The Princess and the Kaiser

by UnknownError


The Miracle of the North

It began with a rumbling in the distance.

Flurry watched the bullets jump in the belt affixed to the machine gun beside her. The hatch was closed; Field Marshal Bronzetail had retreated into the interior while the line waited. Underneath her crystal helmet, Flurry’s ears twitched as hushed commands echoed from inside the Grendel.

She twisted her head to both sides. The heavier tanks were in the middle of the line, flanked by the smaller, sleeker designs. The two rows in front of Bronzetail’s tank spat exhaust fumes into her muzzle. Flurry scrunched her nose, but tried to ignore the smell. The sun rose slowly behind her, stretching her shadow across the metal. The commander of the tank directly in front of Bronzetail was halfway out of the hatch, holding a claw to his headset and nodding along to something. He noticed the shadow of her horn drift across the gray paint of his turret and turned around.

Flurry stared at him. He turned back around and closed the hatch.

Above her, blasts and rapid gunfire echoed in the sky. The dueling air forces were still too high up to properly see. They looked like birds weaving together in a dance, exploding in puffs of fiery feathers. The battle was gradually lowering towards the earth; both sides wanted air support. The Reichsarmee would certainly need it once they reached the Duskwood. The rumbling lowered in pitch; Flurry almost missed under the idling of a thousand engines.

The Changeling Heer was closing in.

They’ll be facing the sunrise. She wasn’t sure how much of an effect that would have, but it was something at least. The Changeling panzers had destroyed Equestria, outrunning the frantic trenchworks and scouring across the open plains of the central heartland before Luna could redeploy her divisions. It was hard to run and shoot with hooves; every changeling had a horn. Aiming a gun with magic needed practice to control the recoil, but ponies weren’t meant for mobile warfare.

According to Celestia, ponies weren’t meant for warfare at all. Equestria was founded on the promise of harmony between the three tribes. The Pillars of Old Equestria traveled the world vanquishing old, wicked magics. They didn’t fight in wars, not like this. As far as anypony knew, none of the Princesses of Ponies did; only Luna came the closest, and she certainly never rode a tank into battle.

We have gone far enough.

Flurry raised a hoof to look at the purple crystal. The origin of the Crystal Empire was a mystery. If Celestia and Luna knew, they never told anypony. It might’ve begun with one mare standing against the frost and chill on a desolate plain. Flurry closed her eyes. When she opened them, small black dots had crested the horizon. She lowered the hoof with a sharp clang.

Bronzetail opened the hatch and looked west with a claw held to his headset. “Initial advance, set range.” The first row began to roll forward, treads churning the dry grass. The barrel raised slightly on the turret; Flurry heard a dull thump from somewhere inside the tank.

“I prefer to command from the hatch,” Bronzetail commented. He lifted the catch on the heavy machine gun next to the turret with a claw and adjusted the belt of ammunition. Flurry peeled the belt away with her horn and disconnected the box. She set it down next to the hatch.

“What are you doing?” Bronzetail squawked and laid his claws on the turret.

“You should store this below,” Flurry advised. She kept looking to the west. “The bullets will cook off from the heat.”

Bronzetail shoved the box down into the turret. An angry squawk reverberated up from near his legs, and the Field Marshal snarled something into the interior. “Is my tank going to melt?” he asked with a sarcastic snap once he was finished.

“Depends on their armor.” Flurry would have shrugged a wing, but her feathers were stiff and laced with crystals. “I’ll let you know if I start to see permanent damage.”

Bronzetail paused, whatever retort he intended didn’t leave his beak. “Hold your spells until we engage. Our armor’s better.”

Flurry jerked her head towards the horizon. Bronzetail raised his binoculars from around his neck and scanned over the dots. “Looks by the book,” he mumbled. “Advanced heavy armor with motorized support behind.”

