The entire battalion stood at attention in the central courtyard of the Palace. Being the morning after my twentieth birthday, I had a bit of a hangover. I squinted my eyes against the sunlight and cursed the many bourbon-related decisions I had made the night before.
My medic's armor shone white in the sun, its huge red crosses gleaming, contrasting the line-troopers' and officers' gold.
Celestia stood, facing us, with our Colonel on her left side and Major Blueblood on her right.
"I request eighty volunteers for a dangerous but vital assignment," Celestia said.
Everypony took one step forward.
"Anypony who gets sea- or airsick is not to volunteer. Step back."
About one hundred troopers and officers, evenly split between unicorns and earth ponies, stepped back. Both of the donkeys in the Battalion stepped back, too.
I'd never been near the ocean or on an airship, so I assumed I didn't get motion sickness. The same with Lieutenant Armor, I would later find out.
Celestia looked at Major Blueblood. "Select your cadre, Major."
"Yes, Your Majesty," he said with an elaborate courtier’s bow.
He selected two platoons en bloc, rather than try to forge new teams on the fly, and added a few troopers to fill in the holes left by unreplaced casualties or ponies with motion sickness. I didn’t realize it at the time, but they were grooming Lieutenant Armor for future command. So: his platoon, which included me, was one of the two selected.
I nodded my head and gritted my teeth. I was ready. I was eager. I considered my capture, and my subsequent parole, as blights on my honor. Regardless of the medals. Even if nopony called me 'rookie' anymore.
I wanted a good scrap. I wanted to prove to myself that my first scrap wasn't a fluke, that I really could do the job while the spells sizzled and the arrows flew.
I was literally the only pony in the entire battalion with the Prisoner of War medal and I felt... ashamed. I wanted to prove I had only surrendered to draw them away from Spring Thunder. Prove I hadn't surrendered because I was a coward.
"Medics," the colonel commanded, "go draw standard armor instead of Red Crosses. Where you're going, the laws of civilized war mean nothing."
My jaw clenched harder. I was still eager, but now I was scared, too.
The next morning, our two platoons took a chartered train to Baltimare. We shared the train with two platoons of batponies from the Mountain Battalion.
In Baltimare Harbor, we met a Hippogriffian squadron: two armed airships, and two three-masted merchant galleons that were fitted with disguised gunports and hidden accommodations for troops.
So. Airships and galleons. That explained the bit about air- and sea-sickness.
We stood on a stone wharf under the half-moon, and dawn would be in three hours. Navy ratings kept the press and the public far away. That concerned me—our campaign against the raiders had been in the newspapers, so at least Mom and Dad knew I was off in a scrap. This time, I hadn't even been able to send them a letter, so they had no idea I was about to deploy.
I flicked my tail and frowned at that.
With Ivy Mercy's death in the desert, I was now our platoon's senior medic. I stood next to our new junior medic. Private First Class Tender Jade was a pegasus stallion, three years longer in service than me, but a rookie with no combat experience, having just volunteered in from Fourth Battalion.
The batponies chittered in their own language, giving me a headache.
"What's going on, Boss?" Jade asked.
I flicked my tail. "I imagine we're going by boat."
"Is that why the Princess said no seasick ponies?"
"Your guess is—"
With a bright flash and a loud teleport, Princess Celestia stood in front of us, on the wooden pier that led to the first hippogriff merchant ship.
"Attention!" shouted Sergeant Flash.
Four platoons of Equestria's toughest stomped into attention. Dozens of leathery batpony wings shuffled for a second, then... silence. The only sound was Baltimare Harbor lapping against the piers.
Almost two hundred ponies and a dozen officers.
Equestria's finest. The cream of the two best battalions on the face of the world. Even with that, two weeks later, less than half of us came home uninjured. A fifth of us would be buried at sea. But, by Celestia, would we ever give better than we got.
As we stood there before her, Celestia flared her wings, and her voice was... sad. I had never heard her speak with such pain before.
"My little ponies," she said, looking at us. She seemed to be making eye contact, one by one, with each of us.
She looked at me for a moment, and then her gaze moved on.
I ground my teeth. This was my princess, and she needed me. My imprisonment and parole were a stain on the honor of Her battalion. I would erase that stain if it killed me.
"My little ponies," she repeated. "I am sending you into danger. This pains me, pains me more deeply than any other duty I have, but it is the Equestrian way that a few of us serve, so that the rest of Ponykind may live in their happiness, never knowing the pain and evil that stalks the world around them."
She pulled her wings in. "I fought. I fought against the disciples of Chaos, and I forged Equestria from the ashes. I have fought at the head of Equestria's legions fifteen times in the ten centuries since. Go into battle knowing that I understand the terror you will feel, knowing that my body broke and bled many times on the field of battle, and that I cried over the bodies of my friends and comrades. Go into battle knowing that I would not ask you to risk your lives if there was any other choice."
