//------------------------------// // Chapter 21 // Story: The Blueblood Papers: Bound By Blood // by Raleigh //------------------------------// While Switch Blade’s act of wanton arson was immensely satisfying to anypony present who had suffered under Changeling incarceration, which, come to think of it, was everypony present, it did have the unwanted effect of attracting the enemy’s attention. They had total mastery of the skies, of course, the resistance lacking sufficient pegasi to take aerial superiority, as is the technical military term for it, and so it was impossible for Queen Chrysalis and her staff, who were hovering on buzzing wings some short distance away in the sky, not to notice the sudden and violent explosion occurring conspicuously and suspiciously far from where the main battle in the docks was taking place. We swiftly got a move on when this awful realisation silently dawned on us; the enemy would know that there was more to this than merely a head-on, suicidal, frontal assault by the resistance on their docks, and that we were up to something. Here, the spaces between the warehouses were much wider, presumably to allow stevedores to drag wagons laden with goods around, and put me in mind of the boulevards through Canterlot where extravagant military parades took place to give the Royal Guard something to do in one thousand years of celestial peace. I felt exposed out here, as if on a stage with a bright spotlight exposing my position for all to see, and with my daft uniform on I might as well have been wearing a sandwich board with my name printed on it in neon letters. We clung to the sides of the ‘streets’, as close to the buildings as we could with our shoulders rubbing against those bare concrete walls. [The nature of airships complicated usual nomenclature for their workers—'longshorecolt' is the typical term for a dockworker, while 'stevedore' is an internal cargo hauler and crane operator for loading and unloading the ship. The lack of traditional docks or, for that matter, a shore, likely led Blueblood to approximate to the next closest term.] Ahead the hangar loomed over us, drawing closer and closer with every rapid gallop, and the way ahead looked clear. There were quite a lot of us, and more joined our little gang as we ran until it grew into about two platoons’ worth of ponies. They were all Badlands slaves who had freed themselves in the confusion, as identified by their similarly dusty-coloured coats and the curiously bastardised version of Old Ponish they spoke. They chattered amongst themselves excitedly, eager for their opportunity to revenge themselves upon their hated oppressors and grateful to the ‘Black Prince’ for liberating them, as though I’d personally cut their chains for them. It looked as though I was never going to get rid of that damned sobriquet now. By now the smoke from the kirins’ battle filled the air with its acrid taste and scent. The black pillars of smoke, roiling in the hot breeze, must have been visible from miles around, and I imagined Princess Luna in the observation tower in Canterlot Castle would be able to see it if she directed her telescope east. I looked up, observing the churning obsidian clouds overhead and imagining the hellish conflagration that had taken hold at the gates, when I barreled straight into Cannon Fodder’s outstretched hoof. “Sir!” he cried. I came to an immediate stop, and where his foreleg had struck my chest had already started to ache. Ahead, blocking our path directly, was a unit of Blackhorns, perhaps fifty, perhaps more, and each armed with muskets. They’d apparently crossed the road from a path on our right, not much more than a dozen yards away or so, and stopped when they’d unexpectedly spotted us here. They stood curiously still, as if as shocked to see us as we were them. One, some kind of officer perhaps, stood there with his jaw gaping at us. At me, I quickly realised; my dubious reputation had just as much an effect on the enemy it seemed. They had muskets, but so did we. But they were better trained with them than the majority of freed slaves on our side. If they fired off a volley then Yours Truly, standing out in front, would be thoroughly ventilated with shot. The calculation was made in a fraction of a second, and there was only one thing for it. “Charge!” I roared. The cry was borne up by dozens of enraged voices; the battle-cry of ponies who had suffered most grievous injustice at the hooves of the hated enemy. With kris drawn I put action to that singular word and galloped headlong into the stunned drones. The ponies all followed, to my relief and mild surprise, and even Spring Rain was still by my side. Fear all but overtook me - I must have been insane to do this - but the Blackhorns recoiled visibly at the sight of our suicidal charge. I saw the officer scream at his drones to fire, though I did not hear it with the heathen curses and shouts all around me, and before their panicked formation could even begin to sort itself, form a line, and let off a volley that would have decimated our ranks, I plunged the rippled steel into his exposed neck. His barked orders faded to a gurgle as his mouth filled with blood, and I tore the blade free with a hideous spray of arterial ichor. The ponies swept past me and collided with the drones. There was a hideous crashing sound from the impact of bodies, like a heavy