The alicorn twisted her head; the metal gorget around her neck blocked the movement, so she fully turned her body to see over the two other lines of armor behind her. Trucks and half-tracks spread out from Canterhorn and Canterlot. Small figures still leapt into the air, flying messages and equipment between them.

“Follow my orders precisely.” Flurry didn’t feel the tap on her hind greaves, but she heard the dull thwack of a talon hitting crystal. She turned back and leaned her forehooves on the turret again. Bronzetail needed a moment to recover from her heavy, hooded stare down at him.

“What are your orders?” Flurry asked in Herzlander.

“If you’re doing spells, fire to the left.” Bronzetail pointed a claw to the left side of the barrel. “We have an easier time traversing right. The gunner’s on the right side.”

Flurry nodded her helmet.

One of the dueling planes above spiraled down in a fireball, crashing before the first line. The tanks adjusted to go around with a squeal of locked treads. It was impossible to tell from the wreckage whose plane it was.

“What else?” Flurry asked. Her voice was naturally soft and light; she had to nearly shout to be heard over the thousands of engines.

“I might as well get a look before I button-up all battle,” Bronzetail groused, ignoring her question and peering through his binoculars again. “I’d prefer to see my death coming. Do you plan on flying, or just staying atop my tank and making it a massive target?”

“I can’t fly in the armor.”

Bronzetail cast an eye at one of the indentations from her leap onto the square turret. “I suppose I should have expected that answer,” he said dourly. “Can you see their armor? Do alicorns have sharper vision?”

“As good as a pegasus,” Flurry answered, “so no, I can’t see them.”

“They overran your trenchworks, right? Moved too quick around the defensive lines after a breakthrough?” Bronzetail said out of the side of his beak. “The lighter flanks will be racing to get around while we take a beating.”

“That’s how I heard the war went,” Flurry agreed. She couldn’t see the lightly-armored tanks from the middle of the army group, but she imagined they were keeping pace. Nearly all of the tank commanders were leaning out of the hatch during the advance.

“The Changelings prefer to button-up and command from the interior,” Bronzetail explained at her sweeping eyes. “I suppose they’re used to cramped conditions; we like our wing room.” He fluttered his wings against the side of the hatch.

The dots grew into proper shapes; Flurry picked out the gun turrets and long barrels, but they were still too far away to make out. The shapes were along the entire plain, encompassing the whole western horizon. Are we just going to crash into each other? Flurry asked herself. Was this what the war was like? Sitting in a trench and watching them grow closer?

“If they spot you, you’ll be the immediate target,” Bronzetail coughed. “Only start using spells at my command.” The tanks continued forward. “Have you been in an armored engagement before?”

“No.”

“Not during the war?” Bronzetail asked with some surprise.

“My father didn’t bring me to the front line,” Flurry nickered. “I was eight.”

Bronzetail lowered his binoculars to look up at her from the side of his eye. “Sometimes I forget you are Grover’s age.”

Flurry let out a breath, not quite in a laugh. “It’s the height. I have long legs.”

Elias lifted the binoculars back up.

The front line reached the proper Celestial Plain, crunching through the overgrown farmland. Flurry could still spot the divots from old rows of seeds beside the bombed-out foundations of farmhouses. The tanks ran over an asphalt road that twisted around to Canterlot, but continued west.

Flurry’s horn pulsed with the detection spell as the line advanced. Bronzetail felt the magic wash over his feathers and glared at her. “I said to hold your spells!”

“It’s the illusion spell,” Flurry replied. “I don’t want any surprises before the attack.”

“You think an unarmed changeling just crept across the Celestial Plain at night?” Bronzetail scoffed.

“Disguised as a field mouse with a grenade on her back?” Flurry let the question linger. “I’d rather not take any chances.”

Bronzetail let the binoculars hang from his neck and peered over the edge of the turret. The grass wasn’t tall enough to hide a changeling, but he still shifted his wing to unclip his holster preemptively. “Bring up the Aquileian mages with the initial knights,” he said into his headset. “We’re driving tanks. Shoot any wildlife that approaches with prejudice.”

