I should have known that it was going all too well for me. I was alive and well, in a manner of speaking, and we had what looked like a clear run to the fuel tanks. However, the itching in the frogs of my forehooves persisted, even as they ached from pounding against the metal as we half-galloped, half-trotted to our goal. The realisation came to me, like the glaring bright light of the sun piercing through a dull overcast sky, when I noticed that more than an entire minute had passed without us being shot at, stabbed, or otherwise attacked. Anypony else might have taken that as a good sign; after all, not being assaulted by murderous Changelings out for one’s blood is usually seen as a net positive by most creatures of the world, but over the course of my career I had since learnt from first-hoof experience that all that it really meant was that the little blighters were up to no good again and I was running head first into an ambush.
[Blueblood has well described the 'healthy paranoia' that characterised much of the Changeling wars, especially in dealing with such an insidious foe that can appear as anypony or anything. The popular belief amongst many soldiers was that time spent in heavy combat was the most relaxing of all, for at least then they would know where the enemy was.]
As ever, this dawning realisation that I was running headlong into a trap came rather too late, and my subconscious would only have sufficient time to gloat and say ‘I told you so’ before it all went to Tartarus in a hoof basket. The battle in the hangar raged all around us with little sign of one side or the other gaining a decisive upper hoof; under the elevated walkway the murderous brawl between the Changeling garrison and our ragtag army of misfits stained the hangar floor in crimson and emerald, while all around, above and below us on this unsettlingly wobbly metal walkway, Changelings, pegasi, griffons, and even the odd teenaged dragon soared, dived, and clashed in their lethal aerial dance. Yet as we neared the huge fuel tanks with enormous pipes, each large enough for me to comfortably swim through were I a seapony, leading up and over to the airships, and I could see those interesting and exciting warning signs in greater detail, it occurred to me that since we'd ascended those ghastly steps to the walkway that no one had tried to stop us reaching the fuel tanks.
That stopped me directly in my tracks, and might have saved my life too. Cannon Fodder and Spring Rain likewise stopped, the latter confused and the former apparently assuming that all of this was intentional on my part. There, to the left of us and rising from below with a dozen Changeling drones armed with muskets at the ready, Dorylus sneered at me with an expression that was filled with equal parts triumph and gloating vengeance.
“Fire!” he bellowed, and I could hear the sheer relish in his voice above the din of battle. Entirely acting on instinct, I hurled myself to the floor, grabbing Spring Rain’s small, soft body with me. She yelped as I all but fell on top of her, shielding her body largely by accident (that’s what I now tell ponies), and the walkway itself shuddered with the impact. Cannon Fodder likewise threw himself down. Muskets cracked and the otherwise lethal hail of shot ripped harmlessly into the empty air where, had we carried on running, we’d have occupied.
“You idiot!” The distinctively unhappy tone of what was unmistakably Queen Chrysalis’ was enough for me to dare to lift my head up from the relative safety of under my hooves. I saw her, her aquiline face twisted into a rictus of pure apoplexy, hovering in mid air before a now-cowering Dorylus. Her skeletally thin chest heaved with barely-contained rage, as though her internal organs might suddenly erupt forth from them and attack the terrified Purestrain that was the evident source of her considerable ire. She raised a long, elegant foreleg and swung it in a wide, back-hoof arc and struck her subordinate square in the cheek with a loud ‘smack’, and his head snapped to the side under the blow and he hissed in pain.
Chrysalis then thrust her snout against Dorylus’, her eyes seeming to glow with the fires of her evident contempt for him. “You’ll hit the fuel tanks!” she snarled. “You’ll blow us all up! Can’t you do anything right?”
“My Queen, I-” Dorylus stammered out pathetically. A comparison to a kicked puppy would be a most apt description of the expression he pulled. I watched as the drones seemed almost embarrassed by the display of their boss being berated so by their Queen, and, while they all seemed to be distracted by what was going on, inched my way closer to the tanks by crawling on my belly with agonising slowness.
“Enough!” bellowed Chrysalis. “No more! No more of your insipid excuses. I was a fool to listen to you! To think even for a minute that your competence could match your boundless ambition!”
Now, contrary to the impression that silly adventure stories might give of the inherent volatility of large metal structures containing highly flammable fuel, they tend not to immediately blow up if even a bumblebee happens to nudge into them a little too hard. Fuel needs something to ignite it, and a fusillade of musket shot or even magic would do little more than puncture its container. This is exactly what had happened; while it was, in its own way, very satisfying to watch Dorylus being told off by Chrysalis yet again, I tore my attention away from the spectacle to those fuel tanks. Most of the volley that was fired at us struck the far wall beyond, but these weapons are infamously inaccurate, which is why earth ponies had to stand in large clumps in the hope that at least one of them might hit the metaphorical barn door, and two, perhaps even three, had struck the tanks themselves. These had formed rather large holes, almost as wide as my hoof, with jagged edges, from which the fuel within spewed forth to form a slowly-growing puddle on the suspended platform. [Musket shot was made of lead, which, as a soft metal, tended to shatter when it hit a target. This explains why the holes made by the shot were so large.]
