//------------------------------// // In Battery, In Dreams // Story: The Princess's Bit // by Mitch H //------------------------------// Fort Bing had a firing range. And copious supplies of black powder, shot, and targets. Not to mention no locals who would object to the endless thunder of target practice. Lieutenant Lulamoon was in Elysium. Her four falcons, arrayed in battery, fired a proper volley, hardly rippling at all. Each barrel slapped back on their respective carriage. The squeal of their trunions as they rubbed, barely, within the proper orbit of their well-aligned respective cap-squares were lost in the violence of the detonation of the powder-charges. The sledges, braced against the range-bench by lightly driven spikes and skid-chains, and weighed down by the carriage-ponies squatting upon their trails and re-rigged harnesses, barely recoiled. Prolonge was for cowards, something mean and unyielding said, deep in the artillery-mare's blackened soul. Lieutenant Lulamoon didn't let her falcon crews prolonge-fire in practice. It was bad form. I only want them prolonging if I order it. Accuracy is better than safety, and I don't want my ponies trained to flee the things they kill. So long as the falcons fired, Lieutenant Lulamoon had no give in her, and would not see any give in her gunnery. Her horn glowed, and the long-sight cantrip brought the target barrels into focus. What was left of them. "Three out of four hits!" said Lieutenant Lulamoon. "Unsatisfactory! Crews, swab and re-lay!" She turned to her range ponies.  "You lot, get out there, lay another spread of target barrels! Do you see those white ones? I want them spread through the formation, with the brown ones. Go!" The assistants from Charlie Troop scrambled, collecting the hooped targets so helpfully provided by the garrison, along with the roundshot and powder Lieutenant Lulamoon was working through with profligate abandon. The Crystal Guard isn't paying for any of this, unless one of my fool crews lets one of my precious falcons burst. That thought occurring to Lieutenant Lulamoon, she walked the falcon line, and eyed her crews as they worked through the manual of arms. For once, she didn't need to yell at any of her troopers, or even her ensigns.  Not even Short Fuse.  She'd asked for the little red colt. No, stallion. And there he was, sweating alongside the number three falcon's crew, stripped down like a common falconeer, and dry-sponging away. Lulamoon'd thought the little stallion would do, and he was. Wings or not. "Falcons ready!" shouted Ramrod. "Hold in place, ware the range!" Lulamoon shouted back. The Charlie troopers were scrambling out of the range. They needed to be better trained; in Lulamoon's opinion, Fuse's fellow Sunburst had his work cut out for him. "Battery! You have five targets! I want to see at least four destroyed targets! You also have multiple non targets! If I see any of those destroyed, you are in my doghouse! This is Perroenica, there are very, very many ways to be in the doghouse here! Aim for the brown, not the white!"  As Lulamoon was lecturing her falconeers, the last Charlie trooper made it into the trenches, and Lulamoon nodded. "Range is safe! The falcons are yours, ensign!" "The falcons are mine! Gunners ready!" "Gunners ready!" The gunners and the second gun ensign took out their looking glasses and round-rules, eyeing their targets and spinning the slides on their rules, estimating the distance of the targets floating in their respective flooded ditches. "Load falcons, solid shot!" The loaders and the rammers did their dance, and in less than the fifteen seconds demanded by the manual, they were ready. "Lay falcons!" The four gunners slapped their glasses and round-rules into their half-saddles and sprang forward to adjust each falcon's aim according to their rough calculations. Their target barrels, brown and white, bobbed in the distance.  "Clear falcons!" "Fire!" And there was another roll of thunder, and Lieutenant Lulamoon thrilled to the sweet unified sound of a battery in harmony, no ripple whatsoever. Four brown barrels shattered downrange, the last remaining target and the white innocents untouched by her falconeers' fire. "Swab falcons!" her gun-ensign bawled. "Ensign!" Lieutenant Lulamoon shouted. "Rotate crews one position! Once again, target the white barrels this time!" They'd do another full cycle through the crews, then they'd take the falcons out of battery by the numbers, and it would be the turn of the Charlie troopers and their falconets, stored in a row of carriages, along with their mounting pivots.  It wasn't as good as having them work the swivel guns from the ship's own swivels, having them practice out here on the range, but there wasn't any chance that the major and the master sergeant would let Lulamoon moor the Bit on the range.  