//------------------------------//
// Friendship for the Blood God 
// Story: Iron Hearts: Book 1 - Planetfall 
// by SFaccountant 
//------------------------------//

Iron Hearts
Chapter 5
Friendship for the Blood God


****


Centaur III - Ponyville town square


*Spread out! Spread out! Devilfish, on standby! Guard the approach vectors! Fire Warriors, open fire the moment the gue'la begins its descent! I don't want anything following us back to base!*
Daniels grimaced as one Tau soldier bound his arms, and he watched the aliens take up firing positions around the wreckage of their vehicles. "So. Tellis?"
"Tellis," Gaela deadpanned, turning to stare at the Fire Warrior binding her augmetic servo limbs. She was surprised that he didn't just shoot them (or her) to disable the devices, but then the Tau seemed to think they still had things under their control.
They were wrong. Very, very wrong.
"You! Gue'la! What was that?" the Tau commander demanded, pointing to Daniels.
"That was a Raptor. Astartes-class assault infantry," Daniels said with a shrug, surprising the alien at how quick he was to answer.
"Is he alone?"
"Him? I guess. Don't really know."
Gaela remained silent. She did know, but she wasn't going to volunteer useful information as quickly as the mercenary.
The commander looked like he was contemplating another order when Daniels continued.
"By the way Sir, I just wanted to say that this has been by far the most pleasant surrender I've ever made to an enemy force. I'm not going to enjoy what's about to happen to you."
The Fire Warrior stared for a moment, and then turned his head away. "You underestimate us, gue'la. We will not fall before one soldier."
Daniels probably had a smart-ass response to that, but their conversation was cut short as the screaming began.


Not the screaming of Tau, although Daniels was sure that was coming soon. It was the howl of wind and burning air as an angry red meteor descended on Ponyville once again.
Volleys of pulse rifle fire started pouring from the village once again as the Fire Warriors tried to shoot down the descending Iron Warrior, but once again he wasn't diving at them, spoiling their aim with his speed and moving at the very edge of their effective range.
Tellis pulled up out of his suicide dive once he neared the ground, cutting through the air at an alarmingly tight arc before shooting toward the nearest Devilfish transport.
The APC conveniently provided a shield from the waves of rifle fire, and the heavy skimmer was too cumbersome to make any real attempt to evade or line up its burst cannon before the Astartes slammed into the side of the vehicle.
Just like the Hammerhead, the Devilfish was sent into a slow spin from the impact, and its unwelcome rider waited several seconds for the tank to stop itself.
The pulse rifle fire did not start up again right away, even when the APC turned to expose Tellis to the infantry's guns; Tau Devilfish were fairly well armored, but pulse rifles were powerful weapons, and a "lucky" shot could carve a hole through a vital power system if the pilots were any less lucky.
As soon as the vehicle had regained some semblance of stability, Tellis jumped from the engine block to the cockpit, his lightning claws dragging along the outer armor for extra traction and leaving a trail of hot sparks behind them. He settled in next to the armored glass on the side opposite the Fire Warriors, and then reared back an arm.
His free hand punched into the armored poly-composite glass of the cockpit, the points of his lightning claws cutting breaches into the barrier thick enough for his armored fist to open with sheer force. The glass shattered inward, and one of the shocked pilots barely had time to mutter a curse in his native language before he was impaled against his chair by the crackling talons.
Tellis felt a pulse rifle shot slam into his shoulder pad, and his optics crackled briefly before he pulled his bloodied claws from the devilfish cockpit and reached for his belt.
"This is going to be HILARIOUS," his vox rumbled as he dropped a krak grenade into the cockpit. Within the next second he had kicked off the side of the Devilfish and taken to the air again, flying with his back to the ground. A burst of much larger plasma bolts zipped over his chest as he escaped, leaving a scorch mark over his chestplate.
"Hm. Crisis Suit," the Khornate Raptor mumbled as he snapped himself upright in the air, hovering briefly behind a building while plotting his next angle of approach to avoid all that pesky small-arms fire. "I hope it has one of those nifty xeno power fists in its arm. This is probably going to be boring otherwise."


The Tau commander watched fire and shrapnel spray out of the hole in the Devilfish cockpit, his teeth clenched. The lights all along the APC flickered as the antigravity slowly powered down, and the edge of the skimmer hit the roof of a house as it fell, tilting the wreck onto its side before it landed.
*He's picking off our vehicles one by one! Pilots, maintain altitude! I want fire teams on-*
*Shas'vre!* called a Fire Warrior backing away from one of the pony homes. *I saw something moving behind the houses!*
The battlesuit chimed in next, its jet pack flaring as it took to the air. *Multiple power signatures detected. Relaying scan data.*
*What?* the Fire Warrior commander silenced his comms and held up his hand to quell his subordinates, and then his blood ran cold as he heard it: the heavy thud of huge metal boots across the ground. It was coming from behind the surrounding buildings, several of them, shielded from view of the town square. They surely would have been spotted had the Hammerhead still been keeping watch, but that gunship was no more.
More Space Marines? Here? How did they get close so fast? They would have noticed if enemy transports had approached the village. Had they teleported in they would have been detected right away by their scanners.
Of course, if they all had jump packs...
"Look at that. Guess he wasn't alone," Daniels murmured.


With an engine roar like a missile salvo and a vox scream like a hundred screeching eagles, the Raptor squad attacked. Giants in gleaming plate of silver and gold leapt over the rooftops, their backpacks trailing flame and their pistols firing wildly into the square. The Fire Warriors only managed to release a single useless salvo in panic before the Iron Warriors crashed into them, and although they outnumbered the Astartes almost as badly as they had the humans, the calculus of victory was much different with Space Marines involved.
Chainswords decorated with black and yellow warning chevrons roared to life, and soon the screaming was indeed that of the xeno soldiers.


****


"Humans are winning again! Party's back on!" Pinkie said brightly.
Twilight flinched as she heard the sound of heavy boots pounding on dirt behind them, and she turned in time to see two more Raptors sprinting into view, coming up behind another home that encircled the town center.
Their jump packs activated and the pair vaulted over the building, their vox grilles screeching a war cry that sent ice down down the alicorn's spine.
"Do those men have SWORDS that are also CHAINSAWS?" Rarity asked, looking squeamish.
"Whoa! They do! That's awesome!" Rainbow Dash said, grinning.
After a few seconds, her grin weakened considerably. "Wow. They're, uh, pretty messy, aren't they?"
"Look! They're takin' the others away!" Applejack shouted, pointing a hoof at the edge of the battle. The Tau commander was making a break for one of the transports, with several of his warriors dragging along their human prisoners.
"We have to save them!" Rainbow Dash shouted, jumping into the air and hovering.
Twilight grit her teeth. "All right, all right, we'll go get them!" she finally relented. "But we'll need to-"
"No time for plans! Action now!" Rainbow darted off toward the edge of the battle, Applejack chasing off behind her.
"What? But-? Hey, wait!" Twilight rushed after them, leaving Pinkie, Rarity and Spike behind.
"I think I'll stay here," Rarity said uncomfortably as a pair of Piranhas zoomed by overhead, buffering them with its antigravity field, "blood and gunfire are hard on a girl's mane."
"Have fuuuuun!" Pinkie called to the ponies dashing into the battlefield as she waved her hoof, although her call was probably lost in the constant rattle of bolter fire.


"Get in! Now!" the Tau commander shoved Daniels toward the devilfish before turning toward a squad leader. "Quickly, take your group and recover-"
The conversation ended when his subordinate's arm exploded under the impact of a bolt shell, throwing the hapless warrior screaming to the ground.
The commander turned in an instant, adding a burst of markedly more accurate fire to the scattered pulse rounds fired by his entourage. Two splashed against a charging Raptor's chest armor with little effect, but the third struck the warrior's leg and sent him stumbling to the ground.
Daniels grunted as he tried to wipe off some of the blood splashed against his leg. "Our boys should be more careful about firing at this unit with boltguns. They have prisoners!"
"I'll be fine. My armor will protect me from anything less than a direct hit," Gaela reassured him.
"Swell. Can I use you as a shield, then?"
The human's conversation was cut short as a Fire Warrior grabbed Daniel's arm, pulling him toward the Devilfish while it shouted at him in its native language.
Daniels promptly slammed a knee into the alien's side, staggering the warrior and causing it to drop its rifle.
"Sounds like it's escaping time, mates!" he kicked the alien soldier away onto its back and then bolted for his injured men.
The Fire Warriors were busy covering their retreat from the town square and watching their fellow soldiers being hacked apart by chainblades, and didn't even notice that the hold-up to their embarking on their transport was running loose until Daniels kicked one of them from behind, knocking him face-first onto the ground.
The other soldier turned with his rifle up, but the two other humans threw themselves on top of the Fire Warrior, wrestling him to the ground as best they could with their hands still tied.
Daniels knocked the soldier's pulse rifle away, rendering the warrior a minimal threat to their escape. The two human soldiers immediately scrambled to get to their feet again. "Come on you two, book it! We're in the middle of a killing field, and-"
The mercenary flinched back as one of his men screamed and stumbled forward, a scorched hole in his back.
"I'm tired of your resistance," the Tau commander said, moving his rifle sights to Daniels, "the Greater Good can do without you fools."
And then a rainbow-colored blur flashed between the two soldiers, and suddenly the Fire Warrior's rifle was gone.
It took a few seconds for the Tau to realize what had happened, his optics rendering Rainbow Dash's form after she had already passed and displaying a still image for his benefit. Even so the Fire Warrior was fairly baffled to turn his head and see the blue pegasus hovering above him with a grin on her face, her front legs wrapped around his primary weapon.
"You're the best, Dash," Daniels said, saluting as best he could with his hands bound as he helped his other soldier up.
"And don't you forget it!" she shouted back.
Gaela stepped past Daniels as she tried to work her servo limbs into cutting their restraints, grumbling beneath her mask about the surprising difficulty of the task.
"You're not going anywhere!" the commander shouted, reaching for his pulse pistol. He only barely caught sight of something approaching from the side at high speed, given that it was much smaller than a human or an Iron Warrior.
Applejack was quite surprised when the Tau leader actually twisted out of the way before she could kick him; all of the other aliens in the blue and black armor had possessed the reflexes of sloths. She was even more surprised when he drew a blade from behind his back and then slashed at her, knocking her hat from her head before lining up a shot with his pistol.
His aim was spoiled as something slammed into the Devilfish hovering nearby, pushing it far enough over the ground to bump into him and disturb his shot.
Gaela heard the impact and glanced back at the vehicle, her eye widening as she spotted the gleaming figure affixing a melta bomb to it. "Run! Run now!"
Daniels and the other human were, quite literally, way ahead of her, but Rainbow and Applejack had to take a moment to wonder at the command before deciding that the Dark Acolyte probably knew what she was talking about.
The Tau commander was more hesitant, and didn't start moving until he heard the sound of a particularly large jump pack taking off from his transport.
And then, explosions.


