So, that was that; I wasn’t even allowed a damned nap before being thrown straight into danger once more. Still, as any good soldier learns after sufficient time on campaign, I eked out as much rest as I could while the other kirins busied themselves with whatever final preparations were necessary. I’m not sure if I actually slept or not, and if I did then those brief snippets were mercifully devoid of any nightmares; those, should I survive the coming inferno, would come later. However, there was one burning question that only came to mind as I could no longer lie on the sofa and rest, a thought bubbling up through my subconscious like gas from a swamp.
“Dorylus said that somepony betrayed us,” I said to Uncle.
“Most likely a random informant,” said Uncle, almost dismissively. I noticed that he seemed to do very little real ordering of underlings about, and his kirins appeared to have quietly anticipated his intentions and simply went about doing them. “Some ponies receive preferential treatment if they tell on their neighbours. A pony probably saw you leave this morning and informed the Blackhorns.”
Grim business indeed, but at least that meant that I could rule out anypony I might have known and trusted. Square Basher had come to mind, and Dorylus had said ‘under duress’, though that could also have meant that said random informant might have got cold hooves when he found himself in a dank cell speaking with the uniformed Blackhorns, and thus required a little ‘encouragement’. Besides, there was no possible way that the concept of betrayal could ever have crossed her mind, not even for a fraction of a second under the worst torture Dorylus’ twisted mind could conjure, and the same went for all of the other ponies in the hangar with her. This, however, left my over-active paranoia with one other alternative explanation: that Uncle had arranged the leak in order to accelerate his plans. I could not entirely put it past him to have done something so callous, as under his kindly exterior he was a kirin of a singular drive to free his city, perhaps by any means necessary. Even then, putting my frame of mind into that of a sociopath, the calculation simply did not add up; the pony with all of the necessary regal connections and who had promised to bring about the independence for his city he desired, me, could very well have been shot.
‘You don’t exactly blend in’, Dorylus had said. I suppose we relied on the locals seeing me painted with dust and with plums painted on my flanks in the streets, thinking ‘that dashing stallion looks remarkably similar to that handsome Prince Blueblood, what an astonishing coincidence!’, and then carrying on with their day a little too much.
I left it at that; there would be time for speculation on the flight home, if I ever made it that far. The preparations were quick, as though Uncle and the kirins had carefully planned this in advance, and in less than fifteen minutes we were ready. That the enemy didn’t think to raid Spring Rain’s home, being the obvious place that I would flee to, was nothing short of a miracle. There is an old adage that if an opponent’s potential course of action seems too obvious then ponies, and indeed Changelings, will immediately rule it out. It was either that mental blind spot or that the riots had spread to the point that the enemy could not spare the drones to raid just one little house. With that on my mind, however, we finally left for battle.
While I was grateful to Uncle for coming up with what seemed like an organised plan at seemingly such short notice and without my prompting and input, I would have felt a lot happier if he had disclosed this plan to me much earlier. However, as we slipped through streets crawling with roving gangs of angry citizens armed with sticks, bottles, rocks, and daggers, and encountered more organised groups of Changelings chasing after them, his explanation of the plan did not inspire much hope within me.
“The kirins will attack the front gates, drawing the enemy to us,” he said, when we paused in another stinking alleyway and I demanded to know what we were doing. “What few Changelings remain in the docks who aren’t putting down this uprising, I mean. You, your friend, and Spring Rain will use the confusion and chaos to sneak inside, meet with your fellow ponies, blow up the airships, and escape.”
“That doesn’t seem very detailed,” I said.
Uncle smiled in response. “We don’t have the luxury of in-depth planning here. Very often we just have to make it up as we go along. If we don’t know what we’re doing, then the enemy certainly won’t!”
“And the pirates?” I asked; I’d gone through a lot of trouble to get their help, and in some way I wanted to make sure the sacrifice of those three kirins was worth it.
“Let’s hope they can see the smoke from out at sea.”
While I might have some sort of knack in improvising my way out of messes, the lack of such a detailed plan, which I had become very much used to when serving with General Market Garden, whose plans would include an array of precise timings that would inevitably go out of the window when the enemy would quite selfishly and rudely do something not accounted for in said plans, only made me feel even more anxious. I had only been inside the hangar once before, and while I had an idea of where the fuel and gas stores were, if one asked me to draw a diagram of the environment we were about to blow to kingdom it would only have been slightly more accurate than if I’d been asked to use my own imagination instead. My special talent would only go so far, and it worked best when it had something concrete to work with. Still, we had little else to go on, and I had to concede to the old kirin here that it was unlikely that we were going to get such an opportunity again; we had to strike now, and hope the inherently chaotic nature of partisan warfare would work to our advantage here.