They were close enough to see the opposing lines. Flurry immediately realized that the Changeling armor was arrayed in the same fashion as the Reichsarmee: Heavy tanks in the middle with supporting scout units along the flanks. Bronzetail squawked adjustments into his headset and the lines began to break into spearheads.

The Changelings did steal their way of war, Flurry huffed.

Another plane crashed down between the armies. The sky above them echoed with gunfire and explosions. Two more smoke plumes rose up from the far right of the advance. The trampled grass was still flecked with bits of frost and wet from morning dew; it swayed in the wind before the treads crushed it down.

“We’ll break into spearheads and counter their maneuvers,” Bronzetail said aloud. He held a claw over his microphone. “Shoot to the left. We’ll be in range within five minutes.” Bronzetail’s turret rotated slightly, matched by the body of the tank a moment later.

Flurry squinted at the tanks in the distance. The turrets were already lowered and tracking the Reich tanks. “We’re just supposed to slam into each other?”

“It’s an open plain,” Bronzetail squawked. “If they were smart, they’d have set ambushes along the Duskwood and-”

The guns fired in the distance. Flurry watched the flashes from the black-plated behemoths and tensed with a sparking horn. She thought of Duskcrest throwing a bottle at her muzzle in the scrapyard outside Evergreen and reflexively cast a shield in front of her tank. Bronzetail lurched against the side of the hatch as the driver stopped dead.

He gasped and twisted to glare up at her. “I said to hold your damn spells!”

Flurry opened her mouth to apologize.

The Grendel directly in front of them exploded. The shield sparked as it was peppered with metal shrapnel. That was the second row. Flaming oil oozed off the spherical shield, glittering with small bolts of blue energy. Flurry cut the spell as another tank in the front row took a hit. More shells kicked up the ground ahead of the advancing armor, but several more landed amongst the first row.

Bronzetail whipped his head west violently and raised the binoculars. Flurry’s ears twitched at the squawking coming from his headset. She looked up and down the line. The heavy tanks had just begun to break into spearheads to counter-advance against the Changelings. Half a dozen tanks were aflame from her position.

I thought you said we weren’t in range? Flurry wanted to ask, but instead stayed silent as Bronzetail disappeared back into the turret. A few Reich tanks fired in the front row; Flurry watched the shells fall short of the Changeling armor. Bronzetail reappeared.

“That’s not the tanks they had in the east!” he spat. “That’s not the tanks your scouts took photographs of!” He raised his binoculars with his beak clenched tight. “Where the hell did they come from?”

Flurry squinted as the Changelings broke to form their own spearheads. A piece of armor fell away from one of the advancing panzers and bent awkwardly in the wind. It was still too far away to tell what it was, but it was a clear sunny morning. The alicorn snatched the binoculars from Bronzetail’s claws and raised them to her own eyes. She had to tilt her head back to peer through the eye slits of her helmet.

Aluminum and cardboard. Flurry watched the panzers shred their fake armor. The silhouettes began to change into a sleeker design. The heavy panzers began to charge across the open plain in their spearheads, moving faster than the Reichsarmee.

Flurry passed the binoculars back. “New armor. They disguised the shape like their old models.” The shell slammed into the dirt several hooves ahead of Bronzetail’s tank.

“Damn scouts didn’t notice.”

“You didn’t expect changelings to trick-”

Another tank exploded ahead of them. Bronzetail disappeared into the open hatch. His tank lurched forward. It drove around the wreckage of the first one; Flurry stared at the burnt claw frozen in a reaching grasp that extended from the flaming hatch. More incoming fire rained onto the Reich advance.