I could smell the acrid tang of fuel, even above that of my own sweat and fear, and that, I assumed, could only be a good thing. Science was never my strong point, and neither were any academic subjects for that matter, but I’d smoked enough cigars to know that air was needed to ignite something, and the fumes were mixing well with it. I nudged the cowering Spring Rain in the belly, and she looked at me with fearful eyes, however, when I indicated to the leaking fuel tanks with an energetic nod of my head, she got the message and began to follow me in crawling over there.
It was probably too much to ask for Chrysalis and Dorylus to carry on with their little discussion while Spring Rain and I burned their hangar to the ground, but I’d made the not unreasonable assumption that Chrysalis’ rage at her underling’s apparent incompetence would distract her long enough. The floor just in front of me exploded in a bright emerald flash, and I felt a momentary intense blast of heat singing my nose.
“I am not done with you!” Chrysalis landed before me, and the walkway shuddered just as I did. I looked up, following the line of her long, slim legs, riddled with those peculiar holes, to her equally narrow, almost emaciated-looking barrel, and up to see her face sneering down at me as though I was something distinctly unpleasant left in her path on a nice morning walk. That look of utter contempt, however, slowly changed to an amused grin.
“Look how the Prince of Blood bows before the Queen of the Changelings!” she roared. Sycophantic laughter bubbled up from the drones, who, still hovering in mid-air, moved to surround us.
In spite of my fear, that little jibe awoke some measure of aristocratic arrogance within me. I began to struggle up to my hooves, though they ached and my stomach lurched with the effort. My kris was still in my magical grasp, floating a short distance away and wreathed in my glowing aura. If I could just send it hurtling into the Queen’s neck. “The Prince of Blood bows only to Pri-”
“Oh no, you don’t!” My horn and the front part of my skull exploded in blinding agony as Chrysalis smacked my horn with her hoof, like the combination of the mother of all migraines and the worst hangover I have ever experienced. My vision was clouded with stars, so I heard, but did not see, my dagger drop harmlessly to the metal floor with a loud clatter somewhere.
“Sir!” I heard Cannon Fodder shout. Twisting my neck awkwardly to my right to see him, my aide, in defiance of all sense of reason and self-preservation charged at Chrysalis armed with little more than a discarded bayonet he’d picked up.
“You dare?” Chrysalis’ horn became shrouded with her sickly green aura, drawing in magic from beyond the veil. Yet as my suicidally brave aide, apparently filled with the old feudal spirit that demanded he protect his master, rapidly closed the distance, as the drones all around raced to get him, the magic sputtered, sparked, flickered, and vanished with a sudden ‘snap’ and ‘crackle’. Blinking through the stars that swam before my eyes, I saw a most gratifying sight - an expression of shock and fear on her face.
Chrysalis raised her hoof to ward off Cannon Fodder, and his wickedly sharp blade sliced into the tough chitin, carving a thin line into her royal flesh and drawing a trickle of blood. She hissed in pain. Faust, I wished I could do more than just watch, but trying to summon even the smallest amount of magic to move my kris to within reach to hack the Queen into neat little chunks brought blinding pain to my injured horn. My aide drew his head back to go in for another swing, but the drones that had gathered around us to watch swarmed in to protect their Queen, and buried him under their bodies.
“Keep that one alive!” roared Chrysalis. “I must know how he can stop my magic! I want him vivisected!” Her malevolent gaze then snapped quickly to me, as I was struggling to rise to my hooves once more. “And you!”
Chrysalis’ cold, clammy hoof pressed onto my back and pushed down. She chuckled to herself as she watched me struggle against her; she was strong, surprisingly so considering her gangly frame, and had no problems forcing back down on my belly once again. Damnation, thought I, we were so damned close. The fuel tanks were right there, spreading their flammable contents on the platform floor, close enough for me to have ignited it with a well-thrown cigar match. I could have fired a flare there, but with the Queen standing almost on top of me, she’d have struck my horn the moment she saw it begin to glow with magic and before I could even get a shot off.
“Get off him!” shrieked Spring Rain. She started to lunge towards the dread Queen of the Changelings, but stopped dead in her tracks, shaking with terror. Whatever iota of bravery she had rapidly evaporated under that withering, silent stare. All the kirin could do was look away, and mutter under her breath a frustrated, “Chi-bai!”
