In our tanks, we went pretty much wherever we wanted. No roads? No problem. Somebody’s house in the way? Also no problem.
“What was that?” Applejack asked.
I glanced at her from where I lounged in the open hatch at the top of the turret. “Nothing. Anymore.”
“Are you sure?”
“Trust me, I know what I’m talking about. I know everything. Part of being God.”
Applejack gave me a look, but by now she knew not to dispute me. She called it “pointless to argue with crazy,” but I knew what she meant.
We drove for a while out of Ponyville. Up ahead, I could see a pair of hills. I consulted the map. “Aha, the Smokey Mountains.”
The communicator had been turned on, and Pinkie replied, “Why do they call them the Smokey Mountains? I don’t see any smoke.”
“Perhaps it’s prophetic about the fiery hell we’re about to rain down on our enemies,” I mused. “If we set up shop on those hills, we’ll be in a great position.”
“How do you know?” said Rainbow.
“Because getting the high ground is an age-old military tactic for gaining an advantage.”
“No, I mean the thing about the name of the Smokey Mountains. Is that really why they’re named that?”
I wasn’t in the mood to argue with Rainbow. “Of course it is. I know everything. You remember that huge surveillance system I have?”
As we got closer, Sunset noted, “There’s already a fort on top the hill on the right.”
Sure enough, there was. I pointed a hoof. “Twilight, Rainbow, Rarity, drive up that one. Everyone else, up the other.”
Applejack, Braeburn, and I led the column up the hill on the left, followed by Pinkie and Trixie in the next tank and Fluttershy, Cordoba, and Fluttershy’s slaves bringing up the rear.
Over on the other hill, I could see Sunset looking out the top hatch of Twilight’s tank and surveying the area ahead. In the next tank, Limestone and Rainbow seemed to be fighting, but kept up the pace. In Rarity’s tank, she and Maud gave them their distance.
Sunset had the Desert Eagle I’d loaned her. While Twilight, knowing Twilight, probably wanted nothing to do with it, I remembered she had also used the pistol once. Trixie, of course, had her M60.
When my group reached the top of our hill, I spotted a group of ponies busy loading catapults, cannons, and slingshots. They weren’t aimed at us, so I ambled over. “Hey, name’s Valiant. There’s about to be a war here, so you might want to clear out.”
“There already is!” an old mare shouted at me. They started shooting vegetables across at the other hill. Most of them hit the fort.
I frowned. “No, like, an actual shooting war with armies and stuff. They’re trying to take over Equestria and we’re going to set up a position here to stop them.”
“Ain’t got time for that,” she said.
“Well, that’s too bad.”
“Do you know what them McColts have done to us Hooffields?”
“Of course. I know everything.” Actually, I just didn’t care.
“Then you know that ain’t nothing more important than this! We ain’t gonna stop fightin’ until they stop!”
Bales of hay began arriving in retaliation from the other fort, crashing down around us.
I rolled my eyes. “God, I hate peacekeeping operations.” I tapped my earpiece. “Sunset, get those ponies over there to cut that shit out. I’m going to stop these over here.”
“Roger that.”
I turned and announced, “If you don’t cut this shit out, I’m going to murder every last one of you.”
That got their attention.
“Put your hooves on your head and get over there by that miserable looking shed,” I said.
“That’s our house.”
“Then put your hooves on your head and get over there by that miserable looking house.”
“How are we supposed to walk with our hooves on our heads?” one asked.
I stared at him. “Do the worm.”
While they were busy, I ordered the others to position their tanks to look out on the valley below. I also decided that we might be able to repurpose the Hooffields’ weapons.
I heard a shot from the other hill. Glancing over, I saw that Sunset was executing prisoners. Huh.
Cordoba, otherwise unoccupied, was practicing with her just-my-size cutlass. I’d have to get her a gun of her own someday. Maybe on her birthday.
I took a walk around the top of the hill. The farm seemed well stocked. Hopefully we wouldn’t be sieged long enough to require food, but it was nice for just in case planning. My strategy was to use the valley as a choke point and have our superior weapons tear up the advancing army.
I glanced inside the miserable looking house. There was a very large cake there. I was immediately suspicious. Nobody had a cake that nice in a house that miserable.
“What’s this?” I asked the ponies that were worming their way over.
“It’s just a cake,” one of them replied, a little too quickly.
My eyes narrowed. “Really? Are you sure it isn’t a lie?”
I turned. “Hey Pinkie, come over here and tell me if this is a legit cake.”
“Why don’t I just poke it?” said Cordoba.
I shrugged. “Or that.”
