Fragment

by Heliostorm

Chapter 10: White Orchestra

Of the many players in the Third Rune War, Trottingham was amongst the smallest. More of a town than an actual city, it was a place steeped in history, being one of the few places to have survived Discord’s reign intact and to have escaped the fallout of the ensuing wars. The light of the quarter-moon reflected off ancient humble cobblestone streets and black-tiled roofs, and the city’s age showed in the unassuming brick row houses and the lovingly maintained, but hopelessly outdated infrastructure. It was the capital of its own homegrown democracy, a beacon of freedom that had the great misfortune of being on the wrong side of the Chaos Mountains.

The city was abuzz in activity. Squadrons of pegasi patrolled the skies, shaping the cloudscape above to be favorable for defensive positions. Teams of Earth ponies piled sandbags up into makeshift fortresses and strung long lengths of barbed wire across cobble avenues. Aging weapon systems had been dusted off and brought forth from storage to arm fortifications at the city perimeter. From her vantage point on a cloud high above the outskirts of the city, Rainbow Dash listened to the sounds of industry as the ponies below prepared to defend their home. The skies were still dark and the moonlight was weak, rendering it impossible to see much detail at all. Despite the darkness, however, Rainbow Dash felt no urge to sleep.

The sun was due to rise in two hours.

Her eyes scanned back and forth across the horizon like a radar dish. After the attack on Solarium, the Cloudsdale airfleet had retreated to Trottingham. Cut off from the other Free States by the Chaos Mountains, Trottingham could not expect much other help from its allies. Its greatest defense was its inconsequentiality—though nominally at war with the Imperial States, in truth it possessed little offensive capability. Its strategic value lay in its ability to act as a base from which espionage and harassment missions could be launched. Which was why they were here now, reinforcing the Trottingham defenders.

Dash sighed, seeing nothing but ordinary clouds as far the horizon. Defending is so boring, she thought. Being part of the first attack wave of the entire war had been exciting and all, but now it came at the price of being stuck guarding this little backwater town for the foreseeable future. If only they had been assigned to Baltimare—the siege of that city could last for months of nonstop fighting as massive artillery batteries traded blows and Cloudsdale’s Cumulofortress rained kilotons of firepower upon the city’s shields. Rainbow Dash’s blood pumped harder just thinking about it.

Just then, a blue-green streak slashed across the sky, catching the corner of Rainbow Dash’s eye. The pegasus sprang to her feet as the dot grew larger, eventually emerging as the familiar face of Lightning Dust.

Lightning Dust blasted through the air towards her, coming to an unusually rough landing on top of Dash’s cloud. She was gasping for breath, and a shiver ran down Rainbow Dash’s spine as she took in an expression hitherto unseen on Lightning Dust’s face: fear. The exhausted pegasus put a hoof on her heaving chest, head faced down towards the ground. “I need to get to General Spitfire!”

Rainbow Dash gauged the mare, carefully keeping worry from gracing her face. “What’s going on?”

Lightning Dust looked up and met Dash’s eyes. There was none of the cocky, arrogant swagger that Rainbow Dash had come to associate with the mare. “Solarium’s crossed the river! They’ve built a bridge; tanks, crossing now!”

Dash’s eyes widened. Maybe this won’t be so boring after all! “How many?”

“Umm...” Lightning Dust closed her eyes. Her mouth worked as though counting the remembered enemies out loud, and she shook her head several times. When she opened her eyes again they were struck by a kind of bewilderment at sights unseen.

“All of them, I think.”

Solarium’s Rapid Assembly Vehicle was the pinnacle of wartime industry. Straddling two separate railroad tracks, it was nothing less than an assembly plant on wheels, pulled along by six hulking metal steam locomotives. As the train marched across the grassy, moonlit fields on its way to Trottingham, metal and concrete continually flew out from the supply carts linked behind it, propelled through the air by the RAV’s titanic telekinesis engines, endlessly coalescing into new lengths of railroads as fast as the locomotives could pull. Using prefabricated parts, it could raise military bases from the ground within minutes, span rivers with steel bridges in hours. Such a feat of military industry was essential for Solarium to drive its largest machines into battle: the many-barreled Hydra artillery pieces, the gargantuan Leviathan superheavy tanks, the enormous Mobile Shield Engines that protected its sieging armies...

