Good Trooper Gilda

by Mitch H


Sinks The Fire

The conference room was crowded, and Gilda's captain was badly outnumbered. Major Tall Grass and her aides sat at their end of the long table, but Gilda couldn't agree that the ponies of Civil Affairs were truly on their side, being only organizationally so. The rest of the room was full of aides from the intelligence and operations bureaus, as well as the G-3's chief assistant Major Fair Winds who was chairing the meeting in the name of Operations. A nonentity from the military police sat to Gleaming Shield's right hoof, representing the provost marshal, but he hadn't said a word yet, leaving all the talking to the accidental representative of the Duchess.

It should have been Prince-Major Blueblood, but he'd waved off the honors, and trotted away to deal with some personal matter, as if that took precedence over the monumental work that was the effort to disentangle the affairs of the new duchess from her aunt's extensive and overwhelming Equestrian interests.

The staff ponies had struggled through a bare half-dozen items before coming to a dead halt on the current subject of discussion, the new duchess's disapproval of the Blue Line, and her angry insistence that it must be dismantled. Ever since they tripped over that line in the agenda, they had been stuck in the same circular argument, an argument that refused to end.

"As I've already stated multiple times, that is a matter for the Duchy's own military, Captain Shield. The Blue Line was built by, and has always been staffed and operated by, the Territorials," Major Winds said patiently.

"And the Princess's Own," Gilda reminded the Operations staff-pony, not looking up from her paperwork.

"And the Rangers, yes, thank you Corporal. Who are primarily Trottish troops, whatever the technicalities, and when we talk about this tomorrow with Bureau, I'll be sure to bring that matter up, it is not subject matter for today's meeting, is it?" the head of operations said stiffly.

"And that is the problem, isn't it?" asked Gleaming Shield, staring down the long table at her opposite number. "There is no Ducal military to speak of, is there?"

"I haven't the slightest notion what you're on about, Shield. You yourself spent two years in the Ducal armed forces!"

"The Territorial Corps aren't an army, they're a regiment!" wailed Gleaming Shield. "A sprawling, horrifically bloated regiment with far, far too many battalions all acting as if they're single-battalion EUP provincial regiments. Many of them have Equestrian ceremonial colonels, for the love of the stars! Only a third of the battalions have any Trottish officers at all. They're brigaded and officered within the EUP's own expeditionary force. All operational matters have to be addressed by EUP staff, because there is no Trottish staff!"

"None of which changes the fact that the Blue Line is garrisoned and operated entirely by the Trottish Pony Brigade. I strongly encourage the new duchess to take command of her own ducal forces and acquaint them with her notions of... social engineering."

"All Sally Port says is-"

"Brigadier Port," sniffed Major Winds.

"Pardon?" Gleaming Shield asked, looking like she had been slapped.

"Brigadier Sally Port is an EUP officer of rank, and shall be named as such in officially recorded meetings," said the major, looking to her left at the earth pony stenographer industriously banging away at his two-key typewriter. "Even by such an elevated personage as the acting Colonel of the famed 'Crystal Guards'."

Gleaming's coat was starting to lighten from its native purple-violet to something dangerously lighter, and Gilda could smell something burning. She had only really seen one of Gleaming Shield's infamous fits of temper once, but the memory of that event made Gilda look around to make sure she knew where the conference room's fire extinguisher was located.

"And that was," ground out Gleaming Shield between gritted teeth, "what Brigadier Port said when we tried to meet with him, just before he informed us that he only took orders from 'Command', and that he would begin writing up his letter of resignation in the event that we pressed the matter. You are, I believe, who he meant by 'Command'?"

"I have no insight into the thought-processes of old Sally, and I'm sure he can explain his own actions in his own words, if you would care to bring this matter up to him, Captain Shield. Now, if we could properly table this item and move on to the next line on the agenda, reduction in forces, we are quite concerned about the excessive logistical load on the expedition by the current number of units in the field and in theater."

"This item is tabled, Major," seethed Gleaming Shield. "We are in Trottingham, to 'table' a matter is to bring it into discussion. Try to remember we are no longer in Equestria."

"I am quite aware that we, and almost a full third of Equestria's military - active and worse, volunteer! - are forward deployed on what is now quite clearly foreign soil, Captain Shield! We recognize the sovereignty of the Duchy of Trottingham-"

"Trottingham and the Isles," Gilda interrupted.

"What?" demanded the deputy head of operations, turning to stare daggers at the bat-hen.

"Duchess Cadenza was coronated ruler of the Duchy of Trottingham and the various counties of the Isles. All eight of them. As is traditional in the history of the Isles. The duke or duchess of Trottingham is sovereign of the combined Duchy of Trottingham and the Counties of the Isles."

"What? I've never heard that, where does it say- oh." The pegasus major stared through her bifocals at the document one of her aides held up to her view. "Well, that's a matter for Civil Affairs, and out of my purview. Most of these matters are no longer my business, I don't even know why I'm here- here now, who's that? We're very busy, young lady, you can bother the Duchess's liaison after the meeting's over! Go away!"