Flurry held her tongue the entire five minutes. They had to be at the most extreme range, because most of the incoming shells missed their targets, kicking up grass or exploding into fireballs ahead of the incoming counter-attack. The Reichsarmee advance still lost dozens according to Flurry's quick counts. The knights, meant to escort the tanks and engage the on-hooves units, trailed behind, staying clear of the lobbed shells.

Booms echoed up and down the entire line. Another tank to the right took a glancing round, mangling the armored skirt and destroying the tread. The tank screeched to a halt and lurched to the side. Another bounced off the heavy sloped plate with a green spark.

Flurry was in the middle of the armored arrow. The tanks near the head of the pack aligned their turrets toward the distant targets. They did not stop to fire; the entire chassis rocked back slightly as the barrels belched smoke and fire, but the momentum carried them forward. Flurry’s ears flinched against the padding of her helmet.

It’ll be worse once it’s Elias’ tank. The blasts were intense, but Flurry was focused on the result. One of the Changeling panzers burst into a vicious fireball, but several plumes of sparks kicked-up on the front plating of its neighbors.

Flurry felt the turret under her change direction. It twisted suddenly to the right and the barrel aligned with a Changeling tank in the distance. Flurry braced herself.

It fired.

Her armor, as heavy and sluggish as it was, helped her keep her forelegs on the turret. The noise was almost deafening and her teeth rattled. Flurry watched the shell, designed to pierce tanks, spark off the side of a distant panzer.

The Changeling tank fired and the shell punched through the turret of a Grendel to her right. Bronzetail reappeared in the hatch. His arms were already sweaty. “They’re going to try and pincer Canterhorn, like we did. Thundertail’s terrain is rougher. Ignatius is holding.”

“What do you want to do?” Flurry yelled.

“We have to draw fire!” Bronzetail shouted up at her. “We’ll close distance!”

“Their armor is better and they’re faster!”

“We have more,” Bronzetail answered and raised a claw to his headset. “Divisions eight through twelve, close now.” He dropped back into the tank to hear the reply.

No.

Flurry snarled and ignited her horn. A golden shield shimmered into existence ahead of her armored spearhead. The Reich tanks tumbled to a stop, including Bronzetail’s. Flurry stretched the shield out into a long rectangle that barely extended above her. She closed her eyes to concentrate.

She heard Bronzetail scrabble back out of the hatch over the sound of falling shells. “I said not to use-”

“Keep moving,” Flurry growled. The shield began to warp and extend along the frontline. Several shells impacted with bursts of blue fire, either exploding of ricocheting off the surface back towards the Changeling line.

“We can’t move with the damn shield!”

“It will move with me.” Flurry opened her eyes and bared her teeth at Elias. “You have a better idea that doesn’t include killing your own griffons?”

The shield continued to stretch along the plain, a simple, wide, flat rectangle. It drew fire immediately and the base of her horn thrummed as the spell absorbed the kinetic energy of hundreds of shells. Flurry ground her teeth and bent the top and bottom, forming a convex, outward curve. The shells began to spark and ricochet rather than detonate against it.

Damn it, if I could fly, I could cover the entire line. I should’ve done this at the start.

Several of the armored spearheads stalled at the sight of the long, convex rectangle extending out along the battle line. The Changeling armor continued to pour fire against it, but no longer advanced to meet the Reich. Flurry exhaled and stamped a hoof into the turret, making another dent. Bronzetail’s tank glowed blue as the spell anchored itself to the war machine.

“It’s tied to your tank. Move,” Flurry panted.

Bronzetail eyed the glowing shield. “We can’t fire through it, can we?”

“You wanted to close distance,” Flurry exhaled. She twisted to see how many tanks she managed to cover. Blasts still echoed to either side of her, but she had extended the shield to cover the advance of several hundred heavy tanks.

Bronzetail raised a claw to his headset. “Yes, damn it, of course it’s the Princess!” He gave her an uncertain look, then turned back to the shells sparking off the front of the golden shield. A Changeling plane spun down to rake the sheltered tanks with gunfire, pursued by a Reich fighter that blasted off its left wing. The Changeling fighter spun out into a fireball over her head.