Her voice rose, no longer sad, but angry. "Monsters stalk the world. Not monsters of animal instinct and cunning, who kill because nature made them that way. No, these are monsters of the thinking races, raised in civilized nations, who have chosen, of their own free will, to become monsters. Hostis sapiens generis, the common enemy of all races. Pirates prowl the sealanes between Equestria and Hippogriffia, and their coin in trade is murder, rape, cruelty, and enslavement. Many innocents—pony, hippogriff, griffon, yak, deer, abyssinian, all races—are held in bondage."
The smell of nervousness swirled around me, but something else, too. Something burgeoning and deepening as the herd listened to our Princess.
The smell of anger.
Celestia flared her wings again, and actually shouted, "I do not permit this. Equestria does not permit this. You are the point of our spear, our first move on the board—"
(The first move is usually a pawn, I thought.)
"—We, in conjunction with our Hippogriff allies, will find these hornets' nests, and burn them out. We will deliver the bound from their bondage. In the name of Equestria, I swear this. Slavery is a special form of evil, and you will inflict a terrible punishment on those who dare test their hoof at it. You will make them into an example to be remembered for centuries."
Slavery. I shook my head. Slavery. That was beyond mere criminality, beyond even war. Something cold and sour formed in my stomach, and I wanted to make sure those beasts never tried this again.
"These beasts have shown no mercy," Celestia continued, "and shall receive none in return. Expect no quarter in battle, and feel no obligation to offer it. We hope for prisoners for interrogation, but your rules of engagement shall be simple: destroy the enemy. No quarter."
A rumble sounded in the crowd of troopers. Horseshoes scraped on the stone as we shuffled our hooves. We had never heard that order before—we didn't know Celestia had been capable of ordering 'no quarter.'
But for slavers? Pirates? Not one of us objected.
A tall hippogriff stallion, light brown, emerged from the shadows behind Celestia, standing next to her. A simple silver coronet sat on his brow.
Celestia nodded to him. "This is Crown Prince Guidestar, eldest of Queen Novo, and Commodore of this squadron. He commands. Consider the orders of allied officers as if they were orders from ponies."
The hippogriff spoke, his accent cultured and clipped. "The Household platoons will each board one of our merchant ships, and we will trawl our way through the pirates' sights, entice them to fat pickings, and then take their ships in close action. The batponies will board the airships, and will stay high, out of sight, and swoop down to assist the ocean-going ships at the moment battle is joined."
"Any questions?" asked Celestia.
Silence.
I ground my teeth. Slavers. Pirates. Suddenly, I didn't want to go back into a scrap. I had scars, medals, and the bitter taste of experience. But to destroy slavers, and free slaves? Yeah. I would risk my life for that.
I nodded grimly to myself.
Tender Jade shook under his armor, shook in terror.
So did I. I was willing to scrap—but don't you ever think for a moment that I wasn't terrified.
"Board the ships," commanded the Crown Prince. "We sail with the tide."
As we sailed from the harbor, under cover of night, Celestia stood on a promontory of stone and watched us go.
I borrowed a pair of binoculars from a hippogriff sailor, and saw that Celestia was sobbing.
My platoon was aboard the galleon Ocean Swell, and Second Platoon, Alpha Company was aboard the Following Winds with Major Blueblood. The batpony platoons cruised three miles above us on the airships Thunderhead and the Anvil Cloud.
With little to do, since the hippogriff sailors were handling the running of the ship, we soldiers spent most of each day exercising. I ran laps around the upper deck. Pegasi each flew dozens of times up to the airships and back, and we earth ponies shifted the cargo back and forth.
Lieutenant Armor levitated around multi-ton pallets of cannonballs for exercise.
I spent several hours a day in sickbay, treating any ponies with issues. Seasickness set in on the third day, after we left the lee of the Equestrian coastline and took to the open ocean. Lieutenant Armor was the first to go down. Goodness, he was green! Literally green. I vomited if I ate, but I was able to keep water down. Some of the others got so dehydrated that I had to break into my combat supplies and give them fluids.
Thunderhead and Anvil Cloud flew above us, somewhere. Now that we were in the pirates' stretches of sealanes, each airship cast bottled spells of some sort to make them hard to see. Lieutenant Armor explained to us: they weren't invisibility spells, but rather light spells, so that the airships weren't dark against the bright sky.
I, for one, sure couldn't see them.
By that point, we ponies were confined below decks, out of sight, and we kept our weapons and armor close at hoof. The semi-darkness drove me crazy, but canvas air scoops over the skylights ensured the air stayed fresh, at least.
The colonel had told us medics to draw standard armor, but I painted red crosses on the shoulders and back of mine. I always felt naked without them. Sergeant Flash glared at me, but said nothing.