Our small group was only one of several making our way through the streets. This part of the plan, as I understood it, had been carefully organised in advance before events had forced our collective hoof. To better avoid detection, as a veritable army of armed kirins moving in a single column through the streets would attract the occupiers' attention even with the riots taking place all over the city, the resistance had split up into multiple small groups of varying size, and each took their own route from whatever safehouse they had called home to the docks. One or two kirins of each group, and Cannon Fodder and Spring Rain in ours, were selected to carry saddlebags laden with muskets, bayonets, homemade incendiaries that consisted of a bottle filled with a suspiciously straw-coloured liquid (I drank one, found it to be both foul-tasting and alcoholic, and then drank a few more to steady the nerves until Spring Rain told me to stop and to seek help) and a rag for igniting, and other assorted tools of mayhem and destruction. If one such group had been caught by the Blackhorns, the Changeling soldiers, or the collaborationist police, then they would not be able to give away the location of the other groups and the loss to our little uprising would be kept to an appropriate minimum. Of course, their ultimate fate would not bear thinking about. That, however, brought up one unsettling question in my mind.
“What happens after we destroy the ships?” I asked.
“You go back to Equestria,” said Uncle. There was a subtle glint in his eye. “I thought that was the entire point of this venture, sir. Either you hijack a ship that we haven’t blown up or you walk all the way to Coltcutta through the jungle.”
“The point,” I emphasised, “is to stop the invasion.”
“Of course,” he said, with a knowing tone that I found a little concerning.
“I meant with you and your kirins, and the city, too.”
“Ah.” The old kirin’s expression grew sombre, and he bowed his head slightly. “You know full well how the Changelings enforce their Queen’s order. Chrysalis is here, she will be outraged, and any of her officers who survive our attack and her wrath will compete with one another to earn her approval after this disaster. That means reprisals, sir. It will be bloody.”
Again, it seemed counter-intuitive to me that the Changelings would be quite so willing to wipe out parts of their own supply of food in the middle of a famine, but my stint with Dorylus and conversations with Odonata indicated that they, and especially Chrysalis, were apparently incapable of thinking in the long term. I don’t know how old their Queen was, and frankly I was not terribly interested in keeping track and sending her birthday cards, but I’d hazard a guess that her lifespan was roughly the same as that of our alicorn Princesses, give or take a millenia or two. I would have thought in that time she might have at least entertained the notion that the problems facing her Hives might have been self-inflicted to a degree, but I would also imagine that there might be a tendency for such long-lived creatures to become a little set in their ways, so to speak. Violence or the threat of it, might have worked well for them with the divided and isolated pony tribes of the Badlands, but in this large and densely-populated city, their old ways were becoming more of a hindrance (though that Ommatidium fellow would argue that the constant struggle was a bonus).
[Immortal creatures have a tendency to become resistant to change, especially after the first or second century of life has passed along with our first set of mortal friends. We each find our way to cope with the weight of the years, some with greater success than others. Chrysalis’ seems to have been to devote herself to the pursuit of power, which, as Blueblood had intimated here, had clouded her judgement over the effects of her rule over the Changeling Hives.]
I suppose I had always known that Chrysalis would respond to the failure of Dorylus’ plan with another tantrum, and the thought of her taking her frustrations and disappointment out on him had kept me going through this dark and bleak period, but in truth the thought of causing yet more misery to the citizens of this already-suffering city as a result of this did make me feel rather guilty about it. Contrary to popular belief, I am capable of feeling guilt, but only for those who truly deserve it. Uncle seemed to sense this was troubling me, and though I’d done my best to keep my sense of aristocratic detachment and regal bearing, the rather troubling events of the past few hours must have made a crack in that masque through which he had glimpsed my true self.
“We will do our best,” he said. “The fires of resistance will only be inflamed by the injustice of the oppressors. It will be up to you to make their sacrifice worthwhile, and end this war.”
