Iron Hearts: Book 4
Chapter 7
Aftermath
****
Primary muster point Zeta
"Bleeding hell!"
This sentiment passed numerous lips as the entire battlefield was suddenly bathed in light, forcing the weary and perplexed soldiers to look away.
Daniels, for one, was shielded from the initial light flare because he was laying in the makeshift medical bay that had been blocked off from the battlefield. He didn't mumble an explanation of surprise until the distant roar and crackle of a truly enormous energy discharge reached his ears.
"Wh-What? What's going on?" Fluttershy yelped, activating her cloak on reflex. This did little to hide her, given that her armor was smeared with blood, and anyway wasn't very helpful at the moment.
"You got me," Daniels said as he looked up over the tops of the supply transports, "but whatever it was, it was bright."
The Dark Acolyte froze from where he was performing a bullet-removal surgery, and he tilted his head upward. "We have lost contact with the assault force."
That bit of news turned Fluttershy's blood to ice, and she hastily de-cloaked. "What do you mean?! Are they okay?"
The cyborg turned to look down at her. "Unlikely. An unexpected weapon discharge of infeasible magnitude was unleashed upon the assault force. There is very little accurate information at present, but it is possible, perhaps likely, that the entire assault force was destroyed." He lowered his head and went back to his surgical procedure.
"No. No, no, no, no..." Daniels grunted as he pulled himself to his feet, using his rail rifle as a crutch. Fluttershy remained still, emotionally torn between horror, panic, and sorrow.
Once Daniels staggered back to the barricades, he got a first-hand look at the distant battlefield.
An enormous stretch of ground in the distance was completely obscured by a curtain of smoke and ash, although it wasn't hard to guess that the assault force had occupied that general area. And further away, smoke bled from the mouth of the culprit: a capital ship turret only slightly smaller than the cannon batteries in Ferrous Dominus.
"That's... There's no way... there's just no way," the mercenary mumbled. Dozens of other soldiers stared out at the blasted terrain, many of them equally stunned. Others were busy thanking their lucky stars that they had been subjected to the far more conventional dangers of a mass Ork assault rather than being instantly vaporized en masse. A small portion of them decided that there may not be any great impediments to the Orks using the starship gun on them next, and began a hasty jog for the rear of the formation.
"Do... Do you think they're..." Fluttershy walked up to him stiffly, her crumbling emotions mercifully sealed within the mask of adamantium.
"I..." Daniels trailed off, not knowing what to say. He'd seen capital ships turn the tides of battles with a sudden bombardment before. Surviving such power seemed impossible. This situation was different, to be sure, but he couldn't find any reason to hold out hope.
"Fluttershy!" Rainbow Dash's voice suddenly boomed in Fluttershy's ear, causing her to jump in surprise.
"Rainbow! You're okay!" Fluttershy gasped. "The others! Are the others with you?!"
"What? I can't-KSSSSSHT!" a burst of static filled Fluttershy's ears, and she winced.
"Rainbow? Rainbow, can you hear me?"
The static continued crackling for several seconds, and then small snippets of Rainbow Dash's voice started breaking through the interference.
"KSSSSH-help with the-SSSSSSH-fires in-SSSSSSH-smoke and dust from-SSSSSSSSH-gunfire, so they must-SSSSSSSSSHT!"
"Rainbow! Rainbow Dash! I can't hear you! Please, come in!" Fluttershy begged, tears welling up in her eyes. The static continued for several more seconds, and then the vox link went dead.
"Rainbow..." Fluttershy whimpered, feeling utterly lost as her visor failed to pick up any sign of the other pegasus.
She felt a slight pressure on her helmet, and she glanced up at Daniels, who had place his hand over her head.
"You heard from Miss Dash?" he asked grimly.
"Y-Yes," she said, trying to keep from sniffling, "but I couldn't h-hear her! S-Something's wrong!"
"Good," the mercenary said simply.
Fluttershy jerked her head back, surprised.
"If we know she's alive, but can't contact us for some reason, that might be the case for the rest of them," Daniels explained, sitting down next to the armored pony, "it's not much, but it's something. And there's not a whole lot we can do to help them from here."
Fluttershy gulped and nodded meekly. "Twilight... everyone... please be okay..."
****
Ground Zero
Dest hammered his foot into the access hatch again and again, feeling the metal give millimeter by millimeter with every blow.
On the twenty-ninth blow the hatch finally ripped free of its hinges and was sent bouncing across the blasted rock outside.
Dest grunted as he squirmed feet-first out of the driver's cab, his bolter already in his hand.
Once he was free of his vehicle, the Iron Warrior leapt to his feet, bolter up and searching for targets.
The search proved futile. There was nothing but dust and ashes in every direction, a particulate rain that reduced visibility to mere meters. His helmet systems likewise informed him that all vox connections had been lost.
Dest heard a shout from behind him, and he turned toward his Rhino.
The APC had been knocked onto its side, and the outer layers of armor had been warped and burned. Every exposed section of metal had been melted and then cooled, fusing together seams between metal plates and utterly ruining the tracks.
As serious as the damage was, however, none of it seemed to breach or obviously damage the interior of the passenger compartment. He walked up to his vehicle and gave it a swift kick.
"Hey! Is somebody out there?!" came a shout immediately. It sounded like Twilight, although there was a lot of grunting and scraping metal sounds coming from the same space.
"It is Dest," answered the Iron Warrior, "are you undamaged?"
"I think 'undamaged' is a lot to ask for, but we're all still alive!" the Princess informed him. "But we can't get out! Hold on, maybe I can cut an opening-"
"Do not activate your weapons inside the compartment," Dest warned, "the access ramp and doors have been fused to the hull. Have the Dark Techpriest cut them loose."
"Affirmative, my lord," came a different voice. This was followed by more metal screeching, and a few clanging noises.
"OOF! Applejack, why do you have your gravity-increasing devices on?!" Rarity's voice demanded.
"They ain't on!"
"This is how much you weigh NORMALLY? By Celestia, I can feel my armor folding in under you!"
"... Okay, NOW they're on. Y'see the difference?"
"OW! OW! OW! OW! Turn them off! OFF!!"
Dest stepped away from his transport, once again searching the shroud of dust and ashes that surrounded him.
"Well, I lost another vehicle, but at least my passengers survived this time," he reasoned aloud to himself, "maybe I'm getting better at this."
He heard gunfire from the side, and then whirled toward that direction, boltgun raised. The shots came from some distance away, far outside effective visibility, but he could make out the sounds of both bolter discharges and the distinct rattling bursts of Ork guns.
"It seems we are not the only survivors," Dest said as a sizzling noise came from the Rhino hull, "our brothers have engaged the enemy."
"Or vice versa," Gaela grumbled while her melta torch seared through the fused armor plating.
"What in tarnation HAPPENED?!" Applejack demanded. "One second everythin' was goin' great, and the next the world's turnin' upside-turvy! And why can't Ah talk to nobody? This helmet busted already?"
"Negative. We are surrounded by a blanket of intense ionic radiation that is disrupting our vox signals," Gaela explained after she finished carving out one seam of the access ramp, "this is taking too long. Macintosh!"
"Eeyup."
Dest backed away as the Rhino shook and shifted for a few seconds.
Then the access ramp was ripped right off its hinges and sent spiraling away into the dusty fields beyond.
The stallion emerged first, glancing about at the curtain of dust before uncertainly moving aside for the others to exit.
"Oh, thank GOODNESS," Rarity gasped out as she exited the Rhino, "I thought I was going to... suffocate... in there..." she trailed off as she stared at the surrounding clouds of dust and ash, and then she sighed.
"Okay, great, we're out," Applejack snorted, taking a moment to adjust her hat, "so what happened, and whatta we do about it?"
Gaela and Twilight followed the apple farmer out of the wrecked transport, and the former immediately turned in the direction of the distant wreck. "The Tau battlecruiser."
"What about it?" Twilight asked as she and the other equines looked up at her.
"There was some concerns over the noosphere channels about power anomalies originating from the wreck," she explained, "and the extent of the damage caused by the weapon could have no other possible source without us seeing such a weapon deployed. I hypothesize that the Orks re-activated a broken heavy ion cannon turret and then unleashed it on the assault convoy."
Twilight gaped. "Is that even possible?"
"It is just possible enough for an Ork engineer to try. Their success was partial, but quite evident."
"Partial?" Applejack asked. "Looks pretty complete from where Ah'm standin', sugarcube."
"Had the Orks successfully repaired the turret, our survival would have been... unlikely," the Dark Techpriest said, "but the weapon clearly suffered a containment failure, and anyway was never designed to fire in an atmosphere. Rather than a coherent energy bolt, it instead bathed the entire combat area in a stream of ionic radiation. Much of the energy was deflected and absorbed by the air, and the remaining charge is what continues to foil our systems. The attack was... harmful, certainly, but mostly survivable for those within an armored vehicle. The vehicles themselves are likely useless to us now, of course."
"Mixed fortune, to be sure," Dest rumbled, "but more importantly, will our personal armor be able to protect us should they use the weapon again?"
Gaela hesitated. "The discharge would have certainly overloaded the magnetic containment arrays of the cannon, which were obviously in poor working order to begin with. It is very unlikely that the Orks will be able to fire the turret again."
"More or less unlikely than them firing it the first time?" the Iron Warrior pressed.
"We... should advance," Gaela mumbled, "whatever weapons the Orks have available, they will hesitate to unleash it with their soldiers in the blast area."
"So now our survival may hinge on Ork RESTRAINT," Dest snorted as he walked ahead of the others, "I'm actually quite impressed by how quickly this offensive has fallen apart. The greenskins always find ways to keep things interesting."
The Chaos Space Marine led the group through the obscuring shroud, moving at a cautious pace toward the sounds of gunfire.
It wasn't long before they encountered another vehicle, and Twilight grimaced as she stared at the warped and partially melted form of a Leman Russ battle tank.
"Hey! Anybody in there?!" Applejack yelled, rushing up past the Iron Warrior.
"Yes! The blasted hatch is fused shut and not a bloody thing in this heap is working anymore!" yelled one of the men inside. "Get us out!"
"These are merely tank crew," Dest noted, "they will be of little help to us without their vehicle."
Applejack looked up at him. "So?"
"So, it would be a better use of our time to leave them and help open any transports that still contain combat-capable infantry," Gaela clarified as she moved to walk right around the wasted vehicle.
"But we can't just leave them! They could suffocate in there!" Twilight pointed out.
Gaela stopped and looked back at her. "So?" she asked, echoing Applejack earlier.
The equines stared silently at the two humanoids, and Dest and Gaela stared back. It was difficult to interpret body language since all of them were fully armored, but they were all familiar enough with each other to feel out the disagreement at hand.
"This is one of those 'moral' things you ponies do, isn't it?" Gaela asked in irritation.
A series of bullet ricochets brought an end to the stand-off, and everyone rushed next to the tank as gunfire started peppering its side.
"What's happening? Are we leaving?" asked the tank pilot with a note of desperation in his voice.
"Fine! Dark Techpriest, cut it open! The rest of you, to battle!" Dest barked.
Gaela wasted no more time, jumping up onto the melted tracks to access the troop hatch.
The others peeked around the Leman Russ, noting that the dust cloud had settled enough to add a few more meters to their immediate visibility.
"Ah can't see 'em!" Applejack complained, her visor flickering from the electrostatic disruption that prevented it from finding a target. "How can they see us?!"
"Sighting an enemy is not a prerequisite for Ork shooting!" Dest shouted back as he crouched against the tank. "More likely they simply heard us arguing!"
He cycled vision modes to set his visor to target muzzle flash rather than enemy bodies, and a few targeting brackets appeared. "Got them! Follow my aim!"
Dest's boltgun kicked in his hand as he snapped off one shot at a time toward the enemy, and it was soon followed by a stream of heavy bolt shells and a purple beam that swept blindly through the haze.
Dest was sure that their barrage had cut down a few of the attackers, but as he drew back behind cover he couldn't help but notice the amount of incoming fire was increasing rather than the reverse. A hail of bullets ran across the breadth of the battle tank and beyond, and Big Mac flinched back when a few shots bounced off his shoulder and helmet plating.