On the eleventh day, just after dawn, a hippogriff officer came below from the top deck and told us: "Stand to! Suspicious schooner closing from windward. A few hours from us."
Everypony donned their armor. I strapped my saddlebags full of medical supplies over my hips.
Tender Jade trotted up to me and sat down. "I just puked," he announced.
I said, "Yeah. That's not a bad plan."
"This is your second scrap, Boss?"
I nodded, and reached down and pulled the strap on his saddlebags tighter. His feathers smelled awful, but then again, we all smelled awful after twelve days without a bath or shower. "Don't lose your kit," I warned.
"I'm scared."
That was weird, really. He was four years older than me, and had joined the Guard the year I was a freshmare in high school. Why was he looking to me for reassurance?
Because I'd seen combat and he had not. I looked at him and said, "I'm terrified."
Is this what it meant to no longer be a rookie? I knew what being in a scrap meant, so that I was even more terrified now than before my first?
We waited, stewing in our own anxiety, for hours. Our ship pretended to run from the pirate schooner, to avoid tipping them off that we wanted them to catch us. A stern chase is a long chase. Stuck below deck, without any windows, I couldn't know if Following Winds, along with the other platoon and Major Blueblood, was still in formation with us or not. I hoped so.
They closed the skylights and we lost the breeze. The air below decks turned soupy with the stench of fear and vomit, and with the skylights closed, we had only the light of oil lamps.
Everypony might have been scared, but we were all ready. Most of the troopers honed their blades on whetstones in a show of nonchalance. I organized and reorganized my medical bags.
Hostis Sapiens Generis. Terrified or not, we all wanted to get a piece of these monsters.
"I hope there are slaves on the schooner," I said.
Jade glared at me. "Boss? That's a horrible thing to think!"
"C'mon," I replied. "A rescue will make a week of seasickness worth it. Don't you want to rescue somecreature?"
He shrugged his wings.
Sweet Luna, did I ever regret voicing that wish.
"Two thousand yards!" a hippogriff called down.
The ship rocked—the crew had all the sail out, clawing into the wind, making a good show of running from the pirates. I got tired of staying on my hooves, and just plopped down to my belly. I closed my eyes, fighting my seasickness.
The gun deck was below us, and through the net-covered gaps in the floor, I saw hippogriff sailors standing to their guns.
"One thousand yards!" they called down a while later. Time was just—I had no idea. Was it a minute or an hour we waited? My heart pounded so hard that I could barely hear the others talking over the thud-thud-thud in my ears.
Time passed. Who knew how long?
"Two hundred yards!" called the 'griff. "Hunker down, they're likely to open up with their chaser gun soon."
Sandbags were piled up, pony-high, against the ship's hull, held in place by cargo nets.
We all hunkered down. If I closed my eyes, I heard the platoon's rapid breathing and smelled our frothy sweat. The motion of the ship's bucking race through the waves battered us all.
I waited. I waited terrified, impotent, and quite frankly pissed off that we were suffering through this interminable chase because of those slave-trading bastards.
"One hundred yards!"
The first cannonball tore through the side of the ship and through the sandbags. It sounded like being inside a thunderclap. The noise battered me and I buried my face against the deck, my hooves over my ears. Sunlight streamed in, and my dark-adapted eyes watered.
"Medic!" somepony yelled, their voice thin over the ringing in my ears. "Medic up!"
The hippogriff guns, on the deck below us, opened their camouflaged gunports, ran out, and salvoed, and my entire world became noise.
That first cannonball had hit one of the troopers and torn her head off. Tender Jade stared at her body and the spreading pool of blood. The dead trooper's squadmates wiped at their faces, cleaning her brains from their eyes.
"Leave her!" I shouted into Jade's ears, and then pointed at Sergent Flash, who had a massive wooden splinter projecting from his left rear leg. He flopped on the deck, panting and gasping. "Triage!"
The other troopers surged up the ramps to the weather deck.
"Hold still," I told Sergeant Flash.
He panted and nodded, biting down on his foreleg. Sweet Celestia, we were going to need Sergeant Flash. This was going to be an ugly scrap and we had to have our senior sergeant. I had to get him on his hooves—or at least his wings—right away! I bit down on the splinter and yanked it out of his leg. Flash yelped and cursed. Jade bandaged him as I spit out little bits of wood.
"Can you move it?" I asked.
Flash bucked twice.
"Missed the tendons," I said. "Give 'em hell, Sarge."
Then the three of us followed the others to the weather deck. Jade and Flash flew, while I galloped, and so to my eternal shame, I was literally the last pony on deck, like some sort of coward!
The upper deck's usual smell of clean ocean breeze was replaced by the stench of gunsmoke.
The pirate schooner was smaller and sleeker than our Ocean Swell. It threw sail and rudder, trying to avoid us and run, now that our disguise was revealed.
Our fore- and after-castles were taller, and our archers barraged their rigging, killing sail handlers and slowing their maneuver.