I was rather irritated that she had yet to burst into flames and consume this entire hangar in purifying nirik fire (though I ought to have been a little relieved at her restraint, seeing as I was still inside said hangar). But, as I turned my head around the other way to look at her, standing there beside me before the most hated creature in most, if not all, of Equus, I could see that she was much too afraid to be angry. It was a perfectly justifiable reaction. I could hardly be upset or annoyed at that, for I felt much in the same way; her eyes were wide, ears flattened against her head, and she shivered and whimpered to herself. I had to get her angry enough to transform, and making other ponies angry at me to the point of incoherent rage seems to have been a unique skill of mine as Rarity would attest, but I had to do so without the Changelings noticing.
So, Chrysalis knew about Cannon Fodder, one of the many aces up my sleeve that I was running very low on here. I expect that she would have found out anyway, though I hoped that she remained ignorant about the exact mechanism by which his unique debility worked. As the enemy was quite fond of saying, there was little that escaped their network of spies, so really it was only a matter of time. However, quite how that information would help them in the long run remained to be seen. The drones pinning him down dispersed, taking to the air again, while leaving two to keep my aide restrained against the ground. He’d received a few bruises from being struck with hooves and blood flowed freely from his nose, but other than that and a look of embarrassment on his face, he seemed relatively unscathed.
“Sorry, sir,” said Cannon Fodder. He sounded rather sheepish, as though his failed attempt at regicide was little more than a minor inconvenience, like allowing one’s tea to grow cold.
“Quite alright,” I said, despite everything being the precise opposite of that. “It must be difficult to aim for her heart when she doesn’t have one.”
The pressure on my back increased, pushing me painfully into the hard, metal floor. My flogging scars did not like that one bit, nearly to the same degree as my spine and ribs. It felt as though something was on the verge of snapping like a twig under the pressure, but the monstrous Queen here seemed to know exactly how much force to exert to inflict pain but not permanent damage. I was under no illusion that, if she wanted to, she’d burst my chest like a ripe tomato underhoof. She lowered her head almost down to my level, and over the tang of fuel fumes and blood I could smell her rancid breath.
“Dorylus was right on one thing,” said Chrysalis, her voice lowering from angry yelling to something a little more tolerable to the ears, “you are very annoying.”
“One does one’s best,” I croaked out. I made another half-hearted effort to push myself up to maintain some semblance of equine dignity here. My shaking hooves struggled in vain, but Chrysalis, apparently tired of torturing me like this, mercifully relented and stepped back, allowing me to stand unsteadily.
“I should have had you killed the moment you surrendered,” she hissed at me.
“That’s rather unsporting, and against the rules,” I said, knowing full well that she didn’t care about such things. “Out of interest, why didn’t you?”
Or, for that matter, why don’t you now? Once again, she had me entirely at her mercy. She could have blasted me into my component molecules with a single burst of magic, or, if she felt that I was simply not worth the effort, wave her hoof and one of her many drones would plunge their blade straight into my neck. Yet she still did not, after all, I survived long enough to write this. A tyrant such as she loves to gloat; their egos are vast and hungry, requiring constant feeding lest they wither and die, and she is forced to confront the fact that, really, there was very little of worth to her existence beyond the shallow pursuit of power. It was not enough that she had won, she had to feel that victory in order to satiate that ego.
My head was pounding like a yak wardrum, and I felt sick, both from the exertion of running and fighting and with the fear. The Queen towered over me, exuding malice and menace. She was shortly joined by Dorylus, who landed next to her with an uncharacteristically ungainly touchdown on the metal floor, with his head bowed in admonishment and shame. At first she didn’t seem to notice him, but I could tell that she was deliberately ignoring him, but after a few moments of this she finally turned her head to acknowledge him.
“Because this imbecile had somehow convinced me that you were of more worth to us alive,” she hissed.
“My Queen, I only wished to-”
“Serve me?” interrupted Chrysalis, and Dorylus quickly clammed up and bowed his head. “Or serve yourself? I expect only two things from my Purestrains, Dorylus, loyalty and discipline, and you have been deficient in displaying both. You, with your self-serving schemes, allowed an enemy of the Hives to live long enough to almost ruin everything again! Not only that, you failed to ruthlessly crush the resistance movement that-” She waved her hoof in the vague direction of the titanic struggle still being fought all around us “-is inside this hangar as we speak! I should have taken personal control of Operation: Sunburn sooner.”
Suitably admonished, Dorylus could only keep his head bowed, staring at the space between his hooves. I very nearly felt sorry for him, but then I remembered that he locked me alone in a dingy cellar for several days and any feelings of sympathy swiftly evaporated.