Oversight watched the RAV’s progress from the Second Airfleet’s flagship, the Magnificent. Solarium’s entire Second Army Group marched towards Trottingham. It was an altogether excessive amount of force for the tiny city, but morale was at a low since their failure to stop the Manehattanites from escaping into the Obsidian Caves, and the ponies of Solarium cried for vengeance.

“Trottingham should be visible in approximately fifteen minutes,” the navigator from up higher on the bridge.

From his command chair, General Greenblade cracked his neck and turned to a gray pegasus besides him. “You there, deliver a message to Trottingham. Tell them they have half an hour to surrender, or we’re going to steamroll their little village so flat their great-grandchildren won’t even be able to figure out where it was.”

The pegasus saluted dashed off. Greenblade turned to the rest of the bridge to bark orders. “Alright, mares and stallions. This is a textbook assault operation. Take it slow and steady and play it safe. Once the path for the Princess is clear, we’ll roll her in and be done by dinnertime.”

Oversight flicked open the gate of the dominator engine’s cage and stepped inside. As he took his seat, the noise of the engine’s cores rose in pitch, mirroring the rise in his own feelings of anticipation. This is it. There had been constant skirmishes between the city-states over land and politics throughout the so-called peace that had filled the land in the past decades, but city sieges were a phenomenon relegated only to the Rune Wars themselves. They were the crown jewel of warfare, the ultimate field of battle for every soldier and commanding officer.

It was time to make history.

Spitfire, three-star general of the Cloudsdale Air Force, shook her head once more at the map on the table. “This doesn’t make any sense. Trottingham’s never been anything but a tertiary objective in any of our simulations. They’ve brought the Second Army Group—the entire Second Army Group!”

The heads of the Trottingham military were arrayed around the room. Their shadows flickered in the candlelight against the worn stone walls and aging wooden furniture that made her feel like an old-fashioned knight rather than a modern commander. The old keep of Trottingham Castle had been requisitioned as their military headquarters due to the prestige and impregnability of the place, but the very durability of the walls that made them so attractive defensively made it a difficult facility to modernize.

“What do you suggest we do?” the one and only Trottingham general asked. Though decades Spitfire’s elder, the yellow pegasus had more combat experience in one hoof than he did in his entire body.

Spitfire sighed. They weren’t going to like her suggestion, but she saw no other option. “Retreat. Get as many of our forces across the mountains as we can. We don’t stand a chance, and every soldier that gets out is a soldier than can fight.”

“And abandon our home?” By the look on the general’s face, Spitfire might as well have suggested he go mount himself. “Some of our families have lived here for centuries. We will not give up so easily.”

Yeah, I didn’t think so, but it was worth a shot. Spitfire sighed again. But she would not resign herself, and more importantly, the ponies under her command, to such a fate. “Fine, Plan B then. We’ll engage their first wave, then when they overwhelm us we’ll retreat behind the city shield and try to last as long as we can.” Yeah right.

“The shield should be able to last a few months...” one of the other commanders suggested.

Spitfire scoffed. “I doubt that. A few weeks, at the most.”

“A few weeks.” The old stallion repeated her words like they were acid. “A shield designed to last the entire length of this war... will last a few weeks?”

Spitfire crossed her hooves and flicked her tail. “It wasn’t designed to last against Solarium’s entire Second Army.” She glanced at the window. Imbeciles. These Trottingham ponies were noble, but they had no idea what they were getting into. And it had been her job to somehow teach them, but it was far too late for that. This has got to be the worst assignment ever.

“It’s not all that bad,” she continued. “Even the worst scenario I can imagine, we should be able to hold out at least a week. That’s a week in which half of Solarium’s firepower is tied up attacking—” a worthless target, she had been about to say, but that would have gone over poorly, “—us, so that’s a week where the rest of our forces can exploit that.” And it’s why I can’t fathom why they would do this, she added mentally. Solarium hardly had the kind of resources to tie up in frivolous pursuits.

“And is a week long enough for Manehattan or Fillydelphia to reinforce us?”

Spitfire shook her head again. “Wouldn’t matter. Their air forces aren’t big enough to ship enough soldiers across the mountains to make a difference. We’re alone here.”

The general looked at the map again. "Then we shall fight to the end. Every inch they take of this city they shall pay for a thousandfold in blood.”

Yeah. You do that.