At the very stern of our ship, two hippogriffs hauled down the merchant flag from the mast, and then ran up the Equestrian and Hippogriffian battle flags.
We raised our hooves and talons and cheered when the colors snapped in the wind.
"Celestia's Own and no quarter!" Lieutenant Armor yelled.
"No quarter!" we screamed back.
"For Queen Novo!" Prince Guidestar yelled, standing on a yardarm.
"For Queen Novo!" We ponies screamed just as loud as the hippogriffs.
My blood pounded, my stomach lurched with every wave.
Something about the salty spray in my face, the wind snapping in the sails, and the bucking of the ship against the waves—I felt so pumped up, so alive. So ready to fight. I never felt quite that way before or since in my life.
The Equestrian colors snapped in the wind. Were there any slaves aboard that schooner? If there were, did they have a porthole or a window they could see through, to see our colors and take heart?
Sweet Celestia, I hoped so.
I looked across the water. Close, maybe thirty yards away, the pirate vessel flew all-black colors from their mast.
"The common enemy of all races," I muttered to myself. "No quarter!"
Our gundeck fired another broadside, and they returned it, several cannonballs arcing close over my head. We had at least five times as many guns, and our ship was larger and more heavily built. We would easily win an artillery duel, but the mission was to take the ship, not destroy it.
My ears went numb. I couldn't tell if I had them perked straight up or tucked down flat. The cannonfire beat me like a bass drum.
It didn't matter. A hippogriff writhed on the deck, a spell-burn across his ribs. I ran to him, ripped off his chest plate, and started working.
Tender Jade looked at me, eyes wide and face pale. His tail thrashed and he clamped his wings tight to his ribs.
An arrow slammed into another hippogriff and she fell from the rigging to the deck.
"Medic up!" screamed one of our troopers.
Tender Jade ran to the wounded sailor.
"Good kid," I whispered to myself.
Blood poured from the spell-wounded hippogriff's beak as he writhed. I put my ear to his chest, listening for the sound of blood bubbling in his lungs, but my ears were still ringing. I heard nothing.
I couldn't hear, but I put my face just in front of his beak, feeling his breath on my lips, and I put the frog of my left hoof against his neck to feel for his pulse.
His pulse seemed... strange. Did hippogriffs have different heart rhythms than ponies, or was his heart damaged? He hugged me, tight around my neck, nuzzling his bloody beak into my cheek, sobbing.
And... then he died. The spell had ruptured his lungs and heart, I think. I never did learn exactly what happened.
"Dammit!" I shrieked, and stomped the deck. His blood dripped off my face.
Our ship hauled around, chasing the faster schooner. Our pegasi and a few hippogriffs carried lines with grapples across to it.
An arrow clipped Lieutenant Armor's foreleg. I turned toward him, and he waved me away, then he cast a shield spell, covering perhaps half the top deck. Arrows and spells glanced off of it.
Tender Jade had his patient under control, the arrow extracted and a bandage over the wound. I hunkered down, peeked over a bulwark, and waited.
I glanced at the dead hippogriff, and thought about his mother.
A cannonball smashed through Lieutenant Armor's shield spell. A flash like lightning dazzled my eyes and I covered my ears. I blinked and shook my head, cleared the dazzle, and heard new cries of Medic up! The cannonball had clipped one of our pegasi, Cosmic Plume, on her foreleg. She fell from the rigging to the deck and I sprinted to her.
She bit onto her other forehoof, fighting not to scream. I grabbed her tail in my teeth and dragged her portside, toward cover, leaving a trail of blood behind her on the wooden deck.
"You're all right," I shouted into her ears. "I've got this!"
Her leg was smashed, bone and gore mixed with flesh and hair. I dug into my pack, grabbed a tourniquet, and cinched it tight, just above the knee.
"Gonna lose my leg?" she said.
I refused to look into her eyes or answer her question.
"This hurts, Doc."
What else was going on? Where was the pirate ship? Where were Following Winds and the two airships? Who else was wounded, who else was dead?
I had no idea.
My entire world was the few inches in front of my face, focused entirely on treating Cosmic. I got the tourniquet arranged just right. Her foreleg was a bloody mess, simply smashed, with no cut to close or laceration to disinfect. Amputation for sure. No way the surgeons could try to salvage it. I grabbed an ampoule of painkiller and jammed it into her thigh.
Her eyes widened and she passed out.
She'll live, I told myself, not sure if I believed it.
The grapples caught and the two ships jerked, bumped, and then smashed into each other, our starboard beam to their port beam.
At the rails, Celestia's Own met with the pirates.
What happened? How long did the scrap on the top decks of those two ships last?