"I think we're just attracting more of them!" Dest complained.
"Well, what are we supposed to do? Stop shooting back?" Twilight asked.
Gaela finished cutting through the top hatch to the Leman Russ, and her servo arms finally wrenched the seals free. "Go! Get out quickly, and flee to the defense lines!" she commanded as the men pulled themselves out of their vehicle.
"WAAAAAGH!!" Every pony sighed in exasperation at the familiar battlecry, and prepared themselves for the inevitable charge.
"If I NEVER hear that sound again, it will be too soon," Rarity growled as her levitation wrapped around her power sword.
"Ah dunno, Ah think it's right nice of 'em to warn us every time they come sprintin' forward into the fire." Applejack lifted the mouth of her flamer.
The first Ork that came barreling through the dust shroud caught a bolt shell in the abdomen and dropped. The second had much its upper torso cooked by a plasma bolt. The third and fourth were swallowed by flames.
But there were still more.
Rarity's body and sword became a blur and Twilight's harmonizer shifted to blade mode as the greenskins came at them with choppa and slugga raised. Big Macintosh let the stim injector in his chest release, and he snorted roughly as chemicals rushed through his bloodstream. Applejack calmly placed her hat to the side so that she wouldn't get blood on it.
The mob crashed into them, and another rank of Orks were cut down before humming blades or hurled into the air by the Apple siblings. The aliens outnumbered the ponies and their driver, but not by enough to overwhelm them; by the time Dest and the armored equines had unleashed their initial blows much of the momentum of the charge had been lost, and too many of the Orks had fallen.
Applejack splintered an Ork's shin with a back kick before swinging her tusks under another, sweeping it off its feet. Then she reared up and landed her front boots onto the prone alien, her gravity plating multiplying the force of the stomp fourfold.
Choppas and slugga rounds pounded at the farmer's armor as the Orks surrounded her, carving gouges into the ceramite and cracking the outermost plates. Still Applejack thrashed and kicked, tearing down the Orks one by one.
She smashed her back legs into another, caving in its rib cage, and then flinched as a choppa blade slammed into the face of her helmet. A deep crack ran through the optics lens, and Applejack faltered as her visor display started to flicker.
It stabilized after a moment, just in time for her to see a headless Ork slumping to the ground in front of her.
"The Warsmith's creations are a true marvel, are they not?" Gaela asked as she cleaved an alien's arm from his shoulder and then grabbed another Ork with her free hand. Her servo arms descended on the warrior with gusto, crushing limbs and burning through flesh.
"Yer tellin' me!" Applejack reared up again and pounded a foreleg into an Ork, her already-formidable strength buttressed by the heavy servomotors. The alien was sent sprawling onto his back. "Just hope it holds out longer'n the greens do!"
On the other side of the combat, Dest was pushing through the alien soldiers with his combat knife and bolt pistol, trying to keep enough room between him and the enemy to prevent them from grappling with him.
He certainly drew enough attention, as he was far and away the largest armored fighter; although the Orks held back nothing when assaulting the equines, he got the impression that the aliens didn't really know what to make of them. Hacking at heavily armored post-humans was old, comfortable territory.
Dest shot an Ork in the chest and then rammed a knee into it, and then he twisted about to plunge his knife into another's face.
"Perish, xeno filth!" the driver roared as he pulled the knife free and whirled around toward the next target.
The next target, unfortunately, happened to be an Ork Nob running at him with a massive iron maul.
Dest managed to fire off a bolt round before the alien reached him, but the shell barely seemed to bother the massive alien in mid-charge. The head of the maul slammed into his abdominal plate with crushing force, and the Iron Warrior was lifted completely off the ground and flung away into the rocks.
He hit the ground hard and rolled, his weapons tumbling from his grip as stone shattered under his armored body.
"Dat all ya got, spiky?" the Nob laughed as he ran up to the fallen Marine. "Git up so I can knock ya down agin!"
A humming noise from behind alerted the hulking warrior to a new threat, and he side-stepped just in time for a crystalline purple blade to slash by him.
"HEROIC INTERVENTION!!" Twilight soared at the Ork with horn aglow, her force harmonizer swerving back around and cutting into the alien's side.
The Nob ignored the energy blade, swinging his maul at her and connecting an underhand swing with a tremendous CRACK.
"Duh-NIED!" he growled, knocking the pony through the air like a croquet ball.
Rarity, in her state of partial removal from normal space-time, barely managed to duck out of the way as the alicorn careened over her. Twilight slammed into the front of the immobile Leman Russ tank with a teeth-rattling crash, and then bounced off into a heap of sparking and battered metal.
The force harmonizer flickered for a moment and then deactivated, leaving blood to seep freely from the deep cut in the alien's side. The Nob, undaunted, chortled heartily, lifting his hammer into the air.
"Who's next?! Imma smash e'ry one o'ya!"
The pounding of hooves to his side answered the question, and the Ork mob leader turned to face one of the larger ponies charging at him in a flat-out bull run, complete with bull horns lowered to goring level.
The sight probably would have been intimidating to a normal Ork, but compared to a Nob, Big Macintosh hardly impressed with his size. The Ork warrior pulled his hammer back for a sidelong blow, aiming to take the equine's head off mid-charge.
Big Mac was fully in the throes of a chemical-enhanced killing spree, however, and seeing the alien pull its weapon back in preparation to strike became just another opening. His augmetics squealed and his muscles burned as he summoned an extra burst of speed toward the Nob, and the workhorse slammed into the Ork's abdomen before it could make the swing. The maul went flying from the Nob's grip, and he doubled over as Big Mac plunged his armor's horns into the enemy warrior and lifted him off his feet.
"Mac?" Applejack asked, slamming a boot down on a squirming Ork boy as she watched her brother gore the mob leader.
And then the stallion kept going, carrying the Nob along on his head as the alien roared in pain and battered his fists against Big Mac's armor.
"Mac! Where ya goin'?" Applejack demanded as her brother sprinted off into the curtain of ashes. "Big Macintosh Ironside Apple, ya come back here this instant, y'hear?!"
She had to suppose her brother didn't hear, because he soon vanished into the dust, leaving behind only the sound of galloping, metal-shod hooves and a substantial trail of Ork blood.
Then her head pitched to the side as the Ork beneath her clubbed her helmet with a loose rock.
"QUIT IT!" she snapped, rearing up again and powering the gravity plates as she dropped down. Bones snapped and flesh tore under her increased weight, and the apple farmer winced as her leg and underbelly plating were splattered with gore.
"Gotta say: trainin' to fight Orks was kinda fun. Actually fightin' em, not so much," Applejack grumbled as she looked around for any more targets.
Gaela brought her axe down into a stumbling Ork boy, cutting deep into its torso. "A common sentiment among us sapiens, I assure you." She kicked the Ork away as she ripped her weapon free, splattering blood over the front of her robes.
Her servo limbs whirled about, the integrated sensors feeding data back to her combat visor as they searched for - and failed to find - any more active hostiles.
"Area secure. We have exhausted the xenos' combatants within engagement range," the Dark Techpriest declared.
The other two ponies still present and standing weren't really listening, instead rushing over to Twilight.
"Twi! Ya all right? Speak to me, filly!" Applejack said as Rarity cautiously poked at the armored body.
"Could you stop the war, please? I'd like to get off." Twilight's visor flickered and buzzed abnormally as an unusually high-pitched voice came from her vox grille.
Rarity's visor finished scanning her friend, and she sighed. "Nothing broken, and only some minor bleeding. Mostly around the head, incidentally. That impact might have knocked a few things loose."
"Like her senses, Ah reckon," Applejack mumbled.
"Don't you judge me, fruit pony!" Twilight protested as she shakily pushed herself up. "I'm the Element of Princess! Just because I'm not a Rainbow doesn't-" she tried to take a step forward, but one leg servo made a horrendous grinding noise before it locked up and sent her tumbling onto her side. "Urk! Pears!"
"Hey, no call fer that kinda language," Applejack said as she gently placed a boot on her friend's side, "just stay still fer now 'til all the stars fade, y'hear?"
She looked up and found Gaela helping Dest to his feet. The Iron Warrior had taken an equally punishing blow by the Ork, but unsurprisingly was weathering the damage better than Twilight.
"We have to hurry and locate more of the assault force," the Chaos Marine panted. His abdominal plating was absolutely shredded, and blood was leaking from the damaged armor. Still, he was able to stand without great difficulty. "Not all of our soldiers will be able to escape their transports, even if they survived the blast. Can Sparkle move?"
"Not really, no. I don't think the damage is permanent, though," Rarity explained.
"Dear Princess Celestia," squeaked Twilight from the ground, "today I learned why humans like to shoot Orks rather than stab them. PS: Owwwwww..."
"We need to keep moving," Gaela declared as she and Dest walked up to the ponies, "I can fix her armor's legs to restore basic mobility, but more extensive repairs will have to wait."
"You are the BEST, Gaela. You're my favorite monkey," Twilight said as she rolled onto her back, still obviously dazed.
"And you're my second favorite equine," Gaela said as she leaned down next to the alicorn, "I would be significantly disappointed to see you perish." One servo arm took firm hold of the damaged boot, holding it in place as the others moved into position.
Applejack looked up at Dest. "What about Mac? He just took off and Ah still can't get the consarn vox to work!"
"We cannot go after Macintosh," Dest said firmly, "he's moving in the wrong direction, and at considerable speed. We assist the transports."
Applejack growled, torn between leaving her brother or leaving her friends and self-imposed duty. "Ah can't believe this! What the hay has gotten into him?!"
"Polyamarol selphetamine, primarily," Gaela responded as she carefully wedged a point on her axe into an armor seam.
"Pola-what?" Applejack asked, utterly lost by the stream of technical gibberish.
"The main combat stimulant used in Macintosh's injector," Gaela explained, not bothering to repeat the name of the chemical again, "potent, but its effects are short-lived. After his immediate psychosis clears he will regain his faculties. Until then, he should fare quite well against any Ork he encounters, so long as he doesn't happen upon too many."
"It hasn't escaped our notice that Orks like to travel in groups of 'too many'," Rarity pointed out.
"Yes, well, this day hasn't really been going as planned for any of us," the Dark Techpriest quipped as she pulled her torch from the armor joint. "There. Sparkle, are you lucid?"
Twilight remained silent and unmoving for several seconds. "... I'm your SECOND favorite pony?" Her voice quivered noticeably, as if she were on the verge of crying.
"Get up," Gaela commanded as she stood, "we have much yet to do, and the cannon of the void ship may yet become active again. Move out!"
****
Fleetfoot was not a happy pony.
This wasn't JUST because she was being made to help a force of marauders take on an army of brutal and gun-crazy aliens, although that fact was certainly displeasing on its own.
No, it was mostly the increasingly miserable and dangerous circumstances that decision had led her to that she really resented. First it was being shot at from the Ork camp while scouting it. Then it was being chased by Ork aircraft. THEN it was being ambushed by Orks on rockets.
And now there was her current dilemma, which she could barely figure out.
She had been helping mark the immobilized Ork vehicles for the artillery when the ground underneath her had simply been bathed in light and heat. She had been high enough up to avoid the brunt of whatever-it-was, but apparently still too close. A shock wave had slammed into her, and then her muscles had started going numb for some reason. She had barely managed to keep herself gliding as she descended, eventually coming to an unpleasant stop within the rising cloud of dust and ashes that blanketed the blast zone.
Her wing muscles had completely locked up by then, and her legs weren't much better. Even her breathing was coming out in strained, short gasps, and what air she got was thick with dust.
At least the dust wasn't getting in her eyes, thanks to the optics visor, but everything else the device did had suddenly stopped working. She couldn't track or contact anyone else.
So it was that she found herself in her current predicament. Grounded, weak, alone, and confused. Curled up on a rock and completely helpless.
But as bad as it was, she could easily think of ways that it could get worse.
"All roight! Fight's dis way! 'Ere we go!"
"Boss Coggz said da humies ain't goin' nowhere!"