safe dropped from a great height, as the weight of the charge forced us deep into their ranks. Some drones, presumably used to murdering defenceless colts and fillies, dropped their weapons and ran from the vengeful ponies. Some stood their ground, and were swiftly cut down. I saw Square Basher, steel glinting brightly in the hot sun from the bayonet held in her mouth, swat a bladed hoof thrust at her out of the way, and slash the drone in the face. Switch Blade, true to his name, held his bayonet in his hoof, and tore into Changeling bodies with precise, deadly stabs that found the vulnerable gaps between their chitinous plates. As for the freed slaves, buoyed by their apparent success, they whooped and yelled like buffalo braves; what they lacked in training and skill, they made up for with enthusiasm and a thirst for vengeance. Three or four of them piled onto a hapless drone, too slow to retreat with his fellows, and they wrestled him to the ground and repeatedly stabbed and kicked him until he ceased to move. Yet we would not have it entirely our own way. The Blackhorns rallied with the arrival of reinforcements; grim-faced, professional Changeling soldiers, who, if they were anything like Equestrians, were grateful for some excitement after weeks of sitting around and doing nothing, joined their amateurish brothers-in-arms. They surged into the flank of our disorganised mob in close ranks, Royal Guard-style, and the freed slaves who rushed to meet them were swiftly cut down. As for me, I was preoccupied with my own survival. The kris was a ceremonial weapon, worn now for tradition, but the example that Uncle had presented me with proved to be just as lethal as any blade in the Equestrian arsenal. I think I got the hang of it quite quickly, not having much of a choice in battle, and swiftly adjusted my usual techniques to account for the shorter reach and the unique wavy blade. It didn’t take well to hacking into chitin like a Pattern ‘12 sabre, and I feared that trying to do so would break the blade, so, rather like using a rapier I sought those vulnerable gaps between the chitin. The world shrank to within the range of my blade - blood, ichor, gore, and steel; the smell and the taste of it was overpowering. I frantically stabbed into any flash of gleaming black chitin and grey tunic I saw. Shouts and screams chorused all around me, as did the clash of steel and the sickening wet sounds of flesh ripped and torn. My head was pounding and I felt sick. I'd been struck in the shoulder by a hoof or the butt of a musket, I don’t know, but I felt the pain only dully. Fear and adrenaline kept me going. Somewhere, Square Basher yelled above the din, something about how they weren’t killing Changelings fast enough for her liking, and with the way they kept on coming I was inclined to agree. Cannon Fodder stuck to my side as always, wielding his bayonet-tipped musket like an old Royal Guard spear, gutting whomever came too close with an almost mathematical precision. Spring Rain was shrieking in raw terror; I was surprised, and considering that she clung to me tightly I was rather grateful too, that she hadn’t turned into a nirik, but I suppose her fear had overcome her anger here. Still, she’d grabbed a discarded bayonet off the ground, stained with blood along the length of its blade, and swung it with wild slashes that nevertheless kept any drones at a hoof's length from her. It could have been seconds, or minutes, or even hours, I don’t know how long this hideous ordeal lasted. Our numbers had thinned, and the dead were piling up around us in grotesque heaps; lightless eyes stared out, bodies streaked with bright crimson. The survivors fought with the ferocity of the truly desperate, getting close without fear for they had nothing left to lose but their freedom and their lives. They would overwhelm drones one at a time, dragging each one down to the ground and plunging their blades into writhing bodies, yelling their hatred for their oppressors with every clumsy thrust. Their savagery overwhelmed even that of the Changelings. Yet it somehow made its way through into my blooddrunk mind that we were being surrounded. As much as I fought and killed, the enemy just kept on coming as a seemingly endless horde that battered itself against our desperate position. Soon the drones were climbing over the dead and wounded, theirs and ours, to get at us. The more enterprising sort took to the air, dodging frantic thrusts with bayonets to dive down and slash at anypony foolish enough to raise their head. A Changeling blade struck my left shoulder, but all I felt was something warm and wet trickle down my foreleg. My horn ached with the exertion of swinging this blade around; Faust, I just wanted it to end. A dark shadow fell upon us. Cannon Fodder, his front splattered with stinking green ichor, tugged at my arm as I sank my blade into a snarling drone’s eye, shouted something that I couldn’t make out above the din of battle and pointed upwards. I looked up, and was grateful that the compulsion to stop and look up at a passing airship affected the Changelings as much as it did ponies. Hovering at what I thought was quite dangerously close to us ground-bound ponies, that I might touch the bottom with my outstretched hoof if somepony threw me upwards with sufficient velocity, and blotting out the sun, the underside of the gondola was