“She refused to lower the shield,” Bronzetail said after a pause. “We’re advancing under cover.” He bent into the hatch. “Fritz! Move, Maar-damn it!”

Bronzetail’s tank rumbled forward. True to Flurry’s assertion, the entire shield warbled ahead of it. Several of the tanks ahead began to timidly push forward. Most of the commanders sat in the open hatches, twisting to try and spot her.

“Did you just lie to Grover?” Flurry asked over a wing. The shield was far enough ahead that Flurry could hold a conversation at a reasonable level. Her horn popped and sparked. A golden bead of liquid flame ran down the spirals.

“No, I’m speaking to the Command Staff,” Bronzetail deadpanned. “You have no idea how much logistics it takes to run a battle, do you?”

“I have other ponies do that.” The incoming fire towards the shield tapered off into a half dozen shells every few seconds. The Changeling tanks began to move forward again to meet the advance head-on, but several began to split off and shift to the sides.

Bronzetail watched through his binoculars. “They’re going to redirect to the exposed flanks. You aren't covering half the plain.”

“Pick a target. I’ll drop the shield.”

“Boreas preserve us,” Bronzetail sighed. “You want to go back to volley fire?”

“You’re in command,” Flurry snapped back. “Tell me what to do.”

Elias regarded the panzers attempting to realign themselves to encircle the shield. Flurry was still too far away to see individual changelings in the hatches, if there were any. “We’re seven hundred meters away,” Bronzetail spoke into his headset. “Target the sides and fire on my command.” He eyed Flurry and raised his right claw. “Drop it on my signal.”

“There’s no bendy light,” Flurry commented idly.

Bronzetail squinted an eye up at her. “What?”

“Never mind.” Flurry counted a minute in her head. The turret adjusted to the right again. There was a brief pause in the incoming gunfire from the Hegemony panzers. Elias snapped his claw down hard at the same time he barked, “Fire!”

Flurry cut the shield for two seconds while the guns responded. Bronzetail’s tank rocked back with a plume of smoke. The alicorn reformed the spell with a toss of her head; several tanks fired late and the shells ricocheted off the shield with flares of blue fire, tumbling back towards the advancing line. One bounced off the tank to her right. The griffon in the turret screeched angrily.

“It has to be exactly on my command!” Bronzetail repeated into his headset. “Adjust. Pick targets that aren’t disabled!” He raised his claw again as the turrets shifted. Flurry heard a thump from the interior as another round was loaded.

The effect was devastating. Rather than target front-facing, heavy-armored panzers, the volley hit the tanks breaking their positions to reinforce the sides. Dozens burst into infernos while twice their number took hits and lurched to a stop. The Celestial Plain was wide, flat, and totally exposed for both sides.

They wanted this fight, too, Flurry realized. They disguised their best tanks as old pieces of junk and brought them out against the best army in the world. The plain ahead and behind them was littered with the burning husks of armor and fallen planes. Bronzetail raised his claw again, and Flurry watched it, tilting her head to the side to peer through the eye slit.

“Fire!”

The shield fell again and the tanks rocked. This time, a shell whistled just over Flurry’s head and carved a furrow into the earth behind her before exploding. The shield snapped back into place after Bronzetail’s tank rocked back.

“They’ve spotted you,” Elias said dryly. Several explosions rippled along the shield, right in front of their place in the attack. “Six hundred meters.” He began to raise his claw, but held it to his headset instead. “They’ve stopped trying to redeploy.” He raised his claw again.

The gunfire impacting the shield slowed.

“Wait!” Flurry hissed out of the corner of her mouth. “They’re watching. Tell them to fire on my command.”

“You need a headset.”

Flurry shifted the armored helmet to glare at him. The alicorn felt a trail of fire ooze down her horn again and pool at the base. “Watch your ears.”