Chrysalis drew in a deep breath and released it as a heavy sigh, and her rage seemed to be quelled at last. “These are only setbacks,” she said, and then she turned her attention to me. “The Hives grow stronger in the face of adversity. You have ultimately failed, princeling; your kirin resistance and your pirates cannot hope to win against the full might of a Changeling war-swarm, and once we have removed them from these docks we will begin our invasion of Equestria. I will not make the same mistake that Dorylus made. You will die now, knowing that you have failed.”
The growing puddle of fuel had by now spread across much of the platform, reaching Dorylus’ hooves. He, having spent much of the conversation staring down at them, had clearly noticed this, and finally worked up the courage to point this out: “My Queen, we should-”
“Shut up, Dorylus!” snapped Chrysalis, and rather than press this quite important issue, the Purestrain did as he was told and regarded the pool with quiet but increasing alarm. There was a danger that she would finally pay attention to what was really going on here, so I had to keep her distracted for long enough for me to provoke Spring Rain. It was all a tall order, but I had I like to think that I had a knack for improvisation as well as being ‘very annoying’, as she put it.
“What will happen to the hostages?” I asked; I heard Spring Rain beside me take a sudden intake of breath. I almost felt a little guilty about where I was about to take this line of conversation, but if it worked then I might be forgiven for this, and, more importantly, alive.
A small, confused frown formed on Chrysalis’ face. “What are you bleating about now?”
“The Changelings took hostages from this city when they invaded,” I said. “My kirin friend’s family amongst them. I hope that they are being treated well.”
“I don’t understand. You are about to die, princeling, and Equestria will fall, and you are concerned about a group of mere kirins?”
“That you don’t understand is the reason why your cabinet is filled with pathetic, useless yes-drones like Dorylus and why you will ultimately lose.” Careful, thought I, I was on the verge of giving her some useful advice that she might actually take heed of, but the flash of anger on her face told me that she was in no danger of being sensible. “But if I am about to die, as you say, then indulge me. It is tradition, after all, to grant a condemned pony one last request.”
I had thought to ask for one last cigar before being cut down, but aside from it being exceedingly unlikely that she, Dorylus, or any of the drones present would have any worth smoking on them, they were also unlikely to be so stupid as to actually grant me one so close to the fuel tanks. After all, one of the very many warning signs plastered over their metal surface warned that smoking was not advised so close to them. Besides, it was best to let her carry on believing that she had won; creatures who think themselves to be secure in their victory were far more likely to make stupid mistakes.
“My husband and son,” said Spring Rain, her tone almost pleading. She took a cautious step forward closer to Chrysalis, who regarded the kirin as though she had only just noticed her for the first time. “I don’t care what happens to me. I just want them to be safe.”
“Kirin, if you wanted to keep your family safe, then why would you throw your lot in with this idiot prince?” sneered Chrysalis. I felt a glimmer of hope blossom within; the Queen could not resist another opportunity to indulge her ego by flaunting her power, and for that reason alone I still drew breath. “That is the entire point of us taking hostages. If you choose to defy the Hives then you and those you love must suffer the consequences, and it will be your fault. You will die knowing that what happens next was down to you. It would be a terrible shame for your foal to grow up without his parents, but before you and your husband too are executed for this ridiculous show of defiance then you can at least take some comfort in knowing that your foal will serve the Hives well as cattle.”
Spring Rain’s body trembled, and her breathing became quick and shallow. Tears rimmed her eyes. Good, she was starting to get angry, but she needed that little push to bring her over the edge.
“I’m sorry,” I said to her. “I never asked, but tell me about him.”
“He loved to paint, lah,” she said. “That paint set was his. He filled the house with his paintings; trees, kirins, ponies, dragons, anything, lah. I hid them after they took him because I can’t bear to see them. And- and-” Spring Rain stopped, her breath frozen in her throat, and she looked up and glared at the Queen of the Changelings, the one who stole her family from her and who listened to her pleadings with faint amusement. Her horn flickered with sparks, and she roared with an anger that had been bottled up and suppressed ever since the enemy raised their flag over her city, “I won’t let you take him!”
Chrysalis looked at her with a blank, curious expression, and broke out into a fit of laughter that sounded distressingly earnest. “I look forward to feasting on him. I will take your shape and gorge on his love for you!”