"I'm gonna krump me a spiky boy and wear 'is hat! I like dem hats dey has!"
Yeah. Things were getting worse.
The sound of heavy boots approaching spurred Fleetfoot to move, but her need simply couldn't bring strength to her legs. If she really exerted herself she could probably stand, but without being able to run that just made her a larger target.
Since running wasn't an option, and the minimal visibility made hiding redundant, she opted to simply play dead. If the aliens were looking for a fight, they sure weren't going to get one from her.
The footfalls came closer.
"Oi, wuzzat?" asked an Ork boy, stopping and pointing his slugga at the small body on the ground.
The other Orks raised their choppas in eager preparation for violence, but then hesitated when they saw what their companion had found.
Whatever it was, it was small and it wasn't moving. One of the Orks stepped up to it and grabbed a fistful of dust-caked hair before pulling it up.
Fleetfoot clenched her teeth as she was hauled into the air by her mane, but let her body hang limp and tried to minimize her breathing even further.
"... Looks like a hoss," mumbled one warrior.
"Wuz a hoss doin' out heah?"
"It ain't a hoss, ya dumb git! It got wings!"
"It also got bomms," mumbled the Ork holding her up, knocking his pistol against the grenades and beacons on Fleetfoot's belt, "dere's sumfin funny 'bout dis hoss."
"Dere was some kinda winged gits buzzin' da camp before, roight? Dis one of 'em?"
"Whatevah," another Ork snorted, "we'z got humies ta stomp! Fergit da hoss!"
"I dunno," mumbled the Ork holding the pegasus, "I'm kinda hungry."
Fleetfoot's eyes snapped open, and she started squirming about desperately in the Ork's hand.
"'Ey! It's still movin'!"
"Ya gotta kill yer food 'fore ya eat it," another Ork chided, "Boss Coggz sez it'z da 'siv-ah-lyzed' ting ta do."
The other Ork didn't seem completely convinced, but before the discussion could progress further they heard a noise ahead of them.
It sounded like Orkish shouting. Accompanied by the constant beat of heavy hooves galloping.
"Put me down, ya zoggin', squig-eatin' grot stain!"
The Ork holding Fleetfoot dropped her onto the ground, his appetite forgotten for the moment as a new figure broke through the obscuring dust cloud.
Big Mac slowed to a trot as the Nob draped over his helmet continued to snarl and beat at him. Then he snapped his head down, throwing the massive Ork onto the ground.
"Izzat... anudder hoss?" an Ork boy asked.
As the Nob groaned, Big Mac reared up with an angry whinny, and then leapt forward to land his front hooves on the Ork's face. The alien's thick skull was crushed to shards, and gore splattered over the nearby rocks.
"... Now DIS wun looks like mo' fun!" laughed one of the newly arrived warriors, raising his choppa. "WAAAAAGH!!"
As the aliens surged forward, Fleetfoot could only stare in awe. Not at the marvel of technology that her apparent savior wore to battle, or the savage ease with which he had finished off a soldier more than twice his size. Her eyes were fixed on the blood-spattered decal of a bright green apple slice fixed on the pony's shoulder pad.
"... Big Macintosh?"
Big Mac's eyes swept over the four Orks charging at him, focusing with animal intensity on the best points to land killing blows.
The highest functions of his brain - which may have wondered why he was out on a battlefield alone, or would have noticed the dusty blue pegasus on the ground - were denied to him as chemical heat rushed through his veins and made every nerve in his body tingle. There was only him, the enemy, and his tools of murder.
His heavy bolter fired, but it shot low across the ground in front of him, blasting off the lead Ork's foot and throwing a wave of dust and shrapnel into the other charging aliens.
As the first enemy fell forward, Macintosh leapt, landing his full weight on the warrior's back and shattering its spine.
He swung his head under the next foe, hooking the Ork's leg and sending the alien flailing into the air. A back kick caught it on the way down, splintering the hefty Ork bones like drywood.
The third Ork fired a slugga round that bounced off of Mac's chest plating, and landed a hit with his choppa that did little more. Big Macintosh reared up and slammed his bionic hoof into the Ork's forehead, splitting its skull right open.
The last Ork slammed his choppa into the stallion's neck plating, digging a deep gouge into the ceramite before giving the pony a powerful kick in the side. If it weren't the side made of living Necron alloys, it might have even hurt him.
Big Mac cut his head to the side, slashing across the Ork's belly with his horns. Then he pivoted sharply, bringing his rear augmetic to bear on the staggered warrior.
The bionic hoof ripped through the alien's scrap-plate armor, thick hide, and dense bones with ease, tearing the Ork's torso right off and sending it spiraling away on a jet of blood.
Big Mac's breath came in short, angry puffs while he swung his head from side to side, searching for more enemies.
Once, twice, and then a third time his visor moved past the pegasus mare who was lying on the ground staring at him. She wasn't an enemy, so she didn't even register to his agitated senses as Macintosh scuffed at the ground irritably.
"......... Wait, where am Ah?" the stallion mumbled as his mental fog started to clear. As he failed to find any more Orks on which to vent his artificial fury, the angry fire in his limbs faded away and higher brain functions were restored.
"Big... Macintosh?"
As the armored pony snapped his head toward her, Fleetfoot couldn't help but flinch back. She didn't imagine that the stallion would hurt her, but his blood-stained armor and the brutality of his recent combat left quite an impression.
Big Macintosh stared down at the pegasus on the ground, taking note of the jumpsuit under her armor. A Wonderbolt. He wasn't exactly a fan, but they were famous enough that he knew the names of the ones that had visited Ponyville, at least. If he recalled the manestyle correctly, he had even run into this one personally - and quite literally - during the Summer festival in Ponyville last year.
"Miss Fleetfoot? Ya okay?" He asked, approaching cautiously. He wasn't usually one to take control of the situation, but it was currently rather unstable. Standing around and calmly waiting for her to say something probably wasn't appropriate.
"You... know my NAME..." the pegasus mare gasped out. Were she not wearing an optics mask, Big Mac might have seen little heart shapes dancing in her eyes and the beginning of joyful tears.
Big Mac thought it was stranger that she knew HIS name, but that wasn't important. "Eeyup. Can ya stand?" Macintosh pushed ahead again, hoping that she hadn't suffered another concussion. He wasn't sure if she'd ever recovered from the one she'd suffered at the summer wrap-up festival.
"I..." Fleetfoot sucked in a deep breath, and then suddenly started coughing as her mouth filled with ashes.
Macintosh frowned. He didn't know if the dust was toxic or otherwise dangerous, but it seemed to make breathing difficult, at the least. He was protected by his power armor, but apparently the Wonderbolts hadn't been issued respirators along with the rest of their equipment. He couldn't exactly share his, so the only option he could think of was to get Fleetfoot out of the ash cloud as quickly as possible.
Big Mac walked perpendicular to the mare and then laid down in front of her. "Climb on," he said calmly.
Fleetfoot stared for a moment, her cheeks turning a rosy pink. Then she gently reached up and pulled herself onto the stallion's armored back.
Macintosh waited until the pegasus had settled herself on him before carefully standing up. He would have helped secure her with his servo arm, but honestly he didn't trust the dang thing not to crush her by accident.
Confident that Fleetfoot wasn't about to tumble off, he glanced around at the dusty and gore-spattered rocks, wondering where to go.
"You know a way outta here?" he asked, his visor still getting scrambled or invalid readings.
"No..." Fleetfoot sighed. She sounded strangely content, Mac thought. She must have been very relieved to find a friendly soldier out here.
Big Mac found the trail of blood that led from the Nob that he hazily remembered fighting, and he decided that path would lead back to his sister and her friends. Which would have been great, except that they were deep in the dust cloud and working to help the rest of the assault force, which had been in the center of the blast. That wouldn't help his passenger one bit.
Big Mac turned in the opposite direction and accelerated to a trot. There wasn't much he could do except keep moving and hope that the mare on top of him held out until then. He had to get her out of the dust cloud.
As Big Mac's mind filled with grim possibilities and searched for solutions, he completely missed the goofy grin that spread over the muzzle of his passenger.
Fleetfoot was a very happy pony.
****
Ork Camp
"C'mon, c'mon, c'mon! Why youz gits muckin' about when dere's fightin' ta do? MOOV!!"
Dozens of Orks jogged through the dusty roads from the camp, being beckoned onward into the giant curtain of dust that had erupted over the battlefield.
"Oi, wha happened out dere?" one unusually inquisitive green soul stopped to ask. "Wha's wit all da dust?"
The Nob gathering a new mob of soldiers chuckled as he pointed to the wrecked ship. "Boss Coggz got da humies good, he did! Fixed up da busted dakka and zapped 'em!"
"Den why's we goin' out dere? Won' he jus' zap 'em again?"
The Nob's laughter turned to a growl. "An' dat's why we gotta get out dere and stomp da humies now! Dere won' be no fightin' left if'n we wait!"
"Some o'da udder boyz tink dey's comin' heah," another Ork mumbled, "dey's settin' up ta bash da humies when dey comes ta us!"
The much larger Ork snarled, an electric arc sizzling over his power klaw. "Well, I'z da biggest Ork heah, an' I sez we'z goin' ta DEM! We moight be heah all day if'n we wait fer a fight ta come ta us!"
A bolt of lightning snaked through the air and slammed into the back of one of the smaller Orks, causing him to flail and writhe wildly before collapsing on the ground in a charred heap.
The other Orks frankly found the unexpected death hilarious, but they were interested enough in what had caused it to take up combat positions as they chuckled.
A dark shape swooped toward them from above, and the Nob squinted as he tried to make it out.
It looked kind of like a horse. A small, dark blue horse. With wings, and hatefully glowing eyes, and some kind of glowing horn coming from its forehead. The Nob silently wondered to himself how many un-horse things a horse had to possess before he could no longer describe it as a horse in the first place.
"KILL IT!!" the Ork mob leader snapped, firing his slugga.
The rest of the Orks shouted in gleefully symphony as they unloaded their handguns into the sky, unleashing a wildly inaccurate wave of bullets at the descending pony.
Luna felt one shot cut across her wing and another impact her breast plate, but she didn't falter. Summoning her power to her horn, she lashed out at the mob with her magic, cutting a beam of darkness across the first rank that sent three of the warriors to the ground. After that came a fireball into the center, incinerating a few more while scattering the unit.
Luna landed, and then flinched back as a slugga round cut across her cheek. "DEFY US AND PERISH, ALIEN!!" she roared, her wings spreading dangerously as the ground trembled beneath her.
The Orks were perfectly oblivious to the danger, and happily charged ahead once she was on the ground, choppas primed to hack the equine apart.
"THOU DESIRES WAR?! LET US OBLIGE THEE!!"
Luna reared up as her horn glowed ever brighter, a deep blue mist seeping around her. At once the Orks charging toward her lost contact with the ground, floating up into the air as they were engulfed by the soft blue aura.
The aliens flailed and shouted and continued to fire their sluggas wildly (not necessarily in the right direction anymore) as they rose higher, and Luna's eyes flashed angrily.
"BEGONE!!!"
She finally fell forward onto her hooves, and they struck the ground with a tremendous crash. The floating Orks were sent flying away with bone-shattering force, most of them being crushed or impaled against the nearby rocks.
The Nob hit the ground hard enough to leave a furrow in the dirt, but immediately grunted and started pushing himself up.
Then he found himself in the air again, pulled by a spot of blue attached to his shoulder plate.
"Thou art going nowhere, alien!" shouted Luna, ratcheting down her voice to the non-painful spectrum as she trotted up to the Ork suspended in the air. "We demand thee tell us what hath transpired beyond these cliffs!" The Nob looked strangely perplexed, and Luna pointed a hoof toward the massive cloud of dust behind her. "There! Wherefore hath our allies been swallowed by light and ash? SPEAK, barbarian!"
The Nob squinted his eyes as he looked around the alicorn, searching for anyone else that might be with her. "But you'z da only wun heah... Why youz talkin' all funny?"
"THOU ART THE ONE SPEAKING HUMOROUSLY!!" Luna screamed at the Ork, shaking him with her telekinetic grip.