Gaela grunted as she hit the ground, her armor scraping furrows in the dirt. It did protect her from any injury, however, and her vulcanized rubber robes in turn protected her from the bits of burning shrapnel that peppered her back moments later.
"LORD TELLIS!" she shouted, struggling to stand up.
Before she completely regained her footing the target of her ire landed heavily less than a meter in front of her, nearly knocking her over again.
"What?" Tellis asked flatly, his chains still rattling around him from the sudden stop. Attached to the chain around his neck were three skulls that hung out over the gorget; not ordinary human skulls either, but rather an Astartes skull, an Ork, and one that belonged to some unusual genus of Tyranid.
Gaela took a moment to catch her breath and remind herself that she was speaking to a Chaos Space Marine and not some mortal lackey.
"Were you aware that-"
Tellis' helmet suddenly tilted up as he spotted something behind her.
"Is that horse wearing a HAT? Ha! That's brilliant!" Gaela winced as her autosenses were subjected to the noise of Tellis's vox-amplified laugh.
Applejack - who had cleared the explosion radius of the devilfish in time, it seemed - finished putting her hat back on and shot a bemused glance at the chuckling Raptor, wondering just what was so funny about her wardrobe.
Gaela let out a deep sigh. "Yes, she is. So-"
"Oh, look!" Tellis said suddenly, his voice sounding worryingly happy. "That's the xeno commander, isn't it?"
Applejack turned sharply toward where he was looking, a scowl stretching over her freckled face as she spotted the soldier. He was crawling across the ground toward his pistol, the back plate of his combat armor pierced by shards of burnt poly-ceramic plating.
Before the farmpony could so much as twitch in his direction, however, Tellis was already past her, his jump jets hissing lightly as he hopped over the intervening distance.
The pulse pistol crunched under the weight of the Raptor's boots as he landed on it, and Tellis hummed to himself as he leaned over and picked up the Tau officer by his leg, hauling him off the ground as if he weighed next to nothing.
"You have no idea what you're doing, gue'la," the commander coughed, "you cannot-"
Tellis ignored him and turned toward the battle winding down in the town square. Specifically, to the one combatant that was successfully evading his soldiers through creative use of a jet pack and the occasional spread of missiles to ward off pursuit.
"HEY, FATASS!!" the Raptor Lord called, his voice screeching with such intensity that Applejack nearly fell down from the noise alone.
The pilot of the Crisis Suit didn't understand Gothic at all, but it certainly heard the screaming noise above the din of bolter shells crashing against its armor. It also noticed that the two Raptors that had been chasing it halted, immediately veering away and igniting their jump packs to take flight from the scene.
Turning toward the shout, and still hovering in the air above the massacred bodies of its Sept-brothers, the battlesuit focused in on the sight of its commander being held up by his leg by a crudely decorated Astartes soldier.
*Revolting savage!* the suit's speakers spat as the it made a beeline for its struggling officer. Its plasma rifle snapped up into firing position, although it was obviously impossible to get a clear shot with the Fire Warrior in the way.
*To use our soldiers as living shields is a repulsive act of cowa-*
The suit's rumbling tirade was interrupted as the Tau commander was flung into his torso armor, bouncing off with a cry of pain and plummeting to the ground.
The pilot was so stunned by the senseless turn of events that the battlesuit merely halted in mid-air, not continuing with its charge or diving after its officer, who landed with another agonized yelp.
In fact, the operator didn't make any clear reaction to having his superior used as a projectile until a peal of laughter came from the Raptor Lord.
"HA HA HAAAA!! Did you SEE that?! It even made a little squeaky noise when it bounced off! HAH!"
The crisis suit became understandably enraged, and targeting reticules began lining up over the Chaos Space Marine as he stamped the ground with his foot.


****


"Thank you, Sparkle," Gaela mumbled as she heard the restraints binding her servo limbs hit the ground at her feet. Then she brought her wrists up to her servo tool, using a melta cutter to break those restraints open as Twilight freed Daniels.
"So, he's on your side, right? That Space Marine who keeps screaming, even when he laughs?" Twilight asked, her ears pinned against her head. Really, she would have found the clear differences in psyches between the newcomer and Dest fascinating if he didn't insist on screeching them loud enough to unsettle glass.
"That's Lord Tellis. He is an Iron Warrior and part of the 38th Company," Gaela said.
"That... seemed redundant and curiously specific," the alicorn pointed out as her horn glowed, cutting through the shackles around Daniels' wrists, "almost as if you're only saying it in order to omit something else that we would have assumed otherwise."
"Awww, I think I made it mad!" Tellis called out as he blasted backward across the square. Plasma blasts followed him as the crisis suit pursued, but none came very close to striking him. "Look! It's starting to affect its aim!"
A static-laced groan came from Gaela's vox grille.
"Well, thanks to him you guys have this fight wrapped up!" Rainbow Dash noted. "It's a good thing he came!"
"Arguable," Gaela said simply.
"Ah think ya'd hafta argue with all the burnin' tanks, sugarcube," Applejack said, poking at a crumpled burst cannon with her hoof.
"How to put this..." the Dark Acolyte mumbled, her voice momentarily lost among the sound of rockets. The Crisis Suit loosed another mini-missile barrage, speeding across the ground behind the humans and equines.
"Allow me," Daniels interrupted after putting his optics back on, "you see girls, among the Chaos Marines it takes a very special kind of crazy to be considered a 'loose cannon'," he explained, making quotation marks in the air with his fingers, "among the cults that worship the Chaos God of battle and destruction, it's even harder to stand out as a raving lunatic."
Then he pointed to the Raptor zooming through the air in a spiral as missiles exploded behind him. "Lord Tellis is that lunatic loose cannon."


****


Tellis laughed as the last of the mini-warheads detonated behind him, and twisted just in time to avoid plowing through the wall of a house.
Not that crashing through a wall wouldn't be gut-bustingly funny, but he had slightly higher priorities now. Blood for the Blood God, skulls for yadda yadda.
Curving back around, he blasted straight toward the Crisis Suit, his jet fins spreading as fire spewed from his flight pack.
The battlesuit adjusted to the sudden change in tactics as best it could, raising its plasma rifle to intercept, but before it could get an angle on the shot Tellis had already blasted by it.
A second later the plasma rifle, and the arm that held it, fell to the ground in a fountain of sparks.
Tellis flew low to the ground and headed for the fallen Tau commander, who was evidently so badly injured now that he could not get back up.
As he snatched the xeno up, however, he heard the soldier shout, so obviously he wasn't dead. Yet.
The Raptor Lord heard the Crisis Suit yelling something at him in the Tau's nonsense language, but he ignored it; even the one that could speak Gothic didn't seem to have anything interesting to say.
Curving back into an attack run on the battlesuit, he retracted his lightning claws into his gauntlets and took firm hold of the Tau, one leg in each arm.
The crisis suit tried to move out of the way, but Tellis was considerably more agile than his opponent. The Raptor hit the battlesuit feet first, smashing it out of the air and into the dirt hard enough to dig a furrow in the ground until their momentum bled away.
And there, standing atop that marvel of alien wargear with its commanding officer gripped in both hands, he proceeded to beat the Tau with its own kind.


****


"Bwa ha ha! Ha ha hah hah!" Rainbow Dash was on the ground again, this time rolling from side to side and kicking her feet in laughter at the sight of the Iron Warrior clubbing a battlesuit with a Fire Warrior.
Twilight had to admit that it was kind of funny, at least in the sense that it was silly and pointlessly brutal, but she still didn't feel like laughing.
"Well... I think this battle is over," Daniels mumbled, looking over the rest of the town square. The other Raptors were checking on their wounded and searching the dead aliens for anything of value.
He slapped the other survivor on the back, causing the man to flinch. "You up for a bit of digging, Jacob?"
"You want to make trench lines NOW?" the other merc asked incredulously.
"No, mass graves," Daniels pointed to the Tau scattered across the ground amongst great streaks of blood, "quite a mess out here."
"You're such a thoughtful guest," Gaela said without a drop of sincerity, "and I suppose that leaves me with the task of debriefing the Iron Warriors."
"Well, you're the boss, aren't you? Have fun!"


****


"You know, I knew when I made this decision that the weak, squishy body of your pathetic species wouldn't make for an ideal club. But even I'm disappointed by how quickly this guy's bones broke."
Tellis spoke conversationally as the Crisis Suit swung a fist easily the size of his head at him. He backed out of the way, dodging the blow with ease.
Then he smacked the limp body in his hand against the battlesuit's head, once again failing to do much more than spatter more blood over its sensors.
"He must have died on, what, the second hit? Maybe even the first. You scrawny geeks have really got to add gene-smithing to your list of fancy new technologies to throw at us if you want to stay in the game."
Tellis hopped back from another punch, but then darted forward as the Tau battlesuit tried to break from melee range to use its missile pods again.
The mechanized soldier was entirely outmatched; Tellis was shockingly agile with his flight pack, occasionally adding small bursts of speed to simple hops and turns by flaring his jets. The Tau moved like it was underwater by comparison, flailing about helplessly and trying to swat away the armored super-soldier with its only remaining arm.
Occasionally the suit would shout something at Tellis, but as he didn't speak Mauling Victim (known as Tau to most others) he couldn't even engage in proper combat banter.
That, and he was absolutely sure by now that, no, the crisis suit did NOT have any obscenely powerful hidden close combat weapons.
BORING.
*Enough of this!* crackled the voice of the battlesuit operator. *If we will fall here, I will take you with me, gue'la monster!*
With that last announcement of desperation and hatred, the crisis suit's missile pod moved to aim at the ground, preparing to unleash a barrage at point-blank range that would likely annihilate both warriors.
A flash of crimson lightning crossed the battlesuit's sensors, and then the missile pod bounced across the ground behind it, trailing sparks and slivers of ceramic armor.
"Gue'la this, gue'la that. That's your word for 'human' right? Besides being inaccurate, I have a name, you know." He pounded a fist against his chest. "Tellis! Say it with me: Te-"
Instead the crisis suit punched at him again, and the Raptor Lord turned his head out of the way, causing the mechanized arm to scrape against the side of his helmet.
With a sweep of his claws the battlesuit's remaining arm was sheared from its shoulder, and the combat armor staggered as the last of its weapons fell to the dirt.
"I think I see the problem. You can't hear me in there, can you? Here, let me help you out."
Tellis shoved one set of talons into the crease he saw between armor plates, and then he pulled them along what he presumed was the operator's hatch. The adamantium blades screeched and the energy fields sizzled as they carved away the locks and hatches protecting the pilot from the dangers of the battlefield. Namely, him.
Prying the main hatch off the armor suit, Tellis retracted the claws on one hand and reached in, grabbing the pilot and yanking it out. The hulk of black armor striped with blue wobbled comically for several seconds and then keeled over backward, sparks spewing from the cockpit.
"It's Tellis! T-E-L-I-S! Wait, how many L's did I list? I think there are two."
The pilot, evidently a female Tau, did not seem to want to cooperate, flailing wildly and kicking uselessly at him.
"Bah. You suck." Tellis flung the alien behind him like a piece of trash, glancing around the town square for something else to do.