That was it. Flames licked around the length of Spring Rain’s horn, and I fancied that I could feel the heat radiating from her as a small prelude of the inferno to come. Still, I had to make sure that she would fully tip over the edge and transform and that I was at a reasonably safe distance from the blaze, so I raised my hoof, which had the added benefit of momentarily distracting everyone present from the kirin about to explode, and slapped her flanks. I am not particularly proud of doing that, but from personal experience I knew that was the most consistent way to make a mare angry (and stallions too, come to think of it), and, most importantly, it worked. The slap launched her a few steps forward away from me, and her hooves splashed into the puddles of fuel.
A pillar of blue and red nirik-fire engulfed Spring Rain’s small, outraged form, through which she was visible as a black silhouette whose eyes glowed with fury. She roared like a dragon as her body turned to fire. I turned and threw myself onto the floor with Cannon Fodder as the blast of intense heat struck us, stinging my hide and making every breath of hot air painful. The pillar evaporated as swiftly as it was summoned, leaving her body ablaze, but the flames swept through the spilled fuel. I heard drones shriek and cry out as the fires engulfed them.
Daring to look back, I saw the nirik, screaming heathen obscenities that sounded downright daemonic with her distorted voice, lunge for Chrysalis, who had escaped the fire by jumping into the air. Apparently stunned by the sudden eruption all around, the Queen hovered there, gazing in stunned horror as her drones fled the flames. Dorylus, whose body was being consumed by the flames so that he almost resembled a nirik himself, crying out in what must have been excruciating agony, threw himself into Spring Rain’s path and dragged her flaming form to the floor.
“My Queen!” he shouted, his ruined lungs and throat giving his voice a horrible, rasping quality. “Help me, please!”
Shaken out of her horrified stupor, Chrysalis darted over the side of the platform, escaping the flames, and disappeared from view, presumably to fly away from what would otherwise have been a fiery tomb.
Speaking of which, Dorylus’ wordless, agonised screams continued as he burned. Spring Rain had squirmed out of his grip, and he crawled about on the floor. I, of course, never thought highly of him, even amongst his fellow Purestrains, but those hideous wails, cracking as his flesh was eaten by the fires, haunt me still. The screams seemed to follow me as I picked myself up off the ground. I had sufficient wits to pick up my kris, which had become rather important to me right there for some reason, and, thrusting it into my sash for safekeeping, I ran, as I ever do, for dear life.
The next few moments are a blur in my memory, but piecing together the snapshots of clarity, the flames had swiftly reached the fuel tanks and exploded. I recall a second blast of heat, more intense than the first, hitting me in the rear as I ran down the walkways, and despite the urge to get the blazes out of there as swiftly as possible, I stopped to look over my shoulder. The fuel tanks looked as though they had been gouged open from the inside, as though a trapped dragon had ripped its way out with its claws, and they were thoroughly ablaze. Black smoke, acrid and foul, rose and smothered the high ceiling. White hot flames lapped around the blacked steel, shrivelling those warning stickers, and they travelled upwards, along the pipes that led straight towards those airships. I knew that they were done for—even if the spreading flames did not reach them, the damage to this structure and the equipment and such that kept them operational would render them as very expensive paperweights, but I still wanted to make certain.
The fight in the hangar had ceased with this new development, save for a few skirmishes between isolated groups. The need to escape the fires had wisely superseded the greater conflict, and drones and ponies, kirins, and so on alike scrambled for the exits. Cannon Fodder and I were still on the walkway, along with a few other individuals further along who I could not make out. There was no sign of Spring Rain, and I felt a sudden pang of horror and guilt; niriks might be fireproof, but I wasn’t so sure about shrapnel. Jagged chunks of flame-blackened metal was scattered around the platform.
A figure burst from the flames, wreathed in fire of a different, unnatural colour. A nirik, who I slowly recognised as Spring Rain galloped towards us, still clearly outraged judging by the snarl on her lips and the murder in her eyes.
“Aiyah, wait for me!” she cried out, her voice still distorted and unnaturally loud. She came to a stop just before me, just close enough that the heat radiating from her burning body caused the sweat to positively flood down my face like a waterfall. “You expect to leave without saying ‘goodbye’? I thought a prince would have better manners, lah!”
“Sorry,” I said, “but I didn’t plan to stick around while everything burns down around us.”
The fires reached one of the ships, and a moment later the walkway we stood upon was shaken by another blast as its fuel tank exploded. A great gout of fire ripped open a jagged hole in its hull, from which black smoke poured, and the flames spread to engulf the envelope above it. That was one down, at least, I thought with some satisfaction.
[It is more likely that the fire had reached the gunpowder stores inside the ship, causing the explosion that Blueblood described.]
“Are you not coming with us?” I asked. In truth, I had grown rather attached to her; a stallion doesn’t have his life saved several times over by another without feeling at least a little bit of affection for his saviour.