a dark, wooden structure, seemingly patched together from parts of other ships, and from it trailed a number of black flags of varying sizes and shapes, from standard rectangular bits of cloth to long pennants. The gondola itself, about the same size as my yacht, hung from a rigid, pale grey envelope patched with seemingly any cloth that its crew could get their hooves on. A shrill, almost impossibly loud cry split the air. A figure stood at the side of the gondola, peering down at the carnage below, and was soon joined by another, and another, and so on. Ponies and other creatures of all shapes and sizes joined them. The first one leapt over the side - a pegasus, plunging like a dropped stone straight into the enemy’s formation. Her wings flared at the last possible moment, arresting what might otherwise have been a damaging fall. The edges of her wings were tipped in polished steel, which glittered like diamonds even in the shade. As she landed, she flexed her long, elegant wings, and the bladed tips ripped into the stunned and astonished drones around her. Green ichor fountained as Golden Hook had finally arrived. Ropes fell from the side of the ship, and those creatures not blessed with the gift of flight descended down them. They were mostly earth ponies and unicorns, but in addition to those it seemed that almost every sapient race able to fit onboard a small airship was present: kirins and griffons in the main, but even teenaged dragons and a yak, who must have been suffering even more than I in this awful heat. Armed with a variety of weapons to match the diversity of their origins, though most were short blades of some sort, the pirates fell upon the stunned Changelings and slaughtered them in a matter of a few horrific seconds. Their swordplay was amateurish, but Golden Hook was something else entirely; to say that she fought with the grace of a dancer would be an awful cliche to use, but in certain occasions such cliches are most apt. She weaved through the battlefield on hooves that barely touched the ground, her wings fluttering elegantly and their bladed tips catching the bright sunlight, and with each delicate beat of her wings those thin little daggers sliced effortlessly into exposed flesh between chitin plates. Despite being in her late forties and therefore just old enough to be my mother, it seemed that her lethal skills in battle were undimmed by age. Then it was over. The last of the drones had fled, pursued by more pegasi into the docks. I could take stock of myself and our force; I’d received a little more than the usual assortment of minor cuts in addition to that stinging slash on my shoulder, and Spring Rain’s hard work in repairing and cleaning my uniform had been thoroughly undone with all of the blood, ichor, and holes in it. Cannon Fodder, on the other hoof, looked and smelt exactly as he had done earlier that morning, which I took to mean that he was in as close to fine health as was possible for him. My aide calmly sat on his haunches and, despite the awful sight of disembowelled drones and ponies all around, reached into one of his voluminous pockets and produced a ration bar to munch on, and I declined his offer on account of not feeling particularly hungry after all of that. Spring Rain seemed unharmed, but the shocked, vacant stare at nothing in particular and the quiet shivering of her body showed that her wounds were more than physical in nature. Square Basher had suffered a few bruises and a rather nasty-looking cut to her cheek that would likely become yet another scar, and she busied herself going around the other survivors - the freed slaves, some of whom were relieving their frustration and grief by mutilating the corpses of dead drones. Switch Blade’s foreleg was sliced open by a Changeling blade, and he hissed and grunted in pain, though insisted that he was fine, as one of the calmer freed slaves applied a bandage and a tourniquet. “Prince Blueblood!” shouted Golden Hook, a huge, psychotic grin on her pretty face as she trotted on over. “You started without us! I would have been ever so disappointed if I missed this party.” “The Changelings gatecrashed,” I said, not quite in the mood for witty badinage with my head pounding, limbs aching, and my mouth full of blood. “How many are you?” Her wings folded carefully at her sides, and I wondered how many would-be pegasi warriors had inadvertently punctured themselves doing that with wingblades on. The manic smile softened to something a little less disturbing, but her eyes were still wide with excitement and her cheeks flushed crimson, and her breathing had become low, deep, and husky. If I didn’t know any better, I’d say that this mare was aroused by the violence, and, without meaning to be so vulgar as to brag, I’d seen enough of that in my time to know. She still wore her embroidered crimson ru, with the addition of a white sash tied around her narrow waist into which a number of small daggers had been placed. Her movement was cat-like, as sensual as the hungry look in her glittering eyes, with a slow, deliberate gait that scarcely left hoofprints in the dusty, bloodstained ground. If it wasn’t for the not-inconsiderable amount of weariness weighing me down as much as a real weight upon my shoulders and that dozens of ponies were all around us, I might have seized her right then and there and had my way with her. “I scraped