I don't know. I saw only fragments, and I've never pieced together the whole. With my pounding heart and rasping breath, my sense of time was entirely skewed, destroyed. It felt like a decade. I once tried to read the Battalion's official history of the battle, but it just made me sick and I went to the bathroom and threw up and returned the book to the library. (It really annoyed Twilight that she had spent three weeks getting that book for me via interlibrary loan, and that I kept it less than two hours.)
What I do remember: the sounds of spells and swords and pikes hitting flesh. Bones snapping. The stench of burning wood, burning tar, burning sails, burning hair and meat, and spilled brains and blood.
I hunkered over Cosmic, guarding the unconscious trooper, and waited for the next cry of Medic up!
The pirates seemed to be all the races: ponies, griffons, hippogriffs, deer, even one yak.
The yak leaped from the deck of the pirate ship to ours and landed on one of our troopers, and smashed his pelvis into the decking.
The yak bounded away. I ran to our trooper and dragged him, grabbing his mane in my teeth, away from the starboard rail and toward the port bow.
His screaming tore at my ears. Was my hearing recovering, or was he just that loud? An arrow glanced off my armor.
Behind one of the masts, I looked down at his injury and ground my teeth.
He just kept screaming.
I couldn't remember his name. He was a loaner from Echo company, replacing one of our troopers who got disqualified for seasickness.
Blood pooled. He screamed louder. Could I save him? Bones all through his hips were crushed, surely the organs were mashed too. But we had the airships—he could be in Baltimare in fifteen, twenty hours. Could I get him that stable? Maybe. Maybe.
Blood poured. I had to open him up and find that artery, I had a few magical tools in my bag. I could expend one to seal the blood vessel. Hit him with a massive dose of antibiotics. Scoop out the feces if his intestines were ruptured. Get him closed up, stabilized, on fluids and antibiotics...
Across the decks, two more of ours were down, pike or sword slashes. A third went down. Cries of Medic up! cut across the decks. Jade and the hippogriff sickbay attendant were both fully involved with patients of their own.
I looked at the crushed unicorn at my hooves, and knew that the many minutes I would need to try to save him—and my chances weren't good, less than one-in-ten even if everything went perfectly—were minutes other wounded, wounded more likely to live to see their families again, weren't getting my help.
My cutie marks burned. They flared in pain as I chose. I hit him with a painkiller ampoule. A second. A third.
He looked at me, eyes wide, accusing, as he realized.
A fourth ampoule. He stopped breathing and faded away.
I stood and sprinted to a pegasus, Scarlet Wind, with a sword-slash across her ribs. Sucking chest wound. That was a life I knew I could save. A life I did save.
It was the right decision. I know it was. And so many times these years since that day on the deck of that ship, I've felt a sickly tingle in my cutie marks when I remember that unicorn's dark eyes as he realized I was abandoning his treatment and overdosing him on painkillers.
What did that make? Losing the unicorn, getting a seal on Scarlet's sucking chest wound? Ten and nine? Eleven and nine? Figure it out later, I told myself.
Back toward the center of the ship, I jumped over the body of the yak, its spine split just above the shoulders by what looked like a wingblade wound.
While I had attended the unicorn, the batponies arrived, harrying the pirates from above as my platoon skirmished with them at deck level. The airships held position a few hundred feet above us, archers picking off the remaining pirate sail-handlers in their rigging.
Batponies landed on pirates' backs, biting at their necks with fangs, slashing with wingblades.
The Following Winds came alongside the pirate ship, on its opposite beam, grapples flying. The pirate schooner was now trapped between both Hippogriffian galleons.
Major Blueblood, Prince Blueblood, is one of the largest and most obnoxious prats I've known in my life, but I'll give him this: he was the first pony over the railing and onto the pirate ship from his ship, sword swinging and shouting, "Follow me!"
I worked on another earth mare, Quartz Vow: leg wound, arterial bleeding. It wasn't a deep wound. I could fix it, skip the tourniquet, save her leg with a quick application of one of my tools.
From my bag, I fished out an arterial repair appliance. A crystal on its side glowed soft green, showing a full charge, and I held it over Quartz's wound and squeezed against the crystal. Magic flowed around my hooves and down, a soft green aura, and the glow reached her nicked artery, tendrils of magic stitching back and forth as the artery closed and the bleeding slowed.
I looked over my shoulder. The scrap was degenerating into individual knots, no formed line or obvious see-saw across the decks of the ships, just a scattering of brawls. The crystal grew hot in my hooves as it finished repairing her artery and started sealing the wound.
"I'll drag you portside," I said, "then get a unit of plasma—"
A griffon landed in front of me, swinging a sword down at Quartz Vow's exposed throat. I lunged forward, shielding her, but he caught me across the back of the helmet—
—some time later, what in Celestia's name, maybe two or four minutes, but I have no idea, really—
What happened? Goodness, did my head hurt.
I staggered to my hooves, swooning and drooling, my hips soaked with urine.
After taking two steps, I fell flat on my face.