Spring Rain shook her head, and her fires dimmed slightly. “I stay here and fight,” she said, after the briefest moments of thought. “Now go! I’ll see you when this is all over, lah. You better bring me something nice, too!”
A second explosion from another airship, closer this time, which tore a large gash along the length of a single deck of its hull, gave me the impetus to make good on my escape. I’d have shaken Spring Rain’s hoof, but it was still on fire, so I settled for a quiet nod and a smile, before turning on my hooves and galloping down the walkway as fast as my remaining strength and endurance would allow me to.
The hangar, as vast as it was inside, was rapidly filling with smoke. It stung my eyes and burned my throat, causing me to break into fits of painful coughing that hurt my chest. Still, I pushed myself onwards, Cannon Fodder in tow. We passed panicked drones likewise fleeing to whatever safety they could manage. The roar of the flames filled the air, interspersed with the barked orders of those still trying to maintain some sort of order. It seemed improbable to me, even as I was running for my life and freedom, that the Changelings hadn’t implemented some sort of fire safety system; I’m no expert on such things, and indeed many other things too, but I’d imagine that sprinklers of some sort might have been the bare minimum, or some sort of magic involved. Given Queen Chrysalis’ impatience and Dorylus’ willingness to go along with it to placate her, I could only assume that they skimped on such things in order to speed along Operation: Sunburn, and now they were paying for it.
[Commercial and military airship services take safety very seriously for reasons that should be obvious, but Blueblood’s assumption that the Changelings had cut corners in following internationally-accepted rules on safety to accelerate their plans for the invasion are backed up by surviving evidence and witnesses. Had those safety standards been followed, it is unlikely that a fire of this magnitude would have spread and most of the airships would have been saved.]
The smaller cargo airship was still there, thankfully un-burned, and as I raced into the hold, still yawning open, I found out why when I almost barged straight into Square Basher there. Here, the ponies had all gathered, our band of escaped Equestrian soldiers and freed slaves who didn’t fancy their luck with the pirates alike, along with the odd kirin who apparently decided that partisan warfare was not for them and they ought to try their luck as refugees.
“Couldn’t leave you behind, sir!” said Square Basher, grinning inanely. She was positively smothered in Changeling ichor and blood, likely hers as I gathered from the assortment of cuts and gashes she had earned in the fight.
I wasn’t sure I could say the same were I in her position, so I expressed my gratitude with a curt, stately nod. “Does anypony know how to fly this thing?” I asked, eager to get underway before the inferno reached us.
“We’ve captured the crew,” she said. “This way, sir!”
She led me through the hold, up a flight of stairs to the deck. Cannon Fodder had elected to remain behind in the safety of the hold; we hadn’t even started moving before his pallour took on a rather sickly green tone and his stomach made ominous gurgling noises that heralded much horror for him to come. I would be relieved to be as far away from him as possible when his aversion to flying took its inevitable course. There, a small crew of Changelings experienced a reversal of their station in life as they laboured frantically at the various ropes and cables and what not under the careful watch of their former slaves and prisoners. The engines spluttered into life, their rumbling roars muddled and drowned by that of the fires, and the ship itself drifted forwards, towards the yawning exit of the hangar and the wide expanse of sky and ocean beyond.
“Can we trust them?” I asked. My words came out as a hoarse, ragged whisper; I felt dead on my hooves, which were made of lead and now required a monumental effort to slowly drag them along the metal floor. Fatigue almost overwhelmed me entirely, and I wanted nothing more than to curl up on the floor then and there and sleep until death finally took me. That is, if the pain in my limbs and from my singed coat would allow me to. I needed a drink, but I doubted that there would be anything approaching a well-stocked bar here; typically a journey by airship called for a perfectly chilled gin and tonic, but it would appear that I might have to settle for something used to clean out the engines.
Square Basher nodded. “Yes sir. We gave them a choice—either do what we tell them or they can stay behind and burn, or face Chrysalis if they survive. They chose the first option, sir.” She stopped suddenly, and stood rather awkwardly. I received the impression that she almost wanted to hug me, or at the very least place a reassuring hoof on my shoulder, but decorum and the gulf between our respective stations in life, quite rightly, halted her from doing it. “If you don’t mind me saying, sir, that was bloody incredible.”
“I think you and the kirins did most of the work,” I said, being quite earnest in that way that only inflates my reputation for heroics. “Are you certain the drones won’t turn on us?”
The awkward moment passed as I steered the conversation straight back onto the business of getting us out alive. “Absolutely, sir. They’re just as afraid of Chrysalis as they are of us. I did have to name-drop you, sir. Hope you don’t mind.”