The MP who had slunk into the back of the room was leaning over and whispering to the Provost Marshal's representative and Gleaming Shield. Gilda couldn't hear exactly what they were saying, but caught 'fire' and 'jetty', and thought she knew what it was about.

Gleaming Shield turned back to the perplexed pony staffers, and cleared her throat. "Gentleponies, I'm afraid that we'll have to put a pin in this agenda and return to it at another time. A matter has come up which cannot be delayed. A security matter."

"Well, if there's a threat to the new duchess, of course you must go, Captain Shield- Captain Shield! You will want a copy of the transcript?" yelped the pegasus major at the retreating back of Gilda and her unicorn as they fled the meeting as swiftly as they could.

Gleaming waited until the door slammed behind her and her little entourage before she blew out her ire in a rush of breath that was only figuratively draconic.

Gilda counted her blessings that it wasn't literally so.

"Very good timing, Baton. How fresh is the news?" Gleaming Shield demanded of the military policemare as they hurried down the corridor to the stairs that led up to the royal apartments.

"You can see the smoke on the horizon, Captain. Very fresh. But it'll take half the morning to get out to the site. The 14/3 is on scene, and I hear the navy's got a couple frigates and the air wing moving into the area."

"They should have already have been on station, if they'd listened to us! Did somepony get crosswise and send the pegasi in early or something?" ranted Gleaming Shield as they passed between the guards still posted in front of the apartments. The guards had remained, even after the former princess and her ponies had packed up and moved across town into Government House.

"And dang it, it already is morning!" she snapped, looking at the clock in the foyer. "Gilda, go get my armor ready. Do we have that spare gig upstairs? Get your harness, I'm going to need you to do some flying."

"Yes, captain ma'am." They split apart, Gilda scurried into their tiny backroom to shuck herself into her hauling harness, and to collect the captain's field armor. Meanwhile, Gleaming conferred with the MPs in the parlor, which was reverting to the meeting and office space it had been before the courtiers had claimed the space for its designed purpose.

Gilda found her unicorn bent over a packet of sloppily composed field reports spread over the coffee table, muttering. Gilda carefully undressed her captain as the unicorn read, the latter only acknowledging her bat-hen's efforts by shifting a leg or tail here or there to facilitate the change while she absorbed the information. She finally looked up as Gilda slapped the helmet on her head, the officer's cap now permanently stitched on top of the padded steel.

"Well, it wasn't what I wanted to get me out of that green-silk-paneled nightmare downstairs, but it'll do. Come on, Gilda, the chase is ahoof!"


Winter had returned with a vengeance, as if enraged that it had been driven from the throat of its prey by some greater gleaming predator. Gilda struggled against the bitter winds out of the southwest, and a flight that should have taken an hour took two wing-aching hours as she tacked against a driving snow-flecked boreal blow.

Half of that time was spent fighting through smoky air, surprisingly thick, given the gale force winds. It lightened somewhat once they got beyond the down-wind of the district that the ground forces were clearing that week. The Hayward Dragoons were back in the field, and living up to their reputation. You could see the burning huts and hamlets in the distance, little sparks that marked the dying spasms of the rebellion. They would remember this harrowing of the rebel districts, would, for generations to come, remember that Equestrians took war seriously.

The wind had let up a bit by the time they came within sight of Gould's Jetty, or rather, the blackened, burning ruins where Gould's Jetty had once stood. Gilda turned twice over the burning, fresh ruins, gliding on the thermals still billowing from the fires.

They had clearly been started sometime overnight, and were only subsiding now because they'd consumed most of the burnable mass of the former little hamlet-port. The eponymous pier was long gone, a scattering of broken, burning planks downcurrent along the shore just beyond the barely-protected cove. The earth and stone work lined with pilings which had protected the little port was shattered, a hole blasted in the breakwater through which the open ocean was pouring, tearing away at the rest of the crumbling structure.

A formerly seagoing ship was impaled upon the outer half of the broken breakwater, her sails long since consumed, that portion of the tumble of masts and wrecked timber standing up out of the waves still burning merrily in the sea wind.

In the distance, both up the shore and down it, could be seen smudges of black smoke marking the corpses of other ships. Gleaming had Gilda fly upwind and find the nearest wreck beyond the one burning on the breakwater.

The next wreck upcurrent was an airship, a flying corsair to judge from its light lines and broken spars. It had been a delicate, swift, deadly little craft before something fiery and faster and more deadly had swatted it from the skies like a hoof of fire.

"How could that have gotten here?" demanded Gleaming Shield, shouting in Gilda's ear. "Those aren't long-distance craft, are they?"

"Do I look like a naval bird to you?" Gilda threw over her shoulder. "This looks like naval business to me, captain ma'am! The investigators ought to be back in the town, oughtn't they be?"

"Gilda my hen, we are the investigators!" laughed Gleaming.

"We're all doomed then, captain ma'am!" Gilda replied, as she turned back to what had once been a little local port.