My patient was gone. Had Jade pulled her to safety? Or had she gone back to the scrap?
She wasn't dead where she had lain, and neither was I, so somepony must have dealt with the griffon while my lights were out.
I staggered to my hooves again, I then fell on my side and vomited. Concussion, something told me. I had that little tingle in my cutie marks I always feel when I get the diagnosis right.
Something seemed wrong with the world as I stood again. At that moment, I incorrectly thought it was the smoke that billowed, cutting off vision, blurring everything.
"Abandon ship!" shouted the hippogriff captain, ringing a bell on the forecastle. "Fire! Everygriff to the Following Winds!"
Black smoke spilled from the hatches and skylights.
There was a dead body below decks! The mare killed by the first cannon shot. I frowned at the smoke and ground my teeth. No way, no chance to recover her.
Damn.
I looked to where I'd left Cosmic Plume, the mare with the smashed leg, but Jade had her, flying around the ships, over the open sea, to the Following Wind. That kid was getting a medal, I promised myself. Assuming I lived long enough to recommend him.
The loaner, the unicorn I had given the massive painkiller dose to let him slide quietly away... we weren't going to be able to recover his body, either. Flames already licked around the port bow.
I staggered to the bulwark and glanced fore and aft. Bodies were strewn about the deck of the pirate schooner, and smoke billowed up from its skylights, too. Batponies and troopers from Blueblood's ship stood over several prisoners—one prisoner, a pegasus, spurted blood from a severed wing stump that a batpony was trying to clench shut between his forehooves.
Galloping to the prisoner, I fell on my face twice. What was wrong with me? This was more than just a concussion! I shook my head, cleared it—slightly—and dug into my pack again. I got a tourniquet cinched over the pirate's stump. I caught an arterial spray in the face as I tightened it down.
Could I count a pirate as a life saved?
Yes, I decided. We needed prisoners to interrogate. Eleven saved and nine lost. Or maybe twelve? My brain was really foggy.
I wiped blood from my ears and eyes, hoping whatever disease had led him to piracy hadn't just infected me.
Major Blueblood trotted over and looked down at me, looked at the blood-soaked prisoner with the fresh tourniquet, looked at my bloody hooves and face. "Good job, Redheart. Are you quite all right?"
I had to turn my head to the left to see him clearly. "Yes, sir."
"Your helmet's dented. You're bleeding from underneath it. You're slurring."
"Am not slurring, sir. And the blood's isn't mine."
"Private," Blueblood said, "look at me."
I looked at him. Smoke was getting thick, and I pawed at my face and coughed.
"You pupils are blown," Blueblood said. "Get to the Following Winds. You're concussed."
"Redheart!" came a cry from below deck, from the pirate schooner's holds. "Redheart!"
I looked at Blueblood. He coughed as the smoke thickened.
"You're not fit to fight," he said to me.
"Celestia's Own don't quit, sir."
He sighed and closed his eyes. "Do you speak Ponish? You are concussed."
"Medic!" came a cry from below deck again, Sergeant Flash's voice. "We need Redheart! Medic up!"
"Sir, I can stand. I can fight."
"Go," he said with a shake of his head.
I galloped. But not very well. I kept bumping into things with my right flank and hip. I found myself on my face at the bottom of the stairs, one deck down, coughing in the black smoke, the deck lit by flames. Ash swirled and stung my exposed skin.
Dead bodies were everywhere, the deck slippery with blood and spilled viscera. The stench of burning wood and burning bodies swirled around me. My eyes stung, watering in the vile smoke.
Seeing the bodies by the flickering light of the flames and through the swirling ash, with the incense of burning fur and feathers and sizzling fat, I decided that this, truly, was an appropriate vestibule to the hell that must await slavers and pirates.
On cool autumn nights, when we sleep with the windows open and the clean breeze from the Everfree fills our bedroom... I can still close my eyes and smell that smoke.
Tender Jade, Sergeant Flash, and Lieutenant Armor, along with the still-standing remains of my platoon, held two wounded pirates at spearpoint. Hippogriff sailors tore the ship apart, probably looking for maps or the captain's logs.
"Where were you?" Lieutenant Armor demanded. "I said medic up!"
"Unconscious."
"Oh," he replied. He tilted his head and looked at the blood dripping off my face and the urine off my thighs. "You all right?"
I looked at the bodies and prisoners. What had happened in the minutes I was down?
"Celestia's Own don't quit," I replied.
"Redheart!" Sergeant Flash called from a few dozen feet away, where he was almost lost in the thickening smoke. "We've got slaves."
Celestia, forgive me for earlier having wished we would find somecreature to rescue.
I wiped ashes from my eyes and coughed.
Blinking away tears and smoke, I studied the situation. A large cell made of wrought iron bars sat against the starboard side. Two unicorn fillies and a hippogriff filly huddled opposite the door.