Now that he was actually looking at the village proper rather than descending on it like a deranged predator, the place was actually quite nice and rustic. Or at least, it seems as if it had been before it had been littered with dead bodies and scorched wreckage. Most of the assaults he had participated in were on hive cities, military bases, and manufactorums, so seeing something so quaint and idyllic was at least rather novel and somewhat intriguing.
Tellis wondered what it would look like on fire.
"My lord," a Raptor's vox screeched as the soldier approached Tellis, his armor sticky with drying blood and slivers of the Tau's poly-ceramic combat armor, "we have two wounded and one dead. Brother Gerran will not fly again."
Tellis pointed to a body lying on the field. "Does that casualty count include him?"
The Raptor turned to look where his commander was gesturing. A single hulk of brushed steel and beaten gold, lying face-down in the dirt behind a xeno homestead.
Data flashed over their visors. "Brother Dest. Driver pool. Huh... I saw no Company vehicles around the settlement."
"A driver without a tank. Hmph."
Without further explanation, Tellis stomped off toward the body.
The watching raptors didn't really know what to make of their lord's sudden distraction, but that was a common situation among their unit.
None of them were terribly surprised when he met the fallen Astartes with a hefty kick that lifted the driver off the ground and sent the ring of metal on metal bouncing throughout the village.
Dest groaned painfully as he rose almost a full meter into the air and then fell back to the dirt again. "Guh!"
"Get up, weakling! You're not dead yet!" Tellis shouted, his talons crackling.
"Hey! Don't be mean to Desty! He's resting!"
Tellis glanced behind him, but saw nothing.
"Down here, darling."
The Raptor Lord turned his gaze downward and saw three small creatures glaring at him. Two were horses, one pink and the other white with a purple mane, while the third was some kind of tiny purple lizard thing with green fins.
"Do you have hats?" the Iron Warrior demanded immediately, "the other one had a hat."
Rarity and even Pinkie seemed surprised by the sudden question.
"Ah, no, not at the-"
"Then I don't want to talk to you," Tellis decided, turning back to the task at hand and completely ignoring the ponies behind him.
Reaching down, he pulled Dest upright by his backpack, revealing the large black hole that had been burned into the Chaos Marine's abdomen.
"There! On your feet!" Tellis let him go and Dest remained standing, although that was surely because Astartes armor naturally stood upright when properly sealed.
"Our driver has suffered a direct hit from a xeno pulse rifle."
Tellis turned his head again as Gaela approached.
"As I'm sure you're aware, the abdominal armor is considerably thinner than the torso plating, and the primary power-"
"You have a little something on your robes, there," Tellis said, interrupting to point at Gaela's leg, "some kind of furry, purple... thing."
Gaela didn't need to look to see what he was referring to. "That's Twilight Sparkle. She-"
"Yes, fine, a Twilight Sparkle," Tellis said, raising his talons, "here, let me get it for you."
Twilight's mane stuck out on end as she stared at the Iron Warrior, and she started to back away.
"It's an honor for you to offer to help a mere Acolyte such as myself," Gaela mumbled, "but Sparkle is an ally, not a piece of debris."
That snapped Tellis out of his stalking pose. "You're allies with a horse?"
"They're ponies, my lord. And they've been curiously helpful, so I was hoping you'd refrain from butchering them for your passing amusement," Gaela bowed her head submissively, and Twilight took careful note of the dynamic between the two to refer to later.
Tellis seemed to dismiss her gesture entirely. "Why isn't it wearing a hat?"
A tired groan came from Gaela's vox, her ire apparently too strong for her to suppress. "Not all the ponies wear hats, my lord."
"If they're going to talk and fight, then they should at least wear hats like the orange one," Tellis decided, pointing his index finger against the Acolyte's helmeted forehead.
"My lord, that doesn't make-"
Once again, Tellis cut her off. "Your ceaseless application of rational thought bores me! I'm going to go carve the wreckage into funny shapes."


As the Raptor Lord stomped off, Gaela hung her head.
"That... was... wow," Twilight could barely find words to describe the encounter, "it's amazing how quickly and completely he demonstrated Daniels' explanation of him."
Another heavy, vox-altered sigh was heard as a Raptor walked up to Gaela, his pistol and chainsword mag-locked to his thighs.
"You did your best, Acolyte. Now, would you care to explain what you're doing here in a xeno settlement with a fraction of a squad left and an entire enemy armored detachment on top of you?"
The Dark Acolyte straightened and then kneeled, quite pleased to be speaking to someone sane. Or saner, anyway. Nobody ever accused the Raptors of being a stable sort.
"Recon mission, my lord. We were to contact the probes that were deployed before planetfall and extract crucial tactical data. We have successfully found the data, and were in the process of attempting to weaken the local vox jamming field when we were assaulted. Enemy presence on this world is much, MUCH heavier than anticipated."
The Raptor chuckled, his laugh not unlike metal nails run across a blackboard. "We were assigned a recon mission as well, to search the estimated landing site of the Tau's mass lander."
"That's some ways off, my lord," Gaela noted, "my deepest apologies that we brought you so far from your target area."
"You didn't. Lord Tellis spotted some kind of giant flying lizard and chased after it to try and cut its wings off mid-flight. For fun." The Raptor wasn't really paying attention to the xenos around them, deeming them a negligible threat, and as such didn't see Spike's horrified expression.
"Before he caught up to it he saw some kind of floating structures in the air in the distance and decided to investigate THAT instead. We were strung along for almost a hundred kilometers off-target before we saw some kind of blue flare light up over the village. Only the confirmation of a battle brought our lord back to a task somewhat resembling our mission."
Gaela sighed, her armored shoulders slumping as she stood up again. "You've endured considerable difficulties yourself, my lord."
"It is an Iron Warrior's only pleasure to serve," the Raptor said, a definite note of sarcasm in his vox-scrambled voice, "now... would you care to explain the pastel-colored horses?"
Gaela glanced down at Twilight, and the purple alicorn grinned back somewhat nervously as she became the center of attention.
Then the Dark Acolyte once again addressed the assault soldier. "They're ponies. They speak Gothic, build primitive things, and are obliviously friendly toward us. The ones with the horns are psykers."
The Raptor observed Twilight critically, and then turned his blood-red optics on Rarity and Pinkie.
"So... there's no need to raze the village yet?"
"It wouldn't make our job here any easier," Gaela agreed.
"Noted. We're going to take the prisoners and our wounded to the edge of the settlement. If you come up with a plan to contact the fortress, let us know. If not, contact me anyway; we'll need you to make repairs on our brothers' armor."
"Yes, my lord. Thank you for your timely intervention. We owe you our lives."
The Raptor turned away, dismissing the thanks as he followed four other jump troopers that were hauling away a few limping Fire Warriors - including the Crisis Suit pilot - away from the town square. Two more Raptors each helped along one of their squadmates, following behind the grim procession.


"Well, that was less useful than I'd hoped," Gaela mumbled, turning toward Dest, "my lord, do you need assistance?"
A garbled groan was her only response.
"You sound fine," the Dark Acolyte decided.
"So... what now?" Twilight asked, looking at the hulks of smoldering alien technology that were now scattered around the village.
Air hissed from the depressurization of Gaela's helmet as it opened up and exposed the Acolyte's pale features to the dusty air.
"Well, now I have to hammer out a plan to contact our main forces or remove the jamming field," Gaela explained, scratching her chin.
"Will that be difficult?" Rarity asked.
"With Lord Tellis around? Probably, yes."
"Is there anything we can do to help?" Twilight asked hopefully.
Gaela's lips twitched into something that might have resembled a smile in poor light. "You've already helped us considerably, actually, and at significant risk. But I think you'll be too busy to help with this next part."
"Busy?" Twilight raised an eyebrow. "Busy doing wha-"
"WHAT IN THE NAME OF CELESTIA HAPPENED HERE?!"
Twilight jumped at the shout, and then remembered that the she, the aliens, and the remains from the recent battle were all lying openly in the middle of town.
It wasn't really any wonder that Mayor Mare was stomping toward the square now that the explosions were over, her expression a mix of fury and horror at the scene of destruction.
"TWILIGHT SPARKLE! YOU HAVE SOMETHING TO DO WITH THIS, DON'T YOU?!"
"Good luck with that," Gaela said to the downcast alicorn as she walked off, "feel free to blame us, but do try to keep your local enforcers from trying to do anything stupid, would you?"
"Oh, you needn't worry, darling. We practically ARE the local enforcers," Rarity said, following the robed woman.
"That's adorable."
"W-Wait!" Twilight shouted, seeing that her friends were following after the human. "Rarity! Pinkie! SPIKE! Don't-"
Her plea for help was cut off by a hoof poking her wings.
"Miss Sparkle. An explanation, please?"
Twilight whimpered as she slowly turned around to face the mayor. This was going to be a long day.