together what I could of the Black Flag Fleet together when we saw the smoke from Marelacca,” she said, stepping rather close and peering up at me, her hot, scented breath and wafting perfume filling my nostrils and briefly masking that of blood and effluence. She held that gaze for a moment longer, then with a sharp bark of laughter she playfully swatted my chest with an impetuous hoof and stepped back to a far more comfortable distance; she was teasing me while ponies and kirins were dying, and I was hardly in the mood to put up with it. “It doesn’t look like much,” I said, sniffing with affected haughtiness at the ragtag group of ruffians who were already going through the pockets of dead Blackhorns and finding not much interesting or valuable to loot. In truth, after everything that had been said about the feared pirates of the Strait of Marelacca, I couldn’t help but feel a little bit let down; I’d expected a damned sight more than a single airship apparently held aloft by the collective prayers of its crew, and had hoped instead for a veritable armada and an army. It was my fault really, having set my expectations much too high; after a lifetime of disappointments I really ought to have learnt by now. If Golden Hook was offended by my lack of gratitude she didn’t show it. “Don’t you worry, we’ve landed crew all over the docks and more are on their way. I have also sent a few raiding parties into the city itself to keep the enemy’s attention divided and, well, to steal anything and everything they can carry.” “Not from the civilians, I hope,” I said. Golden Hook shrugged. “They are pirates, after all, it’s what we do. You knew this when you asked for our help.” That I did, and to say that I was desperate was underselling my feelings on the matter by several orders of magnitude. I hoped that the ponies in this city and I would not come to regret the decision I had made, though I imagined what they would do now would pale in comparison to the Changelings’ reprisals. Nevertheless, there was no point dwelling on it now, and I still had a job to do. “The ships in the hangar,” I said, nodding in the direction of said blight on the landscape. “That’s our goal. We need to destroy them.” “Such a shame.” Golden Hook shook her head with mock sadness. “The Black Flag Fleet could do with a battleship or two.” [The precise classification of the ships gathered for Operation: Sunburn is still heavily debated among military historians, and it is unlikely that these pirate vessels conformed to the same standards as that of Equestria or other kingdoms. ‘Battleship’ is not an official classification for airships, so it is likely that Golden Hook used the term merely to describe large and heavily-armed and armoured airships.] “We’re destroying them,” I insisted. “I can’t risk them falling back into enemy hooves.” Or the pirates’ either, for that matter. Should I survive this, the Equestrian admiralty would be less than enthused if they found out I’d outfitted the pirates with state-of-the-art military airships. “Besides, I thought you were going to retire.” “Oh, I am,” she said, breathing a husky sigh. Her wings flittered against her lithe body, and the blood that coated the blades splattered messily around her hooves like morning dew shaken from leaves. “I will miss the thrill of battle, though. As a warrior, I’m sure you understand.” I have to admit, I was rather struck by the staggering difference between the almost demure mare I’d met in the cave earlier that day and the psychotic maniac who stood before me, and I could only conclude that she must have been showing a sort of ‘front’ for me for the negotiation. The bloodthirsty lunatic that stood before me was her true self, as it were, uninhibited by such social mores about not gutting creatures, and yet the masque she wore earlier was most convincing. She might make a fine commissar, I thought, though I was hesitant to recommend her to Princess Luna. Despite her insane lust for violence, she still kept a very tight leash on her crew; as I sat to drink from a water canteen, I observed one of her crew, a unicorn missing one ear and much of the side of his face, wrest a prized musket from a freed slave pony, and for his efforts received a sharp blow to the intact side of his head from his captain and a tirade in half a dozen different dialects of Cathaynese concerning his dubious parentage. After a few moments of such vile invective that even Square Basher blushed even though she understood none of it, she was able to form coherent sentences again. “You son of a Diamond Dog, we do not steal from slaves!” she shrieked at the cowering pirate, his one good ear flat against his head. “We do not steal from those who have had everything taken away from them but their lives! No, we give them a weapon and we invite them to join us so they may avenge themselves. Have you forgotten where we come from?” She returned the stolen weapon back to its original thief, the bewildered slave who was nevertheless grateful for its return, and then, in Ponish, addressed the gathered mass of surviving freed slaves: “The forgotten of Equus are all welcome under the banner of the Black Flag Fleet! Fight with us today and earn your freedom with the blood of Changelings, and you may prove yourselves worthy of joining our ranks!” That ‘retirement’ was looking less and less likely by the second, either that or