“Just so,” Bronzetail said neutrally. “Fire on the Princess’ command,” he said into the headset, then pulled the hatch closed. Flurry licked her lips at the few shells impacting the shield, then sent a pulse of magic along the entire length. The shield appeared to wobble.

A mass of fire slammed into the shield directly in front of Bronzetail’s spearhead. Several of the shells splintered off back towards the Changelings, but most exploded into blue sparks. Flurry’s horn throbbed, but she grinned and took a breath.

“Fire.” Her voice echoed down the line as she dropped her shield while the Changeling armor reloaded. It wasn’t as precise as before, but the piercing shells finally struck home in the remaining panzers struggling to turn back to face the advance.

The Changeling armor remaining ahead of them seemed to have enough because it charged forward towards the shield with blazing barrels. Several lines of armor broke into wedges to go around the glowing rectangle, weathering direct fire from the Reich lines as they tore into each other. The sound echoed across the plain, joining the cacophony from the sky.

Planes continued to try and dive-bomb the advance for either side, but were shot down by other fighters spinning in pirouettes. One Changeling fighter plowed headlong into the tank to Flurry’s left, spraying shards of metal in a fireball. Flurry twisted her head away and felt a chuck of something smash against her armored flank before tumbling off. She turned to look at the scuffed crystal while Bronzetail climbed back out of the hatch. The crystal appeared smudged, but otherwise fine.

“Thundertail’s having trouble,” Elias said aloud. Flurry struggled to hear him over the blasts. “It’s low valleys. There’s a trap or something.” He licked his beak at the advancing armor. “They’re going to try to kill you.”

“You said we needed to draw fire!” Flurry shouted over the explosions.

“What happens if they hit the shield!?” Bronzetail shouted up at her.

Flurry scanned the advancing tanks. The Changeling armor was charging straight at the shield, probably to try and stall the advance. The tanks along the sides of the shield began to shift to engage the attempted flanking maneuvers. The shield was tied to Bronzetail's tank; the forward momentum would stall if a wave of armor slammed against the magic.

Flurry estimated the range; there were at least eighty tanks pushing towards the spearhead across the plain. As Bronzetail’s divisions advanced, more peeled off to engage the sides. They’re trying to keep us occupied while they close in around us. Blasts and turret fire echoed from the left and right of the plain.

“They’ll stall the shield!” Flurry answered. The tanks weren’t going fast enough to just plow through the advance. “I have to drop it!”

“Wait!” Bronzetail exclaimed.

He vanished into the hatch to squawk commands into his radio. Flurry saw the barrel move again to fire upon an advancing panzer. The Changeling tank was covered in sloped plating along the front, painted gunmetal black with a flared barrel and circular turret. The tanks ahead of her in the spearhead aimed as well, constantly shifting as the treads churned the old furrows in the ground.

Bronzetail’s head poked back up. “Drop it when I say!”

Smoke exploded across her shield as the first line of tanks discharged smoke shells into the ‘back’ of her golden barrier. A cloud enveloped the spearhead, blocking them from sight. The tanks immediately halted under the smokescreen.

“Now!”

Flurry dropped the shield. A shell whistled just to the right of her head, and an explosion reverberated from the tanks behind her. Bronzetail’s tank fired blind through the smoke, joined by the rest of the spearhead.

“That bought us a second, but we’re in killing range,” he panted. Flurry spared him a glance. The griffon’s tan shirt was already stained with sweat, despite the cold morning air. The tank moved at an angle, using the smoke to reposition within the temporary cover.

Flurry didn’t respond verbally. Her horn glowed gold as she squinted through the smoke. A gap in the cloud appeared after a howling shell tore through, aimed far too high. The alicorn saw the tank that fired it and released her laser.

