The ruptured piston belched in Applejack’s face as she riveted a steel band around it. She hitched the Tin Mare to the artillery. If yet another pipe, piston or valve burst, the Second Tank Brigade would have no fire support on their retreat.
She flicked the ignition. Life entered the Tin Mare’s glassy lenses as its engines roared, before a fatal pop echoed and a rusted connecting arm burst out as scrap.
“Bucket of fucks,” Applejack swore. If the fort hadn’t been shelled to pieces, she could find a replacement in the stock room. She only needed a piece of metal long enough to reconnect the leg. She didn’t need it to be perfect, only to work. Any piece of metal would do.
Perhaps, even, the steel frames in her corset.
Well, there was no one left to be modest around. She dressed down and stripped apart the fabric, riveting the corset’s four waist rods into a single rigid piece.
No time for prayers. She trusted her work. Applejack kicked the Tin Mare and its engine roared, dragging the twelve-incher to the fortress’ vista. Trailing behind it, Applejack rolled an 80-pound shell. The first of many, she hoped.
Rarity covered her bruises with her sleeve as pampered, parfum-scented wives filed into her tea room and the auto-butler sputtered. She had skipped maintenance hoping an accident would end their perfunctory gathering early. Fortunately, the day’s conversation was aimed only at the Furan occupation of Porapov.
Some vented worries. New draft papers called on all men, regardless of financials. The Senate needed bodies, not funds. Of course, bribes still worked, and half the assembly of women believed their husbands’ pockets deep enough to void their papers. They counted Rarity among their lucky cohort.
When they asked who Micah had spoken to about this draft, Rarity laughed. “It’s so hard to keep track of his associates.” When they inquired how much a doctor’s letter cost, she feigned ignorance of the details. “He earns, I spend,” she said in jest.
They pressed, but when the auto-butler stalled Rarity excused herself to fetch the oil, knowing it would do little and repairs would take all day. Elise would reschedule, but with the war, their calendars were uncertain. And all those innocent wives whose husbands never beat them would leave without knowing why Rarity had burned Micah’s bribes and appeal letters.
Fluttershy’s shaky hands clutched the suture needle. Blood from the wound made it difficult to keep a grip.
“Done!” she shouted a minute later, and the soldier was carried off. She had no sooner looked back at her table than another soldier had lain down on it. She called for more blood plasma, and poppy seed extract, dosing his transfusion as she sutured his leg.
One after the other, she and the other nurses fought against time as the soldiers fought the Furans, stabilizing the wounded just enough to move them down the trenches to the rear line. But even a thousand nurses couldn’t have made a dent in the growing wounded lines.
But she didn’t stop to think about the numbers, she didn’t let it urge her. There was only time to think about one more life. Just one more.
All the haste in the world was useless if she was too erratic. Slow was smooth, and smooth was fast. The next soldier placed on her table had no legs—direct hit by Furan artillery. Fluttershy breathed deep under her mask, picked up her needle, and started again.
Twilight had gotten disgracefully drunk at a party of scientists and engineers. She didn’t drink much because she was petite, but she wasn’t yet drunk enough for the General’s taste.
She needed his attention. Her new bomber would outclass Yukovan defenses and save countless Furan lives and bring a quick end to the war—perhaps even before her brother’s regiment was redeployed.
He was very drunk himself, celebrating the victory at Porapov. Twilight took the seat beside the General and loosened another button from her shirt.
“It was hardly decisive. Casualties were equal.”
“Eh? And you are?”
One engineer did the favor of introducing her. “Dr Twilight Sparkle,” he said.
The general eyed her chest. “Doctor?”
“Of explosives engineering,” she extended a hand in greeting. “I wanted to discuss the war. Maybe over a drink?” She leaned in, certain she had drunk enough for the General to smell the whiskey from where he sat.
“It would be a terribly long and dreary discussion, I’m afraid,” he said.
Twilight pushed her hair back. “We have the night. I’m sure we can find ways to keep it interesting.”
The general smiled. “I’m of an open mind. And any contribution to the war is welcomed.”
Twilight took the fifty-something year-old’s hand, walking groggily as she recited her pitch in her head, hoping she would remember it by morning.
Getting shot wasn’t so bad.
The idea of being out of the fight hurt Rainbow Dash the most. But the girls helped. Furan girls were something else. The nurses who changed her bandages and gave her antibiotics had soft, pale hands and ruddy cheeks. They were polite and quiet, and blushed at everything Rainbow Dash said.
Every day an officer came to her with coffee or steak or imported Astean cigars, and always with questions. But women did not even vote in Fura, so the officers never imagined Rainbow had any information they could use.
When they announced a ceasefire, Rainbow made sure to collect the names and addresses of every nurse she met. No treaty was signed, but it felt like a new era. She would find one of those pretty girls and tell them about life in Yukova.
In five years, they would marry and buy a condominium in the city with her veteran’s pension. In ten, she’ll have saved up enough to buy a house, and they’d settle somewhere quiet in Herrulrichsburg. Maybe by then a treaty will have been signed.
Rainbow Dash wanted to come back as a tourist.