Cordoba ran it through with her cutlass. There was a shriek and two ponies burst out the top of the cake. There was a third one in there, but he seemed to be in the process of dying from a stab wound.
As Cordoba tried to get her cutlass unstuck from the cake, the two ponies that had previously been inside grabbed her.
“Hey!” I shouted. “Let her go!”
Cordoba struggled, gasping, with the mares’s hooves around her neck. I hit the offender in the nose so hard that it inverted into her brain. The stallion that was with her started forward, but I grabbed the mare by the hind legs and swung her towards him. “I’m gonna beat a motherfucker with another motherfucker!”
The other Hooffields tried to intervene, but I was in the zone. The whole thing was over quickly, and I was left breathing hard and surrounded by dead motherfuckers.
Maybe literally. These were hillbillies we were talking about.
“Well…shit.” I turned to Cordoba. “Are you okay?”
“Fine.” There was a bruise on her neck, but she seemed more pissed than anything.
“What happened over there?” Sunset called.
“We’ve got the whole place to ourselves now,” I replied.
“So do we over here.”
“Perfect. We shouldn’t be interrupted again before the Commies come along.” Though it was a little disappointing that we had to fight just so we could fight.
I took a walk around the top of the hill. Everything was set up and I let my eyes wander. I realized the primary color theme on this hill was red. Everything seemed to be shades of it. Over on the other hill the theme was blue. Well, except for the splashes of blood, but Sunset had been neat and there wasn’t much of that.
I frowned as I looked at the blood on our side. There were a few strange patterns in the splatterns that I hadn’t noticed until that moment. As I looked further, I noticed a strange red miasma that seemed to be permeating the area. When it spoke to me, I knew things were going to get weird.
“Are you the one known as Plymouth Valiant?” asked a deep inhuman voice.
“What’s it to you?”
“I have come from the underworld to kill you.”
“Nuh uh.”
“You can’t say ‘nuh uh’ to death!”
“I just did. What are you going to do about it?”
“Kill you.”
“Oh, that’s real original. That’d be like giving me exactly what I asked for.”
The supposedly from-the-underworld voice paused at my logic. I went on. “In fact, why don’t you become corporeal and come say that to my face?”
“You know not what you will unleash, mortal.”
“I know everything! And who are you calling mortal? So are you going to do it or not? Are you chicken?”
The voice made an annoyed noise and then announced, “Very well, I will teach you a lesson.”
A very satanic form began to coalesce out of thin air. I shouted, “Get him!”
Pinkie was the first one to spin her tank’s turret around and fire. I hadn’t taken the precaution of laying a holy blessing on the ammunition or anything, but getting a HEAT shell through the chest will ruin anyone’s day.
“Is everything okay over there?” Sunset called. I almost missed the question, because my ears were ringing.
“Yeah. It was a demon, but we handled it.”
I heard the boom of a tank shooting at something from the other hill.
“Is everything okay over there?” I asked.
“Yeah. It was an angel, but we handled it.”
“An angel?”
“That’s what he said he was. He was looking for you.”
“Huh.” I frowned. This, combined with the various satanic and angelic runes that kept popping up should have been telling me something important.
“So…what was that all about?” Applejack asked. “Do you know?”
“Of course I know. I know everything. It means that an exciting new front has opened in the war. While we can’t prove a link between the Commies and Heaven and Hell, they at least seem to share a common goal of being hostile and I find that very interesting and worthy of further study.”
“It sounds like you don’t know,” said Applejack.
“Shut up. I know.”
I took a look around our hilltop. Pinkie casually leaned on her battleaxe. It had been a while since I’d seen it, since we fought Tirek. Fluttershy was speaking to a small group of animals, appearing to host an impromtu book club meeting. Applejack and Braeburn talked quietly over by her tank. Cordoba was making a pot of coffee on a tank’s hot exhaust.
“Never a dull moment, huh dad?” said Trixie. Her machine gun was slung across her back.
“You got that right.”
Trixie didn’t continue the conversation. I glanced at her. She seemed off, somehow. “Is something wrong?”
“It’s Daring. I haven’t heard from her in days and haven’t seen her in weeks. I asked her for help with this but she didn’t show up. We’re better together.”
“Are you worried?”
Trixie swallowed and looked at the ground. “No, but I…okay, maybe. You know how Daring always said she had an exit strategy for everything?”
“Are you sure she’s trying to get away from you?”
Trixie shrugged.
“Look, whatever happens, you’ll get through it. I know it. If it comes to that, we’ll handle it.” I smiled.