Watching Shining Armor’s reaction as Crystalline entered the briefing room was amusing. The emotions were subtle, and a pony that wasn’t looking for them might not have noticed, but they were unmistakably there. First was confusion, then indignation, then fury. Taking her seat next to him around the table, Crystalline merely flashed a smile to him and the Intelligence officer on the other side.

“Ma’am,” she nodded towards the small brown mare.

“Miss Crystalline.” The lieutenant’s response was curt and cold. That was fine; Crystalline didn’t expect to be warmly welcomed by anypony in Canterlot. Not after she went rogue. “I will inform General Chess Blitz you’ve arrived.” She quickly left via the back door.

“Why are you here?” Shining Armor asked, his eyes fixed on the far wall.

“To spite you,” she answered.

He turned towards her, eyeing the slightly-swollen side of her face as he tried to decide if she was joking or not. “Somehow, I don’t think you’re the type to risk her life just to spite me.”

“You don’t know me.” Her tone added, and this conversation is over.

The door opened again, and Chess Blitz walked in. Shining Armor leapt to his feet and saluted. “At ease, Captain,” Chess Blitz said. “Captain, if you’d give us a few alone, please...”

Shining Armor visible tensed, unsure what to think. “Yes sir,” he begrudgingly answered, and slowly walked out, eyeing the back of Crystalline’s head the entire time.

Chess Blitz sighed and sat down across from her. His eyes were shadowed, weary. “Why are you doing this?”

“Isn’t this what you wanted?”

“Wanted, yes. Expected, no.” Chess Blitz frowned. “I know how much you hate that place. What could possibly make you want to go back?”

“That’s my business, and none of yours.”

Chess Blitz closed his eyes. “Please, Crystalline. Don’t try to prove yourself anymore. Give up your blades and come home. Your parents miss you.”

Crystalline snorted, looking away towards the maps on the wall. “You used to believe in me.”

“And I still do. I know you’ve got an independent streak so wide I’m surprised you haven’t burned off your cutie mark yet. But this just isn’t the life for you.”

She shook her head. “I’ll decide what’s the life for me, thank you very much.”

Chess Blitz sighed. “You always did make me feel like a tired old stallion.” He breathed, seeming to surge with new energy. “Very well, I’ll let you go. But you will take orders from Captain Shining Armor this time, and you will not antagonize him further, understand?”

Crystalline still refused to meet his eyes. “Fine.”

“Do it as a favor to me.”

She looked down as the old general left the room.

There wasn’t much to see from the inside of a cloud, just a suffocating white fog in every direction. Claustrophobia was fairly common amongst Cloudsdale pegasi, who lived the majority of their lives in the open sky, and even their homes were open and roomy, for construction was much easier when your material was mere water vapor. For Rainbow Dash, there was just a twinge of nervousness as she sat hiding within the cloud. It was intensely disorienting to have her eyes open, looking around, and yet the view never changing from the omnipresent whiteness.

So she closed her eyes and listened.

The wind howled, distant but clear, as it always did at these altitudes. Far below, an owl hooted, and some birds twittered—early risers preempting the coming dawn. The faraway din of Trottingham ran like a low current beneath the surface, the ponies of the city scrambling to defend themselves now that the Solarium attack was almost here. And below even that tumult, and only if Rainbow Dash truly strained to hear it, was the ceaseless rumbling of endless divisions of armor and mechanized infantry.

The thunder-like booming of long-range artillery announced the start of battle. Artillery shells whistled through the air, followed by the shockwaves of their sonic booms. Flames roared as great gouts of dragonfire burst forth from the ground, Second Rune War-style flamethrower mines that would incinerate infantry and even scorch through the armor of light tanks. The pounding of cannons as Solarium tanks met Trottingham gun emplacements grew into an unending thunderstorm, shaking even the skies above.

Rainbow Dash continued to wait. Every muscle in her body was screaming to spring into action, every fiber of her being tense. There was no way to tell, from sound alone, what was happening, if the Solarium attackers were effortlessly crushing all resistance or the Trottingham defenders were holding their ground.

And then, the trumpet. Three short notes, shooting upwards in tone. Rainbow Dash could not hear the rising flutter of thousands of wings as Cloudsdale’s squadrons took to the air. She tensed at the imagined sound, but it was not yet her time. Only in her mind’s eye could she see the vast cloudscape, the roiling white spires and twisting spires of gray thunderclouds. It was an artificial battlefield, one crafted by the defenders themselves from the waters of the Sunsong River that flowed by Trottingham, and honed to their needs. The cumulofrigates, warships of water vapor, would detach themselves from the cloudscape, strike without warning at the Solarium airships with wind and lightning, then merge back into the cloudscape to await their next target. It was a brutally effective defensive tactic, one that had served Cloudsdale well in their wars afore, for it left the attacker no safe avenues of attack except to waste endless lives trying to destroy the cloud cover.