The Nob's reply was to swipe at her with his power klaw, but he was suspended several inches out of range. Luna snorted as the crackling talons of the weapon passed close enough for the heat to tickle her nose, but she didn't flinch.
"If thou refuses to aid us, then thou art useless. Perish, then," Luna said mildly. With a flash of her horn the Ork's flesh was consumed by flame, and Luna tossed the burning alien away without another glance.
There were many more Orks about, moving in small and disorganized mobs toward the camp perimeter and into the ash cloud. Although she was barely winded from the fight so far, she didn't think she could take on many of them at once.
As her magic encircled her in shadows and she took to the air, Luna couldn't help but worry what had happened to the assault force behind her, and how long their arrival would be delayed. She rather prided herself on being a one-mare army, but it had been literally ages since she'd seen combat as heavy and merciless as this.
With her body's visible profile reduced to a shimmering, dark shroud, Luna spotted her next targets and floated forward. There were many Orks yet to be slain before her kingdom would be safe again.
****
Wreckage of the Battlecruiser Aurora
Pinkie's power fist dug its fingers into the corner of the metal barrier, the power field sizzling as it dissolved the compressed and specially formulated alloys as easily as water dissolved table salt.
With a grunt completely out of proportion to the amount of effort she was actually contributing to this exercise, Pinkie ripped the plating free and tossed it aside.
"... Nope. No candy here. Next!" the pink Dreadnought turned away from the heavy supply crate and then stomped across the twisted and shattered flooring toward the next one.
Pinkie and her new Dreadnought buddies were exploring the interior of the battlecruiser's cargo bays, reasoning - with SOME small degree of logic - that it would be the place most likely to store hidden candy.
Kairon was observing an Iron Warrior who had been impaled against a shredded bulkhead during the crash. "Brother Daedalius. Such a fate. To survive the mighty guns of the Tau Empire and then falter before the grasp of mere gravity, so long ago conquered by our race," Kairon intoned.
Pinkie snorted, suppressing a belly laugh. "His name was 'Dead-alias'?" she snickered.
"... Huh. I do not know how I keep missing things like that," the ponderous Dreadnought mumbled.
"Where's the blood? Where's the KILLING?!" Hett demanded, smashing his thunder hammer into another crate and then checking the shattered container for victims and/or candy.
"We are still searching, Brother Hett," Kairon advised patiently, "we will not fail to inform you of any sign of the enemy."
"Or taffy," Hett mumbled, momentarily dropping out of his manic growling.
"What was that?" Kairon asked, pausing to look toward the other walker.
"Blood! Blood! Bloooooood! Talking about BLOOD, here!" Hett howled.
As the Dreadnoughts continued their utterly ridiculous search, a trio of green figures shuffled into the back of the cargo bay. They did a fair job of sneaking in unnoticed, considering they were each hefting a rokkit launcha, although all their targets were mercifully distracted.
"Dere dey is," whispered one Tankbusta to his squadmates, "an' dey's lookin' da udder way. We got dis."
"What're dey doin'?" asked another of the alien soldiers, watching Pinkie rip open another storage crate.
"Looks like dey lootin' da joint."
"But dat ain't fair! We was lootin' da joint foist!"
"Dey ain't even lootin' roight. Look at 'em, tossin away good scrap n'bitz. Sad, wot it is."
A loud crashing and grinding noise suddenly echoed through the room, and the Orks ducked behind their cover as the Dreadnoughts halted.
"Hey, what was that?" Pinkie asked, searching around the dimly-lit and badly damaged cargo bay.
"It sounded like a bulkhead breach," Kairon confided, "something tore through the walls of this vessel. And it did so nearby."
"Footsteps!" Hett shouted gleefully when he heard the pounding of heavy mechanical legs follow the previous noise. "Let's kill it! KILL IT!!"
The Orks kept their heads down, hoping that the combat walkers would return to inattention if they waited. They themselves heard the heavy footfalls approaching them from behind, but with a bulkhead wall at their back and separating them from whatever-it-was they decided they could ignore it and concentrate on their targets.
That decision started to waver as they heard a very loud whirring noise, followed by the squeal of tearing metal.
"Iron within!" barked Sirius as his siege drill pierced the bulkhead, shredding the reinforced metals to splinters. "Iron without!" The heavy flamer in the drill activated, and the Tankbustas howled in pain and surprise as they were suddenly swallowed by a jet of fire.
Two of the Orks were incinerated almost instantly, but the last was far enough away that he was merely caught aflame before he leapt out of his hiding place to escape.
Hett rounded on the immolated Ork immediately, and his twin-linked autocannon fired once, turning the alien into a red smear on the floor.
Then the Khornate walker sighed in satisfaction and relief, his bloodlust alleviated for a few precious seconds.
"Honorable Sirius! You have joined us!" Kairon called out while the Contemptor Dreadnought went about carving a hole in the bulkhead large enough to walk through.
"Sirius? Serious?" Pinkie asked, giggling afterward.
The highly disgruntled squadron leader stepped into the cavernous cargo bay, and then took a moment to look over his subordinate walkers.
"So what were you idiots doing BESIDES being stalked by Tankbustas?"
"Searching for candy!" Pinkie chirped.
"And searching for Tankbustas!" Hett added. "Why? How? You found them first!"
"I considered where I would be if I were trying to destroy all of you," Sirius explained curtly, "got it on the first guess."
"Curses! If only I'D thought of that!" Hett snarled, his head shaking furiously.
"By the way," Sirius continued with uncharacteristic calm, "I don't suppose any of you detected the enormous energy discharge from this supposedly wrecked and inactive ship, did you?"
The smaller Dreadnoughts turned toward each other, spent a moment staring in silence, and then turned back toward the Contemptor.
"That's what I thought. And I doubt you've given any serious thought as to why there's active lighting in this ship, which would require the re-activation of its power source."
The Dreadnoughts tilted backward to stare at the ceiling, which had numerous built-in lumens. Many were shattered, but those that weren't clearly broken were indeed emitting light to one degree or another.
"And I KNOW that none of you have noticed the thick, sparking, and obviously Ork-made power cable running through this room right behind you," Sirius said.
Indeed, there was a frayed length of cable running through the cargo bay from one entrance to another, its entire length haphazardly wrapped in electric tape and leaking sparks onto the floor while it thrummed with current.
"Actually, I DID notice that," Pinkie countered, "that thing is a MAJOR safety hazard. Could you imagine if I tripped? Would I even be able to get back up? We're so top-heavy!"
"They could at least paint some hazard striping onto it," Kairon agreed solemnly, "I like hazard striping."
"Shut up," Sirius snapped, "the Orks are feeding a considerable supply of energy through the vessel's wreckage, and there are only two things Orks use energy for: shooting things or building weapons with which to shoot things. The energy discharge suggests they are engaged in the former."
"That's why he's the leader," Kairon said, "such feats of intellect and insight are quite rare."
"You could say he's Siriusly smart!" Pinkie interjected, grinning beneath her helmet. "I'm going to make that a catch-phrase now! Siriusly smart!"
"Stop talking at me and find me more TARGETS!" Hett snarled, swiveling from side to side angrily.
Sirius couldn't even bring himself to sigh. "I hate ALL of you," the Contemptor said simply before he fired a single round from his butcher cannon into the power cable.
The projectile severed the cable with ease, while also gouging out a fair bit of the floor around it. One half of the cabling stopped sparking, while the other half began to hum and crackle more as the current found nowhere to go and started to discharge into the floor.
"There. Whatever the Orks have been doing here has been foiled for the moment," Sirius proclaimed, "we will break out into the camp and aid the assault."
"But what about the candy?" Pinkie Pie asked.
"THERE IS NO CANDY!!" Sirius roared, stomping a foot hard enough to make the other walkers shake.
"We have not yet explored a large enough portion of the vessel to reasonably rule out the possibility of candy," Kairon insisted.
Hett turned away and mumbled something that sounded like "I want toffee."
"Even if you DID find candy, none of you can eat it!" Sirius shouted, flailing his siege drill in the air. "We're all corpses entombed in sealed vessels that consume drip-fed nutrients! This entire exercise is as pointless as it is stupid!"
Pinkie snickered, as if she was party to a joke only she could figure out. Kairon and Hett glanced at each other.
"That's a really good point," Kairon noted. "You should have mentioned that earlier. Like when you were trying to get us to follow our mission parameters."
"This was a stupid idea!" Hett shouted angrily. "Why didn't you say anything?!"
"If I have one flaw as a leader, it is doubtless my constant overestimation of your intelligence," Sirius said bluntly before he turned away from the others. "Now, we shall..."
He trailed off as Pinkie started stomping away, following along the inert half of the severed power cable.
"NOW where are you going?!" the Contemptor demanded.
"Still looking for candy!" Pinkie said brightly. "But even if there isn't any, I'll bet there's something neat on the other end of this cable!"
"Something neat? I wonder what-" Kairon was cut off as Sirius held up his siege drill to bar the way forward.
"Leave him," the Contemptor snapped.
"Her," Hett corrected.
"I don't care what it is. Let it leave. With any luck there are more Tankbustas in waiting to ambush it," Sirius growled, "as for the rest of you, you will follow me as I breach a path outside, and then we will assault the Ork base! That is an order!"
"Yes! YES!! Carnage!" Hett howled in delight.
"You are in command," Kairon reasoned, despite having blatantly ignored the ranking walker earlier.
"Good. Stay in formation! Today the Orks feel the hammer of the Iron Warriors!"
****
Rainbow Dash soared low to the ground through the billowing ash cloud, her visor searching for any dark shapes that might have been people, ponies, or vehicles. She had been performing these sweeps for some time, searching for any trace of her friends - or any survivors, really - among the assault convoy.
It was slow going, considering the pitiful visibility and the weird interference with her suit systems, but both of those factors had been getting better over time. The dust cloud had thinned, and the ash now resembled a gentle snowfall as it was lifted into the air in the hottest regions before drifting into the cooler areas and falling back down. It still blocked out visibility from the air, though, which meant she had been doing her blind scouting in easy shooting range of everything she came across.
So far the damage wasn't nearly as bad as she'd guessed after having seen the cannon discharge. She'd happened upon many intact Company transports and tanks, and stopped to check some of the APCs to see if her friends were inside. She hadn't found them, though, and she had no way to easily break open the transports for those stuck inside, so she'd moved on with her search.
Eventually she'd happened upon Iron Warriors that had managed to get free of their rhinos, and later, naturally, Ork mobs hunting down said Iron Warriors.
Rainbow had to give that idea a wry snort. The greenskins were proving every bit as brutal and dangerous as she'd expected, but they were still a far cry from the Chaos Space Marines. Each time she'd found a mob of Orks she'd merely shot a spread of shuriken at them and then yelled "Hey! Orks over here!" before taking off. The pounding gunfire that usually followed such warnings reassured her that the Iron Warriors were far from beaten, and eager to repay the blow that had halted their advance.
That still left her friends other than Fluttershy MIA, though...
Rainbow Dash saw the ash fall thinning out considerably, and realized she was reaching the edge of the cloud. She boosted herself higher, and then made a short turn to swing back into the ashes.
Then her wings swept up, the rockets blazing at a forward angle to stop her momentum. After a moment spent stabilizing herself, Rainbow whirled around again.
"Mac? Big Mac!" the pegasus blasted away as she spotted the dusty but unmistakable armor suit sitting on a rock outcropping, quite deliberately removed from the ash clouds.
The stallion turned his head around, and then the servo arm on his back made a wide, sweeping motion in imitation of a wave.
As Rainbow Dash swooped in for a landing, she noticed somepony else with the hefty farmer: Fleetfoot. The Wonderbolt had her forelegs wrapped around Big Mac's back leg - the still organic one, at least - and seemed to be nuzzling it. Which was weird for a few reasons, but mostly because nuzzling dirty ceramite plating couldn't have been comfortable.
"Mac! You're okay!" Rainbow shouted as she skidded across the surface of the stone and barely halted before colliding with him.
"Eeyup."
"Are the others all right?"
