//------------------------------// // Chapter 3; The Badlands Operation // Story: The History of the Great Changeling War // by Fireheart 1945 //------------------------------// With their eastern flank in peril, the Allies knew that trying to reconquer Equestria would be extremely dangerous, if not fatal. For her part, Chrysalis recognized that the hive was vulnerable; her lines north of Appleloosa could hold off the Allies, but she had, in her belief that the war would be short and the conquest of all of Equestria certain, neglected the hive's defenses. While she had an army there, bitter experience had shown her that in a fight, the equipment of the Allies would prevail over equal or inferior numbers of changelings. She knew that around two hundred thousand Allied reinforcements, mainly from the Avalon Republic, were coming up from the south via railroad, and that these could easily be brought to bear against the hive itself. Since the vast majority of her drones were in Equestria, most either on the front lines or heading there, she could not reinforce it easily. The Allies quickly became aware of this glaring changeling weakness through aerial reconnaissance, and moved at once to exploit it. Knowing they would, Chrysalis reluctantly ordered her drones within the hive to make preparations. She ordered them to move her throne north, to Canterlot, which would become the new capital of the Changeling Empire. She ordered that all nymphs and eggs be moved out of the hive and to Canterlot, and ponies and other races held prisoner there were to be removed and brought to the front lines to feed her armies. The hive itself was to be rigged with all manner of traps, and anything of value to be extracted; anything that could not be brought along was to be destroyed. A line north of the hive was to be constructed. Chrysalis vowed that the Allies would pay for their desecration of her hive. But her reasons for the move weren't just military ones. Setting up her capital in Canterlot would be a major blow to the pony population under her rule; she need not tell them about the capture of her hive, and with enough work from the Retaliation Brigades, nopony would suspect it. It would feel to the ponies in the occupied zone that the changelings and their oppression would remain permanently, as the Queen in fact intended. She could also centralize her rule over the conquered lands, allowing her bureaucracy to manage the country more efficiently. As she had already given orders for changeling nurseries and brood chambers to be built in hidden locations throughout Equestria, the fall of the hive would do nothing other than provide a temporary morale boost for the Allied soldiers on the front line, something that could prove temporary once they recognized how useless their victory was. -------------------------------------------- "Come again?" Cicadellidae asked, shaking her head in disbelief. "Queen's orders. Move the throne to Canterlot, move all-" "I heard you the first time," she said. "But..." "We're not required to tell you why," the warrior in charge said. Cicadellidae, more often referred to as Cica, didn't reply. "Alright, alright!" the warrior shouted angrily. "We're moving this stuff because those so-called Allies are going to capture the Badlands, there's your reason why, curse you!" "But... we're changelings! We're stronger than anybody! Where are our troops?" "Most of 'em are on the front line in Equestria. We don't have enough here right now to protect the entire Badlands." "Wouldn't the throne cripple them?" "Not all of them, blasted humans and their 'technology.' The Avalonians are coming, and we've got to clean house. We'll set up in Canterlot. We'll be more secure there. Plus, our nurseries are going to be more spread out, so they won't be able to kill or capture our eggs and nymphs all at once." Cica felt a bit, well, sick, but held her peace. "How much time do we have?" "None. That is to say, fulfill Her Majesty's order at once, and stop questioning her!" "Got it." Satisfied that they had fulfilled their mission, the warriors turned away. Cica sighed. "Well, better get started. Moving all the nymphs is going to be a nightmare..." ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- However, the upcoming loss of her hive, as well as the Allied pressure from the south, was far from the end of Chrysalis' problems. The Yaks had not been idle; they had gathered an army of their own, and were moving southward out of their winter stronghold. They came fewer in number than the changelings, but much bigger and stronger than any, at least in terms of physical strength, and their love of destruction came with them. Griffonstone was finally reconsidering their neutrality. If the changelings conquered Manehattan and Baltimare, they could easily cross the ocean, either flying over the short strait in the north, or by ships they had captured. They held a council among the elders, who were the closest that the land had for rulers. After much debate, they decided that their safety - and economic future - depended on the changelings being stopped. They voted to join the war - provided that Equestria recompense them at the end of it - and sent a delegation to the Allies. The Zebra Tribes, far away in their native land, were too far away for most of them to be in favor of the conflict. A few of them, grateful to Equestria for providing medical and monetary aid prior to the conflict, promised to lend them warriors and ships, but these would prove to be a distinct minority in the war for the moment, and the distance they