managing a gambling den in Cathay might involve considerably more violence than one would normally find at the Casino Royale in Monacolt. It occurred to me that I had no idea of her background, and I thought that it was quite rude to ask, but I would later find out that my impression that she had clawed her way up from a life of destitution over a mountain of corpses proved to be true. [Golden Hook’s origins are not well-documented, but it is believed that prior to her career as a pirate she was a prostitute, and later a concubine of a succession of pirate captains until she seized control of the fleet herself.] I caught Square Basher’s eye, who understood perfectly that last speech, and, though she would never dare question the judgement of a superior officer, seemed to be saying ‘I do hope you know what you’re doing’. In truth, I thought much the same thing too. Besides, only a few freed slaves showed any particular interest, and those were mostly out of politeness too. Innumerable leagues from home, they had never heard of Golden Hook and the Black Flag Fleet, but one pony they had heard of was the Black Prince, scourge of the Hives and the Liberator of the Tribes and what not. One of their number, a tall, slender stallion with his back criss-crossed with scars so that it looked like a game of noughts-and-crosses had been played on it with a knife (rather like mine), approached me and bowed low. “Black Prince,” he said in accented Ponish, and I immediately felt rather self-conscious and embarrassed at the almost reverent use of that silly nickname, “we fight with you this day, tomorrow, and forever if need be. Return us to our homeland, and we will see its soil bathed in the blood of the oppressors.” Well, that sounded rather unhygienic, though I had heard that blood makes an excellent fertiliser. I muttered something about how grateful I was to have such brave warriors on my side and patted him on the head, and that seemed to make him happy. It took but a few more minutes to get ourselves organised again. Those too wounded to continue to fight were dragged away, either to expire or to await either rescue or, as was more likely given the nature of partisan warfare and as this was, for most of them, a suicide mission, await re-capture by the enemy once the smoke cleared. Square Basher, slipping effortlessly back into her old role as Sergeant Major, directed much of it, though she left the pirates to their own devices, perhaps wisely. In the too-short reprieve we were granted, the survivors drank from shared canteens, snacked on whatever was available, and readied themselves for what was to come next. While that was going on, and the sounds of violence that had formed the background music to this gorey scene had intensified with what must have been the arrival of yet more pirates all over the docks, I took the opportunity to check on Spring Rain. It was not lost on me that our positions had been reversed that day; before, it was she who was my guide in this foreign city, upon whom I was reliant for almost everything related to my survival there to the point that I might have referred to her as a surrogate mother without fear of contradiction or much embarrassment on my part, but now in the maelstrom and chaos of battle I was her reluctant guide through its myriad horrors. I think we much preferred the previous arrangement. She had seen violence before when she rescued me, but the tableau that stretched out before her now made that previous engagement look like an elementary school tussle. She sat on her haunches, one of Cannon Fodder’s ration bars in her hoof opened but uneaten, and stared out into space. Her eyes seemed to rest upon the pile of bodies where the Equestrian soldiers had dumped the bodies (a pointless exercise that Square Basher had come up with to keep them occupied). “You can come back with me,” I said to her, and she snapped out of her daze with a jolt. “To Equestria I mean, you’ll be safe there.” “Ah, what?” she said. “To live in your palace?” I shrugged vaguely; making tedious conversation with her would at least take our minds off the horrors all around us for a few more moments. “Someone needs to keep an eye on the servants,” I said. “I can never trust them on their own; I’m sure one of the maids steals my pocket squares when I’m not looking, much to the irritation of my valet.” Spring Rain looked up at me with a strange expression. “Aiyah, we really are from two different worlds. I just want to cook.” “I’ve acquired a taste for nasi goreng. My chef Guiseppe is a temperamental sort; a certifiable genius, yes, but prone to going on strike at the slightest perceived insult. I think I’ll need a more reliable chef if I want to have meals at a consistent time.” “You offering me a job? Ah, don’t talk cock, lah.” She shook her head, but she was smiling at least, albeit weakly; the opportunity to insult me seemed to perk her up a little. “Is this what it’s like for you?” “More or less,” I said, following her gaze to the bodies all around us. “Your life sounds awful.” No argument there, thought I. “It’s all for a good cause, one hopes, and I can return to my palace when it’s all over.” Should I survive the war, of course, which, given the circumstances I found myself in, seemed rather unlikely. The chances of me making it through that day looked terribly remote, but I was hardly going to give up after