They found the major of the 14/3rd kicking at a burning pile of timbers which might have once been an inn, or a pub. Three of his pegasi were trying to pry apart the burning wreckage with crowbars and polearms.

"Major Skies!" Gleaming shouted, no doubt, Gilda thought, still wind-deafened by their survey from the air, "I'm Shield. I'm here to take over the investigation. What can you tell me about this mess?"

"Ah?" he said, intelligently. "Who? What uniform is that? Look, I'm trying to get into this vault. Captain- Shield? You're Gleaming Shield? You're younger than I thought you'd be."

"Yes, yes. Why do you think there's a vault under that?"

"Prisoner. Only survivor, really. Over here. Who're you with again?"

"Provost Marshal, for one. Also, the new duchess. Also, captain of the Guards."

"That's not any Guards uniform I've ever seen."

"New regiment. Still spinning up."

"Uh-huh. Yeah, we've got one survivor. Says she was a pub landlady. That one my ponies are poking through. Says they were running sluggers through this place, can you believe it? Says an awful lot of things, actually, pretty rattled." He led them over to a fat hen who was shivering under a blanket, talking mile a minute to a pair of pony interrogators, who were scribbling away, taking her statement. "She's been at it for hours, seems like. Won't shut up."

"Yer damn roight I won' shut up, I won't! I won't sit 'ere another day, I won't! I've 'ad enough, I 'ave! I want to be transported! I want out of this evil land! I want to live somewhere safe, governor! Somewhere where all I gotta worry about is bein' eaten by dragons or cannybals or Daimondy Dogs!

"They took everygriff, they did! An' burned those ad not go! She burned them, she did! Burned everfing, she did! The orange witch, the jetty burned under 'er bludy 'ooves, it did! Said she'd come fer our sins, come fer our wicked ways. Called us traitors and damned pigeons. Killed the mayor and the marster, she did! Lit them right up where they stood, them and their bluddy gonnes. Blew the gonnes right up in our talons, she did! Didn't get off a damned shot, the braggarts. So proud of their little pop-guns. We moved so many of those useless wastes of iron and wood - are all the unicorns like that witch?

"Take me somewhere south, marsters. Take me somewhere wif no unicorns, them and their sunburst sails and their fires. I've 'ad enoff, I have."

Gleaming Shield looked around at the burning wreckage, and back at the hen, pulling off her helmet and showing her horn. "Who did this orange unicorn say she was?"

The captive hen squawked in alarm at the revelation of yet another unicorn. "She didn't! She didn't, she just sent 'er damn ponies and parrots to sweep everygriff up, forced them into 'er 'olds, she did. The pirates, they called 'er Captain, noffin' more. 'ad an eyepatch on, she did, but you know all of these corsairs do that, it don't mean noffin'. It preserves one of they's eyes for downbelows, it does. Sight-like. But the other eye, oh, it burned green like 'ades it did."

"Did you at least get a ship name?" asked Gilda, tired of the hen's display of terror.

"Oh, what? Yeah, I think I seen something on the bow. Somefin with an I, I think? An S and an I. I don't know. Maybe Sol Invites?"

"Sol Invictus?" asked the pegasus major. "We found a proclamation nailed to a post in the middle of what used to be the town square." He let them away from the hysterical griffon, and showed them the post.

For heathen heart that puts her trust
In reeking tube and iron shard -

To all who would stand against the will of Harmony, profit from war's fury, or abuse the freedom of the seas, know by this, the death of a now-nameless port of profiteers and all those smugglers who took refuge in it, that the Sun shines on the innocent and the wicked alike. The Sun Remembers. And the sun will bleach your bones if you who crawl under her rays offend against her justice.

“Pfft," Gleaming Shield said, making a face at the scroll. "Can't get more pretentious than that. Red Yard's 'Recessional'? Come on, Gilda, let's see if this Captain Shimmer left any other clues."

They found nothing more but more destroyed smugglers' ships, chariots, and airships, all along that fatal shore. The raiders had stormed along that shore, and killing or capturing everything that moved. Not that there were very many corpses in the wreckage - most of the victims seem to have surrendered, to judge from the lack of the dead in the town and along the shore. But the few corpses they found were thoroughly incinerated, their bones indeed, ready for bleaching in the sun.

Major Skies' captive hen wouldn't stop confessing, and her confessions lined up with the mystery captain's proclamation and the physical evidence. Someone had found the villains who had been smuggling foreign-made gonnes into the Isles, someone had stalked them for - Gilda wasn't sure how long, but it must have taken them months to pin down where everything was, everyone was. And then, when they were ready, they had struck. In a single night, the mystery pirate had wiped out an entire cabal, an entire operation, torn them up root and stock, and disappeared into the morning sun.

Leaving Gilda and her captain to clean up the mess.

The Hades of it was, Gilda knew when the papers found out about this, the mysterious Captain Shimmer and her ship would be the toast of the city. It was just too juicy a story for the yellow press to resist.