I nodded gravely, feeling rather sick at the mere thought of that. No pressure, then, thought I, but there was mercifully little time for me to sit there and contemplate the grim task ahead of us and its equally appalling repercussions. The words that I tell myself so that I can grasp a few precious hours of tortured sleep each night - that it was indeed all worth it when we finally won this horrid war, that I had no choice in the matter, and that ultimately it was the enemy’s choice to behave in this bestial and depraved manner befitting the worst excesses of our black propaganda - are of little real comfort.
The streets were emptier as we neared the docks. From what I could work out, the bulk of the unrest was in the city’s commercial centres and had shown very little sign of dying down anytime soon. The pent-up anger and frustration directed at the occupiers, which had thus far been kept in check by false promises of liberation, had finally exploded with their blatant display of injustice. I could not help but shake the thought that this precipitous uprising, serving as it did as a most fortunate diversion for our own little insurgency, was being stoked somewhat by Uncle’s kirins. It was certainly not beyond the realm of possibility that this abrupt wave of violence had been planned for, and while the incident that sparked it could not have been predicted to any degree of accuracy, it seemed that what had followed was a little too convenient to be entirely spontaneous. Then again, perhaps I am being much too cynical, and when push came to shove, ordinary ponies, kirins, and whatever sapient creatures out there could put aside their differences and band together in a common and just cause.
A few run-ins with Changelings put a definitive end to any such contemplation on my part. The streets were wider here, with the industrial buildings and warehouses spread out a little more. Cover, therefore, was a bit of a premium. Swarms of drones, their lack of uniform identifying them as soldiers of the war-swarm and not the glorified police-drones of the Blackhorns, poured through the streets, forcing us to hide in the derelict warehouses and officers until each mob passed and we could continue. Most of these structures were unoccupied by equines, but were still full of desks, equipment, boxes of goods, and so forth, as though they were rapidly abandoned in the Changeling invasion and never reclaimed. The entire industry of commerce that had fueled this city and made quite a few Equestrian merchants obscenely rich had simply halted with the occupation; I even found rotted food left out on desks where presumably workers were sent home during lunch.
I would sit, close to a cracked, grimy window and peeking out as much as I dared to, to see the drones march obliviously past us. Each formation was approximately platoon-strength by my guess, and each drone was armed for battle rather than putting down a riot. One could be forgiven, after watching another group pass, for believing, or hoping, rather, that the entire hangar area had been emptied of Changelings, save perhaps for an irate Queen Chrysalis and a deeply apologetic Dorylus; however, I was under no such illusion. Dorylus might have had poor judgement and an unrealistic impression of his own greatness, but he was not a complete imbecile, and if he had more than a single neuron firing in what passed for a brain among the Purestrains then he would have at least suspected that we might strike at the docks now.
Leapfrogging through the abandoned offices and warehouses took time, especially when we found that some of these buildings were not so abandoned after all and found small groups of terrified and panicked civilians sheltering there. Most were much too traumatised to do more except huddle and whimper, though some, having determined which way the wind was blowing, volunteered their services to our gallant show of defiance. Others, however, blamed us for their present misery; by daring to defy the occupiers, or ‘liberators’ as some of the more deluded individuals had put it to us, we had brought their wrath upon their city. It was a view not entirely without merit, thought I, but this was hardly the time or the place for a civilised discussion on whether the ends justifies the means when it came to armed revolt against foreign occupation, so Uncle wisely moved us on whenever we encountered such groups.
As we proceeded towards our goal, the vast hangar building looming over the surrounding area like a tumour on the flesh of the city, I noticed that Spring Rain was being uncharacteristically silent throughout. Being a mare of strong opinions and zero apparent need to keep them to herself, her sudden sense of tact seemed jarring and, if anything, rather unsettling. Granted, every one of the kirins and the odd pony we’d collected along the way seemed to be under the same sort of tension that soldiers must suffer before battle.
“You don’t have to do this,” I said to her, when we’d found another quiet spot to catch our breath.
“Aiyah, what are you on about now?” she snapped, in her usual fashion. She, like some of the other kirins here, were laden with saddlebags, though when I asked her before what she had inside she merely said that it was a ‘surprise’ and not to bother her about it until we reached the hangar.
“You have already done enough for me, and I’m very grateful, but there’s really no need to risk your life like this.”
Spring Rain glared at me, nirik-fire appearing to dance in her dark eyes. “I told you. I’m not doing this for you, Prince, and I don’t need you to tell me what to do with my life, lah.”