having come so far. Fighting gave me a slim chance of survival, versus letting myself be captured again, which, after everything I had been through, left no chance. There was no time like the present to find out. The few minutes of rest had only worsened my anxiety about it all, making the metaphorical ice-cold serpent writhe and convulse in my stomach until I felt the urge to vomit once more. I’d taken to pacing to try and relieve the energy, affecting to look as though I was deep in thought when I was merely fretting about my immediate demise. Everypony else seemed ready, so I gave the order that we were to move out and get this misery over with, though not exactly in those terms. The Equestrians were eager, practically chomping at the bit to get stuck into the Changelings, and fell into rank quickly, while the freed slaves, undisciplined, excitable, and very enthusiastic, took a little more time to get themselves organised. The pirates, on the other hoof, while I took them to be little more than a disorganised mob like the kirin resistance, had prepared themselves quickly, and formed themselves into our ranks with disciplined ease; I suppose one doesn’t rise to the title of the most feared pirate queen in the region without learning a thing or two about organising cutthroats and blackguards, and Golden Hook flashed a knowing smile as I observed her crew checking and readying their blades. We moved at a brisk trot towards the hangar; Equestrian prisoners of war, Badlands pony slaves, a band of pirates, a kirin fast food vendor, and a Prince - it sounded like the opening to an overly long and not very funny joke. The kirins and the pirates elsewhere must have been doing their jobs as very loud and violent diversions very well, as we were not attacked again before we reached it. That is not to say that we did not encounter any Changelings along the way; small scattered groups, some clearly fleeing the carnage elsewhere, crossed our path a few times. Upon seeing us they each fled, either galloping away or taking to the skies where they would, in theory, be safest. A few of the freed slaves would attempt to chase after them, but a bellowed order from Square Basher reined them in. Even with the language barrier, her intent was very clear. “There’ll be more Changelings inside the hangar,” I said, to appease them. As it turned out, I was absolutely correct in that assessment. We reached the small door in the side of the hangar unmolested, a different one from the one that I had been led through earlier. There was a small group of Changeling drones guarding it, and they promptly scattered like cockroaches upon seeing us; the sight of us, all quite heavily armed and covered in blood and ichor, led by Yours Truly, must have prompted them to take the logical response of running away, and for that I felt a slight degree of envy. It occurred to me when we reached the hangar that I had lost sight of Chrysalis, and I had a dreadful feeling that the full scale of the problem had finally reached her by way of a hapless drone nominated to tell her bad news, and was therefore waiting for me inside. Few things made me quite as anxious as a shut door, more for my overactive imagination and paranoia conjuring all sorts of horrors to lurk behind it, such that it was a relief when Cannon Fodder shoved it open and was greeted with a hail of musket fire. I hissed and flinched away from the open door. Terror gripped me, but I saw that they had completely failed to hit my aide at all. He raised his bayonet-tipped musket over his head and hurled it like a spear somewhere into the hangar. A yelp of pain informed me that he had found his target. “They’re reloading, sir!” he shouted. “Everypony inside, and find cover!” I ordered. It would take them a few moments to reload - three rounds a minute was supposed to be the ‘standard’ - so I made sure that I was first in. The hangar itself was just as I remembered it, and still with the assortment of large boxes and crates full of supplies and things. They were better than nothing, so I galloped as hard as I could and threw myself behind one. And when I say ‘threw’, I mean it; it damn well hurt when I belly-flopped on the concrete ground, but at least my hide remained un-perforated. There, mostly safe from another volley, I could peek around the side of my new favourite box in all Equus and see for myself just how royally screwed I was. The Changelings had positioned themselves above us on the walkway; there were about ten of them up there, and I could see them going through the tricky process of reloading their muskets. The small clouds of smoke swirled around them. I was immensely thankful that though they had sufficient time to plan this ambush, they hadn’t removed the assortment of wooden boxes here. If they had, they would have been able to pick us off at their leisure. That said, they were clever enough to hurl a grenade in my direction. I saw it, arcing through the air towards me, trailing a thin white trail of smoke from the lit fuse. With a yelp of panic, I aimed a telekinetic blast in its direction. The grenade bounced away from me, exploding in mid-air with a sharp, loud ‘crack’. I ducked under the box again as shrapnel showered from above, and then peered over again to see that the sudden explosion had briefly scattered the drones. [It bears mentioning that Blueblood's desperation tactic