"Eeyup."
"Thank Celestia! But they're not with you?"
"Nnope."
"What happened to you guys?"
Rainbow saw Big Mac look slightly to the side, hesitating.
"Never mind, my fault. As long as they're fine, we're cool." Rainbow Dash knew that she could get more than yes-or-no answers out of Big Macintosh if she tried, but she didn't have that kind of time while the mission clock was still running.
She also noticed that Fleetfoot seemed to be scowling, for some reason. It was kind of hard to tell, since she was still wearing an optics mask, but the Wonderbolt's expression had gone from a dreamy smile to an angry grimace after she'd arrived.
"I'm guessing you picked up Fleetfoot in the blast zone? She looks pretty dirty," Rainbow said, thinking that the other pegasus might have been feeling ignored.
"Eeyup," came Mac's characteristic reply.
Fleetfoot, on the other hand, went into a panic as she started flapping her wings and rubbing her mane to get the dirt off of her.
"... Is she okay?" Rainbow Dash asked.
"Nnope," Big Mac answered as he shook his head.
"Well, maybe I should help her get behind the lines to see Fluttershy," Rainbow offered.
"Nope!"
Both Mac and Rainbow started as the refusal came from the mare whose immediate fate was being discussed. A mare who was now standing on Big Mac's back, with her tail bushed out like an aggravated cat.
"Oh... kaaay... Big Mac, why don't YOU handle Fleetfoot," the armored pegasus said cautiously, "you've done a good job so far. No reason not to keep going."
"Eeyup," Mac replied solemnly, accepting this sacred responsibility of continuing to care for one of Rainbow Dash's heroes. Fleetfoot relaxed immediately, sitting down on the stallion's back and smiling happily.
Dash herself was getting a little frustrated by the lack of verbal communication, and she decided to go back to her previous task. "Well, you be careful. That big gun that blasted everyone before hasn't been up to much since then, but we haven't blown it up yet, either." She pointed an armor-clad hoof at the turret in question.
"Is it supposed to be moving?" Fleetfoot asked.
Rainbow Dash gasped, having been under the impression that Fleetfoot's throat had been damaged somehow and rendered her unable to form complete sentences. Then she gasped louder as she whirled back toward the turret.
"Aw, hay, not again!" she cursed. The turret was indeed turning, swinging its oversized and badly scorched cannon past the battlefield that had been its previous target.
In fact, it looked like it was targeting...
"No! NO!!" Rainbow shouted, the fur on her back standing up. The turret was sweeping far past the battlefield now, and the only other viable target besides the assault force was the defense line and its attached artillery battery. Fluttershy and hundreds of human soldiers were still recovering there from the Orks' assault, without armored vehicles protecting them. If the blast was even half as strong as the last one they'd all be cooked alive.
"FLUTTERSHY!!" Rainbow Dash shouted as she connected her vox.
"Yeep!" came a squeak of fright from the other end.
"No time for that! I need to warn you while we can still talk! The big cannon is turning to aim at you guys!" the pegasus shouted.
There was some soft static, and then Fluttershy's voice came from the helmet receiver. "... relieved! Is Twilight okay? I saw..." the voice got weaker for a moment, and then returned. "... catch everything you said, though. Something about... oh, hold on... wait, where are we going?"
As the vox link was cut, Rainbow Dash had to hope that the humans had already noticed and were trying to flee. After all, they had seen the gun fire once already, right? They wouldn't just write it off after that, would they?
As she saw a bright blue glow collect within the barrel of the cannon, Rainbow had to wonder if the forewarning would make any difference.
"Oh, no..." Fleetfoot said breathlessly, squeezing her eyes shut and pressing her face against Big Mac's side. She could only hope that the rest of the Wonderbolts were far from the new target zone.
Big Macintosh sat down heavily, his body suddenly feeling like lead (as opposed to other, more capable metals) as he watched the enormous gun power up.
Then the foreboding glow faded away, and nothing untoward happened at all.
"...... Well... that was anti-climactic," muttered Rainbow Dash after waiting several seconds.
"... Eeyup."
****
Wreckage of the battlecruiser Aurora - improvised turret control
"Aw, zog it! Wha's wrong wit da damm ting now?!"
Hazarr dropped down from the ionization chamber, his metal-encased feet leaving dents in the shredded flooring.
Two Ork Meks were standing in front of the haphazardly reconstructed turret controls, staring at the flickering monitors above. Those monitors were connected to a stack of loose circuit boards and clusters of wires heaped beneath a joystick and a handful of large buttons painted in very distinctive colors.
"Dis is why I HATE grayskin loot," the Big Mek growled, kicking a wall and watching the bulkhead fold in front of his foot, "damm, fiddly, no-good heap o'squig dung!"
"It's da powah, Boss Coggz," one of the Meks said helpfully, pointing to a meter that was at zero when it obviously shouldn't be.
"Sumfin's rong wit' da reeyactah," mumbled the other one, rubbing his chin.
"Dis heep's startin' ta try me nerves," Hazarr said dangerously, his power claw snipping anxiously, "dis ting only fiyahed ONCE 'fore it crapped out, n'just turnin' it is a pain in da rump. I'm runnin' outta dukk tape, too." He withdrew a short cardboard tube from his belt and tossed it away. It landed on small a pile of similar tubes, some of them still bearing a few inches of precious, silvery adhesive strips.
"Wot's da plan, Boss Coggz?" one Mek asked as he turned away from the console.
Hazarr grunted. "Well, we'z put too much wohk inna dis heap ta kwit now. An da boyz is prob'ly havin' a hard time wif da spikies still. Go see ta da reeyactah."
The Meks practically jumped from their consoles to obey, and rushed to the door.
One Mek pulled it open with a hefty grunt, sliding the heavy barrier aside for the pair to leave. His partner stepped forward as soon as there was enough room for him to squeeze through, only to halt and then squint into the dimly-lit hallway beyond.
"Wait... wot is-"
Hazarr whirled around at the sound of a shout and an explosion. Not that those were uncommon things to hear from his Mekboyz, but they usually only did that when they were actually working on something.
His power klaw clanked open and shut angrily as he saw the dark spot on the floor in front of the entrance. "'EY! Dey was me best boyz! Who did dat?!"
Very heavy footsteps came from the hall outside, and the Big Mek took a step back when an enormous power fist grabbed the edge of the door and finished pushing it open.
"Yarrr! I be the Space Pirate Pie, come to shiver yer timbers and plunder yer chocolate!" Pinkie declared as she stomped into the turret control room. "Surrender yer sweets ta me, or I'll send ya all ta Davey Pone's locker! Yarrr!"
Hazarr kicked a metal crate half his size at the pink Dreadnought, and Pinkie deftly caught the container out of the air.
"... Wait, is there really candy in here?" Pinkie asked, dropping her "pirate voice" as she held up the crate. "Because I didn't seriously think I'd find any, but if there really IS candy that's awesome, and I won't have to share with the other dreads because they can't actually eat candy, but I should probably at least offer just to be-"
Pinkie suddenly noticed that the really big, heavily armored Ork had been using his oversized welding torch to cut off the arm with the power fist while she was talking. She noticed this because he had finished the endeavor, and her walker's arm dropped down onto the floor with a heavy thud.
"Hey! I was talking to you! That is SO rude, attacking me when I'm talking to you!" Pinkie complained.
Hazarr's response was to sink his power klaw into the dreadnought's leg. Steam blasted from the compression servos and electric arcs curled over the klaw blades as he tore through the reinforced metals, severing the leg with an ear-rending screech.
Pinkie Pie yelped as her walker collapsed to the side. "Ow! Hey! Quit it, you greenie meanie!"
Hazarr walked up in front of the squirming assault walker, his eyes narrowing behind his welding mask while he stared at the gunmetal helmet lined with gold.
"Yer peeses don' match," the Big Mek growled.
"What? Oh! That! Yeah, the helmet is new! Didn't have time to paint it up. You know how it is, right? You get something new and you're super-excited to use it, so you bring it to a battle even though it's not painted?"
"Dat's jus' LAZY," Hazarr snapped, walking around the other side of the Dreadnought to its plasma cannon.
His welding torch hissed as he pushed it far past the temperatures used for fusing metal and into the range most useful for destroying it.
Plunging the torch into the plasma cannon's flex sheathing, he gouged out the weapon's main reaction chamber. Then he grabbed the coolant distributor with his klaw and pulled it off, flinging it aside.
"You're doing more mean things, aren't you?" Pinkie Pie demanded, unable to see the Ork from her current position. "That's not very nice!"
"Shut up, ya idjit," Hazarr spat as he walked toward the exit, "yer too ugly ta even loot. 'Ave fun 'splodin'."
"I won't!" Pinkie Pie yelled back at the Big Mek left the room. Numerous warning icons were appearing and informing her about the status of her plasma cannon now, and they gave the distinct impression that it was "bad".
"SO rude," she grumbled as the plasma chamber started to go critical.
****
Assault Convoy - ground zero
"Shootas coming in from the right flank!"
"We have them. Maintain suppressive fire on the primary unit. Do not let them advance!"
"We have positive sighting on Killa Kans behind the infantry screen."
"Stay on your targets!"
"Stikkbomms! Incoming!"
"I've got them, darling."
An overtly feminine voice briefly rose above the harsh barking of the Iron Warriors, and the explosives hurtling through the air were suddenly immobilized by an aura of blue magic.
Then they flew back through the air toward the Orks that had thrown them.
Rarity ignored the subsequent explosions, returning to the business of spewing plasma bolts into the Ork mob covering behind two partly-melted Rhinos.
The ash fall was thin now, such that it barely obscured vision up to the effective range of a boltgun. Still, the vox systems were having enough trouble that the Chaos Marines preferred to shout to each other rather than struggle with the interference.
Rarity saw a bright red missile corkscrew through the air over her head, and then tracked the trail of smoke back to its source. A large figure was ducking behind a rock spire, fixing more explosives onto the head of his weapon.
"Applejack! Nob!" the unicorn called out, turning her head away briefly as the rokkit smashed into an empty Rhino's side and blasted it open.
"Ah see 'im!" Applejack whipped her tail forward, and a crackling whip of energy latched onto the distracted Ork leader.
A sharp tug pulled the alien out from behind the crags and sent him sprawling out into the open. Rarity fired a string of plasma bolts once he came to a stop, turning the mighty Ork into a dark spot on the ground.
"Yee-haw!" Applejack reared up as several Ork boyz charged at her, her front boots glowing while slugga rounds bounced off her armor harmlessly.
She dropped onto all fours with a thunderous crash, staggering the Orks barreling toward her. Then her heavy flamer roared to life in front of her, sweeping over the closest aliens as the others regained their footing and surged around the tongue of fire.
Choppas started hammering away at her sides, but before the Orks could make any serious progress in dismembering the apple farmer the sound of revving chainswords surrounded them.
Applejack splintered an Ork's leg with a swift kick, and then knocked another alien off his feet with a sweep of her helmet tusks.
After that, though, it was all she could do to stay out of the way as Chaos Marines painted the ground with Ork blood. The Iron Warriors sawed through the aliens with grim, calculated efficiency, tearing off limbs or causing other sorts of grievous wounds before shouldering the target aside and moving to the next foe. Very few of the super-soldiers stopped to perform killing blows or finish off the wounded; it was enough for them that the enemy was taken out of the fight. That the enemy soldiers were left gasping and bleeding out on the ground in great pain clearly didn't bother them, presuming they even thought about the matter.
After perhaps a dozen seconds, the melee was concluded and the last Ork warrior was falling backward with a bolter wound in his gut. The Iron Warriors had already mag-locked their chainswords to their belts and were taking up their boltguns again, ready to dismember the next squad at range.
"Y'all havin' fun yet?" Applejack shouted over the din of bolter fire before she lashed another alien and yanked him out of cover.
"Indeed!" barked a Chaos Marine after he gunned down the prone Ork. "Slaying greenskins is FAR more satisfying than slaughtering the weakling Tau!"
"We'll hafta agree to disagree on that, cowboy!" Applejack shouted as her flamer swept through another rock outcropping, immolating another wave of aliens.