I almost said that it was my job as a Prince to tell other ponies what to do, but I thought better of it. “I know, you want me to send you something nice and expensive once this all blows over.”
Her glare softened a little at the mention of a reward. “I was joking, lah,” she said, a little quieter now. “But I wouldn’t mind. Make me a lady of something, with a title and everything. I already said, I do this for my family.”
If she wasn’t careful, I might unload one of the more unfashionable bits of Equestria that I have the misfortune to own on her, and see how she likes being the Countess of Our Town and dealing with their inane, rural little problems. [The province currently known as Our Town was owned by Blueblood’s family for centuries. It had been very profitable for its ice, which was shipped south to the rest of Equestria, but the invention of the domestic freezer put an end to that and it was forgotten and the ponies left. Starlight Glimmer reports that she had personally asked Prince Blueblood if she could build an ‘autonomous self-funding commune’ on this neglected land, and that he responded by complimenting her on her flanks and ordering another bottle of wine from the bar, which she took to mean ‘yes’.]
“Wouldn’t you be putting them at risk by doing this?” I asked, recalling the photograph of the smiling kirin and the beaming foal she had showed me; if she was to help us in this venture, and for me to put my life in her hooves, I had to know that she would not pause or hesitate when it came to the crucial moment.
“They were always ‘at risk’,” she said, her cold gaze not leaving mine. “When the Changelings first took them I knew I may not see them again in this life. Now the ponies and kirins have had enough of the Changelings and have risen up, and whatever they choose to do with who they have taken from us has already been decided. I told you, lah. I help you because you hurt the Changelings, and because you will win and when you do you will make them all pay for what they did to us.”
Well, that was me told then, thought I; at least any concerns I had that she might have a sudden attack of good sense and self-preservation had been well and truly crushed, which made it one less thing for me to worry about then while being shot and stabbed. At any rate, we were nearing the hangar, and as a result the need for idle chatter was diminished somewhat. The remainder of our journey was conducted in near-silence, save for a few necessary orders barked here and there. Each time we ventured out from the relative safety afforded by the abandoned and not-so-abandoned buildings there we saw the vast, dark structure of the hangar, looming ever higher with each furtive excursion into the streets. It would do well to finally be rid of it.
Before long, however, we came to a security checkpoint in the wall that surrounded the hangar, much like the one that I had passed through the day before, occupied by a gaggle of Changelings who probably thought themselves lucky for having been assigned this duty and thus escaped the worst of the fighting. Some paced up and down boredly in front and behind the barricade, while others simply sat and stared off into space. We waited for a few moments, while I drove myself to higher states of restlessness wanting to get this over and done with. When I saw the barricade lift and another unit of drones march through, knocking one of the slower checkpoint guards out of the way, I understood that we were in fact waiting for the moments between them.
“Ah, Blueblood!” Spring Rain called out suddenly. She waved me over from the other side of this miserable little warehouse we were hiding in, and I, grateful for a small distraction from my growing anxiety, dutifully obeyed like a well-trained dog. “I have something for you.”
“It’s a little late for presents, isn’t it?” I said.
“Aiyah, why would I give you a present? You’re a rich prince, lah! You can just buy whatever you want!”
Well, that wasn’t quite true, thought I, but I didn’t feel like arguing about how most of my wealth was tied up in land, properties, and titles. She popped open a saddlebag and dug her hooves into it, pulling out a few boxes of cartridges, knives, and a few lifestyle and cookery magazines and tossing them on the floor, before pulling out a bundle wrapped in pale beige cloth. This she placed on the ground with a little more reverence than the other things, then, after scooping everything else back into the saddlebag without much care, opened it up to reveal it contained an all-too-familiar black tunic with red piping and its accompanying peaked cap.
“Oh, my uniform,” I said, rather perplexed as to why she had elected to bring this now.
“It was dirty,” she said, unfolding the neatly folded wool tunic and holding it up for me. “I cleaned it for you.”
“Thank you,” I said, “but why?”
“Aiyah, you were not going to clean it yourself, were you?”
“I mean why did you bring it?”
Uncle had crept up on me so silently that I almost leapt out of my hide when he suddenly spoke. “The kirins and ponies need a symbol,” he said. “One that will also inspire hope in us, but also fear in the enemy. You are that symbol, sir.”