Hooves landed on her cloud, and Rainbow Dash heard First Lieutenant Copper bark, “Private, quit sleeping in there and prepare to launch!”

With practiced ease Dash burst upwards out of the cloud, flaring her wings dramatically against the moon. Ah, fresh air! “Yes ma’am!”

Copper turned and pointed to a bulbous white, black and gold form of a Solarium frigate crashing through the clouds ahead. It was being swarmed by colorful dots attempting to tear holes in the balloon, while its own escort of pegasi and gun chariots fought them off. As Rainbow Dash watched, a massive bolt of lightning suddenly erupted from a nearby pillar of cloud, striking the side of the airship’s gondola. The battle was too far away from her to tell if the attack had been effective; thunder roared, and more lightning flashed in the distance, engaging the dozen zeppelin frigates of Solarium’s first wave.

“That’s our target,” Copper said. “Follow me, and hit it on my signal.” She motioned to a mechanism on her back with a control button attached to her front left leg.

The two pegasi blasted into the air, soaring towards the chaotic swirling combatants. Rainbow Dash climbed high into the air above the battle, feeling the icy chill in her coat and the pressure of her helmet against her head, clinking the metal claws on her front shoes together in anticipation. She watched as Copper joined the fray, four other pegasi trailing behind her in a V formation as she tore across the upper surface of the frigate’s balloon, cutting small slits in it at she went. The balloon’s material was a tough, metallic fabric, and did not tear easily—due to the tiny pressure difference, even the biggest holes would take hours for the ship’s helium to leak out substantially. Which of course, was why Dash was here.

The mechanism on Copper’s back surged, emanating a bright white light. Dash dived, punching through the air with all her strength, her rainbow trail cutting apart the sky. She judged the distance between her and the airship, adjusting her direction to aim exactly at the largest hole Copper’s squadron had just cut, and timed her speed increase perfectly...

She tucked in her wings, and slipped right through the hole. A millisecond later she punched into one of the ship’s gas bags, the wall of air built up in front of her by sheer speed blasting right through the thin fabric. Then she flapped her wings one last time for that final burst of speed.

Ssssh-ch-pyuum!

The sonic rainboom tore apart the inside of the airship’s balloon, obliterating gas bags and twisting the steel frame into mangled fingers. Rainbow Dash twisted her body, using the force of the rainboom to blast her up and out of the airship as it violently exploded around her. As she screamed into the air the frigate fell apart. The gondola itself plunged through the air, still attached to a rough third of the balloon. Dash could see bodies jump out the doors, some spreading their wings into flight, others not so lucky to have such appendages. The little aerial battle quickly ceased as the Solarium pegasi nearby all dived to save their comrades.

Rainbow Dash was met with cheers from her friends. Chest swelling with pride, she flew on towards the next target...

The bridge of the Magnificent was a swarming hive of activity. Scrolls flew through the air, appearing and disappearing into flames, shouts echoed with the metal confines of the command center, levers flicked up and down as operators mashed buttons repeatedly. “Get a Shock Trooper team to take out the artillery battery behind that hill!” Greenblade shouted, his voice rising above the din. “Hydras, focus on the major turrets on the first gun emplacement line!” The view out the window swung as the airship swerved around to bring its main guns to bear, and the massive broadside rocked the floor. The shells rained down onto the cyan shields of Trottingham’s giant stationary guns, huge triple-barreled turrets embedded on great towers surrounding the city.

The battle was going well. Once the fields of flamethrower mines had been cleared, there had been a minimum of delay before the tank divisions started rolling. The eastern field was already taken, the northern one all but, and the southeast field was only delayed by fierce resistance on a well-fortified hill, already withering in the face of massive artillery bombardment. The first line of tanks were being held up by the Trottingham’s outer ring of defensive turrets, but as more Leviathans crawled up to the front those too would fall.

