//------------------------------//
// Deadlock 
// Story: The Great Extraterrestrial War, 1023-1027 
// by The Blue EM2 
//------------------------------//

As it transpired, the war wasn't over by Wishentide. Far from it.

Two years had passed, and the ponies of Equestria were still no closer to victory. Far from the offensive having forced the tripods to the negotiating table, the attack had eventually stalled after the enemy had reinforced. And it only got worse.

The trench lines, which were only ever intended to be a temporary fixture of a mobile battlefield, had not gone away at all. In the months following the offensive, both sides had begun to dig in and expand their fortifications throughout the land. The lines had rather gone from there. Not only that, but the ponies and the tripods had soon found themselves racing to complete their lines first. Networks of thousands of miles of trenches snaked from ocean to ocean like blood veins on the face of an angry giant. Each of these trenches was full of soldiers, stallions and mares thrown into battle for a war which seemed no closer to ending.

This might all have been well and good had any real forward progress been made in the campaign against the tripods, but there had not. In two years of war the lines had barely moved, with thousands dead in a long running meat grinder. Part of the problem was that nopony had fought a war remotely like this one before. In fact, they hadn't fought a war full stop in centuries.

The men had more to fear, though. Goldie was on duty late at night when suddenly she heard clanking noises approaching them. "Get ready," she whispered down the line. "Spiders closing in for night attack."

But then, just as the clanking had started, it stopped. The enemy had halted before them, the explosions from shells lighting up the terrain briefly illuminating the forms of the hulking iron monstrosities.

Another sound started up as the machines had stopped. An unnatural screeching noise approached their position as smaller machines rattled into position.

"Prepare for attack," said another soldier. "The Lice are here."

The soldiers had taken to calling the smaller machines Lice, owing to their small size. But what they did was arguably worse than anything the other machines were capable of. When dawn cleared and the swarms of smaller machines were done consuming the ground, the battlefield was picked clean of anything. Bodies, weapons, shells, bullets- everything was gone.

As the Lice did their work, the Spiders opened fire to provide them with cover. Goldie pulled her head back down as the energy shots arced overhead, forcing the line to keep heads down. She knew her husband had found records of a place called Tartarus.

The nightmare of this war was far worse than she could have imagined possible. The mud and blood and suffering would easily have driven anypony mad, but yet they had to keep fighting.

There was no need to find Tartarus under the ground. It was here, above them. Each and every one of them was trapped there by these monstrosities.

And all they could do was sit and wait it out.





Two years had also not seen much progress in decoding the alien language. Despite Argyle and Zipp's efforts, they were no closer to figuring it out. Argyle looked at the letters on one of the tablets in confusion. "There's no logic to this at all," he said. "Normally languages have recognisable letter patterns and symbol orders, but there's no logic to this at all. It is, for lack of a better word, nonsense that we cannot figure out. How in Equus are we supposed to get a message out of this?"

Zipp peered closely. "What if it's not supposed to make sense?" she suggested.

"What?"

Zipp brought up a chart display with some numbers on it. "Back when I was in school, I learned that a codebreaking technique is to try and put messages together. This is because codemakers are aware that patterns exist in words, and thus splitting them up is often used to make gibberish. Perhaps the same has been done here?"

Argyle thought to himself, and then began putting the portions together as he hummed slowly. "The sooner we crack this, the sooner we end the war." He got to work and began to put the pieces together, soon forming some other structures and forms.

It was then his eyes lit up. "There's a regular pattern. This symbol is the most common, so I think it may be the letter E." He tried swapping the letters around, and soon found a pattern. "Wait a second. This is forming words in Ponish. I'll need to put these together further and see if we can get a message." He continued working. "Feint. Feint... this is serious." He glanced to Zipp. "The tripods have been losing battles on purpose to trick us into launching larger offensives!"

He dashed out of the room and to the main planning room, where he knew the Generals were meeting. He knocked on the door and looked to a security guard. "I have to speak to them," he said. "I have information that could change the course of the war."

The guard nodded. "Sir, important speaker to see you."

The door opened, and the Generals were all sat around a table, looking at a map. "And this is where we shall make the breakthrough," said one, pointing with a stick.

"You cannot launch the offensive," Argyle said.

"What?" said the General. "What makes you think you can order me about? How much combat experience do you have?"

Argyle breathed in. "Zipp and I have just cracked the tripod code. The enemy are wanting us to launch massive attacks so they can draw the war out. If you launch this attack it will simply make the enemy stronger!"

The General scoffed. "Nonsense! We have new technology, better weapons, even upgraded Landships. This is the last push we will need to make in order to end the war. Besides, the preliminary bombardment is already underway. The Wishentide Offensive goes ahead as scheduled, and it will succeed."