Which, I was considering pointing out, would also make me a rather obvious target for any Changelings out there. However, if it would also inspire my newfound comrades, along with Square Basher and her fellow enslaved ponies, to better protect me in the coming storm of steel and fire, then putting on this rather heavy wool outfit and the accompanying stupid hat in this brutal heat and humidity was something that I would be perfectly happy to put up with. The sight of me in uniform might even further enrage Dorylus, should he have escaped from the riot before and made his way back here (though given Chrysalis’ infamous temper, if I was in his position I’d have faked my own death and escaped to take my chances amongst the kuda bunian instead).
Discarding what was left of my disguise, I donned my old uniform. Though the Changelings had repaired and cleaned it after that stint on Hill 70, it had suffered a little in the subsequent escape attempts and after the final one that led to me being cocooned they were less motivated to provide a laundry service again. Spring Rain had brushed out the dust, repaired the holes and nicks in the fabric, and even shined the brass buttons and medals until they shone brilliantly in the bright sunlight, so I’d stand out even more, apparently. Still, it was my uniform, and it still fit me as well as any bespoke tailored garment should, like easing into a beloved and well-worn old Saddle Row suit, or a pair of pyjamas for an analogy that might be better understood by the common pony. [Records from various Saddle Row tailors indicate that Prince Blueblood commissioned a number of commissar uniforms through his career, apparently having lost or discarded the off-the-rack one that Princess Luna had provided.]
While I was busy getting dressed, the kirins and the few ponies we had collected along the way prepared themselves in whatever manner they saw fit. Though they were all civilians, and some had only picked up a weapon, besides their ceremonial kris daggers, with intent for the first time that day, they still instinctively went through the same sort of rituals that our trained, professional soldiers would undertake before battle. One of the kirins instructed the others on how to load a musket for firing. Some prayed to whatever heathen deities are worshipped around here, though a few others, in particular the ponies, would seek the blessings of Celestia to bring them through the coming ordeal. A few cracked the same sort of awkward jokes, or I assumed that they were; the language remained something of a barrier, but resulting laughter made the meaning quite clear. Others were quiet, and either stared into space or kept themselves busy by checking their weapons.
I suppose I ought to say something, and indeed that was what a commissar was supposed to be for. That the few ponies and kirins in this abandoned building with me only constituted a small part of our uprising mean that not every creature would hear it, but that at least meant that if I made some sort of gaffe then it would be contained to these dozen or so. Fewer still, if any of them were unfamiliar with Ponish, but as I yet I still hadn’t met anypony without at least a basic understanding.
“I know that none of you wanted this war to come to your city,” I started, and to my surprise they actually stopped what they were doing and listened. “I did not want that either, but the enemy does not care for such things and the war has been brought to your homes regardless. You have shown me that the spirit of resistance cannot be crushed by the enemy’s tools of oppression and terror, and that though they walk the streets of Marelacca they can never truly own it. Across the ocean, the war is still being waged. Equestrian armies strike into the dark heart of Chrysalis’ empire, and once vanquished it will bring forth a new world of friendship and harmony. The eyes of the world may be fixed upon that titanic struggle, but today, what we do here will be seen by all of Equestria. We will show them what the free creatures of Marelacca can do!”
As speeches went it was not one of my best, but I think I did well for something I made up entirely on the spot. Usually, I have something prepared for me from the Commissariat, but I tend to omit the more ridiculous parts; soldiers are not completely stupid and can spot naked and empty propaganda as readily as the nearest whorehouse. Still, I think the language barrier here helped me somewhat. Though most creatures here were familiar with Ponish, and indeed with a number of different languages spoken here it served well as a means of communicating across those social divides, I couldn’t help but think much of it went over their heads, but it wasn’t so much what was said that was truly important but how it was said. ‘Smash the Changelings’ seemed to be the message they all took from it, and so I was rewarded with a resounding cheer for my efforts.
I was still bloody exhausted from my ordeal, and almost dead on my hooves. Yet somehow I always found some small reserve measure to draw upon, just to get me through the next few hours until I was either free in one sense of the word or free in another, more final manner. One day, I thought, there might be nothing left in this shell.