Some ways behind the roar of gunfire and howl of Orks, Twilight was on top of a Hellhound assault vehicle with her harmonizer in blade mode, carefully cutting the crew hatch loose.
"Just a little bit... more..." she mumbled as the crystalline edge sliced through the reinforced alloys in a wide circle.
"Got it!" she drew the blade up, and then planted a boot onto the hatch to mag-lock onto it before pulling it away.
The tank gunner rose out of the vehicle immediately, only to pause as he saw the large, purple blade hovering nearby.
"Land's sakes, you cut open tanks with that thing?" he asked, glancing in askance at the somewhat battered pony standing behind the main turret.
"Oh, you know, when I have to," Twilight said modestly. Then she paused to look back and forth, making sure no one familiar was in earshot. "The Twiblade can cut through-"
"No way is it actually called that," the crewman interrupted.
Twilight glared at him through her visor. "... SOME refer to it as a 'force harmonizer'," she said bitterly.
"Okay, yeah, that's much better," the gunner said as he finally climbed out of the tank entirely.
The pilot and secondary gunner followed moments later, the latter snickering as he pulled himself up.
"Heh. Twiblade."
"Hurry up and get out of here!" the young Princess snapped before she deactivated the weapon and leapt off of the attack vehicle.
Every tank and transport she could see were empty or wrecked by now. Most had been cut open and evacuated already, either by her or the Dark Mechanicus squads roaming around the blast zone. The rest had apparently not survived the initial blast from the ion cannon, having broken apart and exposed the crew and passengers to the dispersed - but still quite deadly - wave of heat and radiation. Those unfortunates had been cooked alive, their vehicles transformed into heavily armed ovens.
On balance, though, it seemed that much of the infantry fighting power had survived the unexpected attack, and the Orks weren't putting a very heavy dent in it as the Iron Warriors regrouped and pushed forward. Close-quarters combat without extensive support was the sort of fighting that the savage aliens liked best, but it was also a sort of fighting that Chaos Space Marines had long mastered.
"Gaela!" Twilight spotted a cluster of dark-robed figures trudging toward the front lines, surrounded by a ring of Scavurel Dregs. A pair of Black Praetors flanked the group, their weapons systems seeming to writhe and twitch from being so close to combat. And following above the group...
"Rainbow Dash!" Twilight yelled as she swooped over to the advancing group.
The pegasus shifted into a hover. "Hey, Twi! I found some dudes making a break for the defense lines, and they pointed me to the Dark Techies," she said before snapping a foreleg up in a salute, "reporting for duty, Rainbow Leader!"
Twilight's joy and relief instantly soured. "I'm going to have a long talk with you about our unit name. Later. Right now we have to pull together and finish this fight." She looked up at the Dark Techpriest leading the squad. "Gaela, the Iron Warriors are pushing through the Orks that were sent to attack the damaged transports. They should be able to get to the Ork camp soon, but there's a concern about the Orks' defenses now that we don't have APCs. I think-"
"Sparkle, have you recovered fully from your earlier cranial trauma?" the Dark Techpriest asked.
Twilight groaned and rolled her eyes. "Yes. I'm fine, now. Thanks for asking. But we-"
"It seemed pertinent, as I am Dark Techpriest Callucan," the armored figure interrupted again.
Twilight took a moment to note the extent of Callucan's optical array, his exact number of servo limbs, and a dozen other details that were different from the cyborg she was familiar with.
"... Sorry," Twilight said awkwardly, bowing her head slightly.
"Apology accepted," Callucan said before he walked past the armored pony. Most of the Scavurel followed him, all of them chittering in Binary and some of them making noises that sounded suspiciously like laughter.
There was nothing ambiguous about the sniggering coming from Rainbow Dash, who was holding her boots up to her vox grille as she chortled.
One of the Dark Techpriests remained behind, and Twilight walked up to her sullenly as the other augmented humans left.
"You could have said something," the alicorn mumbled as she stopped in front of the remaining Techpriest.
"You could have checked our noosphere identifier tags," Gaela countered, "or at least blamed the cranial trauma. But this is not important; you had a tactical projection you wished to share?"
"I thought Rainbow Dash could do some forward reconnaissance to let everyone know where the enemies are entrenched before attacking," Twilight explained.
"Yeah, sure," the pegasus replied, "that's kind of like what I was doing for Luna before the big gun went off."
Then she paused. "I wonder how she's doing, anyway. I kinda left her in the lurch there to look for you guys."
"Luna?" Twilight's eyes widened. "Luna's here? Where?!" It seemed obvious, now that she thought about it, that the Princess of the Moon would have been on the battlefield. But she couldn't remember seeing Luna at all today, and she had been so distracted by the battle itself that she had completely forgotten about the other alicorn.
Rainbow Dash waved a leg in the direction of the stone bluffs. "Oh, she's over there somewhere. She was pretty far away from the blast, so that wasn't a problem."
"Over THERE? That's where the Ork camp is!" Twilight protested.
"Well, yeah. Too much green for my blood, but she was all gung-ho about it." Rainbow Dash shrugged.
"Rainbow, she could be killed!" Twilight shouted.
"What are you yelling at ME for? What am I, her foal-sitter?" the pegasus demanded.
"Why does the possible death of Princess Luna matter?" Gaela asked calmly.
Twilight was perhaps more shocked by the question than she should have been, but Rainbow Dash answered just as calmly.
"She controls the moon, you know? It would be kind of a big deal."
"Right. That," Gaela mumbled, pausing for a few seconds, "your star system is ridiculous."
"Now let's not start THAT argument again," Rainbow warned, casting a glance at Twilight.
"Dash is absolutely right!" the purple pony shouted, her voice panicked. "We have to go make sure she's all right!" Twilight swerved around into the air, and then zoomed away.
Rainbow Dash followed, easily matching the alicorn's pace. "Twi, chill. Luna's crazy powerful, you know? And, like, immortal and stuff. Can alicorns even die to stuff like bullets?"
"YES, we can, Dash!" Twilight shouted back.
"Well, okay, sure, YOU probably can. Maybe." Rainbow mumbled. "But Luna's thousands of years old and an ex-super villain. Do you really think a bunch of clueless green thugs could kill her?"
Twilight turned her head around, fixing the pegasus with the bloody red glare of her (slightly cracked) combat visor. "Do you want to be held responsible when we find out for sure?"
Rainbow Dash digested that tidbit for a few seconds before she sighed and blasted up higher into the air. "This day just gets better and better..."
****
Wreckage of the battlecruiser Aurora
Hazarr grunted as he pushed his way through the cluttered and partially collapsed hallways of the wreck, slowly plodding toward one of the entryways his boyz had cut into the sundered hull. As the clearance between the floor and ceiling started to narrow, and the number of active lights thinned, he knew that he was almost back at camp.
"I wondah how da boyz is doin' out dere," the Big Mek mumbled. "Prob'ly gettin' deir bumz stomped, if I knows dose gits."
Hazarr sighed. It was hard, being a Boss as well as your pirate fleet's chief engineer. It meant that he spent too many battles as he'd spent this one: in the back trying to work out an off-the-cuff advantage, rather than leading the mobs and making sure they aimed their dakka in the right direction.
It also didn't help that most of his army was composed of thick-headed weaklings, but he imagined that at least that problem was familiar to ALL Ork bosses.
He spotted a square of light cast into the hallway as he was forced to lower his servo arms down to advance. Crushed and shredded bulkheads surrounded him, and he could see a single gretchin hiding in a darkened corner in front of the exit.
"'Ey, grot! Why's ya in heah hidin'? Dere's workin' an' fightin' ta do!" Hazarr barked, causing the tiny green creature to leap in fright. Perhaps it had been hoping to avoid notice; it wasn't possible that the cowardly runt hadn't noticed the Big Mek coming.
"Boss Coggz! It's bad, Boss! Real bad!"
A groan rumbled in the back of Hazarr's throat as he passed by the smaller Orkoid. "Wot's da matta NOW? Is da humies arredy at da camp? Or is it da spiky boyz?"
"Iz a hoss, Boss Coggz! Dere's a hoss out dere!" The gretchin quivered in terror.
Hazarr halted. "A hoss?" He tilted his head to the side. "Did it 'ave wings?"
"Yeah, Boss! Yeah! An' it's all dark, an' it spits fiah and loitnin', an' leaps from da shaddahs! It's da spirit o'deff, in hoss form!"
Well, that was quite a ways off from the other horse he had seen on this planet, but Hazarr dismissed the grot's wailing as he squeezed forward toward the exit. His boyz may be a bunch of dense, useless layabouts, but even THEY could handle murdering local wildlife.
He reached the exit breach and pulled himself through.
"AAAAAAAAAAAGH!!" A Nob sprinted past him while on fire.
"Aw, zog it," Hazarr sighed.
"HAVE AT THEE, WRETCHES!!" Luna boomed as rays of destruction flashed from her horn and into the backs of a retreating mob.
Dead bodies and the smoldering remains of killa kans littered the ground around her, and shadows swam about her body like a living thing.
"Boss! Boss Coggz!" gasped one Ork boy as he noticed the Big Mek and skidded to a halt. "Whadda we do, Boss? We'z gettin' zapped real good, we'z is!"
Another Ork stumbled to a stop next to the first. "E'rytime we get close to da hoss it jus' tellyports away, Boss! Or flies! Or uses sum kinda othah wonky powah! An our dakka don' work none!"
"O'course yer dakka works, ya gits!" Hazarr snapped as he stomped past the lesser Orks. "Da problem is dat none o'ya can hit da brahd side o'a squiggoth!"
They were near the massive electric transformers that Hazarr had been building when the human army had arrived, and he spotted an unmanned zzap gun sitting on a construction platform near the control station. He walked off toward the cannon, a low growl building in his throat.
Luna saw two clanking walkers heading toward her, one of them boasting an attached rokkit launcha that spat a cluster of explosive missiles in her direction.
She wrapped the rokkits in her magic, and then steered the projectiles completely around in the air, sending them back to the Killa Kan that had shot them. The Ork walker was torn apart by its own rokkits in short order, and its partner hesitated before the alicorn advanced on it.
"Such absurd contraptions! Back to the garbage heaps with thee!" Luna's horn glowed brighter as her magic engulfed the Killa Kan, straining to lift the walker up off the ground.
Luna's horn pulsed once, then twice, and then the kan was flung through the air like a cannonball, smashing into a half-constructed hut.
"WHO NEXT WISHES TO DEPART THIS-hmm?" she dropped out of the Canterlot Voice mid-sentence when she saw an Ork much bigger than all the other ones she'd seen today aiming some kind of sparking cannon at her.
Luna raised her barrier, and apparently just in time. A bolt of lightning leapt from the mouth of the strange weapon and struck her shield, causing the Princess to wince at the feedback. Long, hot tendrils of electricity lashed about the surface of the dome, but it did not weaken.
"Ha! Thy greatest weapons art but an inconvenience to..." Luna trailed off after she saw that the Ork was ignoring her, instead fiddling with some kind of control panel. "DO NOT TURN THY BACK TO US, ALIEN!! WE SHALT STRIKE THEE DOWN!!"
Hazarr pulled down a switch, and the enormous transformers started to hum and quiver as they crackled to life.
"WHAT ART THOU DOING?! FACE THY DOOM, INVADER!!" Luna demanded. She would have blasted the big Ork by now, but she still had her barrier up. Something told her that she might need it.
As the two giant transformers suddenly discharged enormous electrical surges into her shield, she was quite gratified to be proven correct.
"Hrrrrgh!" the moon Princess grunted as the strain of maintaining the barrier increased fivefold, challenging even her mental discipline. "Thou... shalt NOT... overcome us!" she growled, her voice weakening.
Hazarr looked over at the Princess, who was clearly struggling under the constant discharge of the transformers, and then he made a few adjustments to the nozzles of his welding torch.
Luna's eyes widened when the massive Ork hopped off of the construction platform toward her, brandishing some sort of tool with a pilot flame burning on the end. "Nay! Stay back!" Her horn sparked and vibrated under the strain of holding up her barrier, and Luna spread her wings to prepare to flee. "Stop this at once!"
