Chapter 4
She was screwed, Summer Lightfall was so screwed, and as she lied back in her bunk, the realisation of what was about to happen continued to set in. Drill Sergeant Gunmetal had done his best to prepare them for action against the Harimau, from training them in marksmanship, drilling in small unit tactics, rigorous physical training; they had been taught everything they needed to know in the first two weeks, now it was just down to drilling it into them.
The acceleration of their training hadn't helped. This was supposed to be a twelve week course, and it had been cut down to six. To quote Drill Sergeant Gunmetal they were: 'As ready as they were ever going to be'.
That made her feel much better about herself.
'Psst! Lightfall!' a voice called out to her in a harsh whisper.
Summer did not reply, in fact, she barely noticed it.
'Lightfall? You awake?' the whisper called again.
Summer jumped slightly, and turned her head to look at the bunk next to her. Pender was lying wide awake, looking directly at her. It was dark, and the earth pony's purple coat made her difficult to see, If not for the light of the moon reflecting off her eyes, Summer wouldn't have noticed her at all.
'What is it Pender?' Summer called back in a hoarse whisper.
'I can't sleep... I mean... war? Who'd have thought?' Pender said.
These feelings were shared by almost everyone in the company. No one, not even the instructors had ever seen any action. There hadn't been any in sixty years! Summer wasn't stupid, she could train to her heart's desire, but until you got out there, and saw the real thing? You had no idea how it was going to go.
'I know...' Summer said with a frown.
'Now we're stuck in this mess...' Pender said with disheartened words in her voice.
'Oi? Pender? Shut the fuck up will ya? Trying to sleep here!' The voice of Joker harked over from the bunk on the opposite side of Summer's.
'I don't know how you could possibly sleep Joker...' Pender snapped back before the pegasus stallion interrupted her.
'I don't either... considering the fact that you won't SHUT UP!' Joker snapped back.
'Oi, knock it off will you? Before you wake up the Drill Sergeant!' one of the other recruits called out.
'I'm already awake decoys! Now shut your mouths before I come over there and shut them for you!' Drill Sergeant Gunmetal's voice said from seemingly nowhere.
Everyone in the room fell silent, and no one said anything for the rest of the night.
Joker smiled and finally went to sleep; his impersonation of the Drill Sergeant's voice had worked perfectly.
Summer, still however got no sleep.
…
The accelerated training was nothing short of brutal, Summer watched as more recruits flowed in each day where they would be placed in one of the eight training companies. Before the war, D-Coy was the only one, now... it was merely the beginning, the vanguard for all others.
Talk of war was downplayed. Even the external media had stopped referring to it as war. The word ‘war’ in and of itself was a word that made people nervous. Some of Equestria’s older citizens had been children during the time of the Great Patriotic War, and memories from that time came flooding back. The camp commandant even issued a standing order for the recruits not to use the word ‘war’.
‘What the hell are we supposed to call it then?!’ Pender cried out as she read the notice from the commandant on a bulletin board that someone had set up in the Mess Area.
‘Drill Sergeant Gunmetal and the other instructors are calling it “The Emergency”, as if that’s any better’, Joker said with a frown.
Summer nodded her head in agreement. She’d grown close to Joker and Pender during her time at Camp Trixie. Honestly? They were the only two ponies she had bothered to learn the names of. There were a hundred ponies in their company, and Summer had the unfortunate curse of being bad with both names and faces. She’d heard some of the officers talking, casualties were supposedly pretty substantial out in the field, their company would be broken up and they’d be assigned as needed to fill vacancies in the regiment’s first battalion. In any case, it was highly possible that Summer could be assigned to a different unit than Joker or Pender.
‘Honestly? I don’t even know if I could point Salaya out on a map’, Joker said with a frown. ‘I’d never even heard of it before the Emergency started’.
Pender nodded her head in agreement. ‘No kidding, and how would we have? What business do we even have over there? Do we have any ties to the area?’ Pender asked.
‘Not that I know of’, Summer said, shaking her head.
‘Exactly! So why are we even going over there in the first place? What is it to us?’ Pender asked again.
‘It’s only because the Præsidium’s foreign ministry said what the Harimau Liberation front is doing is a good thing’, Joker said with an annoyed huff. ‘Now, I like the communists as much as the next person does, which is to say, not at all, but come on, we pick some pretty dumb things to get into arguments over’.
Summer frowned. As much as she hated to admit it, Joker had a point. No one had really gotten over the Great Patriotic War; the Præsidium lost, and was out for retribution, the Equestrian Republic was sorry that they didn’t finish the job. More likely than not, the two nations would never get along.
‘You know, I heard a story about the Præsidium’, Joker said as the trio began to walk away from the posted notice and out of the mess area.
‘Oh? And what would that be?’ Pender asked, raising an eyebrow.
‘Apparently, only one in seven families in the Præsidium own a car’, Joker said simply.
‘No kidding?’ Summer asked, considering the population of the Præsidium, that was a pretty low number.
‘Uh huh, and there’s this story I heard, that it takes them ten years to be able to get a car!’ Joker said with a nod. ‘So there’s this guy, who goes down to the secretary in charge of distributing cars to people, and he fills out the paper work and puts down the money. The secretary looks over the paper work and the money and says: “Okay you’re good, come back in ten years and we’ll have your car ready for you”, and the guy looks at him and asks: “Morning or afternoon?” The secretary looks at the guy strangely, “Well, its ten years from now, so what difference does it make?!” The guy looks at the secretary and offers him a shrug and says: “Well, the plumber is coming in the morning”’.
Summer and Pender looked at each other, a grin forming on each of their faces; the two of them struggled to keep from bursting out into laughter. They could hold it no more, and broke out laughing as hard as they ever had before in their entire lives.
‘I didn’t... I didn’t... oh jeez... I didn’t know that Joker could actually be funny!’ Pender said as she struggled to catch her breath.
Joker merely rolled his eyes at his friends and shook his head. ‘Well come on Pender! My parents called me Joker for a reason; it wasn’t for the irony here!’
The trio continued to walk, struggling to contain themselves, lest Drill Sergeant Gunmetal chew them out, he was supposed to make an announcement today, and they were all nervous to what exactly it would be.
...
‘Alright, so I’ve got some good news for all of you! You are no longer decoys! You are trained soldiers of the Republican Army! There is no more that I can teach you, you have practiced everything you have learned plenty, as far as I am concerned, you all are ready to head out into the real world and kick commie arse!’ Drill Sergeant Gunmetal said as he paced back and forth as he usually did. ‘You will be shipping out to Saleya in forty eight hours, so until then, you are all granted leave... you will be back here in this spot in EXACTLY forty eight hours. Do not be late! If you do not show up... I will come out there, and I will find you myself, you don’t want that. Trust me; now go on... get out of here!’
Summer needed no encouragement, now was time to relax a little, in forty eight hours, she would never have the opportunity to relax again.