Well then, it was time to get this misery over with, thought I. I drew my kris from its ornamental scabbard, still stained with the coagulating green ichor of the Changeling I’d stabbed, which the few ponies here seemed to be impressed by, and ventured outside. Of course they expected me to lead from the front, but not too far in front; I made sure that Cannon Fodder was by my side, his odour ripening to its fullest in the afternoon heat and likely alerting everyone within a mile’s radius, and that the kirins and ponies just behind me were still close enough that I could dart behind them when violence inevitably broke out. The other groups, the ones that had evaded the enemy’s patrols at least, had caught up with us, and descended upon the small guardpost.
I fully expected to be greeted with a hail of lead shot to the face when I first stepped out of the building in full view of the Changeling guards there, but nothing was forthcoming. Instead, they stared at me with vacant shock as I marched up to them at the head of a small army.
“Hives, It’s the Black Prince!” I heard one shout in amazement, and I realised that was the reason why Uncle wanted me to dress up in this silly uniform.
It worked better than Uncle could have hoped for, and said drone turned on his hooves and scrambled away in fright. The others held their post a little longer, grabbing their muskets to face the oncoming tide. Muskets cracked from behind me, and though none of these notoriously inaccurate weapons wielded by untrained civilians and resistance fighters hit their target, the sporadic volley was enough to convince the remaining Blackhorns to abandon their checkpoint.
A great cheer rose up from behind me, as though we had somehow won a great victory by forcing these four guards to retreat. Emboldened, the equine tide surged past me before I could get a word in edgewise, and charged as a disorganised mob through the guardpost. This was already getting out of hoof, but I could hardly expect military discipline out of them. Still, the more chaos the better cover for me to use to slip through. As the furious cries of combat and the anguished screams of the wounded and dying filled the air, I grabbed Spring Rain, who stood there dumbfounded by the bloody carnage unravelling before eyes, and pulled her in the direction of the violent display.
The kirins might have been resistance fighters, yes, but said resistance had only been in action for a month, if that. There had been little time to train them for a protracted fight against an enemy who believed it was their inborn right to dominate their lessers through force. Still, what they lacked in discipline they made up for in spirit and in being to light themselves on fire. The initial shock of the attack carried them through, and the kirins had forced their way into the compound. We followed the surging horde, which acted without direction and put me in mind of an enraged minotaur trapped in a confined space filled with many small, breakable objects. They didn’t need directing, of course, as their only objective here was to cause as much destruction as possible, and judging by the plumes of smoke they had made a great start on that venture. In its wake, the dead and wounded lay on the ground - gutted, burned, stabbed, or stomped.
“We have to find Square Basher and the others,” I said. Usually one just had to follow the sound of her shouting obscenities at both her own ponies and the enemy, but here there was the risk of being drowned out.
We trotted the open square, the stench of blood and fire stinging my nostrils and the mad noise of combat assaulting my ears. Here, I lost sight of Uncle, but I would assume that he had wisely stayed back; a stallion of his advanced age would be unlikely to be anything but a hindrance here, and I found myself grimly looking forward to being too old to have to fight. I passed a drone, his chitin scorched with nirik-fire, but despite the horrendous burns to his flesh he clung onto life, gasping for air with ravaged lungs and throat. I had witnessed scenes like this before far too many times than I’d care for, but the shock of seeing it never truly leaves. Since then, I have chosen to take that as a sign I hadn’t lost myself.
“Miss, we need to move.” I looked over my shoulder to see Cannon Fodder politely tugging on Spring Rain’s upper foreleg, and that said mare was too busy vomiting. Before her, the body of a pony lying on its back, chest torn open and innards exposed to the hot sun and had already attracted the attention of flies, festered.
Spring Rain didn’t seem to hear my aide, so I trotted back, anxious for every second wasted. “You don’t have to follow,” I said.
She looked up at me, sick still dribbling down her sagging chin, but the sight of me seemed to restore her somewhat. “Aiyah,” she hissed, wiping her chin with the back of her hoof. “I go away and you’ll just screw up without me. Go on, lah! I’ll follow!”
By now, the unruly mob had split up into several smaller blobs, and each were enthusiastically engaged in some act of arson. As we trotted on, heading towards the squat, square structures that I thought the slaves were kept in, I saw that the enemy had recovered enough of its wits to organise a more effective defence. It was still rather sporadic, given the unravelling situation, and entire groups of niriks were setting fire to whatever they could get their incandescent hooves on without a care in the world, but soon, organised units of Blackhorns and Changeling soldiers had mobilised, and in serried block ranks and armed with muskets they mustered quickly from those hastily-constructed barracks huts. Whoever directed them seemed to have a decent idea of what they were doing, for instead of throwing those units directly into the rampaging mobs one at a time, they manoeuvred themselves around the resistance to cut off their obvious line of retreat back into the city. This stroke of basic competence ruled out Dorylus in my mind, but left only one other valid alternative.