here, while quite effective, is difficult to efficiently perform in the heat of battle. Spotting and deflecting ordnance was taught to unicorn Guards after the casualties at Virion Hive, but it quickly became clear that doing so regularly with any degree of precision while under live fire can be dangerous to the caster and their unit, as a single panicked miscalculation can ricochet said ordnance into one's own lines, and it places high stress on one's magical capacity. "Deflector" thus became a revered special class of Guards, especially as the conflict settled into trench warfare.] There were bound to be more elsewhere in this hangar. As the rest of our cobbled-together unit swarmed through the open door, I fired off a few magic blasts in the direction of the drones as they regrouped on the walkway. I don’t think I hit any of them, the energy sparking harmlessly against the metal grating, but it was enough to throw them off for a bit. The airships were still there - the huge, floating structures, plated with steel armour as I remembered them - and were in dire need of igniting. I’d done it before, albeit entirely accidentally with a poorly-aimed flare spell that set the airship I was on ablaze. It would be possible for me to replicate that, I thought, provided that I could get close enough to reliably hit the highly flammable gas cells. That, of course, was a problem, as I needed to get up on that gangway to have a decent chance of directing the flare between the armour plates. The others swarmed in after me. Those with loaded muskets fired off a volley at the Changelings above, which, while not hitting them, at least spoiled their reloading a little longer. Spring Rain, almost dragged along by Cannon Fodder, joined me in the safety behind this enormous box, followed by Square Basher, Switch Blade, and the other Equestrians. Huddled together, it occurred to me that we were sitting ducks if the enemy grew bored of taking potshots at us with muskets and swarmed us from the air. The stairs up to the gangway were further along in the hangar, across a path that was desperately exposed and devoid of reliable cover. The drones might have been poor shots, but there were enough of them up there that should we take our chances and gallop across, and somehow not falter, then at least a few of us would be felled by the next volley, and given the distinctive uniform I wore that made me stand out like a pre-tied bow tie in high society dinner they’d all be aiming directly for me. It was a fine mess, as usual. I heard the next volley, a rippling crackle that briefly drowned the incessant shouting, and a yelp or two of pain. The air stank of burnt powder and blood. There was no time to stop and look to see who had been hit, but we had another brief window while they reloaded. “Follow me!” I shouted. Whether or not it was heard I couldn’t be sure, but when an officer runs off somewhere ponies will usually follow, one hopes, even into the lungs of Tartarus if sufficiently motivated. Not daring to look back, I nevertheless heard and felt the sound of hooves on concrete behind me. Above, griffons and pegasi, each clad in a multitude of exotic garb from all over the region, swarmed into a loose formation of sorts above us and hurled themselves into an oncoming swarm of drones. Battle, it seemed, was truly joined inside this structure vast enough to host one. A veritable horde of drones massed between us and the stairs, buzzing around like a hideous cloud of fat, ugly flies in the air, ready to dive straight upon us. It seemed the only way was to try and punch our way through with brute force, but as was more than likely they would bog us down with numbers; they only had to keep us from getting to the airships themselves. A shrill, ululating cry from above pierced through shouts and screams and roars of battle. I felt the wind briefly over my coat, as Golden Hook swept straight into the heart of the formation, polished wingtips glittering brightly. The drones were stunned by her brazenness, and her wingblades were a veritable tornado of steel as they sliced and ripped into chitin and flesh. From where I was, galloping away on the ground, I saw only a spinning, chaotic mass of flailing limbs and buzzing wings, and intermittent splatters of emerald ichor that fell like waste hurled from an earth pony villager’s window. The other airborne pirates joined her; the war cries of griffons were sharp and ear splitting as they hurled themselves with their pegasi brethren into swirling formation. Still, the enemy had numbers on their side, and though they fought with as much savagery as their legal status as outlaws implied, the pirates were not enough to keep the drones off our backs. Drones in twos and threes dove into our beleaguered group, picking out the stragglers, it seemed. I saw one such group dive straight for one pony, and pile upon the poor blighter and hacked at him with blades. Another tried it with a kirin, but with admirable self-control he burst into flames at the right moment, and the drones were immolated in a burning embrace. “For Celestia’s sake, stick together!” I cried; the last thing I wanted was to be left alone here and picked off. “You heard the Commissar!” bellowed Square Basher. “Close formation!” Our group bunched up tightly, still galloping on to the stairs; I was still at the front, wedged in with Cannon Fodder on one side