would have to travel would be long and dangerous. Furthermore, the dragons were on the fence; Changeling infiltrators informed their Queen that Dragon Lord Torch was considering joining the war, though which side he would select, if any, was still up for grabs, as he took consideration with the dragon elders as well as listening to the aggressive, destructive youth. ---------------------------------------------- "I say we take this chance to burn Equestria to the ground!" a young red dragon said, claws slamming onto the rock the others were using as a table. "We dragons have been holding off from major destruction for too long. If we roast an entire country, our names will be remembered and feared for the next thousand years!" "But who are we supposed to fight, young Garble, and who would be standing at the end of the war; the Allies, or the changelings?" a white elder dragon asked. "No one, because we should fry them both! Come one, they're busy killing each other, they won't even see us coming!" "Even the greatest of dragons can be felled by the smallest foes," the elder remarked. "They all have legends of slaying or out-thinking us. And their weapons, especially those of the Allies, decrease our advantages in size and strength drastically. I urge the Honorable Dragon Lord not to be hasty when it comes to this war, and to refrain from rash decisions, as this would be." "I'm not either for or against Equestria," Ember, the blue daughter of Torch, said. "But right now, they have standing armies; there are hundreds of thousands of Allied soldiers, and perhaps millions of changelings. How do we fight that with strength alone?" "The guns the Avalonians used to defend Appleoosa make me all the more determined to remain out of the war," a second, green elder added. "We have been terrors of the world for millennia without burning the world to a crisp. I believe that we can go on as such for thousands of years more." "Do you dweebs hear yourselves?" Garble shouted, unleashing a stream of flame afterward. Even before it had vanished, he continued, "Where's your courage, old geezer?" To emphasize his point, he poked the white elder. "Where it always has been." Garble suddenly felt a fist tighten around his neck as the much larger elder lifted him off the ground by his throat. "I use my brain when it comes to courage; you, on the other claw, have shown no sign of possessing a working cranium." "ENOUGH!" All dragons present looked up to the giant Dragon Lord, who towered over all of them. "This council is over. We will meet same time, same place next week. Until then, NO dragon is to engage in combat with either side. I hope I make myself clear?" To add to his point, Torch held up the Dragon Scepter, which looked almost comically tiny next to him. "And no dragon is to offer help to either side, either. End of story. For now." -------------------------------------------- Meanwhile, Klugetown, then a little-known city in the Bone Dry Desert south of Equestria, was not interested in the war whatsoever, except for a few merchants who hoped to make a profit off of the conflict. Chief among them was a young cat named Capper, who saw an opportunity to smuggle arms and munitions to the only nation both needing and willing to accept them; Equestria. Equestria was badly behind Avalon, as were all the other participants, in terms of weapons. While they were reverse-engineering Avalonian weapons that had been discarded on the battlefield (and their human allies pretended not to notice), it was clear that it would take much time to adapt them for pony and horse use. While griffons and hippogriffs could use any human weapon as well as the Avalonians could, they too sought to build their own versions. For the time being, though, they were obviously lacking, and Equestria, nominally the largest of them all in terms of land mass (or at least it had been, before the war), was the most behind in military development. Worse, it's scientific centers had primarily been in Canterlot and the northern cities, which were now under changeling occupation, with the notable exception of Manehattan, which was cut off from the southern part of the country that was still free. Weapons from almost any quarter (excepting obviously the changelings) that were more advanced than spears, swords, and ancient guns were welcome. ----------------------------------------- "Well, well, our guests have arrived," a cat in a coat said, as a group of Equestrian officers came through the door. There were some nasty snickers around the room. "You contacted us first, remember?" Captain Storm Fury, a gray pegasus in the Royal Guard, reminded them. "You said you have something that would... interest us?" he added, looking slightly disgusted to be among people that he would have considered criminals back in Canterlot. "Yeah. Heard you boys lack good weapons," a big fish rasped. "Shame, that is." "Old swords, spears, rusty guns... entirely out of date," another said, adding some rusty laughter of his own. "Pity." "Of course, we could... get some for ya," a mole said. "Of course, weps ain't cheap ta come by, ya know?" "One of these deals," the Captain said, facehoofing. "Hey, ya need 'em, and we need money," Capper said, in the very catty sort of voice he used when trying to convince someone. "We give ya good guns, you give us gold, and we all come off better." "Crime capital of the world," Storm Fury heard one of his subordinates whisper. "Crime?" Capper said, faking a hurt expression. "How is free trade - at the right price - a crime? Like I said, we all win." Storm Fury