Oversight could feel the eager anticipation of the new recruits, the grim determination of the veterans, contrasted like the roaring hotness of a fresh flame against the soft methodical coals of a mature blaze. The battlefield for him consisted of hundreds of such flickering mental flames, like little candles that lit up the psychic darkness. Only those ponies with special training, “receivers”, as he thought of them, could open their minds up to this benign version of the dominator engine, so his view of the battlefield was scattered and incomplete. Sometimes this frustrated him as he struggled to form a clear picture of what was going on, but the full force of tens of thousands of minds would have obliterated his psyche, magical protection or no magical protection.

The sonic rainboom splashed across the sky, clearly visible even from the bridge of the Magnificent, its colors penetrating even the cyan shield bubble that surrounded the vessel. For a moment, the swarm ceased as all the ponies all watched the circular rainbow expand and dissipate. “She’s here,” a lieutenant said, simply stating the obvious.

Oversight frowned, mentally zooming in on that particular patch. There were three receivers in that area. Two were plunging to the ground, one was flying outside. He could feel the rush of wind, the panic, the pain. One candle flame caught another, while the third flickered out. It was hard not to be sympathetic, but his job demanded his attention. “Shall I implement a capture order?” Oversight asked.

Greenblade shrugged. “You can try.”

Colonel Stonehammer, a large, burly gray pegasus that had been scooting little metal icons across the tactical map, turned to the general. “That confirms that this is the same regiment that attacked Solarium.” His face was etched with a grim thirst for vengeance.

Greenblade merely smirked. “That’s hardly news, Colonel.” His eyes turned towards the tactical map. “Our initial probes indicate that the bulk of their aerial defenses are concentrated on the northern side. Curious. Why do you think that might be, Colonel?”

Stonehammer’s eyebrows pressed together as he pored over the map. “It’s a terrible position to cover their primary defenses from. They’re too far from the battlelines on the ground to respond effectively. They haven’t committed, but it’s too open a position to commit from.” He shook his head. “I don’t know.”

Greenblade tapped his hoof on the table. “Think politics, not tactics. The land defenders are from Trottingham, the air forces are from Cloudsdale.” He looked up. “General Spitfire is well aware of how untenable their situation is, and is refusing to commit her forces to a position where it might be hard to retreat from. Give her a good crack of the whip and she’ll probably break and run.” He grinned. “Makes our job easier.” He turned to the dominator engine. “Oversight? How would you propose we crack said whip?”

Oversight scrunched up his eyes, concentrating on the layout of the battlefield. It was obviously a rhetorical question, and one with an exceedingly obvious answer, but that was exactly what made him unsure if the obvious answer was the right one. He tried to crush the uncertainty from his voice. “Have the Task Group Cyclone line up at half a click from the enemy lines and broadside with vortex cannons.”

To his relief, Greenblade nodded contentedly. “Make it so.”

“Roger that.” Oversight closed his eyes, letting the dominator engine envelop his psyche as his mind reached out across time and space to the calm and confident thoughts of the airship captains of the Second Airfleet.

Rainbow Dash was soared into the air, racing around a cloud pillar in an effort to lose her pursuers. They were coming for her—they always came for her. The Solarium gun chariot blasted straight through the cloud pillar and climbed after her, its unicorn gunner firing weak stun bolts from his horn. Dash spiraled around evasively before twisting back downwards, racing past the less agile gun chariot. As she did, she felt the unicorn’s telekinetic pull on her tail, but he could do little except slow her down. Six Cloudsdale pegasi blew past her towards the gun chariot, and Dash smiled at the chariot’s predicament. Reckless! Rushing beyond your friends like that! Those chariot-pullers could have used some of good ol’ Sergeant Cumulus Catcher’s drilling.

Pegasi were dogfighting down below, trying to pierce each other with lances or slashing with claws on their hooves and blades on their wings. Dash snarled. She knew her place: retreat, hide in a cloud until the next airship comes along. It wasn’t her job to deal with the pegasi fliers—she was too valuable, too irreplaceable an asset, and every time she flew out it was with an entire squadron escorting her. Still, it burned that she had to hide when her friends were fighting. War for her would always be impersonal. She fought metal and helium, not flesh and feathers.

A horn rang, but it wasn’t the distinctive Cloudsdale trumpet. Rainbow Dash watched as the Solarium ponies suddenly began peeling off from their dogfights and retreating en masse. She slowed down to a hover, watching curiously as they sped away...

… into an incoming line of airships.