****


Ponyville outskirts


"I'm amazed that you can use a shovel," Daniels mused as he pushed his spade into the dirt.
Applejack, who had a shovel of her own and was digging out the hole on the opposite side from the human, raised an eyebrow. "Oh? Ah'm a farmer, sugarcube. Diggin' holes ain't exactly new to me."
"No, I mean I'm amazed that you can hold and use a shovel without hands. Shouldn't it have, like, hoof-holds or something?"
"You makin' fun of me, Daniels?" the farmpony asked, though she was smirking.
Daniels stepped aside as the other surviving soldier approached, dragging a pair of dead Fire Warriors behind him by their legs. The man flung the bodies into the hole, and then turned around to go get more.
"Awful morbid work. You do this a lot?" Applejack asked, levering her shovel onto the side of the pit to expand it.
"Not really. We don't do a lot of cleanup in most of our battle zones," he admitted, "but you girls have been so neighborly, I figured it was the least we could do after bringing the Tau to your planet and drawing them here to your village."
Applejack stopped digging for several seconds to think about that. "Yeah, Ah think yer right. That IS the least ya could do."
"Keeping busy, soldier?"
Gaela approached the pit with her helmet down, her attention mostly focused on her plasma pistol. She had recovered it and her power axe from where she had dropped them, and was checking the weapons for any damage or contamination.
Rarity, Pinkie, and Spike were following behind her, although the former paused at the sight of the grave and the latter stopped moving as soon as Rarity did.
"We've had quite an adventure so far, haven't we? How'd the driver check out?" Daniels asked, not pausing in his earthworks.
"He'll be fine. His body is busy trying to regrow his intestines, but once the worst internal damage is healed he'll be battle-ready again even before we can get him to a medicae facility," Gaela explained.
Applejack sighed. "More'n we can say for Jones and Michael. Veers mighta made it out, too, if we'd been a little faster back there. Poor fellers."
Gaela stopped what she was doing. "Who are those people?"
"Our casualties, Acolyte," Daniels answered.
"Those weren't the Raptor's names. And the only one who died was-"
Daniels cut her off. "Our HUMAN casualties, Acolyte."
"Oh." Gaela rolled her eye. "Right. Tragic."
"Aw, c'mon," Applejack stabbed her shovel into the dirt, "ya act like ya don't even care!"
"Casualties are a mathematical inevitability of warfare. And in terms of combat asset value, those men were a trifling loss compared to the Tau squads we slew today." She glanced over at the other rifleman dragging more bodies toward the pit. "Also, there's a reason I don't bother to learn their names."
"That's real cold of ya," Applejack said evenly, standing on her back legs and leaning on her shovel, "Ah know yer in a war'n all, but ya ain't gotta be like that to yer own boys, do ya?"
Daniels chuckled. "Don't worry about it, AJ. In the Mechanicus they don't have much in the way of heart, even before they replace 'em with electric pumps. Even less so on the Dark side, obviously."
"I suppose I could take to lying to my soldiers to make them feel special," the Acolyte said, looking annoyed, "do you think that would help morale, Derrin?"
"His name is Daniels," Spike pointed out.
"Whatever."
"Ooh! Ooh! I know! I think you should smile!" Pinkie shouted, bouncing around Gaela in a circle.
"Oh, I don't think I could handle the shock if she did that," Daniels murmured, "just stick to your dry sarcasm Acolyte, you're really good at it."
"Noted. Now shut up," Gaela said flatly, "I have to come up with a way to contact the base or destroy the larger portion of the jamming field with what assets we have left." Pinkie started climbing on her actuator pack again, and her servo arm twisted backwards to bump her off.
"Has anything really changed, though?" Rarity wondered aloud. "That was your plan, before, right? And now you have those other bru-ahem, Chaos Marines to help."
"That doesn't necessarily make things any easier," Gaela admitted wearily as she pulled her bionic arm away from Pinkie to keep her from playing with her mechadendrites, "but more importantly, we're traveling in a region where we can be ambushed at any time by enough xeno firepower to take out a field base. A handful of Iron Warrior Raptors, even if they weren't led by a complete imbecile, can only help so much with that."
"Don't forget about us!" Pinkie shouted as she poked at the cables wrapped around of the haft of Gaela's power axe.
"I'm trying to, but you do make it very difficult," Gaela admitted, "I will say that I'm surprised and pleased by how... placid the Space Marines have been in dealing with you all. Usually they're far more hostile toward intelligent aliens."


****


Ponyville - town center


"This material is almost worthless. How the blazes do those puny xenos make it into a gunship?"
Tellis grumbled to himself as he pulled a single powered talon through a hunk of mostly undamaged tank plating. The poly-ceramic plating tended to crack easily around breaches, but those cracks tended to loosen small chips of the armor rather than the larger chunks necessary if one were trying to fashion the material into a pointless sculpture.
Stupid aliens had to make everything difficult. Except smashing their squishy faces in, which was the one area of interaction where he actually appreciated a challenge.
Bashing off the edges of the plating, Tellis formed it into more or less the shape he was looking for and then placed it onto another collection of rubble, spearing the block with his lightning claw.
He overcharged the claw, sending tendrils of power lashing around the adamantium blade and cooking the wrecked armor from the inside. An exceptionally crude method of fusing armor segments to one another, but also more fun than most.
Pulling his lightning claw out and then retracting the talon into his gauntlet, Tellis stepped back to admire his handiwork.
"What's that supposed to be?"
Tellis turned around to spot the source of the voice.
A blue pony with wings and a multi-colored mane hovered above him, smirking as she stared at the piled wreckage.
"You don't have a hat. But you're also flying. The prospect of flying horses amuses me," Tellis said bluntly.
Rainbow gave him a look. "What? You've never seen a pegasus before?"
"Not really, no. The infinite wonders of the universe continue to amaze me even as I reduce them all to blood and ashes," said the Raptor, his tone almost reverent as he stared up at the sky.
Then he pointed to his sculpture. "Also, it's a dog. With a burst cannon. It's funny, because dogs don't have burst cannons!"
Rainbow Dash snorted, raising a hoof to her chin. "That's supposed to be a dog?" The clumsily fused wreckage was shaped into a two-legged figure, and while one "arm" did indeed have a broken Tau weapon hanging on the end, the other was little more than a short chunk of armor sticking out.
"Tau salvage is a difficult medium. Maybe it's the ears? The ears need work," the Khornate soldier rested an arm across his chain-crossed chest as his other scratched at the vox amplifier that best approximated his chin.
Then he turned around fully to face the pegasus. "Also, who are you, anyway? I keep seeing you creatures around here and not dead."
"I'm Rainbow Dash," Rainbow answered, an eyebrow rising, "and why would we be dead?"
"Because blood for the Blood God."
Rainbow looked skeptical, flying a slow circuit around the Raptor Lord. "That doesn't sound like a very good reason to me. Besides, we're on your side!" She thrust a hoof into the air, grinning. "Ponies and humans, fighting side by side to save Equestria!"
"That doesn't sound like something we'd do," Tellis admitted.
"Well, actually, I guess it's more like us saving the 38th Company than the 38th Company saving us," Rainbow shrugged, "I'm not sure about the details. I kinda zone out a little when Gaela or Twilight speak."
"Oh, don't get me started about those Mechanicus nerds and their technobabble," Tellis agreed, turning his head, "they invented an entire other language so that they could ramble to each other without bothering the rest of us, so why do some of them still insist on speaking Gothic? It keeps fooling me into thinking they might have something useful to say."
Rainbow chuckled, and then the Chaos Space Marine seemed to remember something.
"You shed and spill blood for the Company, then," the Raptor grunted, "unusual, but not unheard of for us to use xenos as our pawns. Which of the Eternal Lords do you serve, if any?"
Rainbow seemed distracted as she thought over the question. "Uh, Celestia, I guess?"
"Huh. Must be a lower pantheon," he mumbled.
"How do you fly with all that metal on you, anyway?" Rainbow finally asked. The way the man blasted through the air didn't exactly have the grace of a pegasus, but even at a glance it was leagues beyond the short jet-assisted leaps of the other Raptors.
"I don't know, how do you fight when you're barely as big as my arm?" Tellis asked. "Is snatching away guns all you're good for?"
Rainbow narrowed her eyes, but rather than indulging her annoyance she took the chance to boost her ego, flying in an upright pose and placing a hoof against her chest.
"Who do you think you're talking to? I'm Rainbow Dash, the Element of Loyalty! I'm the most awesome pony you'll ever meet!"
"That doesn't sound like an especially challenging standard," Tellis noted, "how awesome are these theoretical future ponies going to be? They'd have to have even better hats than the orange one."
Rainbow was starting to get annoyed now. If he didn't want to get down on his knees and start worshiping her tail then and there, fine, but he didn't have to start treating her entire race like brightly colored hat-racks.
"You want to try me? I'll show you what a pony can do!" the pegasus said, crossing her front legs over her chest as she grinned and hovered above the Chaos Marine's head.
"You don't need to show me that you can bleed profusely; I'd guessed that already," Tellis grumbled, waving her off, "weak offerings such as you will not please Lord Khorne, and you begin to bore me. Begone, blue thing."
Rainbow Dash was practically livid after hearing that, but before she could begin an angry tirade at the winged giant, something he had said seized her attention.
"Lord WHAT?"
Tellis began to walk away. "Lord Khorne, the Blood God, the dark god of slaughter and warfare. I'm sure your 'Celestia' - who sounds like a total wimp, by the way - has heard of him. He's probably the god that beat up your god after god gym class."
To his surprise, Rainbow Dash started laughing.
"Lord CORN? You worship a vegetable? Ha ha haaa!"
Tellis froze mid-stride. His hand twitched, and his lightning claws extended with a crackle of electricity as their destructive energy fields engaged.
Rainbow seemed distantly aware of the weapons as she brought her snickering under control, looking at the Raptor Lord with amusement as she slowly floated backward on the breeze. "No wonder you like Applejack so much! You're both real devoted to farming, huh?"
Well. That was that then. Blue pegasus dies.
One turning launch through the air to make contact. One swipe to seize the pony by the back of her neck. One good shake, and the snap of bones announced the end of the trivial chore, the xeno's neck splintered. It was dead.
Well, that had been the plan, anyway.
Tellis thought it had been a good plan.
The pegasus hovering out of arms' reach probably disagreed, as she had been able to flit away from his grasping metal hands with room to spare.
"Wow, you seemed a lot faster when you were fighting the grayskins," Rainbow noted with a smirk, "but hey, I understand. You're probably tired and all ready to pray to Lord Corn, aren't you? Do you need anything? Like some butter, maybe?"
Tellis spent a moment staring into the grinning face of the rainbow-headed speedster, his blood-red eye lenses betraying nothing.
Then he turned away, a hand moving to the side of his helmet. "Pardon me, creature. I have to make a call."