sighed. "What's your price?" "Well, first, we need to know; what do ya most need right now?" an old croc in the back asked. "Can't set a price without knowing the product, heh heh." He coughed, and then continued imbibing liberal amounts of rum. "We're suffering, first and foremost, from a shortage of guns to equal those of our human allies. We're trying to reverse-engineer them, but we lost our best scientists to the changelings when Canterlot fell, and the boys in the southern towns just aren't as skilled or experienced, so it's going to be some months, and that's not considering our reduced industrial capacity. Our artillery is outdated as well, though perhaps less so when compared to our small arms." "So, some rifles, maybe a machine gun here n' there, some up to date big cannons, and the munitions to go with them all," Capper said, ticking them off on the fingers of his left paw. "Am I missing anything?" "We've also lost many of our airships. While none of them were made for war, their loss means we won't have as many to recommission for military service." "I see. Well, now that we're aware of your needs, we can start to fulfill them." "Just be aware that our treasury isn't as.. glamorous as it used to be. When Canterlot fell, a lot of ponies and stuff fell with it." "Oh, that's gonna seriously impact what we can get ya. Of course, we might still be able to... work something out," Capper said. Storm Fury facehoofed again, wondering what on earth he'd gotten himself into. -------------------------------------------- While backdoor deals were made to the far south, the war continued at full speed. Of the 200,000 men who had come up by the southern railroad to shore up the line, half were assigned to the coming offensive against the Badlands. They gathered in the Macintosh Hills and the northwestern piece of the Forbidden Jungle, preparing for the assault to come. Their movements were detected by Chrysalis, who decided that, rather than waste her warriors, to withdraw them. However, once again her messenger was too slow; the Allies, mainly the human forces of the Avalon Republic, began their offensive on July 2nd, 1002. ----------------------------------------- "Up two degrees, right four." Giuseppe Ricci, an artilleryman for the Republic, adjusted the big gun as ordered. "Load!" The 149 mm shell was manhandled into the breach, which was shut immediately. "Fuoco!" The gun's roar was like the loudest thunder one had ever heard, at least to those around it. The observer watched the enemy lines with a pair of binoculars. "Long." Giuseppe helped to adjust the gun again, and to load another shell. "Fuoco!" BOOM! "Short." Again, the gun's barrel was sightly adjusted, and another shell was loaded. "Fuoco!" BOOM! "Hit! Bravo! Bravo!" the observer yelled. Giuseppe, whose view of the enemy was obscured by the dirt piled in front of the gun, chose to take the man's word for it, and slipped another shell into the barrel. Yet another shell was soon on its way into the enemy lines. "How much mail do you think we'll ship today?" another gunner in the same crew, Riccardo Bartolomeo, asked. "Another hour or so of this, with maybe five shells a minute, probably 300 or 400 in all," Giuseppe replied. "Too much chat, not enough shells, boys!" the gun captain yelled. "We need to soften them up so that the ground-pounders can go in and give those bugs what for!" Giuseppe and Riccardo shut their mouths and continued their work. ----------------------------------------------------------- Explosions. That was what Scarab would remember that day, among other things. The distant thunder-like sounds, the whistling, the sound of incoming death, the roar as the falling explosives detonated, and the screams of wounded and dying changelings. He sought shelter behind some rocks. A withered tree had grown up out of them, and provided some cover as he looked toward the mountains. Bursts of fire from them illuminated the skyline. "We're getting hammered!" another drone cried out, as more explosions tore up the Badlands around them. "Shut it!" an authoritative voice yelled. "Commander Aphid!" Scarab said, turning around. "Do you want us to go and take those... things out?" Commander Aphid looked carefully at the mountains. "I'd love to do just that. But our scouts said that those mountains are crawling with humans and their guns. I don't think we have the numbers." "We could sneak in and-" "Won't do any good. Their language is different from ours, and we haven't got enough infiltrators and interpreters trained to use it ourselves. And they don't have a whole lot of ponies with them." "We're the Mandible Guard! We can handle anything!" another drone said. "Then why are you all cowering behind those rocks?" Scarab sighed. "But what else can we do?" Aphid looked directly at him. "Not a whole lot." "So you think the humans are going to come soon?" the second drone asked. "Wouldn't be any reason to hit us so hard with these things unless they were," the Commander said, adjusting his helmet. "I don't know how long we'll be facing... this, but they have to have a limit to how many they can shoot at us. After that, they'll be coming. Make sure you all remember how to aim; I'm not tolerating bad shots." ----------------------------------------------------------- Lorenzo Capello advanced with the rest of his company down the hill as the entire army advanced; for miles to either side, all one could see were Avalonian soldiers moving down from the mountains and into the Badlands, a few ponies, mainly unicorns, among them. Green-uniformed men were pushing