Hazarr fired the torch, and Luna screeched in pain as the magical bubble folded before a spear of intense heat, instantly exposing her to the merciless lashes of power curling down from above.
"AAAAYAHAHAHAHAAAUGH!!"
The Orks watching from hiding whooped and cheered as the alicorn was electrocuted, jerking and spasming painfully under the veritable river of pure power.
After about ten seconds of this the transformers finally sputtered out, and Hazarr turned around toward his Orks while the scorched Princess teetered from one side to the other.
"An' DAT is how ya do it," the Big Mek said decisively.
"We... art the... n-night..." Luna mumbled before tilting a bit too far to her left. She collapsed onto the ground in a smoldering heap.
As Hazarr walked back toward the Orks emerging from cover, one of the boyz sniffed the air.
"Heh heh. Smellz like chikkun," the warrior chuckled, drooling slightly.
"Pakk it in, ya lugz," Hazarr snapped as stomped past, "we'z leavin'."
This seemed to startle his soldiers.
"Wot? We'z runnin'? But we'z fin'ly winnin'!" protested a Loota.
"Winnin'? Ya tink we'z winnin' 'cuz I stomped da hossy dat wuz pickin' on ya dumm gitz?" Hazarr snorted. "Dere's a lotta akshun on dis rock. Too much fer youz lunkheads. We'z gotta go find mo' boyz, an' den we can giff dis planet anudder go."
A rather badly burned Nob frowned as he stared off toward the sounds of distant gunfire. "Ya sho we'z losin', Boss Coggz? Wot if da boyz is beatin' da spikies?"
A loud screeching noise came from nearby, like the sound of tearing metal. The Orks that looked over toward the disturbance saw that part of the battlecruiser wreck was bowing outward, as if something was digging straight through the bulkhead to get out.
Those Orks that didn't stop to watch the disturbance saw Hazarr speed up on his lurching dash through the camp.
"I sed LEG IT, boyz! Ya wanna be pickin' up ya teef outta da dirt wit' tweezahs, ya go 'head and stick it out heah!" Hazarr keyed a code into his klaw gauntlet, sending a signal to his ship in orbit. "Landa's comin'! Move!"
The grinding noise against the wreck bulkhead intensified, and soon the last few inches of plating were ripped away as Sirius carved out an exit with his siege drill.
"Iron within, iron without! Feel the hammer of Chaos, weakling xenos! HA HA HA HAAAH!!"
Sirius was moderately surprised to see the aliens in full retreat already when he stepped free of the wreckage, but he didn't give it another thought. His butcher cannon took aim at the nearest mob and roared to life, shredding apart the fleeing soldiers like they were stalks of wheat.
Hett and Kairon exited behind him, and the former quickly joined the larger Dreadnought in scything down the retreating Orks. Kairon hesitated, looking up at Sirius.
"You have been in unusually good humor very recently, Honorable Sirius," the Dreadnought noted, "a rather jarring change from your countenance earlier this mission."
"You've noticed!" Sirius said cheerfully, shouting over the roar of his gun.
"Your change in mood seems to coincide almost precisely with the moment that our squad system link indicated brother-slash-sister Pie's Dreadnought ceased life support functions," Kairon continued.
"Ever observant, Brother Kairon!" Sirius laughed.
A few gretchin scrambled past the Dreadnoughts, trying to move behind them and flee to safety unnoticed. Sirius swiftly pivoted around to face them. "It's dead! The pink idiot is DEAD!! Ha haaaa!" the gretchin stopped in fear and confusion, unsure as to why the giant metal opponent was yelling enthusiastically at them rather than killing them.
Then Sirius unleashed his heavy flamer over the mob of nearly helpless creatures, incinerating them all and neatly resolving the conundrum.
As he turned back around, however, he had very little left to shoot at. The Ork camp was abandoned, its former occupants having either fled the area or happily marched to battle already.
This didn't discourage Hett, who was sprinting as best a Dreadnought could after the enemy, the ground shaking with his steps.
Sirius decided to let him go. With the Orks in retreat, their mission was apparently a success despite his unit's moronic detour. He was too happy right now to try to reel in the psychotic assault walker.
"Command, this is Contemptor Sirius of Black Shield Squadron. We have reached the primary engagement zone and the xenos are in retreat," he reported into his vox.
There was a pause before he was answered, and the man on the other end seemed curiously surprised.
"Lord Sirius? You're in the xeno encampment?"
"Affirmative. My squadron took an... ill-advised detour, but we seem to have arrived ahead of the main assault force," Sirius explained, "but as I stated, what few Orks are left are fleeing before us. Resistance is negligible. Awaiting orders."
"I see... secure the area, Black Shield. The assault force had some difficulties of its own, but it's making progress toward your position. Make sure to intercept any greenskins retreating in your direction."
"Affirmative," Sirius intoned. Securing an area already free of apparent foes meant different things depending on the area in question. In this case, it meant smashing open the structures that may yet hide cowering gretchin or Orks in ambush. Sirius started walking toward a smoldering electric transformer, his siege drill already spinning up.
"Watch your step," Kairon suddenly warned.
Sirius froze, and then he tilted his head down.
Lying in front of him, exactly where he was about to put a giant metal foot, was an unconscious pony. A pony with dark fur and a shadowy mane that twinkled with hundreds of tiny points of light.
"What is THAT?" Sirius asked, pulling back a step. "One of our xeno servants?"
"They prefer the term 'allies'," Kairon pointed out.
"And I prefer to burn xenos rather than use them as pawns, but we don't always get what we want," Sirius retorted, "in any case, this one is damaged, but still alive. I suppose it would be impolitic to finish it off."
"No doubt. Shall I carry it?" Kairon asked.
The Contemptor made a harsh vox noise that was meant to approximate a snort. "Leave it. The assault force can deal with it if they wish."
Once again Sirius turned toward the fizzled transformer, and again he was interrupted.
"Ah, the vanguard," Kairon said, looking up as a single gleaming figure blasted through the air above them, "which now consists of a flying equine, apparently. Was there a major tactical update since I was last deployed?"
Said equine quickly swooped down toward the pair of walkers once she was reasonably sure that they were the only (sort of) living things around.
"Luna! Aw, geez, is she okay?" Rainbow Dash landed unsteadily in front of the Dreadnoughts and then disengaged her helmet, leaning down over the fallen Princess. "Please tell me she's alive! Is she breathing? Does she even breathe at all? There's no air on the moon, right? Okay, wait, she is breathing. PHEW!"
The Dreadnoughts waited patiently while the mare finished fussing over the comatose pony, and then she looked up at them.
"Did you guys clear out the greens already? The others are right behind me!"
"The xenos have retreated," Kairon stated dutifully, "it is uncertain whether they were already fleeing before they detected us."
"Regardless, the greenskins have been routed entirely, and the survivors are probably headed back to their ships in orbit to search for more vulnerable worlds," Sirius said, "the camp is ours. You are clear to see to this other one if you so wish." He tilted his siege drill slightly to indicate Luna.
Rainbow Dash chewed her lip briefly as she considered how she might carry the larger pony, but then she looked up at the Dreadnoughts again.
"Hey, wait a minute. Aren't you the guys that Pinkie Pie was with?"
"Fate did inflict that particular cruelty upon us, yes," Sirius said, a cheerful note entering his booming, static-laced voice, "however, it also relieved us of the burden in pleasantly short order. The pink idiot has perished."
Rainbow Dash recoiled, her eyes wide. "Wh-What? What are you talking about?"
"Pinkie of Pie was destroyed," Kairon clarified, his tone solemn, "our female brother separated from us, and the Orks fell upon her. Our unit link informed us of her destruction when her life support suffered critical failure."
Taking dark pleasure in the stunned look on the pony's face, Sirius elaborated. "We cannot know for certain Pie was dispatched by Orks. It may have been crushed by a flimsy bulkhead, or stepped into an active reaction chamber because it saw something shiny. But we may offer it the benefit of the doubt, I suppose."
Rainbow Dash looked from one Dreadnought to the other, and then shook her head. "No. You're wrong."
"Ah, denial." Sirius turned toward Kairon. "That is a stage of grief, is it not? It has been some time since I've witnessed that particular sentiment in any sort of genuine display."
"Pinkie of Pie has indeed fallen, Rainbow of Dash," Kairon said, making a note of the pony's identifier.
"No, she HASN'T," Rainbow Dash insisted, shaking her head.
"Believe what you wish," Sirius said, "but I will not-"
"Dude, she's right over there," Rainbow Dash interrupted, pointing a foreleg between the two walkers, "she sure doesn't look dead to me."
Sirius very hesitantly swiveled his torso around, fearing the worst.
Even fearing the worst couldn't have prepared him to see a familiar Dreadnought plodding up behind them with a tiny pink head poking out of it. Because he had foolishly thought "the worst" would have involved the survival of Pinkie Pie's walker. But the Dreadnought shell approaching them was not the offensively pink machine that had vanished into the shattered passageways of the Tau battlecruiser.
"Hi, guys!" Pinkie said brightly, waving her thunder hammer in the air with her twin-linked autocannon pointed straight upward. "Looks like you guys did an awesome job, here! Serious, Sirius!"
As a few bursts of sparks blasted from the Contemptor's head piece, Kairon turned to face Rainbow Dash again.
"That is not Pie. That one is called Hett," Kairon explained calmly, "except for the head portion, which inexplicably seems to be that of an equine alien. That aspect defies all logical explanation."
"Hey, Dashie! How goes the valiant struggle against the xeno threat?" Pinkie asked with inappropriate cheerfulness as she walked up next to Kairon.
Rainbow spared a glance at Luna's unconscious body. "Eh. Could be better, could be worse." Then she looked up again. "That isn't the same walker you had this morning. What happened to it?"
"Ork blew it up," Pinkie replied.
Rainbow clicked her tongue. "Why they gotta be like that?"
"I know, right? Such a buzzkill!"
Sirius finally managed to restrain the torrent of emotions and psychotic impulses surging through him well enough to offer a coherent thought.
"What happened to Brother Hett?!" the Contemptor demanded, stepping forward threateningly.
Pinkie had no obvious fear of the butcher cannon aimed in her direction as she turned to address the head Dreadnought. "I'm not sure, but I think the Orks got him."
"The Orks... what?!"
****
"C'mon, ya lazy gits! Fasta!" Hazarr snarled as a stream of boyz and gretchin scampered past him. All of them were loaded down with loose supplies, weapons, and scrap that they had been able to nab on their flight from the camp, and the Big Mek kept a carefully eye on his troops to make sure none of them boarded empty-handed.
Of course, nearly all the supplies they were carrying had belonged to Hazarr's gang in the first place, with the exception of a few interesting odds and ends from the battlecruiser. This entire trip had been a massive loss for his fleet.
But that was okay. He and his boyz got a hell of a fight, and some of them were even going to live to fight again. And he had personally gotten the opportunity to destroy a weird pink Dreadnought and a mutant horse/bird/narwhal thing. Good times.
An angry, un-Orky voice brought his attention back to his current operation, and he snapped his head up.
A half-dozen boyz were carrying a big metal container of some sort toward the landa, and chuckling heartily as they did so. The source of their amusement was clearly the object that they were carrying, and the fact that it was yelling at them furiously.
"I will tear out your guts and grease my servos with your fluids! Your blood will feed the thirsting damned for an eternity! Hraaaaugh!!" the sarcophagus shook with the intense hatred of its occupant, but the Orks carrying it merely laughed.
"Hol' on a sec," Hazarr grunted as he stepped up to the boyz and gazed suspiciously at the their cargo, "dis is spiky stuff. Where'd ya numskullz pick dis up?"
"Pink daemon! I will grind you underneath my iron foot!" snarled the sarcophagus unhelpfully.
"Jus' a li'l ways back, Boss Coggz," one boy assured him, pointing toward the wall of half-complete huts and building foundations, "dere wuzzat big stompy ting chasin' us, roight? An' yellin' a lot? Well, we got away, but den it startin' yellin' even loudah. An' it stopped chasin' us. So we'z went back fer a look, and den saw dis ting on da ground."