****


Ponyville outskirts


"I don't suppose it would be insubordination to ask if you're going to help out with the digging," Daniels asked.
Gaela was leaning against a fence post behind him, and sounded somewhat distracted when she answered. "If I was that strict with my cannon fodder I probably would have killed all of you before the enemy could, so be reassured." The Dark Acolyte had her biological eye closed as she sorted through visual data with her bionic optics. "In answer to your implied request, if you need additional help, I might suggest asking Pinkie for assistance. This would have the additional benefit of keeping her from toying with my respirator rig."
Daniels turned his head enough to glance the power armored woman with one eye, and he took a moment to wipe the sweat from his brow. "Why do you take the time to learn the ponies' names, but you won't remember mine?"
Gaela didn't budge her head, which was still engulfed in data. Her arms moved plenty, but that was just to keep Pinkie from getting entangled in her loose tubing. "For starters, their survival estimations engagement to engagement are nine times what yours are. Do you want me to go on, or is that depressing enough on its own?"
Before the soldier could reply, Gaela saw a vox signal attempting to connect to her suit's unit. "Hold your foolishness for a moment, this could be important."
The first thing she noticed was that the signal was specifically seeking her, which quashed a brief hope that another squad of lost troopers had stumbled into her mission; such signals would have been searching for any available vox receiver, not hers specifically.
The identity of the individual on the other end of the connection quashed any other general, all-purpose hope she may have had left.
"Lord Tellis. I had suspected that you had gotten bored and flown away on your own," Gaela said evenly. It took every bit of tact she had (not a lot) to say "suspected" rather than "hoped". "What can I do for you?"
The Raptor Lord's voice crackled in her headset. "Acolyte, you are the relative expert on these pony xenos within our forces, correct?"
Gaela idly wondered why the Raptor's vox-voice from within his helmet had the same resonant severity as sounds projected outside the mask. Had he changed the settings deliberately, or had the vox amplifier melded with his voicebox directly?
"Technically, that would probably be soldier Da..." she trailed off, trying to remember the rest of the name.
"Who?" Tellis asked, his voice loud and grating even as he seemed unusually calm.
"Daaa... something. It begin with a 'D'." Gaela glared around at the ponies and the single man as they remained dutifully quiet, exactly as she had instructed. With her helmet open, they could hear the Raptor's words as well. "Whatever, I'll put him on. Just-"
"If you can't remember the dolt's name then he can't be worth speaking to. I'll just ask you: do these ponies abandon their dead, or perform mortuary rituals in which friends and family view the corpse?"
That was an... unusual question to come from Tellis. Not because it was so morbid, but rather because it was so logical and rather intellectual. She had no idea, and would be honestly interested to learn the answer.
The ponies glanced at each other, obviously unsure if they should be worried or volunteer a simple answer.
"I could ask. Why do you wish to know, my lord?" Gaela responded.
"Well, I'd rather not spend the time etching curses and profanities in the corpse I'm about to make if nobody's going to look at it. Research the matter for me while I kill this thing."
The vox line went dead.


****


Ponyville - town center


"Yes, you're absolutely right, Mayor!" Twilight said, nodding in rapid agreement for what must have been the hundredth time. "This is completely unacceptable, and I will relay that sentiment to the humans right away!"
"I should hope so! Just look at our beautiful village! It's a wonder the entire square hasn't burnt up!" the mayor complained. Again. "Who's going to get rid of all this... this JUNK?"
Twilight resisted the urge to reprimand the mayor for calling it that. The old mare wasn't exactly the type to appreciate that several tons of alien artifacts had landed into their village, much of it mostly intact. If Twilight could manage it, she'd claim the wreckage here herself and move it somewhere safe where she could study it later. Just thinking about the things she had seen these vehicles and devices do made her shiver.
"I'll find a way to move the debris," Twilight promised, standing straight with an expression of determination totally disproportionate to the task, "you won't have to worry about it, Mayor."
"And what are those humans doing now? They'd better not be stirring up more trouble!" the older pony snorted, shooting glares at the pair of humans digging a great hole at the edge of town.
The Chaos Raptors were elsewhere, presumably nearby but not close enough to see or hear. Twilight was quite sure Mare would have been more discreet if they were the ones she was eyeing.
"They're not! They're just cleaning up and trying to find a way to continue their... uh, their 'quest' elsewhere! You won't hear a peep out of them again!" Twilight insisted. She had taken a few liberties with the story of the humans' presence in Equestria in order to explain them without causing further alarm. Not lies, really, just... gaping omissions. Omissions that probably would have made Applejack queasy.
"I don't know how you can trust them," the mayor said in a whisper as she approached the alicorn, "these... 'humans' are killers and savages, Miss Sparkle, no different from those other aliens! What's to stop them from turning on us with their weapons?"
Twilight raised her snout dramatically, as if speaking to the heavens themselves. "The magic of friendship!"
When she glanced back down, the mayor did not look convinced.
"Also, the other, more conventional type of magic that can block their projectiles and disarm their soldiers," Twilight continued.
Mayor Mare nodded slowly, her demeanor softening. "I see. That IS reassuring. If there's anypony who can see off a threat to Ponyville, I know it's you girls."
"Thank you, Mayor. But as I explained, that will not be the case. These humans have proven to be very friendly... or at least very non-violent toward us ponies." Twilight's expression softened and became more confident as she sensed that she had finally talked the mayor out of any confrontations they'd all regret. "I'm absolutely certain that none of the humans will attack anypony."
The end of her sentence was marked by the roar of an oversized jump pack coming to life several blocks away, the noise shadowed by a loud and familiar laughing.
"I'LL KILL YOU, BLASPHEMER!!"
"Gotta catch me first, slowpoke!"
Twilight's eye twitched as a blue comet trailing rainbows was chased over the rooftops by a gleaming predator spewing flames. She didn't turn to look though, even as Mayor Mare's eyes tracked them across the breadth of the sky.
"As I was saying," Twilight continued even as a snarled curse came from above and behind her, "I'm absolutely certain that none of the humans will hurt anypony. Excuse me."
Twilight's horn flashed, and then, in a blink of violet, she was gone.


She hadn't moved very far, however, reappearing next to Gaela as the Dark Acolyte hung her head and Daniels leaned against his shovel.
"Ooh, a teleport. That's a neat trick," Daniels whistled.
"What's going on?" Twilight demanded.
"That much should be self-explanatory," Gaela deadpanned.
"YOU WILL PERISH IN A STORM OF BLADES AND FIRE!!"
"No blade and fire storms today, pal! Weather factory's orders!"
They were a rainbow streak being followed closely by a gleaming comet through the sky, cutting wild circuits through the air in dizzying loops and zig-zagging courses.
Gaela was sure that such wild aerobatics would have been far beyond the most agile fighter craft, and judging by the straining burn of his flight pack and subtle inaccuracies in his pursuit arcs, even Tellis - borne to the sky with the wings of a daemon clad in steel - was having trouble trailing his prey.
Applejack whistled. "Yer boy sure seems riled 'bout somethin'."
"What did Rainbow Dash do this time?" Twilight moaned, a hoof to her face.
Gaela quirked her eyebrow. "You're blaming DASH for this? Not the deadly psychotic trying to rip her apart?"
"Gaela has a point," Rarity noted, "this might not be Rainbow's fault."
"STAY STILL, YOU LITTLE BLUE WRETCH!!"
"What's the matter? Too fast for you? Maybe you should pray to your veggie god for help!"
"HE IS NOT A VEGGIE GOD!! YOU SHUT YOUR HORSE MOUTH!!"
The ponies all sighed in tandem except Pinkie.
"Heh heh. Veggie god," the pink pony giggled.
"Really, I would have thought that even Rainbow Dash would have more sense than to taunt one of the Iron Warriors," Twilight grumbled, "never mind the one that might actually be able to catch her."
"Well, Ah don't know about that," Applejack said, returning to her digging, "flyin' fast is RD's best trick. That iron galoot ain't got a chance of catchin' her."
"Oh, I'd wager a ration or two he will. Those Astartes are bloody persistent when they're mad," Daniels noted.
"Ah'll put an apple against yer ration and raise ya two more," Applejack countered.
Daniels thought about pointing out that if Rainbow lost then she'd also die, but decided against it. "One apple is equal to one ration? I don't know about that..."


As the farmer and the mercenary debated the exchange rate of apples and nutrient goop, Twilight considered how to make their bet a moot point.
"They're moving too fast and too far away for levitation or some kind of binding spell to work. There has to be another spell..."
"Can't you fly up and stop them?" Pinkie asked, poking the alicorn's wings.
Before Twilight could say anything, Gaela interrupted. "Not a good idea. In his frenzied state Tellis is quite likely to lash out at any flying pony he sees and can get his claws on," the Acolyte noted, arms crossed, "also, using sorcery on him is a bad idea. He is... resistant."
"Resistant? To magic?" Twilight asked, intrigued. "How?"
"The Warp did it."
Rarity and Spike followed the path of rainbow and fire through the sky with their eyes.
"Well, is there anything you can do about it?" Rarity asked the Dark Acolyte.
Gaela rubbed her chin. "I could call down another emplacement and try to shoot him down."
"You can't do that!" Twilight said, alarmed that she would talk seriously about firing on one of her Company's soldiers.
"You're probably right. By the time it arrived and I set it up, I'm pretty sure this incident would be over," Gaela admitted, "still, it's a nice thought. I could claim I was trying to hit Rainbow but picked up Tellis as the larger bio-signature."
"I was thinking more in the sense of talking him out of it," Rarity clarified.
Gaela raised her eyebrow. "You mean make him even angrier so that he comes down to kill me instead?"
"I mean persuade him not to hurt anypony at all," Rarity clarified, looking slightly worried as she stared at the woman.
"And how would I do something like that?" Gaela asked. "I didn't even know you could incite non-violence in people. Is that some kind of psyker trick?"
"It's called diplomacy," Twilight said with just an edge of sarcasm.
"OH. That. I've heard of that. I don't do that," Gaela said uncomfortably.
"We've noticed," Rarity sighed, looking up again, "oh dear. It looks like they're heading out of town now."


