Armor's Game

by OTCPony

Into the Land of Bones

“Wha’s it we’re doin’ now, AJ?”

“Wha’ d’ya think?” said Applejack to Hayseed, stifling a yawn. “Same dung, different day.”

The sun was only just beginning to poke through the clouds as 3rd Battalion, Princess Celestia’s Ponyville Light Infantry, formed up in a half-distance column behind a slight rise in the ground. The light infantry regiment had been heavily engaged throughout the past week, clearing and securing no less than five towns along the Great Trunk Road in gruelling street fighting. But beyond this rise, Applejack knew, was the last one: the town of Whiskerton. She didn’t much understand the grand strategy and the top brass’ reasoning behind taking the town, but she trusted Shining Armor to make the right decision. What she did understand was that this would be an agonising fight. This would be her third battle in a town. In her first battle she had been in the first wave, and breaking into the town had been hard enough. In her second fight the 3rd Battalion had had to have been brought up after resistance had been heavier than expected, and racing from ruined building to ruined building amid choking powder smoke with Changelings firing from every window had been far worse than marching into the enemy’s teeth at Maneden. If the Changelings were as smart as Shining Armor, they wouldn’t give up this town easily.

“Uh, Sergeant?”

Applejack took a moment to realise she was the one being addressed. She was still not used to the three chevrons on her sleeve. “Yeah, Cherry?”

Private Lemon Cherry stared up at her, eyes wide. “Is it... is it true what they’re saying about the Lynxes? How they lost a battle?”

“Now tha’s why ah don’t say anything ‘less ah know it’s true,” said Applejack sternly. “Don’ you worry ‘bout them Lynxes or the other regiments or even the other battalion, Sugarcube. We all gots jobs to do an’ somepony else messin’ up ain’t gonna stop us doin’ ours!”

Still, a tiny voice couldn’t help but whisper in Applejack’s head, some of what they were saying about a Lynx defeat didn’t exactly make encouraging listening. She had heard the words “getting cut off” used more than once recently.

Then the bugles blew and the guns on either side of the battalion fired. Applejack shoved those thoughts to the very back of her mind as the battalion let out a cheer of “TIMBERWOLVES!” and marched over the hill.

***

It was a straight two hundred-yard march across flat open ground that had once been fields to reach Whiskerton. Once this town had been surrounded by rich farms, producing the fabled bounty of the Felinia Matriarchy, second only to Equestria in per-capita farm production. Now the farmers were long gone, the earth was parched, dry and cracked and rose in clouds of choking dust. What few plants remained were rotted, desiccated, and crunched beneath a hoof. The hedges that had once separated fields were now bare of leaves, gnarled, blackened and shrunken and could be smashed down by a determined kick. The Changelings had destroyed it all.

Across the desolation lay Whiskerton, once a prosperous little town of whitewashed buildings. Now the paint on the walls was cracked and peeling and the houses were leprous with spots and stains. Great columns of smoke rose over the town and pillars of debris shot into the air and rained back down as four batteries of the Royal Artillery pounded Whiskerton with roundshot and shells, fixing in position the Changeling half-cohort that lurked within. Next to the town flowed the Kelpie Creek, thick and brown and choked with weeds and corpses.

The regiment’s 2nd Battalion halted just in front of the hill, holding position as an emergency reserve. With Applejack’s section in the front rank, the 3rd Battalion marched on to assault Whiskerton.

At a hundred and fifty yards from the town, the rear five companies halted and held back in reserve for the second wave. Lieutenant Colonel Cherry Fizzy stayed with him. Sickening apprehension filled his throat as he watched the rest of his battalion march away for the third time this week. He knew that for an urban attack his place was at the rear, to direct the reserves and keep control of the battle, but that didn’t comfort him at all. Every instinct screamed at him to be at the front, fighting and dying with his ponies.

At a hundred yards, the Fifth Company halted as a tactical reserve. Then the Fourth Company split into three platoons to act as mobile reinforcements. The Third Company wheeled to the right to take the town’s flank. The Second and First Companies kept marching, spreading into open order to cover the entire front of the town.

The Royal Army Drill Manual prescribed having three-to-one numerical superiority before committing to a set-piece field battle. For an urban assault, that figure rose to five-to-one. Two thousand troops were bearing down on scarcely three hundred Changelings

Then the artillery barrage lifted and dropped down again fifty yards behind the Changeling first position. Dazed and injured Changelings staggered to their hooves from behind cover and were met with a storm of shots from the lead companies. The light infantryponies dived from cover to cover and only leapt up to deliver devastating shots that always found their mark, while the Third Company wheeled round and charged up the Great Trunk Road and slammed into the Changeling flank.

Amid a ruin of shattered walls, burnt-out rooms and blasted rubble that had once been shops and homes, Princess Celestia’s Ponyville Light Infantry carved through Whiskerton a bloody path with spearpoints, knives, hooves and teeth.