forward, rifles at the ready, as their artillery continued to pound the enemy positions. A human wave was trekking out of the mountains, ready to overwhelm anything that got in their way. For some time, the cannons continued their fire, with explosions rocking the desert ahead. Hopefully, this barrage would leave the enemy lying dead or senseless, and the Republic's army could push ahead. A few minutes later, however, the artillery fire stopped. By then, most of the brigade was on the level ground of the Badlands desert, and the enemy could been seen. The changelings did appear to have been badly rocked by the bombardment, but many got up almost immediately after the explosions ceased, and their green bolts of fire began to pierce the air. Men began to fall onto the dirt, screaming. Most of the others in the front line raised their rifles in response and began shooting as they ran. Most of their bullets missed their targets, but the air was full of lead, and at least some of their shots were hitting changelings. Even those that weren't making contact with chitin were making the enemy to keep their heads (which were, incidentally, connected to their only ranged weapon) down. The Avalonian force continued to advance. Some of their batteries back on the mountain began to fire again, giving the enemy the grim choice of staying in cover and risk being blown to pieces, or else come out of cover and become even more vulnerable. Some of the enemy did the latter... and were shot by soldiers too happy to be shooting at changelings that were out of cover. The majority kept tight in those places that did offer cover, but there had been too little of it to begin with, and the artillery was focusing on those areas. Lorenzo stopped and fired. The changeling he was aiming at fell, though given that a bunch of other soldiers were shooting at it, he was never sure whether his shot was the one that took it down. Nevertheless, he gave a holler and rushed forward. Soon enough, with the men approaching the enemy line, or more accurate what was left of it, the artillery ceased fire, and not long after that, it became a close-quarters fight. The changelings didn't have enough warriors to stop the tidal wave of Avalonians. Is victory in sight? he wondered. ---------------------------------------- The Avalonians smashed through the unprepared changeling line. The defenders, their lines torn to shreds, tried to pull back, but the retreat was uncoordinated and the human soldiers took every opportunity to put their rifles to use. Out of thirty thousand changelings, less than five thousand would escape. The Battle of the Macintosh Hills was a stunning Allied victory. The Allied forces swung to the north as they moved, brushing aside further efforts by the changeling forces to halt them. Before long, the hive itself was in view. Perhaps the Avalonians were too hopeful. While the extraction of all useful elements was not quite completed, all nymphs and eggs had been successfully evacuated, along with all love supplies and the throne. As the Allies approached, the changelings set about destroying everything they were unable to take with them. By the time they withdrew, nothing was left but ash and melted slime. While the hive structure was intact, along with the stairways and various spatial doorways, there was nothing the Allies could use to gain any real knowledge about the changeling hive or how their society worked. Getting into the hive was actually more exciting than its occupation. The various doorways in it had a nasty habit of popping in and out of existence. After several soldiers nearly lost parts of their bodies, the generals in command had had enough, and used artillery over open sights to blast open entry points. As noted before, once inside, there was nothing worthy of salvage inside. ------------------------------------------------ Lorenzo walked slowly into the hive, alongside his comrades. Black ceilings and gray walls were all he could see. "Where are they?" someone else asked. "Shut up!" one of the sergeants said, in a kind of whispered shout. "They're probably still here, just waiting to ambush us somewhere deeper in." But no ambush of any kind took place, not even when, hours later, the Avalonians entered what was obviously the throne room. By this time, the suspicious sergeant from earlier was beginning to doubt his own assessment. "Can't have just abandoned the whole place, can they?" he whispered, voice full of bewilderment. By the time the day was out, there had been no attack by enemy forces. Other than those floating, sometimes present, sometimes disappearing doors, there was no real threat of any kind. "This is their home, for crying out loud; why aren't they protecting it?" another soldier asked, as darkness began to fall and candles came out. "I have no idea," the sergeant said. "You'd think that an enemy so evil would defend their home to the death, but there's no one and nothing here but us." A pony - one of the unicorns sent with the force for anti-infiltration duties - ran up to the sergeant and began speaking in the Equestrian language. The sergeant replied in the same tongue, not sounding impressed. "What did he say, sergeant?" one of the men asked after the pony walked away. "He said they've looked everywhere, and not only are there no changelings, there's no food or drink or books or personal effects or... or anything. Just burned out mush." "I hope he's wrong; we'll need food soon." "Our supply lines will manage to keep up. The generals will make sure we're sent somewhere useful. In the meantime, get