****


Ponyville outskirts - approximate altitude: 130 meters


Rainbow Dash breathed hard as she made another sharp curve through the air, her lungs burning and wings straining.
The pitch in the engine roar behind her shifted slightly, and she heard another unnecessarily loud growl of frustration behind her.
She twisted her body in the air and cut her speed, smiling as Tellis rocketed past her in another missed swipe.
The Raptor was fast. Very fast. But that was probably to be expected from someone who strapped rockets to their back in order to fly. If she had made it a straight-up race to try and leave the Astartes in the dust, there was a (remote) chance that he might be even faster than her.
She was enjoying their current game plenty, however. Sweat dripped into her eyes and adrenaline surged through her body as she curved over the assault soldier's head, the Raptor zooming upward just a moment too late to catch her.
"Hey, is that Big Mac and the fillies?" Rainbow Dash said, glancing below even as she picked up speed again. "I'm gonna go say hi. You can take a breather here; you probably need it."
Tellis turned around, the mini-rockets of his iron wings flaring to neutralize his position in the air while he shook a fist at the diving pegasus.
"YOU'RE the one who needs a breather!" he snarled, his voice amplified to a daemonic howl.
He stopped shaking his fist, his posture slumping slightly in the air. "That was NOT one of my better come-backs."


****


"Sure has been loud out there, ain't it Big Brother?"
"Eeyup."
"Hey, Scootaloo, pass the jam!"
"Here you go. What do you think those explosions from earlier were? I hope nopony got hurt."
+Analysis from heat blooms and vox transmission intercepts suggests that Iron Warriors unit has prevailed against Tau vehicle detachment. Dispatching congratulatory vox message to unit commander.+
Big Macintosh, Crabapple and the Cutie Mark Crusaders were finishing up their breakfast, distantly aware of the skirmish that had ripped through the village. Big Mac had been worried when he saw several blue vehicles with black trim zooming over the rooftops to cross the village, but none of the skimmers had stopped or even slowed down to investigate the freshly painted probe standing sentinel behind his little sister.
They had also spotted a Space Marine with a jump pack sprinting past the restaurant toward the town square, but just like the Tau the Astartes hadn't paid them a moment's notice. It had just been that kind of morning.
Scootaloo twisted her head, catching sight of a smoke trail in the air out of the corner of her eye.
"Hey, is that Rainbow Dash up there?" she asked, suddenly excited.
Big Mac looked up from his plate, scanning the skies briefly. "Eeyup."
"Sweetie Bell quirked an eyebrow. "What's that thing behind her? It's shiny..."
+Unit identified as Iron Warriors Raptor Commander Tellis. Scanning suit cogitator data...+ Crabapple buzzed in binary.
"Is it... chasin' her?" Apple Bloom asked.
Big Mac traced the shiny object trailing Rainbow Dash on a tail of smoke and fire. "Eeyup," he said yet again.
+Suit cogitator has attempted to distribute a scrapcode self-destruct directive via system uplink. Terminating link. Power armor machine spirit is to be considered corrupted and highly dangerous. And also a huge jerk.+
"Ya okay, Crabapple?" Apple Bloom asked. The last Binaric blurt had sounded unusually agitated.
+Data intercepts suggest that unit Tellis is to be considered extremely dangerous. Recommend preparing eulogy and funerary rites for unit Rainbow Dash immediately.+
"Hey, do you think they're playing tag or something?" Scootaloo asked, pointing a hoof at the two flyers tearing up the sky above Ponyville.
Big Mac didn't answer, his expression darkening. He very much doubted it was "tag" she was engaged in.
"Is she... coming toward us?" Sweetie Bell asked, starting to lean away as the stunt flyer dropped into a dive. She was well aware of Rainbow's skill in flying - Scootaloo regularly took the time to remind her friends - but the pegasus also had a reputation for spectacular crashes.
Luckily, Rainbow was on the mark today, as was strictly necessary in order to escape an enraged Chaos Space Marine. She skimmed low to the ground before she decelerated, stopping to a hover next to the table as Scootaloo cheered.
"Hey guys! Mind if I help myself?" without waiting for an answer, Rainbow snatched up a bowl of sliced apples and practically dumped them down her gullet.
"Heya, Dash! Did you see those explosions earlier from the town square?" Scootaloo asked, jumping on the opportunity to talk to her idol.
Rainbow swallowed the fruit, wiping her mouth with her leg. "Sure did! I was almost in one of them! Ha! We sure showed those alien freaks!"
"What are you doing flying around over town like that? Are you being chased?" Sweetie Bell asked.
"Yeah, I'm just messing with one of those Astartes guys," Rainbow grabbed the glass of water next to Big Mac and downed it even faster than the fruit, splashing plenty over her face. "Gotta go! If he catches me he'll kill me!"
"Wait, wha-"
Apple Bloom was interrupted when Rainbow Dash bolted into the air again, which happened at almost the exact same time as Tellis landed in his latest attempt to mutilate her.
The Iron Warrior missed, of course, and his boots hit the ground hard, plowing through the street and leaving a wake of scorched dirt behind him as he slowed to a stop.
"I WILL TEAR YOU INSIDE OUT, INSOLENT BLUE CREATURE!!" Tellis howled.
"I'm too awesome to die!" Rainbow Dash shouted back triumphantly, racing off into the clouds beyond Ponyville's perimeter.
With a roar of jet engines Tellis was airborne again, his daemon-tech wings spread wide as he blasted into the sky in pursuit.
And then, suddenly, his acceleration cut short, and one side of his pack spread to the side, twisting the Raptor around with a burst of thrust.
Tellis stared down at the restaurant he had landed next to, and the figures sitting next to the table.
"Is that... one of our probe automata?" he asked, baffled. It was painted the wrong colors, but it was clearly of Imperial pattern, and he had seen nothing else from the ponies that would have indicated they had access to such technology.
"Bah, whatever." With another burst of flame to his side, Tellis turned again in mid-air. "Now what was I doing again?"
After a few seconds, he remembered. "Ah, right. Maim, kill, burn. Now where did my little victim go?"
To his surprise, he couldn't see Rainbow Dash anywhere. He was pretty sure she hadn't descended and hidden in the buildings or simply zoomed off into the sky. She wasn't THAT fast. Probably.


Rainbow Dash breathed heavily as she curled up as tightly as possible on a cloud above Ponyville, taking a minute to catch her breath.
She didn't really expect to get much respite from the armored killer chasing her, but something had distracted him long enough for her to pull into a cloud for cover, so she'd make the most of it.
She had to admit that she hadn't expected this whole affair to last this long. In fact, she hadn't put a great deal of thought at all into what she would do to ultimately stop Tellis from killing her. She hadn't thought he was being serious at first about killing her over a joke, but when she really thought about it, the guy WAS an insane, murderous super-soldier. And as much fun as it was to fly at this pace against a pursuer, she couldn't keep it up much longer, and he didn't look like he was getting tired.
She needed a strategy to stop him, not just lose him.
"Finally! Geez, it took me way too long to remember I have thermal vision settings on my visor," Tellis grumbled, his flight pack burning hotter, "I found you, you little... are you actually lying ON the cloud? That's impossible, you know."
Rainbow took a deep gulp of air and then took off again. She had gotten her second wind, but she needed to end this soon, somehow.
The building roar of Tellis' flight pack announced that the Raptor had given chase once more, and Rainbow led him around Ponyville outskirts, doing the same circuit of twists and curves as before.
Then, spotting a familiar cottage down below, the speedy pegasus got an idea.
Fluttershy's home was down below and ahead of her, and her window was wide open to allow birds to come and go from within, as it often was when the pegasus was at home.
"All right, Tellis, let's see you do a little stunt flying," Rainbow said, a smile spreading over her face.
"I can't make out what you're saying! Are you mocking Lord Khorne again? Because I hate that!"
"I said I like apples more than corn! Why don't you worship those instead? You and Applejack can build a church together!" Rainbow taunted, starting a swooping dive toward the cottage.
"I don't know who that is, but maybe after I'm done with you I'll mangle them next!" Tellis growled, his flight pack screaming as he vectored into Rainbow's flight path.
He didn't put full power into the dive, though. As the initial fury of Rainbow's taunts had worn off, he had recognized that the pesky pony had been using his rocket-assisted acceleration against him to trick him, sending him into high-velocity runs while she had darted out of the way to escape.
This time Tellis matched her acceleration, not attempting to overtake her. He'd simply match the pegasus for speed and trajectory, and wait for her to exhaust herself. And then...
Well, he'd think of a funny way to desecrate the corpse later. He usually came up with his best material in the heat of the moment.
And on the topic of stupid split-second decisions, was Rainbow actually planning to just ram through that building they were shooting toward?
"YEE-HAW!" Rainbow Dash cheered as she barrel-rolled through the air, slipping through the relatively small opening of Fluttershy's window and then correcting course enough to clear another such open window on the other wall by mere millimeters. She felt the tips of her wings brush the wooden frames, but it was otherwise a perfect move.
She had thought she had heard a loud squeak of surprise as she had shot through, but with her attention entirely on her flight path, she hadn't been able to spot Fluttershy in passing. It could have just been one of her animals, for all she knew.
"Let's see you match that trick, tough guy!" the pegasus called behind her as she pulled up into the sky over the Everfree Forest.


Rainbow Dash was not good at physics.
It was enough for her to know that walls were typically hard, immovable things, while flying individuals were generally stopped dead by such obstacles, and usually with great pain. That was her experience, anyway.
At no point did she wonder if a four hundred pound super soldier wearing half again his weight in rocket-propelled metal would have the same problem.