Not while they were repairing the engines and the feeder hoppers. Lieutenant Lulamoon observed her falconeers, and revelled in the freedom of the manual of arms, rigidly, carefully, whole-heartedly embraced. Meanwhile, the Lieutenant was purging all of Trixie's embarrassment and mortification over her failure in the city. There would be time enough for Trixie to find some place afterwards, to be Trixie. Into a bucket, perhaps. The weakling. "How did this happen, Basket?" Ping demanded of his best shieldmaiden. "We were supposed to be keeping her dreams locked down tighter than the ship's armory in the waking world! This is the pony with the keys to all of our most destructive devices and possession of the most dangerous toys on the Princess's Bit. What broke containment?" "I don't know, your lordship! There wasn't even a nightmare last night! The posted bats didn't report a shadow-blasted thing, not a twitch, not a shudder." Fruits Basket looked confused and ashamed. "You said that we were out of the bight of night-poison, after we got into port! That the high mountain ranges to the north would block all of the cursed things we'd been fighting against." "Well, just because I say something is safer, doesn't mean it's harmless, shieldmaiden. And you should think for yourselves. I'm not here to do all your work for you, now, am I?" "No, your lordship. And the maidens on patrol should have… I don't know what even happened. Just that tonight's pickets can't get inside, and say there's something nasty in there. And everypony agrees that Lieutenant Trixie was - I don't know. Different. Strange." "Yes, yes. Classic possession marker. Who was on last night's Lulamoon picket post? We need to check them out, make sure they weren't suborned first. Who was it? Are they on call?" "They're off tonight. Sleeping naturally. Uh, Nightfang and Starfruit." "Those two. In the number three dream-berths?" "Yes, sir." With a thought, both Ping and his subordinate were standing in the dream of a dream, the protected spaces laid out for batponies not working on the 'night shift'. The dreams of those so placed in the night-world were hidden from the powers and predators, warded safely by magics renewed by Ping and his shieldmaidens on a weekly basis. The two shieldmaidens, sleeping their nights off away, looked unaffected by any adverse curses or mind-magics, but Ping looked closer, looked for some sign of subornation.  "Well," he sighed, giving up the attempt. "I don't see any problems. Do you? These are not the minds of corrupted maidens." "I already looked before I came for you, Lord Pumpernickel." Ping rolled the eyes of his night-self at the unwanted title. "Look again, Fruits Basket. I'm not infallible, and you should always double-check your work." She followed his orders, zealously, crawling into the dream-bunks with the sleeping mares, examining them like she was looking for nits, or fleas. To be honest, Ping rather wished the besotted mare would kick more at his petty tyrannies.  It was a tartarus of a thing, being worshipped.  "Nothing I can find, sir!"  Oh, grapenuts. Ping sometimes missed being the silly little company clerk. Missed leaving this sort of horseapples to someone more… not him. You're the one who didn't want the matrons, with their craziness and their baggage. Mare up, stallion. "Wake them up, Fruits Basket. We need the numbers. And Lieutenant Lulamoon needs exorcising, before she does something unforgivable. Or, I suppose, whatever night-hag has gotten past our pickets, and is now wearing her like a hat, does in her stead." The two rudely awakened shieldmaidens were much less worshipful than Fruits Basket. It was almost endearing. Until Ping thought on how their failures had made a mess of his nice neat night-scape. The night-hag had made a mess of poor Lieutenant Lulamoon. When they'd blasted their way inside of the corrupted membrane of the lieutenant's infected mind, they had found anxieties and embarrassments strewn across her psyche like a roll of toilet-paper torn up by a misbehaving pet, tossed about, shreds of this and that hanging, dangling, clotted up and scattered in the unicorn's befouled mindscape.  Ping, looking into the tangled space over the carefully held shield-constructs deployed by the maidens, hooving his night-lance.The night-hag - or rather, the creature which was acting like a night-hag - was crouched under the mystical equivalent of Lieutenant Lulamoon's living room couch, fiery eyes glittering like an affronted cat in the tight gap it had squeezed itself, hiding from the bat-ponies filing into the cluttered dream-scape. "That," Fruits Basket said, frostily, "is the great and sly monster that defeated your wards and slipped behind your backs, Trooper Starfruit?" "I don't know, ensign-" "Shieldmaidens!" snapped Ping. "We are in the night! No day-ranks here! And you are equal in the eyes of the Mother of Dreams!" "Yes, Lord Spear-Stallion," muttered Starfruit. "Yes, Lord Pum-" began Fruits Basket. "Spear-Stallion!" snapped Ping. The other shieldmaidens knew he was something special, but he didn't need that damnable title escaping into the wild. ""Lord Spear-Stallion, sir." "Very good. Nightfang, move your section around the flank. It's not big, but it's