comfortable, boys. Looks like we'll be staying here for a while until our orders catch up with us." --------------------------------------------- While disappointed at the lack of loot or knowledge that came with their conquest, the Allies nonetheless announced the fall of the hive, which boosted morale along the front everywhere. The effect on the changelings was relatively minor, with some minor morale loss here and there, as all important things in the hive had been taken out or destroyed before it could be captured. Chrysalis merely made a promise to retake it as soon as possible. In the meantime, the changelings fed on their conquest. There was indeed a need to do so. Chrysalis had made sure that she and her people laid as many eggs as possible in the years after she became Queen, right up to the point where she had unleashed her coup against the former pony capital. Egg-laying had been prioritized almost as much as gathering love. This process had worked well to get her enough troops to overwhelm Equestria, but it also led to a big problem. The hive needed food, which is to say, it needed to take love from ponies and from any captured or convenient source. The more changelings were hatched, the more food the hive needed. This issue had been taken care of for a while after the conquest of northern Equestria. Millions of ponies had been imprisoned, and many, many others enslaved and serving as erstwhile snack sources in between their enforced duties. But Chrysalis now realized that a quick victory was not in the cards, and she would need as many warriors on the front line as possible. She and her hive would need to continue to lay eggs at the same rate that they had for years, and the future population would need even more food. The Retaliation Brigades had yielded some; some rebellious ponies had been captured, and these were drained of their love with a vengeance. But the few thousand or so ponies who were captured would not be enough. Chrysalis made a decision. She needed more warriors at the front line. While hundreds of thousands were forming a new line north of the Badlands to halt the Allied advance there, she needed more warriors than ever, as the battlefront was growing to an unprecedented scale. For hundreds of years, changelings had grown up being taught that the hive and the Queen in particular were of greatest importance. Their education was largely in infiltration, reading, writing (these two largely to allow changelings to impersonate those ponies they replaced), and in loyalty to the Queen. Nymphs were encouraged to take from and bully other changelings to encourage dominance over their weaker peers and aggressive behavior toward "prey," which meant just about any other species. A nymph usually took around twenty years to grow into a fully adult changeling, about as long as a pony or any other species that built a civilization on the planet, which meant that it would take a very, very long time for the nymphs that came from the eggs to become full warriors and infiltrators. At least, that was the normal case. For one egg, royal jelly was used to change a female nymph into a Princess changeling, essentially creating a successor for the incumbent Queen. This had no effect on how long it took the Princess to grow up, but would extend her life indefinitely and give her power over other changelings. The Queen began to suspect that royal jelly could be altered to serve other purposes, as could the eggs themselves. As she already had a daughter, Princess Metamorphosis, there was no succession problem, but perhaps royal jelly, and changeling biological aspects, could speed up the growth process to make more warriors in a shorter amount of time, and perhaps the genetic code in the eggs could be changed so that other classes of changelings could be made; perhaps a bigger, stronger warrior, or with greater ability to use energy. Chrysalis set her most intelligent and knowledgeable drones to work on the issue. She then turned her attention to what she had evacuated from the hive. She tore down Celestia's throne and put her own in its place. She set up brood chambers within the caves beneath Canterlot, where she had imprisoned Princess Cadence, along with constructing others in spread out locations around the new empire. While the front was expanding to the south, she began to receive reports from scouts to the north that a horde of thousands of yaks was approaching from the northwest, from their frosty homeland. It was hardly something that she relished. She had maybe one million, two hundred thousand warriors and infiltrators at the moment, almost all concentrated in the south. Those few that were not on the main front were in Retaliation Brigades that were hunting down and punishing resistance. She could hardly part all these brigades from their purpose, as that would mean that the ponies would have more liberty to revolt and inflict damage upon, not to say overthrow, the empire she was trying to establish. Hundreds of thousands would be ready to be added to the ranks by the end of the year, and she would receive thousands of reinforcements daily as changelings reached adult age, but she required them in the south, as the battlefront grew and grew and more Allied forces arrived. Other than a few broods of these newly adult changelings, that left the Retaliation Brigades in the north as the most reasonable force to stop the yaks. She gathered half of them at her new capital, and ordered them northward to halt the enemy by any means necessary. -------------------------------------------------