Rainbow's eyes widened as the wall of Fluttershy's cottage exploded outward in a burst of shattered wood and squawking birds.
Tellis tilted backward to let his engines kill his forward momentum, easing himself into a landing as a pair of goats fled out of the hole behind him.
Then the Raptor Lord reached up and pulled a python off of the right horn of his helmet.
"Begone, serpent," he spat, tossing the snake away.
Then he stared down at a house cat that was clinging to the Tyranid skull hanging from the chains around his neck.
"You may stay, cat. Your casual acts of cruelty and amusingly poor grammar please the Blood God."
The cat apparently had no intention of taking him up on his offer, dropping to the ground and racing off.
"Uhm... e-excuse me... can I get off too? Please?"
Tellis couldn't see behind him, but he heard something speaking from atop his flight pack. Probably entangled in the other chains back there. His armor also detected some kind of tremors from the creature, for some reason.
"Unnecessary, voice near but not within my head: the sudden acceleration will jar you free." His main turbines began to howl as they started spinning, and the hiss of fuel injection filled his autosenses as his iron wings spread once again.
"Uh, not to be a bother," the timid voice returned, "but that doesn't sound very saaaaAAAAAAH!"


Rainbow Dash watched as Tellis ascended once again, Fluttershy tumbling off of his flight pack in a flurry of yellow feathers and jetwash. She'd be fine.
"I hope this doesn't mean we have to fight the humans too, now," Rainbow mumbled as she turned around and took off again. They had turned on the Tau because the extraterrestrials had attacked them and destroyed one of their homes. Now the Iron Warriors had done the same thing.
Then again, it might not count, given that it was her fault this time.
"You can't flee forever, pegasus!" Tellis screeched. "You will pay for... whatever it is you did to enrage me in the first place! Damned attention span..."
Rainbow frowned at that as she and the pursuing Astartes flew low over the treeline of the Everfree Forest. He was right, of course. She'd need another plan to shake him off.
And that was when the shooting started.


Warning runes in his helmet started blinking as a bolt of sizzling blue slashed across his greaves, and Tellis turned hard to the side right before a rail rifle shot zipped over his head, trailing friction-heated air.
"Not as planned! Not as planned!" the Raptor shouted irritably as he turned into a fast evasive curve. Lances of blue fire stabbed out at the air around him, clearly not properly adjusted to hit something moving at his speed.
Nonetheless, lucky hits would do the job if he stuck around long enough. Frustratingly, as his visor scanned the surface below all it returned was ghost signals and magnetic noise. Such readings were about as useful as the view of darkened tree branches that greeted his unaugmented vision, and it meant he couldn't even get a passing count of enemy strength, never mind find a good point to charge in if he wanted.
The hiss of a missile pod unleashing its payload reached his autosenses, and Tellis rocketed straight upward as the mini-warheads ascended in an interceptor spread, exploding behind him even without an impact.
While he gained altitude, a new warning rune indicated that he had been struck by a different kind of weapon: his helmet cogitator had intercepted a data stream that had reflected off the surface of his armor and beamed the altered particle data into a local data network.
A Tau markerlight. That was bad.
Tellis turned again, rocketing back toward Ponyville as blue flares burst and crackled in the sky behind him. He may have been a fearless slaughterer of Khorne, but that didn't mean he was going to let himself get shot down like an idiot without so much as seeing his killer face-to-face.
As yet ANOTHER warning rune lit up on his visor display, he had to admit that it might be a foregone conclusion.
A snub-nosed missile the size of the Raptor's flight pack broke the top of the tree line, trailing bits of wood and leaves as it picked up speed.
Tellis turned, curving through the air as best he could while maintaining "crap-there's-a-missile-coming-at-me" speed, but the seeking missile corrected easily, tracing the Raptor Lord's formidable power signature as it closed the distance between them.
"Damn grayskins and their clever toys," Tellis groaned, the distance indicator on his retinal readout swiftly falling toward zero. The missile blasted toward him, mere seconds away from impact. "Ah, well. Blood for the Blood God."
And then suddenly rainbows.


Rainbow Dash grunted as her hooves hit the body of the missile on her fly-by, striking the deadly projectile as best she could while both she and it were moving near their respective top speeds.
The projectile tilted upward, tearing into a somersault as it tried to correct for such a sudden and dramatic change in its trajectory. Within seconds it lost its tracking data as it tried to turn completely around, and the warhead activated its safeties once it failed to register a target. The missile's engines fizzled, and it fell to the forest below like a stone.


Tellis slowed to a hover as he neared the cottage he and Rainbow had flown through earlier. His vox grille was silent as a pict-capture of the last few seconds hung in the corner of his visor display.
After a few moments Rainbow Dash flew over him, her breath heavy and her flight path unsteady.
Tellis spun around in the air to look the pegasus in the eyes. "Did you just KICK a missile out of the sky?"
"Yeah. Huff... no big deal. Huff..." Rainbow's mane was damp and sticking to her neck, which was certainly one of the less obvious indicators that it actually was a "big deal".
"That was the single most stupid thing I have ever seen," Tellis said flatly as he and Rainbow Dash hung in the air.
"Stupid?" Rainbow demanded, bristling.
"Yes, stupid. Stupid AWESOME!!"
Tellis nearly blasted the pegasus away with the sudden jolt in volume, and he raised a hand up into the air above his head.
It took Rainbow a second to get her bearings again, but once she steadied herself she recognized the gesture and promptly smacked a hoof into the Raptor's metal palm.
"Ha! I told you I was the best!" Rainbow said with a grin.
"You didn't mention that you were crazy, too!" Tellis laughed with the pegasus for a few seconds before he leaned his head in. "How did you know where to strike the seeker missile without detonating it?"
Rainbow blinked. "Detonating? You mean those things explode? I didn't know that. I figured it was just going to ram into you or something."
They stared silently at each other for several seconds as they both came to terms with how close Dash had come to being reduced to rainbow-colored debris.
"BWA HA HA HA HA HA!!" Then they laughed, because it was just that funny.
"Oh, man! I was almost in trouble there, wasn't I?" Rainbow asked between chuckles.
"Not quite as much as me, though," Tellis admitted, cocking his head to one side, "why did you attempt to help me while I was trying to murder you?"
"Aw, like I said, we ponies are on your side! We're like brothers and sisters in the epic struggle against the Tau!" Rainbow insisted, brushing off his question. Then her expression turned sheepish. "Also, I DID kind of make you mad on purpose. And then accidentally led you right over them, too."
Then the pegasus frowned, turning toward the thick and darkened forest. "I had no idea there were some hiding out in the Everfree, though. Those jerks are everywhere!"
"Yes. I suppose I should call that in or something," Tellis mumbled.
"Uhm, excuse me. Mister metal... uh, Sir?" came a timid voice from just below the two, just barely audible over the sound of Tellis' flight pack keeping him aloft.
"Not now, cowardly voice outside my head!" Tellis barked, not noticing the other pegasus hovering below him. "This is important!"
"Eep! I'm sorry! Please go ahead!" Rainbow Dash quirked an eyebrow as she watched Fluttershy dart back down and fly back into her house, courtesy of the brand new hole in its wall.
"Good. Come Dash, we have to talk to that killjoy in the robes," Tellis swung about in the air and then blasted off, fire spewing from his turbines, "also, the other xenos probably wish to know that you're still alive."
"Right behind ya, Tellis!" Rainbow said, taking off in pursuit at a much more leisurely pace than before.


****


Ponyville outskirts


"You drive a hard bargain AJ, but I suppose I can live with three apples to a ration," Daniels said, rolling a tin around in his hand, "so you'll be wagering three of your apples against my ration tin?"
"Okay, though Ah still think yer gettin' the better deal," Applejack said reluctantly, her eyes narrowed as she raised her hoof in front of the mercenary.
"Are you done making bets on our friend's survival? Because I could use some ideas on how to help her out," Twilight asked, glaring at the pair.
"Doesn't that mess with the odds?" Daniels asked as he shook Applejack's hoof.
Twilight groaned, and then turned toward Gaela.
She didn't speak, however, because she was currently in a conversation over her vox link in Binaric Cant.
+-and you seriously couldn't find some way to contact us physically when you didn't get a vox connection?+
+Survival of Iron Warrior unit is not mission priority. Commander Apple Bloom demanded unit Crabapple's presence for scheduled nutrient consumption,+ came the blurt of code from the metal collar currently made up of Gaela's disengaged helmet.
+Let me inform you where you can relocate your "mission priority"...+
Twilight found Gaela's communication system fascinating. Of course, she found EVERYTHING about the Dark Acolyte fascinating. She hadn't known someone so intelligent and mysterious since she'd met Princess Celestia herself.
Gaela's lips didn't actually move when she spoke Binary, and by now Twilight was fairly certain that the buzzing coming from her throat wasn't at all natural. The sound of Binaric Cant was too far removed from ordinary sounds and syllables to be just another language.
Gaela switched off her vox with a thought and grunted in annoyance. "So we have no new readings to help locate the enemy primary jammer array, and the nearest substation is ten kilometers out."
"So, should we get marching?" Daniels asked. He was shoveling dirt back into the giant pit full of corpses now.
"I WOULD, but the Raptors requested armor repairs," Gaela pointed out, "and Dest as well. Meaning we can't even head out until..."
She trailed off as she heard the sound of a rocket engine approaching fast, and she turned her optics to the sky as Daniels took cover.
"Enemy missile?" the mercenary asked.
"No. Tellis," Gaela grumbled as the IFF sensors in his armor returned his ID. As if it wasn't perfectly obvious who and what the gleaming metallic comet hurtling toward them was.
"I think I'll stay behind here anyhow," Daniels mumbled, crouched behind a wagon with his shovel.
"Is that... Rainbow Dash next to him?" Twilight asked, surprised and quite relieved.
"Well, I'll be..."