Lieutenant Armor leaned in close to me and whispered into my right ear.
He disappeared when he leaned in close.
"Oh no!" I gasped.
"Are you paying attention, Redheart?"
I waved my right hoof in front of my right eye.
"Sir, I, I just realized—my right eye is blind."
His magic gently grabbed my head and tilted it this way and that.
"You look fine," he said. "Dent on your helmet."
"Detached retina," I gasped, knowing I was correct. "Celestia!"
"Focus, soldier," Sergeant Flash said to me, his voice gentle. "These three fillies won't let a stallion into their cage. I've got a theory on that, if you follow me?"
I sucked in a deep breath and flicked my ears. I thought I had hated these slavers before, but my stomach absolutely roiled right then with renewed fury. "Yeah. Yeah, I get you."
"See if you can get them to go with you. This ship won't last long."
"Can do!" I replied. I was a trooper of Celestia's Own, wasn't I? Celestia's Own don't quit. I could do anything.
It said so right on our shoulder flashes: PERSEVERE.
It would take more than a concussion and a blind eye to stop me.
...Right?
Two hippogriff sailors came up a stairwell from the deck below, screaming: "Fire! Fire! Everygriff out, everypony go!"
Yeah, fire. Fire might interrupt Celestia's Own.
Flash pointed at Jade and the others. "Take the prisoners and wounded and get out."
I bucked the locked door open and stepped into the cage.
The fillies scooted backwards, away from me, into the opposite corner, screaming and blubbering. I took off my helmet and tossed it outside the cage.
The dent in my helmet was huge. I rubbed the back of my head, and warm wetness soaked onto the fetlock.
"Fillies, I'm Redheart. I'm a medic." I pointed to the red cross I had painted on the shoulder of my armor. "Let me help you."
The two unicorns just sobbed, curled into pitiful balls on the deck. The hippogriff took a step forward and flared her wings in challenge, protecting the others. She looked to be the oldest, maybe ten or eleven.
Flames were creeping toward us, and a piece of wood fell from the ceiling, hitting my thigh just below the armor, leaving a burn. I flicked ash from my ears.
"Let me help you," I said, sitting down on my haunches, and holding my forehooves out. "I'm a mare. I can guess why you were here."
The hippogriff nodded. Ash swirled around her. My butt was getting warm, the fire a deck below us intensifying.
"Redheart!" Lieutenant Armor said. "Smartly, now. The fire will reach the powder magazine. Thirty seconds, then I levitate them."
"No!" shouted one of the unicorn fillies. "No, no, no!"
I turned to him. "Go then! Get out, I've got this."
"Not without those three."
I glanced around. Other than dead bodies, Sergeant Flash and Lieutenant Armor were the only two still below decks with me and the three slaves. The rest were gone.
"This ship is on fire," I said to the fillies. "We have to get you to our ship."
The hippogriff filly looked at Sergeant Flash and Lieutenant Armor. Her tail tucked, covering her underside. She whimpered. "But... but stallions!"
"We're Celestia's Own," I said. "We're soldiers, not pirates. I promise, nopony will hurt you."
The hippogriff shook her head no.
"Mr. Flash here, and Mr. Armor," I said. "They're good stallions. I've known them for months."
She shook her head, tears leaving furrows in the ash on her snout.
"Please, we have to go," I said. "I trust them. Please trust me."
"No. No. No!" The filly stomped.
Ashes swirled thickly now, and I rubbed them out of my eyes. My right eye might have been blind, but it could still feel pain. Ash burned my flanks, chest, and ears. Anywhere the armor didn't cover.
"We're Celestia's Own," I said. "Celestia hoof-picked these stallions, she hoof-picked every one of us."
I turned and showed her my other shoulder, the one etched with our unit flash, with Celestia's cutie mark. "See? Celestia herself. We're her personal guard. Celestia sent us to save you. Can't you trust Celestia?"
The two unicorns looked up and nodded. The hippogriff looked at one, then at the other, and then nodded to me. "Celestia?"
"She sent us for you," I said. "Honey, please. We have to go."
She took two steps, and jumped up to hug me. The unicorn fillies joined the hug. They trembled, and I could feel their ribs. I lifted the three fillies onto my back. Half-starved, they weighed almost nothing.
Flash hovered a few feet off the deck and flapped, pegasus magic blowing a clear pathway in the smoke for us, his wounded leg hanging down and dripping blood, the bandage soaked through. The lieutenant lit his horn, making just enough light for us to find a stairway up.
Burns and smoldering ash covered all six of us. The hippogriff filly's feathery tail smoked. We all coughed and choked. At the top of the stairway, we broke out into the sunlight on the deck. Lieutenant Armor was the last one out.
We six were the last to board the Following Seas. It cut loose from the pirate schooner, which was still tied to the Ocean Swell. Both ships were now fully engulfed in flames. Following Seas made sail and ran from the burning wrecks.