Sensible drones, then, if they could be believed. I wasn’t quite so certain myself, but I had little other choice but to accept; I obviously had no idea how to pilot an airship, and if I didn’t know then I highly doubted that Square Basher or anypony else present, Equestrian or not, knew either, unless Switch Blade had an unexpected history of joy-riding airships, which it transpired he did not.
We emerged onto the deck, and the scorching heat from the burning hangar once more stung my skin and eyes. I sat on the wooden floor, watching passively but with growing anxiety as our intrepid little craft surged forwards, faster and faster, and the flames consumed the hangar around us. Another airship, closer now, had caught fire, and its gas envelope had become an incandescent globe of raging flames. The black smoke swirled around us, growing denser like a descending fog, filling my nostrils with its acrid stench and singing my damaged lungs. The roof above us had likewise caught fire, and to look up and past our own airship’s envelope one could imagine that the sky itself burned as though Celestia had accidentally nudged the sun a little too close to the world. A stray piece of burning debris would end our daring escape right there and then. I thought that we might not make it, for the fuel had spread to the ground level of the hangar beneath us and likewise burned, sending great tongues of flame licking upwards at our tiny craft, but our Changeling crew was just as keen on self-preservation as I was, and the horrid smoke parted to reveal the expanse of clear blue ocean, sky, and and the limitless horizon beyond. Finally, I could breathe; relatively cooler, crisper air soothed my aching lungs and stinging flesh.
As our airship accelerated and climbed into the air, I stumbled on over to the rear of the gondola, to look back at the burning hangar. I watched, as we drifted slowly away, expecting to see drones or other ships in hot pursuit, as portions of the ceiling, weakened by the intense heat, collapsed in on themselves. The black smoke continued to rise in great, churning pillars ascending to the heavens above. I could scarcely imagine that such a conflagration would be put out soon, and I could feel confident that we had utterly destroyed the invasion fleet.
Watching the docks recede into the distance, I could take in the view of the rest of the city of Marelacca. Smaller towers of smoke could be seen elsewhere, dotted here and there amidst the dense city streets from the fighting. Any feeling of triumph was squashed by the weight of knowing that for the city it was only the beginning; that through my actions here I would unleash the petty vengeance of an enraged Queen Chrysalis upon an innocent population, and the reassurance that, as far as the greater war was concerned, this was ‘worth it’ was of no comfort at all. I thought of Spring Rain, and, while I was never one to bother Faust with my tedious prayers, I did pray that, whatever happened, she would live and be reunited with her family. For the both of us the fight would invariably continue, and in our own ways we knew it would be filled with nothing but pain and terror.
As was always the case, the sweet taste of victory turns to ashes in one’s mouth when one understands its cost, and the realisation that many more will be needed before the misery can truly be over brings the bile up one’s throat. Yet it was only one part of a greater conflict that still raged halfway across the world, where such horrors were a daily occurrence to the ponies we had liberated along the way, and one that I would, after a momentary hero’s welcome, a pat on the back, and a medal or two, be thrust straight back into.
It would not do well to dwell on such things; I was alive and going home to a well-deserved rest that I was determined to drag out for as long as possible, and that, I tried to convince myself, was worth feeling happy about. I’d had enough of watching the city recede into the distance, for my part in their fight was thankfully over, and as I crossed the deck something rather important had occurred to me:
“Does anypony here know the way to Equestria?”
[It is on this note that Blueblood’s account of Operation: Sunburn comes to an end. The airship crossed the Celestial Sea in three days and crash-landed near a small earth pony village in the vicinity of Hollow Shades, just as the supply of food and fresh water was about to run out. Every creature on board was swiftly apprehended by the local police force and militia, who believed them to be the spearhead of a Changeling invasion fleet. Prince Blueblood would spend another two days in a police cell before the news filtered to me and I could arrange for his release. When I arrived to greet him at the police station, he remarked that his pony jailers were not much of an improvement on the Changelings.
Given this rather abrupt end, it would be appropriate to provide readers with further context around this relatively unknown front of the Changeling War. As ever, we turn to Paperweight’s A Concise History of the Changeling War for a short but informative description of the conflict beyond my nephew’s personal involvement in it.]
Whether or not Operation: Sunburn was a genuine effort to invade Equestria from across the sea, a wild fantasy that was doomed to fail, or a merely a feint to draw forces away from the Badlands fronts remains a point of much scholarly discussion that is beyond the scope of this book to explore fully. However, though the Marelaccan/Coltcuttan campaign is regarded as a mere sideshow compared to Field Marshal Hardscrabble’s three-pronged offensives into Changeling territory, it cannot be denied that Queen Chrysalis’ strange decision to commit to such a costly drain of resources could only have accelerated the demise of her regime.