***

Applejack stood silently on what had once been Whiskerton’s common. The very grass beneath her hooves felt brittle. The air was thick with the reek of burnt wood, stone and flesh. Buildings that had looked like little piles of sugarcubes when they’d marched over the hill were now jagged ruins, their roofs blown off and caved in, holes blasted through them to give access to the infantry, and their walls dark with smoke or spotted with burns from hundreds of spear shots. Fifty ponies had died for this town, and one hundred and five injured were being raced to the field hospital at the rear.

The occasional shot still rang out from the buildings as the mopping-up parties dealt with what Changelings remained. Applejack knew the drill well by now, she thought grimly. There was to be only one survivor to bring news back to the Hive.

She closed her ears to it all and instead looked to the centre of the common. Standing there, its branches bare of leaves and its trunk gnarled, was an apple tree. She slowly padded towards it, wondering if once before the Changelings came Felinia had curled up in its shade or played in its leaves in the autumn. They’d have eaten the apples certainly. Had the Felinia bucked apples? Twilight would know. Thinking about it amid all this suddenly struck her as absurd, obscene even.

She gently touched a hoof to the cracked, greying trunk. No, this tree was long gone. Its roots were still sunk deep, but something vital about it was just missing. It was as if the Changelings had been determined to suck away even the simple joy this tree had provided this little town. This tree would never again provide shade or apples or piles of leaves to roll in, just as Whiskerton would now never more be anything other than a collection of ruins, probably not even marked on a map. An’ for wha’?

Her thoughts were interrupted by the sound of wood splintering. A Private in the Fourth Company had bucked open the cellar door of a building across the common. “Found it! PIONEERS! OVER HERE!”

Oh yeah, thought Applejack grimly. Tha’s what. A section of pioneers, axes leaning against their shoulders, their leather aprons cracked and brown, and carrying saddlebags stuffed full of grenades packed with gunpowder and naphtha, trotted over to the open door.

“Good find, Private,” said their Sergeant. “Okay boys, let’s get ready to torch this nest. Get down there and knock out the major support beams: I want this whole building coming down on them when we cook these bugs.”

“D’ya have to?” Applejack found herself saying.

The Sergeant stared at her in disbelief. “What?”

Applejack couldn’t really believe it herself. “It’s jus’... well, they’re kids, ain’t they? Larva! Some of ‘em ain’t even outta eggs yet! It’s like killin’ foals!”

The pioneer Sergeant took a step forward, his face contorted with anger. “My foals aren’t going to drain all the love from Canterlot when they grow up. I’ve got orders to destroy every hatchery I find. You had orders to kill every Changeling defending this town. Didn’t see you complaining then.”

“The ones ah killed could figh’ back,” growled Applejack.

“A bug’s a bug!” snarled the Sergeant. “Doesn’t bucking matter if they’re fighting or what weapon we use! If we don’t kill ‘em all now they’ll just come back to get us later!” He spat and swept down into the cellar, followed by his section down into the mass of gold-green eggs and squirming white Changeling larvae.

“LIVE ONE!” yelled somepony suddenly. Applejack spun around to see a door burst open and a Changeling drone gallop out pursued by two light infantryponies. Suddenly it seemed like every soldier in the town was on the common, surrounding the hapless drone with a ring of spearpoints.

Applejack stared at the drone. She’d seen the bodies at Maneden of course, but she hadn’t seen a Changeling up close since Canterlot. She’d forgotten the iridescence of its sable carapace, the glint of light through the fissures in its legs, the bright white of the fangs in its mouthparts, and the soulless void of its icy blue eyes. It was a creature to fear; a creature to hate.

And yet, here, surrounded by a ring of spears, its head darting from left to right as it desperately looked for a way out, chittering in panic and its wings buzzing uselessly, the hapless drone didn’t looked threatening at all.

“C’mon, ya bucking bug!” snarled one soldier, jabbing his spear at it. “Killed any foals today?!”

“Hey bug boy!” laughed another. “Those wings ain’t doing much! Maybe you should just fly away!”

“Oh yeah, but you ain’t got no magic left, do you!” laughed a third. “’cause WE put a stop to that!” He swung the butt of his spear down hard on the drone’s head. With a hiss of agony the drone collapsed to the grass.

“For Spirits’ sake, jus’ get it over with an’ put him outta his misery!” snapped Hayseed Turnip Truck.

“Buck off, bumpkin! Did he do that to the Felinia or the Lynxes?!”

“We’re suppose’ to be better ‘n him!”

“Well you go for it then!”

“ENOUGH!” snapped Applejack. She strode forward, making sure everypony could see her stripes. “Y’all know the drill. We’re sendin’ this one back to Chrysalis. There’s plenty more like him further down the road!”

She seized the drone by its wings and dragged it from the circle. She made sure it got a good look of the pioneer section leaving the cellar and hurling its grenades in.