I saw her. Queen Chrysalis hovered in the air above her troops, her face twisted into a rictus of anger and irritation. ‘Must I do everything myself?’ seemed to be what she was thinking as she bellowed orders to her drones, who responded with the sort of alacrity that could only come from being personally ordered about by royalty. I immediately ducked behind an old, worn-out shed, dragging my two companions with me. Up there was another Purestrain, but whether or not it was Dorylus himself, having extricated himself from the sticky situation at the execution wall, I couldn’t make out from down here; they all look very similar, anyway. There was plenty of cover for us down here, but unless Square Basher did something obvious to announce herself, and considering the incredible noise nopony could possibly say that she had missed the start of the uprising, it would be exceptionally difficult finding her in this complex. Still, I had to try.
We darted to the next structure, a large warehouse where a couple of drones dressed incongruently in denim overalls, apparently civilians or what passed for civilians in the Hives, were hiding. They were no threat, rather too afraid of the flames spreading through the compound to do anything, and so we left them to their own devices. As before, we dashed to each warehouse when we thought it safe, but it was to my immense relief that Chrysalis was much too distracted by the demanding task of stopping an unruly horde from burning down her hangar to notice two ponies and a kirin scurrying beneath her. Still, it was damned stressful work. If she happened to look down and slightly to the left at precisely the wrong moment then she would have spotted me as I darted between each building, and, well, I wouldn’t be here writing this.
The crack of disciplined musket fire split the air and sent a shock racing through my body. I couldn’t see what was going on from behind those warehouses, but I shuddered to think what the Changelings’ massed musketry had done to the kirins. The kirins might have had the advantage in the hell of close combat, thanks to their ability to become living torches, but they would have to get there first. Another volley followed, but that itself was accompanied by the most tremendous roar of hundreds of fires igniting, and a chorus of distorted screams filled the air. Battle, it seemed, was truly joined, and for once I was heading in the opposite direction to the violence.
That is until one of the warehouses ahead exploded. The blast of hot air struck me square in the muzzle, singeing my nose, and the deafening roar drowned out all else. Wooden beams, bricks and mortar, and glass were turned into a storm of shards of shrapnel. On instinct I leapt backwards and threw myself onto the ground to avoid the worst of the deadly hail of debris, but I’d collided with a shrieking Spring Rain and forced her down with me. Something punched me in the flank - a small lump of masonry that would leave a nasty bruise. I lifted my head to see a churning ball of fire rise up into the sky from the hollowed-out shell of a ruined warehouse, trailing a huge smear of black smoke.
“Aiyah, get off me you fat lump!” yelled Spring Rain, jabbing her hoof quite painfully into my belly. “You’re heavy!” I dutifully obliged, but refrained from pointing out that I might have just saved her from being shredded by debris with my body.
Cannon Fodder helped her back up to her hooves, and while he did that I peered over at the wreckage. A fire had taken hold in the ruins, with hot yellow flames dancing spasmodically and a pillar of smoke writhing in the wind. I heard a cheer, which sounded quite distant to my ears but I think that was due to the shrill whine of tinnitus. It was unlikely to be Changelings, so I grabbed Spring Rain once again, receiving a torrent of obscene language in a variety of different dialects, and half-led, half-dragged her in the direction of the burning warehouse.
Getting closer, it looked as though a large beast, like a dragon, had scooped out a chunk of one wall and spread the crushed masonry all over the place around it. As we neared we stumbled and scrambled over the ragged lumps of brick and concrete, precariously dodging the sharp shards of glass and steel poking through it. Whatever was stored in this warehouse must have been extremely flammable, for the fire raged with no sign of abating. Fuel or gas for the airships, I would have thought.
As we neared I heard a familiar voice; a loud, gruff, and deep Trottingham accent despite coming from a mare. “Alright, lads, that probably got their attention! Good work, Switch Blade, now let’s see what else you can blow up.”