and Spring Rain on the other, who in turn was sandwiched against Square Basher’s hulking form. We were near. A section of drones descended from above to block us, too close for them to fire off a volley but I had no such issues; a mad spray of unrefined magic flew from my aching horn, hitting one to form a deep crater in the chitin on his chest, and getting the others to duck. We smashed into them, this time with enough momentum to carry the charge through. Bodies were crushed and pulped underhoof as we stampeded into them. Shoulder to shoulder, we forced our way through their blockade, but with the dense press of bodies our charge slowed to a crawl. I could scarcely breathe, wedged in with so many ponies and drones, and had hardly enough space to even swing my kris. A jagged hoof struck my nose, and the front of my face exploded in pain. Blood flowed out of my broken nose like a stream and stars swam before my eyes. My vision was filled with gnashing maws and fangs, thrashing hooves, and glints of steel, my mouth with blood and ichor. Hoof-to-hoof combat was never my forte, I’d rather have a nice length of steel between me and the enemy, or, failing that, magic. Unfortunately, whatever magic I summoned to try and blast the enemy directly in the face fizzled and faded the moment I summoned it, and my panic turned into frustration when I worked out that Cannon Fodder was by my side. I could only throw my hooves against hardened chitin, and hope to open up enough space to plunge my blade into any glimpse of exposed flesh. At long last I’d forced my way to the foot of the stairs with my fellow ponies, having butchered a bloody path there. Everything hurt to some degree or another, and to top it off I’d have to climb stairs while being assaulted by the enemy. “Go, sir!” shouted Square Basher. She’d turned around to guard the foot of the stairwell, her front bloodied and a nasty set of hoofprint-shaped bruises spread over her bare chest. “We’ll cover you!” I don’t normally take orders from the lower ranks, but in this case I was happy to make an exception. After a brief second to make sure that Cannon Fodder and Spring Rain were still with me, I scrambled up those metal steps. My hooves were slick with blood and ichor, so I slipped on a few steps with a heart-stopping lurch. I felt as though my own blood, or as much as was still in me, was on fire, making every single desperate exertion agonising. At about halfway up I looked back to see that Square Basher and the ponies had grouped around the stairwell and were fighting off savage attacks from the enemy surrounding them. It was then that my hooves began to itch, heralding some disturbing thing that my subconscious had noticed but had yet to articulate fully in a coherent way. Upon reaching the top of the stairs and the gangway suspended over the hangar, I felt about ready for death. I had trotted as fast as I dared up those stairs, and considering how I was already in a fragile state, it was no wonder that I was a coughing, wheezing wreck. That Spring Rain was in much the same way, leaning against the railing creaking precariously under her weight and gasping for air, stopped her from making another inevitable comment about my weight and lack of exercise. [Blueblood’s unduly low opinion of his character seems to have extended to some physical traits. He has consistently demonstrated excellent endurance, despite his injuries, diet, and vices, but unfortunately was incapable of recognising it.] As for Cannon Fodder, he only seemed modestly out of breath, and I marvelled at the example of peak equine physical fitness standing before me, staring into space with the air of a stallion waiting for a train to arrive. The gangway was clear, though the battle on the floor below and in the air all around was still running its grisly course, and the itching in the frogs of my forehooves that had made itself felt above the sensations of exhaustion, pain, and nausea grew more noticeable. My hindbrain was shouting at me that something was wrong, but as ever could not articulate it in a way that my conscious mind, already being quite overloaded with the madness all around, could interpret. Here, however, as I fought to catch my breath, sucking in deep lungfuls of air reeking with blood and smoke as I too leaned against that fragile-looking railing, I looked through the fuzzy dancing stars before my eyes to see what in the blazes was all around me. I remembered the gangway, of course, dragging boxes from a cargo airship and catching furtive bits of conversation with Square Basher, but this wasn’t anywhere near the same place as before. We were much further along, and the gangway here spread out to a larger platform that reached the back of the hangar itself. There, I saw huge metal tanks, like grain silos, from which an array of pipes led to hatches in each airship. An assortment of exciting warning labels in vivid colours led me to believe that these were the pumps that fueled each of the airships. Further along behind us, I spotted the smaller cargo ship that I had worked on before, still there and dwarfed by its more imposing brethren. In seconds I quickly formulated a hasty plan. “This way!” I shouted, tapping Spring Rain in the shoulder. She looked like she might protest, but instead nodded wearily and trotted on after me towards those tanks. This, I hoped, was her moment to shine.