She grinned. My turn. But even as she thought those words, she noticed something was wrong. Rather than closing into beam cannon range, the airships were slowing down, coming to a stop half a kilometer away from the tip of the Cloudsdale defensive line. Dash squinted. These airships were different—there were strange mechanisms on the sides, like nothing she had ever seen before. They were wiry, circular frames embedded in a rectangular machine, and didn’t look like any kind of weapon.

Then, as one, the mechanisms transformed. The wiry frames extended long poles, around which were arrayed long blades, waving in incredibly complex patterns that confused her eyes just to follow them. The design looked as if it was inspired by an electric fan, in the sense that the design of a surgical scalpel might have had some relation to a flint machete.

Then they began to rotate, drawing and compressing air within them into circular patterns, creating rising cylinders of wind that quickly surpassed the airships themselves, cylinders that were all too familiar to Rainbow Dash. Each ship was summoning two massive tornadoes on either side.

“Get out of the way!” she shouted, plunging into a dive. Moments later, Task Group Cyclone unleashed their broadside, a wall of roaring, twisting wind that stormed towards the enemy lines, vaporizing the hurriedly-crafted cloud defenses. Impossibly, the tornados continued to grow in size and strength even once they had left the mechanisms which had birthed them, and Rainbow Dash realized it was much too late to escape.

The onrushing storm smacked her from her trajectory like a gigantic hoof, sending her spinning head-over-tail. The world blurred into a giant gray soup. She tried every trick she knew to fight to tornado and regain control of her own path, but she might as well have been trying to reason with it. Dark streaks rushed past her, other pegasi caught in the storm. Dash tucked in her wings and curled up into a ball, figuring it might at least minimize her injuries if she hit something. Any good flier could make a small tornado, but only the best could regain control over one that raged out of it, and she had never even heard of it being done to ones this large.

The wind began to slow down. At last, the vortex was dissipating, but not before it spat Rainbow Dash out like a sunflower seed shell. Immediately Dash flared her wings and fought the air—she was plummeting almost straight down towards the Trottingham city shield, and flapped desperately to try and gain altitude.

Too little, too late. Dash had just enough time to reflect on the appropriateness of her childhood nickname before smashing into the cyan bubble face-first. She remained there for a few moments, all six limbs flattened out to the sides, before beginning to slide down the bubble, making a long squeaking noise.

Still better than that time I broke the roof of the Thundercloud Manufactory...

Once her brain had stopped bouncing around inside her skull, she flipped around so as to be sliding on her back. She was racing down the side of the bubble shield, gaining speed all the while. Dash flared her wings, trying to catch the wind, but there was no way to take off from this position. She clenched her teeth, trying desperately to think of something, as artillery fire pounded against other parts of the shield, sending vibrations to rattle her bones. Trottingham was returning fire as well, as small holes opened up in the shield for artillery shells on their way out.

One such hole opened up right in front of her. Rainbow Dash had just enough time to register its existence before she fell through. Less than a millisecond later, a shell all but grazed her mane, and the hole closed back up.

Her heart thudded like somepony was beating a gong in her chest. She opened her wings once more, and this time the wind caught the right way, and she felt lift fill her feathers in a proper glide. She sighed, glad to be off the knife’s edge of death at last.

The trumpet sounded, echoing in the distance. Three notes, each lower than the last. No. It couldn’t be.

But it was. All across the sky, Dash saw tiny colorful shapes turn away from the battle and soar away. Her mouth hung as wide open as her eyes, unable to comprehend what was happening.

They were retreating. No, they were running away. Leaving Trottingham, abandoning all these ponies on the ground fighting desperately for their lives...

Abandoning her.

She didn’t even think to flap her wings until after she flew face-first into the clock tower.

“Enemy air forces in full retreat, sir,” Oversight reported, with no small amount of satisfaction. All across the battlefield, there was a lull in the enemy fire. Artillery pieces went quiet, machine gun emplacements stop rattling as the shocked defenders watched their allies retreat.

“We’re going to have to work on that coordination,” Greenblade responded coolly, not even turning from the bridge windows to crush Oversight’s sense of accomplishment. “We want to stagger the attack pattern vertically to maximize the the space covered, and fire off from the edge inwards so there’s minimal time to escape.” Oversight’s heart sank—the fact that Greenblade treated everypony like cadets in a training exercise was what made working for him the fast track to promotion, but it could get so irritating.

Greenblade paused and smiled, evidently aware of Oversight’s discomfort. “Now then, ladies and gentlecolts,” he addressed the entire bridge crew, “I think it’s time to roll in the Princess.”