With the almost complete destruction of the fleet at the hooves of a combined kirin, pony, and pirate uprising led by Commissar Prince Blueblood, any hope of invading Equestria, real or imagined, was crushed. This, however, left a sizable Changeling force all but stranded in Marelacca, hundreds of miles from where the ‘real’ war was being fought.
Queen Chrysalis was in Marelacca at the time, and ordered a brutal crackdown on the anti-Changeling resistance in the city before departing for the Badlands. After the initial invasion she had used a softer approach to imposing her rule through working with local anti-Equestrian groups, but her anger at her plot unravelling pushed her to fall back on much harsher methods. However, the brutal methods that had worked well against the small, relatively isolated and disparate pony tribes of the Badlands that rebelled against her rule were less effective in a large and diverse city such as Marelacca.
Plans had been drawn up to deport the entire population of the city to the Badlands to serve as ‘livestock’, but the destruction of the fleet made that impossible. Smaller shipments across the seas were made, but were raided by a resurgent pirate fleet, and the liberated slaves often bolstered their ranks. In the city itself, however, martial law was imposed. Hostage-taking and random reprisals against civilians were the main tools the Changelings used to attempt to maintain order, but these only served to stoke the fires of resistance. Chrysalis’ promises of independence following a Changeling victory were increasingly exposed as the lies they were. In the countryside and the jungles, Changeling rule was virtually non-existent, providing the resistance with a base from which to strike.
Resistance to Changeling occupation would grow in strength, supported and supplied from afar by Princess Luna’s ‘Ministry of Unladylike Warfare’ to the point where, by the time Teratoma Hive was being sieged, the city was in open revolt and the Changelings had lost effective control over it. Attacks on Changeling supply lines and infrastructure and assassinations of key officers and the few remaining collaborators were their main methods of resistance, though few actions matched the spectacle of the destruction of the fleet. The partisan warfare, however, would exact a terrible toll on the civilian population, particularly in reprisals by occupying Blackhorns that would only drive more and more citizens into the ranks of an increasingly organised resistance. This would lay the groundwork for independence from the city following the end of the war.
The Ministry of War, who were not aware of Operation: Sunburn until Prince Blueblood’s return to Equestria, believed that the occupation of Marelacca was a prelude to an invasion of Coltcutta, and sent XVI Corps led by Lieutenant General Willow to defend the colony. While both sides would pour soldiers and weapons into this ‘sideshow’, it was one that the Equestrians, with their superior numbers and industry, could better afford to maintain, and one that the Changelings could not. Unwilling to admit that she had made a mistake in approving this plan, Queen Chrysalis ignored the advice of the remaining Purestrains willing to contradict her (especially Hive Marshal Chela who had requested the war swarms assigned to Sunburn be returned to her command) and ordered an invasion of Coltcutta to save face, which was to be led by Hive Marshal Chilopoda.
The speed at which the Changelings advanced through the jungle had caught the Equestrians and Coltcuttans by surprise and sent them into a retreat. Changeling infiltrators attempted to work with independence organisations within Coltcutta, but while this was of deep concern to the colonial authorities, the conspiracy failed to bear fruit even as war-swarms crossed the border into Coltcutta. The largest Coltcuttan independence groups were unwilling to exchange one mistress for a harsher one.
The environment here shaped the campaign on both sides. The tempo of operations in this theatre was dictated by the yearly monsoon, which effectively shut down all operations for three months in a year. The single track dirt roads through the dense jungle strangled supply lines. Exotic diseases, worsened by the heat and humidity, took their toll on both sides.
As the Equestrians retreated further into Coltcutta, the Changelings outstripped their supply lines and were exhausted and starving. The Equestrians too were in a poor state, having taken severe casualties. However, buoyed by the unexpectedly successful advance, Chilopoda believed that victory was merely one more battle away, and that his starving troops would feast on the love of captured Equestrian and Coltcuttan soldiers and the civilian population of Coltcutta. Changeling forces would launch a series of futile attacks against entrenched Equestrian positions at the villages of Imfilly and Coltima, until starvation forced junior officers to order a retreat. For this act of mercy to their drones many were executed for disobeying Chilopoda’s orders to attack.
Despite their victory, the Equestrians were in no fit state to pursue; they had suffered horrendous casualties in a desperate fight that ought to be commemorated as much as the Battle of the Virion Hive, and Lieutenant General Willow was cautious enough not to repeat the same error his enemy had made. Liberation for Marelacca would coincide with the end of the war in the Badlands, as Equestrian forces landed and occupied the city without resistance, and following a political campaign instigated by Prince Blueblood, the process of decolonisation and the founding of the Association of Friends would follow.