"Death! DEATH!! Death for ALL of you!"
Another Ork chuckled. "Can we keep 'im, Boss Coggz?"
Hazarr pursed his lips. "Awroight, but keepin' talkin' spiky loot is a big 'sponsahbilitee. You'z gotta feed 'im an' clean 'im yerself. An' keep 'im from killin' da boyz."
"We will, Boss! We will!" the Ork boyz said eagerly as they hauled the sarcophagus along toward the dropship.
"Damn you, pink devil! I will destroy you! I will destroy you ALL!!"
****
Pinkie Pie sighed melodramatically as she tilted her head up toward the sky. "Another dear friend taken by the xeno menace, just like Unnamed Mercenary #29 and Big Mac's left kidney! Oh, the equinity!"
"But... how did... the Orks... the sarcophagus... connections..."
As Sirius started sputtering confused half-thoughts, Pinkie Pie turned away from the Ork camp and began plodding in the direction of the muster point. "Whelp, things here are pretty much a wrap. I'm going back to the defense line. I heard they have cupcakes!"
"Could you save me one?" Rainbow Dash asked. "I have to stay here and make sure Luna doesn't get stepped on or anything."
"Okie dokie lokie!"
"But that... removal of... the Orks would... core extraction... no explosion would... a pony is... but..."
Sirius continued stuttering as Pinkie left, his visor flickering ominously.
Kairon glanced after the pink pony wearing the assault shell of his old squad-mate, and then turned to face Sirius. "I, too, would like to be relieved so that I might consume cupcakes."
Suddenly, the Contemptor's thoughts snapped into focus. "YOU CANNOT EAT CUPCAKES!! IT IS PHYSICALLY IMPOSSIBLE!!"
The smaller Dreadnought hesitated, and then tilted his helmet forward. "Ah. Right. That makes me sad."
Sirius made a noise that sounded like a metal sheet being slowly torn in half, and then he whirled toward the nearest Ork structure.
"Kairon! The Scavurel squads are en route to demolish the xeno structures, are they not?!"
Kairon looked up, wondering why Sirius sounded so angry about other squads' mission objectives. "Affirmative. They should be here within minutes."
Sirius gunned the engines in his siege drill, and the grinding adamantite heads whirled to life.
"They'll have to find something else to do, then," Sirius growled as he punched the drill into the transformer, "I require the catharsis that only destruction can provide!"
****
0.3 Kilometers outside muster point designation Zeta, 1 hour later
"Twi, seriously, calm down. She's FINE," Rainbow Dash said irritably as she followed behind a pair of Scavurel dregs carrying a stretcher.
On top of the stretcher was Princess Luna, and literally hovering over the unconscious alicorn was Twilight.
"She is NOT fine, Rainbow!" Twilight snapped. "When somepony is knocked out by force, they are BY DEFINITION 'not fine'!"
Rainbow Dash groaned and rolled her eyes. "I meant she's not seriously hurt! Calm DOWN!"
"How would YOU know? You swapped out your optical scanner for a 'cool sensor'!"
"You said you didn't even believe me!"
"I DON'T!!"
+Our escorts are becoming increasingly hysterical,+ noted one of the Dregs in Binaric Cant, +I recommend assigning them to other tasks. Tasks far away from us.+
+They don't take orders from me,+ Gaela said simply as she walked ahead of the stretcher.
"What do you want me to do? I thought you guys were in trouble! It was a loyalty thing!"
"It's not a matter of loyalty, Rainbow! You knew Luna was going to be in over her head! You didn't even know what had happened to us!"
"That's why I was worried!"
"You should have been worried for Luna, too!"
"Who says I wasn't?!"
+This IS getting rather tiresome, however,+ Gaela admitted, turning around, +cease movement.+
Twilight gasped as Gaela suddenly grabbed Luna by her mane, pulling up the Princess by her head.
"Gaela, what are you-"
A loud crack cut off the purple mare as Gaela slapped the unconscious pony across the face. With her heavy, metal augmetic hand. Rainbow Dash swore she'd heard a bone crack as Luna's head pitched to the side.
"Guh! We rise! We art awake!" Luna stammered, her eyes blinking rapidly. "The moon shalt be up in moments! We apologize for our tardiness!"
Gaela let go of the pony's mane, and Luna grunted when her face fell back onto the stretcher.
"There. Now the subject has no more need of medicae service," the Dark Techpriest declared.
The Scavurel promptly tilted the stretcher over, and Luna yelped as she rolled off onto the ground.
"Why is it that human medical treatment is either brutally negligent or brilliantly effective with nothing in-between?" Twilight asked bitterly as she landed next to the larger alicorn.
"Efficiency is the usual excuse," Gaela replied while the Scavurel left, "although in this case you must also consider just how annoying you all are."
Luna lifted her head up in a daze, her eyes squinting against the sun. "... Ah, now We remember what hath transpired," she mumbled bitterly, "it seems We hast made a misstep in our pursuit of the enemy."
"Are you okay? Please be okay!" Twilight almost begged as she cracked her helmet open and levitated it off.
Luna groaned as she pushed herself to her feet, feeling every muscle protest at the movement. Although even that seemed mild compared to the throbbing of her jaw. "We hast suffered no great injury but to our pride." She scowled. "There was an Ork among the idiot horde who seemed a great deal more clever than the lesser warriors. We thought ourselves safe from his weapons, and he proved otherwise."
"Well, that's a bummer," Rainbow Dash admitted, "but the important thing is that you're still in one piece and Twi can STOP FREAKING OUT."
"This is serious, Rainbow! Do you know what Princess Celestia would do to me if something happened to Luna?!"
"I think we ALL know what she would do, but I'll hear out your crazy ideas for laughs," the pegasus answered.
"MOON, Rainbow! MOON!" the purple pony shouted.
"To our knowledge, Sister hath never used the moon as a prison for any pony other than We," Luna grunted before she stretched out her wings, "besides, thou hast no special responsibility to us, and serves Celestia no more. Whatever irrational punishment thou imagines she might dispense cannot reach thee under the Company."
Twilight took several seconds to absorb the reassurances of her friends, and then she let her rear fall into a sitting position. "Okay. Okay, you're right. Of course you're right." She chewed on her lip. "Things have just been really crazy today, what with all the death and killing and seeing Pinkie show up in a completely different dreadnought than she started out in. I'm just REALLY wound up, is all."
"The brain damage probably hasn't helped your mood either," Gaela said solemnly.
"... No. It probably hasn't," Twilight admitted as her eyebrow twitched, "but at the end of the day, we won, the Orks lost, my friends are still alive, and we're one step closer to saving the planet from being totally overrun. This is good! We're doing good!" She didn't exactly sound cheerful as she finished speaking, but the expression of exhaustion was still preferable to her nervous ranting.
"Bangin'," Rainbow Dash replied as her boosters gently lifted her off the ground, "now if you'll excuse me, I have to get back to Zeta before all the cupcakes are gone. Later!"
"Rainbow, wait!" Twilight shouted, lifting off herself before her flight pack carried her after the pegasus. "I need to talk to you about our unit name! We are NOT calling ourselves 'Rainbow Squad'!"
The two armored equines quickly flew out of earshot, leaving Gaela and Luna behind. The latter was tenderly pushing at her jaw and wincing, while the former seemed to be lost in thought.
Gaela looked down at Luna. "You were imprisoned on the moon? As far as we could tell, its environment isn't tenable."
"Aye, thou art correct," Luna mumbled as she concentrated on a spell. Waves of soft blue magic cascaded over her fur, and her burns and bruises started to fade away, "despite our own connection to the noble satellite, 'tis quite a miserable place to live."
"Which makes it an ideal penal colony," Gaela mused, "still, I'm surprised Celestia had the foresight, much less the ability, to construct such a facility."
Luna snorted as she shook her wings out, watching a few loose feathers shake free. "There is no 'facility'. We had to make our own way whilst imprisoned."
Gaela frowned under her helmet. "... Then how did-"
"Thou must excuse us," Luna interrupted, "but We do not care to dwell on this topic. 'Tis a subject of great pain to us." The dark-furred pony started trotting off in the direction that the other equines had gone. "Besides, a feast awaits to celebrate a victory won! Let us balm the scars of battle with baked sweets and merriment!"
"I have to see to the salvage of the Ork base and oversee the incineration of the xeno corpses," the Dark Techpriest said, turning away.
Luna paused. "Most unfortunate. Shalt We save thee some confections for after thy duties are complete?"
"I wasn't complaining, I was making an excuse," Gaela explained as she continued walking the other way. "I'll never understand these ponies," she grumbled under her breath.
"We shalt never understand these sapiens," Luna mumbled herself as she walked in the opposite direction.
****
Ork camp perimeter
On a plateau overlooking the smoldering, broken ruins of the alien war camp, a trio of observers watched as Scavurel and their Dark Techpriest masters swarmed over the base like ants. Ork technology and materials were usually so sub-standard and abused that they barely even made good scrap material - a cruel irony for those races that had to contend with the greenskins constantly scavenging their war machines - but the Dark Mechanicus had long perfected its inglorious craft. They would find materials and parts of use to them. Of course, after the Ork base had been dealt with, the engineer-cult had a great deal of work to do on its own vehicles; most of the armor lost in the engagement still had perfectly usable vehicle hulls.
Behind the devotees of the Machine God came the Iron Warriors, many with flamers on hand. In great, sweeping waves they scorched the earth behind the Scavurel, turning the battered earth to burnt wasteland.
The three figures watching from above found the strategy quite familiar. And yet, still quite curious.
*They're burning the Ork spores before they settle,* mumbled Shas'el Wraithstar, his voice feeding into the helmet systems of the two battlesuits behind him, *culling their numbers ahead of time. Any future infestation here should be entirely manageable.*
*They've done this before,* decided the Stealth Suit on his left, zooming his vision down to capture an image of marching Chaos Marines.
*But WHY?* Wraithstar asked, sounding perplexed almost to the point of distress.
*To stay the Ork's growth? Didn't you just say that?* replied the suit on his right.
*No, that's WHAT they're doing,* Wraithstar snapped, *but why? Why are they protecting this land? Why are they still here? Do they honestly not realize there are numberless more of them coming?*
*Even if they didn't, it would still be curious behavior,* remarked one of his subordinates, *why fight the Orks on the ground? Their fleet could have intercepted the Orks before they reached orbit. Nothing about this makes sense.*
*I don't see a problem,* mumbled the other one, *if our enemies kill each other, it's less trouble for us.*
Wraithstar made a sharp growling noise that had the other suit stepping back in surprise. *Short-sighted. You won't live long thinking like that.*
*We won't live long ANYWAY, unless you forgot,* the Stealth Suit snapped back.
*And that's the POINT, Shas'ui,* Wraithstar said calmly, *the gue'la fight an unwinnable battle when they - unlike ourselves - yet possess other options. They defeated this army with ease, but it is only the tip of a horde that can overrun entire sectors. Strong as they are, they have no access to reinforcements and no colonies nearby to supply them. Yet still they stay and resist. WHY?*
The other Stealth Suits fell into quiet contemplation.
Finally, one looked up. *If we're sure that the gue'la know about the incoming Ork fleet, there is but one possibility: they believe that victory is among their options.*
*They're delusional, then,* the other Stealth Suit spat.
Wraithstar's optics zoomed in on a Contemptor Dreadnought that was smashing apart a building foundation.
*Perhaps they are. But so far these 'Iron Warriors' have proven extremely resourceful, and they have tools that we do not. I wouldn't be so quick to charge them with stupidity.*
The Commander activated his jet pack, and then hovered away from the cliff edge. *This mission is complete. We are returning to Black Point.*
*Shas'el,* one of his subordinates began as the other Stealth Suits took flight, *can they defeat the Orks? Is it really possible?*
*... I don't know,* Wraithstar said after a pause, *but I think it's time we found out what their game is.*
*Why does it matter?* mumbled the other battlesuit.
*Because we might wish to play as well, Shas'ui.*