The Ocean Swell sank, burning as it slid under, the ocean sizzling against it. The Equestrian and Hippogriff flags still flew proudly from the mast as it went down.
The pirate schooner blew up, flaming hunks of wood arcing high. The blast shook us and we all covered our ears.
Nineteen Hippogriff Navy and twenty-one Royal Guard bodies went down with the two ships.
The hippogriffs who weren't busy with the rigging or the wounded knelt around the body of Crown Prince Guidestar, sobbing and holding each other.
I whispered to a hippogriff, "Does your queen have another heir?"
He wiped tears from his eyes. "Her Highness, Princess Skystar. But she's just a chick, not even walking."
A hippogriff mare poured buckets of clean water over the fillies, washing away the ash and cooling their burns. I stripped my armor, then she poured a few buckets of water over me.
As the cold water sluiced over my rising blisters, washing away the ashes, sweat, blood, and urine, I stood there for a moment, my shakes starting. That was different from the scrap in the desert, where it had been hours before I got the shakes. This time, at least, I didn't vomit. Small favors.
I checked over the three freed slaves. The fillies had no broken bones, but lots of infected cuts and abrasions and the fresh burns. Plus the injuries they had received from their "duties" aboard the ship, of course.
I cleaned, salved, and bandaged their cuts and burns. After I hit the three fillies with painkillers, they passed out. Tender Jade then cleaned the back of my head and stitched the laceration where my helmet had split my scalp, and he bandaged my burns.
"Boss," Jade said, "Those are second-degree burns you've got. Let me sedate you."
"No."
"But—"
"Those three fillies trust me," I replied. "If one of them wakes up, I need to be awake for her."
"Boss, you've got to be in pain." He pointed to the bandages covering my ears and lower legs.
"I have a concussion," I told Jade. "Keep me awake. No sedation."
"That's an old mare's—"
"Do as I say."
"At least take a painkiller, if you won't let me put you under."
"Fine." I took the pill he offered, but it made damn little difference.
Over that first hour, blisters rose across every part of my body my armor hadn't covered.
I waved my right hoof in front of my face.
My right eye was still blind.
Every few minutes, I checked it, to see if my vision would suddenly—
Still blind.
After our ship got turned bow-on to the wind, the airship Thunderhead circled down and moored to us. The wounded (which included all the prisoners we took), the three freed slaves, and I were all herded or levitated aboard. I tell myself I was herded onto the Thunderhead because I was the only female medic, and the three fillies wanted me close.
What I didn't want to admit was the truth: I was being medically evacuated again, leaving my unit behind again. My concussion and blinded eye both needed medical attention, and my burns were serious. Sergeant Flash and Lieutenant Armor's burns were just as bad as mine, and they, too, were on board the Thunderhead as it rose into the sky and turned for Baltimare at top speed.
The airship crew gave the three fillies a tiny cabin below deck. I curled into a ball outside their door, guarding them, and cried into my tail, hoping nopony would notice my tears.
Tender Jade politely pretended not to notice, and went topside to treat the other wounded.
The airship's hippogriff captain came to me. She asked, "How are your young patients?"
"Bad," I said. "You can guess what their duty was on the pirate ship."
She nodded. "I can. How are you?"
I shook my head and looked away from her. "I've lost the sight in my right eye. I can't... they'll make me leave the Guard! All I've ever wanted is to be a nurse, an emergency room nurse, and I won't be able... with only half my eyesight." Tears ran down my nose again.
"You saved several lives," she said. "Especially those three fillies."
Could I count them? Talking them out of the brig before the ship burned, blew up, and sank?
Yes.
Fourteen, I guess. Fourteen and nine? Fourteen and eleven? Fifteen?
Celestia, who could keep track?
The hippogriff touched my withers and gave me a small squeeze before returning to her duties.
Eighteen hours later, just after dawn, with the Following Seas and the rest of my platoon far behind us, we landed in Baltimare. A team of female doctors, nurses, and counsellors took my patients from me, and then I was hustled into the hospital myself.
I was in for one of the worst months of my life as they treated my concussion, my burns, and my eye, but we had delivered the bound from their bondage, as Celestia had charged us to do.
Those two unicorn fillies got reunited with their surviving families. They send me a letter now and then, and cards at Hearth's Warming. Ever since the Storm King's defeat, and the re-emergence of the Seaponies as the Hippogriffs, that third filly has sent me a few letters, too. She's married now, and has chicks of her own.
That ship's hold was a vestibule of hell, with the swirling ash and the stench of rendering fat and charring bone, but I delivered those three fillies from hell and returned them to the land of the living.
When I still hear the cannonfire in the middle of the night, when I wake up in a cold sweat remembering the feel of the doctor's spell in the back of my eyeball, I sneak out of bed, re-read those fillies' letters, and tell myself it was worth it.