One hundred thousand tons of gleaming metal, shining brightly in the white, obsidian and gold colors of Solarium, clanked its inexorable way to Trottingham. Its octuple tread systems left deep furrows in the soft soil that could have been the foundations for a highway system. Princess Morningstar was far too large for the even the mighty double-rail system laid down by the RAVs that transported Solarium’s other gargantuan war machines. It traversed the earth on its own power alone, a landship that could rival or surpass any of the great battleships built to sail the world’s oceans, and it was a silent hint at the awesome power contained within that the titanic vessel could keep up with the much smaller, nimbler vehicles of Solarium’s armed forces.

Timberwolf and Minotaur tanks scattered before it like mice before an elephant. Not just to avoid being crushed beneath its awesome treads, but to escape the hailstorm of fire that rained down upon it. Princess Morningstar was many things, but subtle was not one of them; its arrival onto the battlefield was immediately met with every available Trottingham artillery piece turning against it, and simply being near her was enough to risk death by metal from the sky. Which of course, was the point: every shot effortlessly absorbed by its shield was a shell that was not spent on the Solarium squads bearing down on the artillery batteries themselves. And as she advanced, Morningstar’s guns responded in kind, each of the four triple guns booming with the strength of a thundergod against distant stationary turrets, bullets raining down in sheets that obliterated barricades and bunkers through sheer mass of metal.

Finally, she reached the edge of the Trottingham city shield. And here even this mightiest of war machines seemed small against the vastness of that cyan dome, stretching miles into the sky in every direction to envelop the city and its surroundings entirely. It was a defense built to withstand the test of time, to hold out for an entire war, powered by rune cores the size of buildings and tended by an army of engineers and technicians, the single most expensive piece of equipment in all of Trottingham that had more magic surging through it than entire civilizations had burnt through in their lifetimes, and yet this shield did not even compare to the still mightier defenses of Solarium or Manehattan. One by one, Morningstar’s guns fell silent. Its own shield shrunk and vanished into nothingness as it crawled up to the city shield, so close a pony standing on her deck could have hit the shield with a thrown rock.

It was then she revealed her primary weapon.

A massive round aperture opened in her front end, like the opening of the maw of some great carnivorous ocean beast, rising up to swallow ships whole. There was a sound that filled the air, the sound of gargantuan rune cores accelerating to their maximum speed, then a descending tone as colossal capacitors discharged their energy.

A ten thousand ton rod of metal exploded out from the maw at almost 100 meters per second and smashed into the city shield like the hammerblow of an angry god. The shockwave sent up enormous clouds of dust on the ground as the shield itself shuddered from the titanic blow. The ten thousand ton metal rod, the mother of all battering rams, slowly sunk back into the maw.

The entire battlefield fell silent, as all turned to watch the surreal, impossible sight in glory or horror. Princess Morningstar recharged. The descending tone filled the air again, and the city itself seemed to shudder from the blow. The battle began once more, as the shock wore off on either side, and the Trottingham defenders lashed out ever more desperately. Again the battering ram fired. Tiny, barely-perceptible cracks began to appear in the shield that was supposed to protect the city for the entire war. The sledgehammer struck again. The cracks crawled and splintered across the face of the shield like shards of slow-motion lightning. Once more the world shuddered, and ten thousand tons of metal knocked out shards of the shield, creating tiny gaps in the impact site.

Finally, on the sixth blow, the shield crumbled. Huge jagged shards of crystallized magical energy shattered and rained down onto the city in torrents, dissipating into nothingness, as a sound like ten thousand mirrors breaking echoed throughout the valley.

Then the panic began.

Shouts and whinnies filled the air as the population of Trottingham took to the streets. Already the main roads were clogged with carts as thousands of ponies sought to flee the city, carrying with them all that they could fit on the shoddy wooden constructions and piling all else that they could onto their own backs. Smarter, more desperate, or simply poorer ponies overflowed into the narrow alleyways, while some of the more athletic ones leapt across rooftops. A few pegasi soared across the sky, keeping low, well below cloud level, some dragging pony-filled carts behind them—families that had undoubtedly paid hefty sums to the few pegasi living in Trottingham to get them out as soon as possible. Further up in the sky above them were the ominous silhouettes of the Solarium armada, outlined against the clouds and torched red-orange by the rising sun.

