you hurt Twilight,” Applejack said. “Not before we’ve even properly got her back.”
“You seem to think you have a choice in the matter,” Starla said. Her whole body was tense, the arrow trembled on her bowstring. “Twilight’s dead whatever you do, the question is do you want to die with her.”
Rainbow Dash tensed. It was clear that she was going to leap.
Starla smirked. “I was hoping you’d make that choice. Starlight-“
“Paint bomb!” Artie yelled, throwing out his palm as a ball of energy that superficially resembled a glob of paint soared through the air to strike Starla on the hip. It exploded in a shower of luminescent pink, making Starla cry out in pain as she staggered sideways, lowering her bow as she did so.
Artie leapt down from the rock ledge, doing a backflip on the way down so that he landed with his back to Twilight’s friends, facing his team.
The team he’d just betrayed.
“Go, find Twilight, ask her why the hay she’s doing this,” Artie said. “Ask her…get her to stop this if you can, before more people get hurt.”
“Artie?” Pinkie asked.
“Go,” he said. “I’ll try and buy you some time.” He had no illusions about the ultimate victor of this contest. He was one against five, and the four he knew well enough to say where very good at what they did. Honestly, he didn’t expect to buy them that much time.
But he kept that pessimistic assessment off his face as he looked back for a second and grinned at her. “There was never anything that I could say to make you feel better, or to help at all…but I figured out that there is something I can do. Now get out of here. A dive like this is no place for a nice mare like you.”
Starla’s howl of outrage as Twilight’s friends made their escape was wordless, but she found her words quick enough. If looks could kill then her glare would have struck him dead already.
“Artie!” she screamed. “What…what are you doing?”
“I’d like to think that I’m doing what’s right,” Artie said, hoping that he sounded calm instead of sounding as scared as he felt.
“What’s right?” Starla shrieked. “What’s right? What the…I don’t…you’re betraying your team, your family and for what? For them? For Twilight? For everything that is wrong with United Equestria?”
“For friendship.”
“Friendship?”
“I didn’t know what it could be until they shared its magic with me.”
“This isn’t a fucking joke!” Starla yelled. “This is serious, this is…was this always your plan? All this time, have you been planning to betray us? To betray me?”
“You let over nine hundred ponies die aboard the Revenge and for what?” Artie demanded. “To take out Twilight, a pony that we fought with, a pony that we should never have let die in the first place.”
“She never did die in the first place, did she?”
”Yes, she did, this is just her clone that they brought back,” Artie replied. “Did you forget that? Did you get confused what was real what His Majesty was saying on TV?”
“To question the words of His Majesty is treason.”
“Starla, for the love of the gods, how come you can’t see how wrong this all is?” Artie said. “I know that Rhymey’s dead, but these girls are our comrades too and we can’t just execute them all because…because…damn it, Starla, all of you! You must be able to see that this is wrong!”
Buddy had the decency to look away. Dyno and Myte met his eyes with unflinching stares filled with hostility. Green Sickle looked bored by the whole business.
“Danaus is dead,” Artie said. “All those ponies on the Revenge are dead. Rhymey’s dead. How is killing Pinkie Pie and Fluttershy going to make anything right?”
“This is the most right I’ve felt since we came to this place,” Starla declared. “Now, Major Artie Bristles, because I like you I’m going to give you one chance. Get out of the way, and we’ll forget that this ever happened.”
Artie’s hands tightened upon his staff. “I’m afraid I can’t do that, Starla.”
“I see,” Starla said coldly. “Die.”