Bronzetail dropped back into the tank with a pained squawk as the spell flew true and punched clean through the sloped armor. The Changeling tank exploded into a fireball with blue flames. The gray paint along the front of Bronzetail’s turret charred black from the heat in a wide line. Flurry scuffed it with an armored hoof.

Bronzetail reappeared with a sunburn on his light brown beak. “W-What?”

“I’ll aim to the left,” Flurry responded.

He pulled the hatch closed.

The tank exited the smoke cloud with Flurry atop it. Her horn burned like a torch. The Changeling panzers hadn’t adjusted yet, moving slowly and waiting for their targets to emerge from the smoke cover.

Flurry fired first. The laser burned in a wide, continuous burst that sprayed the panzers ahead. Disappointingly for her, it did not melt them entirely, but rather disabled the guns and doubtlessly cooked the changelings inside the glowing, red-hot armor. Her side regrouped beyond the dissipating smoke cloud.

I need to charge my shots. Flurry swept her horn to the left first, then the right after Bronzetail took too long to fire a shot. The tank fired anyway and exploded an already half-melted panzer. Another shell whistled just over her right wing, close enough to ruffle her feathers.

A shell exploded just in front of Bronzetail’s tank, and the shrapnel scraped across the armored treads. Bronzetail's turret moved too slowly to the right. Out of the corner of her eye, Flurry saw multiple barrels align in the distance. The alicorn cut the laser, felt the tank below her in her magic, and teleported with a golden flare. For one brief moment, both the alicorn and the war machine snapped out of existence. Two more shells plowed into the empty ground.

The tank snapped back into existence a hundred meters to the left behind a burning wreck of another Grendel. Flurry snorted and licked her upper lip. No blood. She summoned a bubble shield around the tank when it stumbled to a halt.

Flurry waved her left wing at another charging Reich tank; the commander returned the wave with an absent claw as the gun fired below him. After several seconds of waiting, Elias Bronzetail pushed the hatch open with vomit staining the front of his shirt. He scraped a claw on the microphone of his headset and grimaced queasily.

“Sorry,” Flurry apologized, “but I think we were about to die.”

“You can…” the griffon trailed off and swallowed something down. “You can teleport a fucking tank?”

A tank shell slammed into the side of the bubble shield while they sat unmoving. Flurry twisted her helmet to watch the explosion blossom across the bubble. “Yes. I could teleport my plane.”

Bronzetail stared dully at another exploding shell. He raised a claw to his headset. “Fourth division swing southeast. Reinforce eighth.” The spearhead left them behind as it pushed forward.

Flurry spied another Hegemony attack attempting to counter a line of Reich tanks to the southwest. Half-tracks and trucks lingered behind the armor farther across the plain, waiting to move in on the disabled tank divisions. Same as the knights.

“Second, merge with sixth and hammer the counterattack,” Bronzetail said blankly into his headset. Another shell impacted the shield around the stalled tank.

“Are we stuck?” Flurry asked.

“The driver shit himself.” Bronzetail turned to stare at the burning wreck just ahead of them. An errant shot slammed into the husk and split the turret apart. Flurry’s ears tried to pin at the sound of squealing metal.

She looked up. The sky was still full of dogfighting planes. The fighting had retreated higher up into the clouds as the air forces vied for supremacy. Flurry watched the shadows spin for a moment.

“How far can you teleport us?” Bronzetail asked suddenly. He had wiped vomit off his binoculars and was staring ahead.

“Why?” Flurry asked.

“Can you get behind that division?” Bronzetail pointed a claw southwest. Flurry squinted and saw the black panzers.

“Yes,” Flurry answered immediately. “I can drop the shield and teleport.”

“Do it, the armor’s weak in the rear.”

Flurry hesitated. “It’s going to be really rough,” she said in a low warning.

“It’s going to be a rough day,” Bronzetail answered and pulled the hatch shut.

Flurry dropped the shield after a hail of shells and teleported before another volley could impact.

The tank went with her, leaving the smoking imprint of treads in the frozen ground.