We were interrupted when Rarity called, “I say, is that an army advancing in our direction?”
I ran to the edge of the hill. “Nah, looks like a scouting party…of several hundred.”
“What do we do?” Fluttershy asked, wide-eyed.
“Button up!” I called. “Load frag shells!”
We all got into the tanks, slamming hatches down behind us. The oncoming group was pretty large. Maybe my estimate of several hundred was optimistic, but there were at least a couple hundred.
“Fire at will!”
We started raining death. Between all of us in Applejack’s tank, the work went quickly, and I could hear cannons popping from both hills.
Unicorns started shooting back. Pegasi soared out of danger and raced towards the tops of the hills. Seeing the oncoming threat, I said, “I’m going outside. Sunset, Trixe, Limestone, come on!”
I reached into my stash and pulled out some earplugs, putting them in before throwing open the hatch. A shot of magic glanced off the armor at the front of the turret and I ducked it, swearing under my breath.
The pegasi were nearly on us. I heard Trixie open up with her M60. One stallion came at me and I punched him down.
Across the way, I saw Limestone screaming and flailing with the attackers while Sunset covered her with backup gunfire.
Trixie seemed well covered behind Pinkie’s tank. I turned in the open hatch and grabbed the .50 cal mounted there.
The tank cannons started to go quiet as the army got close enough that they could take shelter at the base of the hills where the cannons couldn’t point down far enough. Realizing this, the others in the tanks also started to man up the machine guns.
Maud was throwing rocks, but being Maud, they were actually boulders. Pinkie was swinging her axe around. Rainbow was doing her dragon thing. Twilight looked reluctant but had shielded her hilltop and was contributing a few retaliatory spells.
Cordoba cut some pegasus’ head off in an aerial battle. Damn.
It took some work to turn the tide of the attack, and my hilltop got it worse because we didn’t have a fancy fort, but we finished the job. There were no serious injuries on our side, though all of the tanks were showing paint damage.
Things fell quiet. It had been pretty hot and heavy there for a while. At least these Commies, smarter than zombies and drug fiends that they might have been, were still not well versed in combat. I personally took credit for getting the girls exposed to that kind of training early on.
But we’d only defeated a fraction of the whole enemy force.
I sat down, leaning against a tank tread. Applejack came over. “We’re almost out of ammo.”
I stared at her. “We didn’t bring enough ammo?”
“I thought you knew about things like this.”
“I do know! I’m going to chalk this up to a lack of the ‘one shot, one kill’ policy. And I thought you ponies were big into conservation, what with your environmental consciousness and animal husbandry and shit.”
She gave me a look and walked away. I sighed and got up. Better go check how things were going elsewhere.
I climbed into Applejack’s tank. Braeburn was staring blankly at the comms equipment inside. “This is to talk to Tin Mare, right?”
“Among other things. Speaking of.” I pulled up Tin Mare’s telemetry. She’d expended about half her ammo. I connected into her and Guinness’ link. “Yo. ‘Sup?”
“We are in so much trouble!” Guinness said, without even greeting me.
“What are you talking about? Is something on fire?”
“It could be more on fire,” Tin Mare replied.
“I don’t even know what ‘it’ is, but make it so.”
“I would, were I able.”
I frowned. “What do you mean?”
“I am unable to maneuver effectively in order to get into firing position,” Tin Mare reported. “There has been significant ground fire from unicorns. In addition, pegasi are attempting to intercept.”
“Wait, so they’re actually kind of competent?” I asked.
“Yes!” Guinness shouted. “Didn’t you know?”
“Of course I know.” I pulled up the satellite feeds. One of them was out. Strange. All it was showing was a weird oscillating light. As I watched, there was a flash, and another screen was blocked.
“Son of a bitch.” They must be blinding the cameras with unicorn lasers.
“I’m getting out of here,” said Guinness. “They’re about to overrun my position. We took out a few of them when we still had the element of surprise, but there’s just too many. And they’re smart.”
The locater beacon in his transmitter started to move. In the satellite feed, I saw unicorns shooting at him and pegasi on his tail.
“Tin Mare, cover him.”
She was already on it. I saw the pursuing pegasi scatter as she roared through their airspace, one of them catching the leading edge of her wing with his face. Then, another unicorn blinded the last satellite.
“Tin Mare, verbal status report.”
“Evading. Maneuverability restricted by heavy fire. Hit: cosmetic damage to left wing. Hit: afterburner vanes jammed. Hit: catastrophic struct-”
“…Tin Mare?”
Silence.
“What’s going on?” Braeburn demanded.
I stared at the radio. “I don’t know.”