//------------------------------// // Chapter 12 // Story: The Emergency // by Wheller //------------------------------// Chapter 12 The rest of the trip was rather uneventful. The airheads and hoofers eventually got bored of antagonising each other, or so, that was the official story coming from both camps. In reality, they had all heard and seen Summer Lightfall threatening to knock the teeth out of anyone who got into a fight. Summer soon discovered that her single chevron made a big difference when talking to pretty much anyone. Every one of the hoofers on the ship was a private, except for her, Colour Sergeant Gunmetal, and Lieutenant Wolsey. She actually had pull with people! She didn't let it go to her head though; just because she could technically order any private to do something doesn't mean that she should. Lance Corporal was an appointment in the army just as much as it was a rank. Lieutenant Wolsey was in her right to freely give it to anyone she thought deserved it, and she could also take it away in pretty much the same manner that she'd given it. Summer was fair, she kept everyone in line, and kept the rest of the hoofers from antagonising the airheads, and she'd only needed to make Joker clean the ship's toilets once to let everyone know that she was serious. … Madeline Wolsey had been particularly impressed with Lance Corporal Lightfall, she was a natural leader, and if she kept this up she'd make corporal well ahead of schedule. She had a feeling that she’d be relying a lot on Lightfall when they got out there into the field. Wolsey didn’t want anyone to know this, but she was scared. More than just a little scared, very scared, honestly she wasn’t sure she was cut out for this. Command, being an officer, hell, even serving in the military wasn’t what she wanted to do with her life. She had only joined up because she was practically obligated to have. Her grandmother had been Field Marshall Trixie; her mother had been a colonel in an artillery regiment. Her father had been a brigadier in the Welaran Army. The thought of doing anything else with her life would have sent her parents over the deep end. The bigger problem was that Madeline didn’t even know what it was that she had really wanted to do with her life. She was twenty six, and she didn’t have any better ideas then she did when she was sixteen. If not for her family’s history of military service, she’d have been a bum on the streets by now. Madeline was by no means a royalist, but she did envy one part of Old Monarchy society, and that was the cutie mark. A cutie mark told a pony what their talent was, and once they had one, it would determine what they would do with their lives. Modern Republican society saw this as a curse, a mark of slavery, and something that froze one’s social class in place. Once a cutie mark was obtained social mobility was not possible. Your class could not go up; your class could not go down. If your cutie mark was in shovelling dung, then you shovelled dung until the end of your days and were expected to enjoy it. Madeline could see why the idea behind the cutie mark was bad. Still, for ponies as indecisive as she was, it would have been welcomed with open arms. And as she stood looking over the holographic display of Sarawak, her indecisiveness was getting the worst of her, once again. Captain Heartstrings had asked her to point out where she thought anti-aircraft guns would most likely be placed at, reasoning that her training in ground pounder tactics would help her determine the best places for such guns would be. Honestly? She didn’t know. There weren’t really any places that leapt out at her and screamed: PUT AA GUN HERE. Well... there was one hill that looked good for one, and that was the one that the Regiment’s forward firebase had been built around. Other than that... An idea popped into her head. Lance Corporal Lightfall had a head on her shoulders. She would call the Lance Corporal to her quarters and have her pick out places that she would think would make good locations to put anti-aircraft guns at. Then she could recommend those places to Captain Heartstrings. She would tell Lightfall that it was an... exercise, part of her appointment to lance corporal. Yes! Brilliant! There was absolutely nothing that could go wrong with this plan! ... Summer had to admit, when Lieutenant Wolsey had asked her to come to her quarters, she was more than a little nervous. The invitation... and that’s exactly what it was, an invitation, had come from practically nowhere. She had only spoken to the lieutenant on three occasions thus far. She didn’t really know her all that well, what could she have wanted? Summer stopped outside the lieutenant’s quarters and knocked on the compartment door with her hoof. ‘Enter’, the lieutenant’s voice called out from inside. Summer pushed open the compartment door and entered the room to discover the lieutenant looking over a holographic display. ‘You asked to see me? Lef-tenant?’ Summer asked, offering her commanding officer a salute. ‘Ah, yes. Lance Corporal Lightfall. Good of you to have come’, Wolsey said with a smile, returning the salute, and offering Summer a seat on a chair sitting at the holographic display, directly across from her. ‘If I may ask, ma’am, what is this about? Summer asked, instinctively raising an eyebrow at the lieutenant. ‘I’ll get right to the point, Autumn... it is Autumn, isn’t it?’ Wolsey asked. ‘Summer, actually... ma’am’, Summer said, correcting the lieutenant. ‘Ah, my apologies. Well Summer, I’ll get to the point. You’ve got the brains; I honestly think that you’re command material. You’ve got the intellect. Now, I’m pretty important as far as the regimental commander is concerned... if I were to recommend you for a promotion... you’d get it. Like I said, you’ve got the intellect, you can figure things out, what you don’t have is the experience. I like you, you remind me a lot of me, which is why I’m going to help you out, get you what you deserve’, Wolsey said, offering her a warm smile. ‘I... thank you ma’am!’ Summer said, unsure of what to think of what the lieutenant had just said. ‘I’m going to tutor you in tactics and strategy, give you the edge you need, so to speak. I’ve prepared an exercise her for you, this is a map of Sarawak, which is where we are going, of course...’ Wolsey said as she slid her hoof over the map. ‘The most important thing to do when you’re planning an attack on something is to think like your opponent. Now... the Thunderchild is going to be coming from the northwest, think like the enemy commander. If you knew you could expect an aerial assault from the northwest. Where would you put anti-air emplacements?’ Summer looked over the northwest quadrant of the map before her, studying it for a few moments. The North West quadrant was a small, peninsular outcropping. It was a good place for the Thunderchild to move into because there wasn’t really anywhere that was in deep enough cover for an obvious anti-air emplacement. She looked up at Wolsey; the lieutenant was keeping a neutral expression. She figured that the lieutenant must have been trying to keep from nudging her to the right place. Summer looked back down at the map and reached out with her hoof, touching a spot on the end of the peninsula. ‘I’ll say this, you don’t pick any easy questions, do you, lef-tenant? If I were going to place an anti-air gun on this peninsula, I couldn’t do it in a normal fashion, because any enemy coming from the northwest would just blow it up. So what I would do would dig out a bunker at the end of this cliff and put a gun in here. Field of fire is going to be limited, but it might be enough to keep any invader off guard. Just to make sure, I’d also plant a dummy gun a couple metres back on the peninsula to bring the focus to that. I’d also put two guns hidden in the tree line back here, while the enemy are focusing on the dummy, the hidden gun on the peninsula will keep them busy, and let the two guns in the tree line do most of the work’, Summer said, tapping at the holographic screen to indicate each location. Wolsey nodded her head in affirmation. ‘Yes... very good, clever. I agree with your assessment. Well done Lance Corporal!’ Wolsey added with a smile. ‘Th... thank you Ma’am’, Summer said, offering her commanding officer a salute. ‘You’re welcome, you’re a natural at this, Lance Corporal, and I wouldn’t be surprised if you make Sergeant by the time this war is over!’ Wolsey said with a grin before dismissing her back to her quarters. Summer smiled, offering the lieutenant another salute before leaving. Wolsey looked down at the holographic display. It was brilliant, just brilliant enough that she could pass it off as her own assessment. It was just like someone of her reputation would think.