clearly clever enough to have slipped past you last night. Ambersweet, take yours to the other side. Cut off its retreat into the deeper night!" They moved in concert, shifting to block the night-hag, or nocnice, or whatever the hay it was, from fleeing. Just as the shieldmaidens were crossing the open space, everything went wrong, in a crack of rolling thunder like - Falconfire! Dark shadows darted across the cleared spaces like angry bees, or screeching rockets, or -  One of the shieldmaidens was struck, and her dream-self was torn open, her spirit-self shattered by the impact. Her scream almost drowned out the sound of the- What was happening? Ping moved forward to cover the stricken shieldmaiden, and his own shield caught strike after strike, wavering and quivering, nearly broken like the wailing mare behind him, sobbing in agony.  If he hadn't paid attention to the demonstrations of Magus Heartstrings, and absorbed the techniques of Major Shield and the Gonne Research Group- The other shieldmaidens placed their own shields firmly, and braced. The stream of streaking dark projectiles came to an end, and with it, the fire and the noise. But not the smoke. Ping knew that smoke. The damn nocnice, or night-hag or - it had fired cannon at them! Dream-cannon! How had it known to do that? Where had it learned to do that? The night-hag suddenly darted out of its hiding place, dragging a falcon-carriage behind it like a cart-horse, racing for the exit. "Basket, take her!" Ping yelled, leaving the wounded shieldmaiden and charged to cut off the night-hag. The other shieldmaidens followed him, converging on the strange dream-monster. Ping got in front of the night-hag, and it recoiled, at bay. The dream-carriage swung about, as the nightmare collapsed into a spray of tentacles and hostility, swarming around its strange dream-construct. Tentacles bristled with rammers and sponge-rods and linstocks, moving around the dream-falcon. That's enough of that, Ping thought, and sent his lance telescoping through the cloud of shadow and tentacles, before the night-hag had re-loaded its night-falcon and turned it upon him. It screamed in agony, echoing the wailing, mangled shieldmaiden being protected by Fruits Basket on the other side of Lieutenant Lulamoon's psyche. Ping's lance licked out again, and took the nightmare's legs out, dropping it away from the dream-construct of the 'falcon'. He reversed his lance, and clapped the wailing night-hag on the ganglia, rattling its sensorium.  "Quickly! Bind it!" Ping yelled, his voice going higher in his excitement. The shieldmaidens converged in a group tackle, turning their shields into tanglers, catching up the quivering mass of tentacles and pain in a web of duty and stubbornness.  The formidable night-hag struggled, spasmed, and screamed in a hopefully mindless fashion. Ping squinted at it, worried. No, not a full tulpa yet, thank the Mother, but it had been feeding furiously on the Lieutenant's insecurities and self-hatreds. It was a bloated little tick, their captured night-hag. Look at the fight it had put up! "What are we going to do with it, Lord Spear-Stallion? Regulations state that we should be putting it through the chipper, and adding it to our feedbags," one of the shieldmaidens said.  Night, she sounds like The Pearl of Mother Dusk. Chapter and verse. Ping looked down at the glaring little monstrosity. It had almost a sort of awareness in its angry little coal-chip eyes. "I think perhaps it's too mature for that. We might do ourselves damage, trying to eat that, no matter how much we mulch it. And, I think, it already has too much of our lieutenant in its bloated stomach, given the performance it just put on. Perhaps this is a time for Rectification ceremonies." "Really?" asked Shieldmaiden Nightfang. "You want to bleed a fully-fed night-hag into the dreams of a pony who was just possessed by the damned thing?" "Yes, shieldmaiden," Ping said, carefully. "There's too much of the Lieutenant already in it. She'll be lessened if we don't return her soul-stuff to her. Look at this thing. It's already eaten much of her self-worth and pride, and a good portion of her professionalism and skill. And you two let it in here." He stared accusingly at the offenders, who had enough shame to wilt under his glare. "Right. Go look up the ceremony. You'll be doing most of the heavy work, Shieldmaidens Nightfang, Starfruit." He noticed that Fruits Basket was looking a bit smug, from where she was tending to the shieldmaiden who had been mauled by the night-hag. "You too, Senior Shieldmaiden Basket. You were supposed to be supervising these two." It isn't their fault. They're soldiers, not fully fledged dream-warriors. Trained but not experienced. You have them doing matron work without the seasoning, the experience. Your fault, Two Pings. Fruits Basket looked baffled, not sure whether to smile at her sudden promotion, or shrink under Ping's accusing tone. "Either way, we have let Lieutenant Lulamoon down, and we must make amends. "Snap to it, maidens!"