The loud, thunderous sound of artillery fire continued well into the night and into the early hours of the morning. As the sun rose over Wishentide, the guns finally came to a stop, and the soldiers poked their heads up to the viewfinders to see a landscape completely plastered in explosions and craters.

"Looks like that's the signal," one said, as more gathered in the lines to await the order to advance.

"Should be easy pickings," said another. "Nothing could have survived that bombardment."

Another soldier looked back at him. "They said that about the last offensive, and the offensive before that," he said, shaking his head. "Amateurs."

Goldie moved up and took a look, noticing something wasn't quite right. "It's quiet," she said. "Far too quiet for my liking."

"Prepare to advance!" called a voice down the line. The soldiers stepped forwards to the ladders and prepared to climb.

"Why aren't the guns firing?" asked one soldier. "I thought they were meant to support us as we advanced!"

Goldie sighed. "They'd risk hitting their own troops. It's far more charitable to let the enemy do it for them."

Just then, the whistle blew, and the line charged over the top and into the desolate landscape beyond. Almost immediately did things go wrong.

The soldiers sprinted straight into a massive hail of energy fire from entrenched Spiders and other opposing units, who laid down relentless fire on the advancing soldiers. Rows of men were cut down by indiscriminate weapons usage, and forces continued to storm over the ramparts and into the hail of fire.

The Landships were trying to advance too, but were unable to break through with the opposition they were facing. As gunfire continued to roar all around, most infantry were rendered unable to advance through lines of barbed wire.

"What idiot thought that artillery would cut the barbed wire?" a soldier asked.





At command, there were similar moments of horror. "Sir?" called an aide. "Report from the front. First and second waves are pinned down and unable to gain ground. They're requesting to withdraw from the lines."

"Send in another wave!" the General replied. "If any of them attempt to run, order our own guns to cut them down. That'll teach them to disobey orders."

"The entire front is stuck!" another soldier reported. "Several units are calling for supporting artillery fire to allow them to advance. Are we to authorise fire mission?"

"Negative, the shells are needed for the breakthrough after they've taken the first trench."

Figures were being pushed forward and about the battlefield based on reports. What the Generals didn't realise was that they were issuing nonsensical orders to units that no longer existed on the field. It was what they weren't prepared to accept that led to the worst casualties in many parts of the sectors in question.

The offensive was failing. And soldiers were being pointlessly fed into the meatgrinder.





Two months passed. Two months of pointless attacks and needless deaths passed by before the Generals finally called off the attack. Allied lines had barely moved forward in that time. For all the fighting, only one mile of ground had been gained for the loss of 100,000 soldiers. Which, as a newspaper calculated, works out to about 1.6 soldiers dead for each inch. This same newspaper asked the critical question as to whether these sorts of casualties were worth the amount of ground won, and if there was a better way to fight the war.

There was further bad news on that front. Recon had been conducted on enemy lines, and it had been discovered that the tripods had enormous supply dumps filled with machines and resources that were ready to be deployed into combat against the ponies. Contrary to what the official propaganda was saying, the allies were nowhere near close to beating the aliens.

For the first time ever, the populace as a whole was beginning to question the tactics of the war. "They lied to us about being able to fly!" said one pony in an interview. "And now they lied to us about being close to winning the war. Something needs to change!"

He wasn't the only one with that opinion. One foggy morning as the war entered its third year, Queen Haven convened her daughters and their friends. "It rather goes without saying something has to change," she said.

"Based on current casualty figures, I'd be inclined to agree," Hitch noted.

"The Generals seem to think that just throwing more bodies at the problem will solve it," Queen Haven noted, shaking her head in disapproval. "We clearly need a way of being able to beat the tripods at their own game and developing more effective strategies for countering them. Any ideas?"

There were a few moments of silence as they discussed amongst themselves. Numerous suggestions bounced back and forth as they tried to figure out what would work in the circumstances.

After a few more minutes, it seemed they had come to a plan. Pipp was the one to speak. "I've had an idea," she said. "Something I know from social media is that if somepony else has a great idea, you should adopt it yourself and make it work even better. So I suggest we do the same."

"I'm not quite sure what you're getting at, Pipp," the Queen replied, looking more than a bit confused.

"In a sense, we use the enemy's tactics against them, and it may require us to do something risky. However, I'd argue that it's worth it," Zipp noted. "If we can get our hooves on their weapons, we can turn them against them and perhaps win the war."

"And how exactly are we going to do that?" Sunny asked. "We can't figure out how to take dad's weapon apart, and mom's off at the front fighting. So where do we get the weapons from?"

"Simple!" Pipp said, as if it was the most obvious thing in the universe. "Capture a Heron!"