Rainbow Dash made a slow, flat arc over the rooftops, unsure what to do. The Trottingham military was nominally trying to maintain control, but at this point it was questionable if it was even in control of itself. The battle was clearly lost, the pounding of distant artillery growing more and more infrequent. Dash didn’t know what was happening outside the city, and dared not fly high enough to find out, lest those airships hovering threateningly overhead decide she was a target.

Why aren’t they attacking? The airships were just floating there, not even bothering to fire their weapons. And other than the massive landship, no Solarium forces had breached the city boundaries. It didn’t make any sense; they were giving the defenders time to regroup. Maybe they just didn’t care, so smug in their superiority that they couldn’t conceive of any actions the defenders might take making any difference, and were already lounging on their chairs and drinking tea, congratulating themselves.

She grit her teeth. She could leave with the civilians, following her countryponies back to Cloudsdale, or she could stay and fight it a futile battle in which her contribution would almost certainly make no difference. It wasn’t much of a choice. She started searching for a Trottingham command post. Surely this city of Earth ponies could find use for a pegasus.

“General, Colonel Hardhelm would like to reiterate his opinion that we should press the attack now.”

Greenblade lounged back in his chair and lit a cigar, puffing happily now that the Trottingham forces were in full retreat. Somewhere, a lowly officer was brewing him a cup of tea. “You can tell Colonel Hardhelm,” he mumbled, then put the cigar on the table, “it would be most ungentlecoltly of us to attack before they’ve had a fair chance to evacuate their civilians from the forward areas. And then you can tell him where to stuff his opinion.” He put his cigar back in his mouth. The general atmosphere on the bridge reflected his attitude.

Oversight rubbed his gently throbbing head and stared out the bridge window, taking a well-deserved break from psychically coordinating ten thousand soldiers. There were about two hours left before the attack would recommence, plenty of time for him to get some food. Trottingham hung below. Already the thin columns of smoke were rising up from the city, and they hadn’t even begun attacking yet. He wondered what they’d face in terms of urban warfare. Probably not much, as the defenders likely hadn’t done much in the way of preparing defenses inside the shield.

He squinted. Oversight lacked the more-developed eyesight of a pegasus, and in fact had pretty poor vision even for a unicorn, but he was just able to make out the tiny swarming dots that were the panicking civilians. They trailed out from the far end of the town, streaming across the land like a migrating colony of army ants. Some of them would be bunkering down in safer parts of the city, some would be leaving to make the dangerous journey across the Chaos Mountains, and undoubtedly some of the more stubborn ones would be sitting tight in their homes. Two hours ought to be enough for most of who wanted to get out to get out.

He squinted harder, trying to gauge at how wide the streets were, and wondered how the tanks were going to fit.

As it turned out, they didn’t have to.

Through advanced technology and intensive training, the Solarium armed forces are, pound for pound, the toughest in the world. Though they may be outmanned and outgunned, they are never outmatched. Solarium vehicular design emphasizes quality over quantity, and every vehicle that comes off of the assembly line is superior to its combined counterparts on the other side of the Chaos Mountains. “Combined”, because Solarium vehicles integrate multiple roles into a single platform: for example, the Parasprite Light Tank, which serves not only as a fast attack vehicle, but also as the primary infantry fighting vehicle, supporting Solarium infantry divisions and overrunning enemy positions. And whereas Manehattan and Fillydelphia have developed specialized anti-air vehicles, Solarium tanks are more than equipped to deal with gun chariots and low-flying airships...

The standard Solarium assault tactic can be best thought of as a steamroller. Minotaur Heavy Tanks form the core of the Solarium assault line. These house-sized tanks serve as mobile bunkers, creating what is essentially a moving line of fortifications that advance across the battlefield. Although invulnerable from the front to all but heavy stationary defenses, their bulk renders them easily outmaneuvered, and so are always supported by Timberwolf Medium Tanks, which prevent fast-moving enemy vehicles from exploiting their weaker side and rear armor. When all else fails, however, Solarium turns to the Leviathan. Standing at three-and-a-half stories tall, this superheavy tank lives up to its reputation of invincibility, and can duel with even the most powerful stationary defenses. Named for the mythological beast said to dwell in the deepest depths of the ocean, many an enemy’s last sight has been this advancing wall of steel, wreathed in flame, crushing bunkers, barricades and the husks of lesser tanks beneath its treads, spitting fire from every port...