And there she was, Sergeant Major Square Basher standing with a group of ponies at what one could hardly call a safe distance from the fires. I recognised Switch Blade, too, grinning like a maniac and beaming with pride at the destruction he had wrought. There were other ponies that had shared our stint in Camp Joy, plus a few of the Badlands pony slaves who appeared to be enjoying their newfound freedom and the opportunity to avenge their enslavement upon their former masters immensely. One of their number spotted us, poked the mare’s broad shoulder, and pointed in our direction with a series of sharp, energetic jabs. Her eyes widened to the size of saucers when she recognised me.
“Sir!” she bellowed, snapping to attention apparently on instinct and offering a crisp salute, despite the fires raging around her. I suppose me wearing this ridiculous uniform had something to do with it.
“At ease,” I said, as I trotted on over to her, stumbling here and there in the mass of debris all around. She relaxed, but only slightly, but a huge grin was stretched across her face. “It looks like you’ve started without me already.”
“Yes, sir,” said Square Basher, nodding eagerly. “Something got all the bugs running around in a panic. They talked about some kind of uprising in the city over there, sir, and we figured you had something to do with it, and if you didn’t it seemed like a good opportunity to try a bit of sabotage anyway.”
I dreaded to think what would have happened if it hadn’t, but at least here her impatience had paid off. Another crack of muskets reminded me that we hardly had the time or space to stand here and exchange pleasantries; the thought of what was going on elsewhere with the kirins was not a pleasant one, but I dared to turn and look in the direction of the sounds of horrific violence to see a number of pillars of roiling dark smoke rising into the sky. To hazard a guess, neither side were having a particularly fun time of it. I had to keep this brief.
“Good job,” I said, and Square Basher beamed with pride. “All of you. We’re getting out of here now. Spring Rain here is going to help us burn this place to the ground. We’ve brought muskets and weapons for you.”
The Equestrian soldiers were already familiar with such things and seemed much happier with them, but as for the formerly enslaved ponies they would have to use them as either clubs or spears. Knives, swords, and bayonets were distributed amongst the rest, and soon our little band was armed to the teeth, as it were. I felt marginally safer with about half a platoon’s worth of ponies to hide behind, except they seemed to expect me to lead from the front as usual.
“These are where the bugs stored the airship fuel,” explained Square Basher, as she stepped back and observed her ponies distributing the weapons amongst themselves. I assumed that she meant all of these warehouses, and not just the one that was still burning merrily away before us. “It turns out young Switch Blade here has a gift for arson.”
She shot a glance over at the spotty teenager fiddling with one of the muskets we’d brought, and he flashed a cheeky grin in response. I decided that I was probably happier not knowing how he had acquired those skills in the slums of Trottingham, but at any rate with Spring Rain here those would no longer be required.
“I’m glad he’s putting that ‘gift’ to the good of Princesses and Country,” I said. “We need to destroy the airships themselves; the Changelings can always bring in more fuel, but those ships will be harder for them to replace.”
Square Basher nodded her head. “Yes, sir!” she said, with unbridled enthusiasm for more violent and reckless destruction. “The airships are already fueled up and filled with gas.” She looked to the overwhelmingly colossal structure just beyond, towering over us, and likely thought the exact same thought that was occupying my fraught mind: just how are we supposed to destroy all of that? “It’s good you came when you did, sir. They were close to finishing them. Chrysalis demanded they be filled with fuel and gas so there wouldn’t be any delay to the invasion.”
“That should make it a bit easier for us.”
Square Basher nodded with exaggerated eagerness.
Our rag-tag team of former prisoners-of-war, slaves, a middle-aged kirin mare, my aide, and me were about as ready as we could possibly be, and it wouldn’t be long before the enemy realised that the ships themselves were the true target. We passed the burning warehouse at a brisk trot, hoping to use the flames and the smoke as cover as we made our way to the hangar. The air itself stung my throat to breathe, and given the still unhealed damage to my lungs from that horrid gas attack before, I was lagging behind somewhat. So was Spring Rain, being a civilian who, until today, her most arduous activities involved leading a fast food cart through streets, and making sure that she could keep up with everypony else gave me an excuse to slow down and slip back. The fire showed little sign of abating, apparently having found sufficient fuel to sustain itself, and with a bit of luck and this warm breeze, it might spread to the surrounding warehouses and engulf this entire miserable place. Preferably, I might add, without me in it.