Tellis landed without a shred of subtlety, slamming into the ground hard and letting his boots carve furrows into the dirt as he slid to a stop.
Rainbow hovered over him, waving hello to her friends as if she and the Astartes hadn't been in a life-or-death game of tag just minutes earlier.
"You. Dark Acolyte. You're the mission leader around here, aren't you?" Tellis asked. He sounded annoyed, as if actually performing proper intelligence procedures was a tiresome chore.
"Technically, my lord, that would be you, since you outrank me," Gaela pointed out.
"Okay, yes, but you're the mission leader around here who actually remembers what their mission is, aren't you?" Tellis clarified.
Gaela swallowed an irritated groan. "Yes, Lord. How may I be of service?"
"Found a bunch of Tau outside the village outskirts. I was barely a kilometer inside the boundaries of..." he turned to Rainbow Dash. "What was it called?"
"The Everfree Forest," the pegasus answered.
"Thanks. I was barely a kilometer inside it when I came under heavy fire, some of it anti-air. I couldn't get a lock on anything, either. Just thought I should mention that."
Gaela blinked. "I'm surprised that you stopped chasing Dash to report this in."
"Does this mean you didn't catch her?" Daniels asked.
"Is she still alive?" Tellis asked, turning toward the man.
"Sure seems so, Lord."
"Then I didn't catch her," Tellis confirmed, glancing over his shoulder at the grinning pegasus, "you just can't catch this damned horse. She slips through the claws like the wind itself."
"Well, you made a good attempt, though," Rainbow said, snickering as she patted Tellis on his shoulder guard.
Daniels grunted and tossed a ration tin to Applejack, who smiled and caught it without a word.
"My lord, let me access your suit's locator and pict-capture data," Gaela asked, placing a hand to the implant on the side of her head, "perhaps I can parse the readings to get something more substantial out of it."
"Yeah, fine, knock yourself out," Tellis mumbled, finding Gaela's cogitator signal and allowing it access to his suit memory coils.
Gaela checked the data upload, and her expression darkened. "My lord, your suit just uploaded a scrapcode worm trying to make me self-destruct."
"Is it working?" the Raptor Lord asked.
She glared up at him silently.
"By the gods, you Mechanicus geeks really have no sense of humor at all," Tellis grumbled, "try it again."
As Gaela uploaded the data, Rainbow Dash wander over to Applejack and Daniels, staring at the ration tin that had just changed hands.
"Wait, AJ, did you make a bet on that chase just now?" Rainbow seemed offended somehow as she pointed an accusing hoof at the evidence.
"What? Ah just told Daniels that there was no way that some rocket-powered human would be able to catch you," the farmer said defensively, "he wanted to put his money where his mouth was, that's all!"
"I think she's upset that you were making a wager on a matter of life and death," Daniels pointed out.
"No, I'm upset that nopony told me so I could get in on it!" Rainbow complained, crossing her front legs angrily.
"You were kinda busy flyin' for yer life," Applejack deadpanned, "but if it makes ya feel better I'll split the can with ya."
Twilight turned her attention away from the absurd conduct of her friends to pay closer attention to the slightly less absurd conduct of Gaela and Tellis.
"Well, did you find anything out?" the alicorn asked eagerly.
Gaela nodded. "A great deal, actually. What fired on Tellis was not an armored vehicle, but a dedicated anti-air structure. While many of the signals were scrambled, they couldn't have hidden the Tau's drive emissions completely with the electromagnetic fields deployed in this region."
Tellis formed his hand into the shape of a mouth opening and closing constantly, silently mocking the Mechanicus agent.
Gaela's eye narrowed. "Structures mean a field base. Field bases mean centralized command logistics. Command logistics means data. If we take that base, we might just be able to figure out why the Tau are here in strength."
"Swell. I'll round up the Reavers and we'll deploy immediately," Tellis offered, jabbing a thumb toward the spot his subordinates had chosen to hold outside of the village.
"My lord, it's going to be too heavily defended to take with a handful of Space Marines and a few humans as support," Gaela said evenly, "you'll need to fly back to base and inform the Warsmith so he can deploy reinforcements."
"Pft, I'm not doing that," Tellis said immediately, "that would take, like, half an hour or something. Each way! If you don't need me to kill things then leave me alone."
Gaela deflated. "But... my lord, getting this information to base is CRITICAL to our mission success!"
"Yeah, so you do it. I'm busy," then he turned away from the Acolyte, "hey, Dash! Show me how you can treat clouds like a solid, again! That was cool!"
Rainbow turned around, breaking off her conversation with Applejack and Daniels. "Okay, sure! Follow me!"
She took off into the sky, and a second later Tellis had blasted off after her, his jet wash kicking up Gaela's robes around her feet.
"Aww, the crazy man made a friend. That's adorable," Rarity said with smirk as Gaela hung her head.
"Is there any other way to contact your people?" Twilight asked.
"Yes. We could walk," the Acolyte grumbled, "it would take at least a day just to get there, and there's a chance that the Tau might relocate in the interim, but it is absolutely vital Warsmith Solon is informed."
"Maybe a pony could make it there faster?" Applejack guessed.
"Any pony given the task would run a very serious risk of being shot when approaching the landing point. Besides, none of you know the way."
"I know! You could write a letter!" Rarity suggested.
Gaela raised her eyebrow. "And this letter would reach my lord... how?"
Rarity turned toward Spike. "Spike, I don't suppose your fire teleport would work in this case, would it?"
Spike winced, never happy to admit weakness in front of his crush. "It, ah, doesn't really work that way."
"The letters could only go to Princess Celestia," Twilight confirmed. Then her ears fell flat against her head. "Which reminds me... I have quite a letter to send her to try to explain all this..."
"Hey! Did someone mention letters?"
Gaela and the ponies glanced up into the air.
"Oh, hi Derpy," Twilight greeted, "we were discussing a message our friend here needs to get to her boss."
The gray pegasus brightened as she landed in front of the Acolyte. "If you have a letter, I can take it!"
"A live courier system, eh? Quaint," Gaela mumbled, her gaze lingering on Derpy's eyes, "but I doubt you deliver to the Iron Warriors' main base."
"Sure I do!" Derpy said with a smile.
That stopped everybody short.
"You DO?" Twilight asked incredulously.
"It's that smoky city by the Badlands surrounded by all the big, shiny people, right?" the mailmare asked.
"That... is a fair description of the landing point," Gaela admitted, though her expression still spoke of disbelief, "how do you deliver messages through the security perimeter and auto-defense matrix?"
"I don't know what those things are!" Derpy said brightly.
"Ah. Ignorance as a survival mechanism. I should have guessed," the Acolyte mumbled, cupping her chin with her bionic hand, "well... I suppose I don't have many good options in front of me. As long as there's a flyer willing to carry the message along, I suppose I have to try it. Does anyone have some parchment?"
"Spike!" Twilight called.
Without further prompting the young dragon had produced a blank scroll and held it up to Gaela.
She took it and unrolled the blank parchment, holding it up in front of her. Then she hesitated, looking over the page distastefully.
"I feel like a savage trying to recharge a lasgun power cell with a campfire," Gaela admitted ruefully.
"Speaking as someone who's actually DONE that, stop complaining and do what you have to do," Daniels said.
Gaela grumbled incoherently as her welding laser pushed forward out of her servo-tool. After adjusting its power output down to almost minimal levels, she raised the paper up in front of the tool.
"For such a 'primitive' act as writing a letter, you certainly seem to be making a hi-tech show of it," Rarity drawled.
Gaela's cutting laser pulsed rapidly as she slowly ran it across the breadth of the page, burning what appeared to be a single unbroken line into the parchment. Microscopic variations in the length of the markings, imperceptible to the naked eye, marked out the different elements of the binary message, and Gaela moved the page up and over to continue on the next line.
After a few seconds of this, she felt Pinkie climbing up on her shoulder again.
"You misspelled 'particle'; that should be 11010, not 11100," the pink pony said, pointing a hoof at the message.
"Shut up. You can't read binary," Gaela insisted, continuing to write the next line.
A second later the laser tilted upward and zapped a line that she had already passed over, although Gaela said nothing more on the matter.
"It's not encryption, but in case this message falls into enemy hands it should at least confuse them for a while," Gaela said as she burned a final line over the page.
"You have to complicate everything don't you?" Daniels asked.
"How many times to you think you can get away with mocking me before I submit a disciplinary request upon our return, Daggoth?" Gaela asked, folding up the parchment.
"Exactly as many times as it takes before you remember my name, Acolyte," the mercenary replied.
Gaela grunted irritably before holding out the folded parchment to Derpy. "Here. That is to be taken straight to Warsmith Solon postehaste," she said.
"Is he the one with all the legs like a centipede and the wires sticking out of him?" Derpy asked, staring at the paper with one eye while the other pointed off elsewhere.
"No, that's Dark Magos Kaelith. Warsmith Solon is the one with legs like a spider who smells like burning rubber," Gaela clarified. Rarity and Twilight gave each other dubious looks, wondering about that description.
"Oh, yeah! I know him! He's nice!" Derpy said, smiling. She didn't take the message, though.
Eventually, Twilight figured out what was wrong. "It's postage due, Derpy."
"Okay!" the gray pegasus saluted with one hoof while the other finally took the parchment and stuffed it in her saddlebag. Then she took off into the air, curving in the general direction of the Iron Warriors city-fortress.


Rarity quirked an eyebrow at Twilight. "Postage due? Really?"
The alicorn flushed, leaning in next to the snow-colored unicorn. "I always use Spike to send letters! I almost never use postage!"
"I feel ridiculous," Gaela admitted as she scratched the back of her head, "I'm stuck in an alien village with hardly any troops with an enemy base little more than a grenade's toss away, and I'm sending crucial strategic data to my commander via flying pony courier. To top things off, the only especially competent warrior available has formed an inexplicable bond with the last creature he tried to murder and is too busy playing with her to actually help in our mission."
"Plus you have a bright pink pone trying to arm-wrestle your servo limb," Daniels pointed out, "just in case you needed more reasons to feel ridiculous."
As Gaela pried Pinkie off her shoulder, Twilight gave the Dark Acolyte a hopeful look. "Well, now there's nothing much to do but wait for your message to be received, right? We'll get some more time to talk!"
"I was hoping to spend the time repairing our troops' armor, actually," Gaela pointed out, "also, I should check on Dest. We just left him standing in his armor out in the open while he recovered."
"Oh, nonsense!" Rarity cooed, batting her eyes as she tapped a hoof against Gaela's armored calf. "We have no idea how long you're even going to be here; you can't spend your entire trip working!"
"But I'm on a miss-"
Rarity interrupted her as she walked past, seizing the Acolyte's arm with magic. "Oh, I know! Let me show you my boutique! I would just LOVE to come up with a dress for something with your shape!"
Twilight brightened. "Yes, that's perfect!" It would mean that Gaela would be kept immobilized for an extended period of time with nothing better to do but answer the dozens of burning questions that kept bubbling on the surface of her mind, demanding answers. Sweet, delicious answers...
The Dark Acolyte sighed, offering no further resistance as she was magically pulled along behind the white unicorn. "This has a been a VERY strange day..."