“Get outta here,” she said. “Go home, get a meal, tell yer buddies how awful we are. Spirits know, we’ll jus’ be doin’ exactly that here.”

The drone galloped off down the bank of the muddy Kelpie Creek towards the south. Behind her, Applejack felt the heat from the burning hatchery and heard a sound she’d become far too used to: hissing grubs and popping eggs.

***

“Whiskerton is secured,” said Colonel Noteworthy proudly, pushing into the staff tent. It had been a good week for his regiment. “We have our river route, sir.”

Whiskerton sat where the Great Trunk Road met the Kelpie Creek. The Royal Army now had access to a river route running straight through the heart of the Changeling Kingdom. They could now load their heaviest supplies onto boats and, unencumbered by baggage carts, double their daily rate of march while their gear for the night sailed along next to them.

Noteworthy’s smile was not reciprocated by the staff officers huddling around the map table. His grin faded. What had happened? Some new development in the war? Had the Changelings snuck a force past them and they’d been cut off? Had Chrysalis tricked up new legions from somewhere? And yet, as he moved closer, he saw that the staff was not poring over maps, but instead... newspapers?

“What’s happened?” he asked uncertainly.

“The media back home has turned against us,” said Shining Armor grimly. “The papers from two days ago were delivered this morning. Major Sweet Cake held them back and asked me to look over them before distributing them to the troops.”

“It makes for depressing reading,” said General Blackfire.

Noteworthy stared in disbelief at the media bombshell before him. Copies of Sun and Moon and the News of Equestria, the Canterlot Chronicle and The Baltimare Times covered the table. A mere glance at the headlines told him that they had found out everything: the burst guns, the near-disaster of Valneigh, their policy of destruction...

“All News Equestria papers...” he muttered.

“That plothole Newsprint has always been against us,” snarled Crystal Thought. “Uh, begging the Field Marshal’s pardon...”

“My thoughts exactly, Colonel,” said Shining Armor. “But Newsprint is just in the business of selling papers. Another victory and he’ll be cheering us on again. My concern is how to minimise the impact.”

“Those bloody Parliamentarians will have a field day with this,” growled Warding Ember.

“The Parliamentarians just want to increase the public’s voice, sir,” said Colonel Tinderblast, offended.

“And they insult us every day in Parliament, Colonel. If that’s the public’s voice I’d rather it stayed quiet.”

“Save the politics for the mess,” said Shining Armor, as Tinderblast looked ready to say something he would regret. “What can we do to keep this from reaching the rank and file?”

“We can’t, sir,” said Crystal Thought. “A total blackout without explanation would make them think something worse has happened at home. The best we can do is to distribute them with our own message to quell any rumours.”

“On that,” said Shining Armor. “Anything clearer on the Lynxes turned up?”

“Slashclaw’s dead,” said Thought simply. “About twelve thousand Lynxes under Strong Blow have pulled back to the base of the Recinante Cliffs. The rest are either dead or running back home. There’s about two legions still on the Bitissippi that could be a threat, so...”

“If they confront the Lynxes and they break, we’ll end up cut off with ten thousand Changelings sitting across out supply line,” completed Shining Armor. “We’ll dispatch a battalion north with three cavalry squadrons to stiffen their resolve. Everything else is needed here.” He looked over at the huge wall map where prospective battle sites were marked. “Chrysalis can’t let us keep advancing for much longer. She must meet us in force soon.”

Everypony shifted awkwardly on their hooves. They knew full well what they were doing to force Chrysalis to commit to battle. The papers had predicted it perfectly.

“Sir,” said Ration Bag in measured tones. “I’ve been hearing a lot of dissatisfaction among the ranks towards our policy on Changeling hatcheries. With the papers in mind, wouldn’t it be best to...”

“What we are doing is absolutely necessary to end this war,” interrupted Shining Armor, coldly. “The soldiers know that. If that isn’t enough for them, then remind them what the Changelings did to Canterlot, what they did to the Felinia who used to live here.”

“What we are doing is genocide,” whispered Surgeon-Lieutenant Colonel Redheart.

A ringing silence filled the staff tent. Shining Armor slowly turned to face his senior medical officer. His gaze was as cold as the Crystal Mountains. “You will not use that word in any capacity again or I will have you disciplined. Is that clear?”

Redheart’s mouth was set in a defiant line, but what she said was; “Yes, sir.”

One pony did not notice the drama. He stood at the back of the crowd of staff, clutching a newspaper in a shaking hoof. I won Valneigh for him, and he credits the artillery?! He says my victory was nearly a catastrophe?! I protected his flank while he was still forming up at Maneden, and he thanks those idiots in the 2nd Division?! Major General Neigh stared furiously at Shining Armor. This stallion may be my commander, but he is not my leader.

***

With a shriek of fury, flash of green light filled the room and the drone fell dead, ichor leaking from its neck.

“Put him with the others,” hissed Queen Chrysalis.

Lord Chitin and the three other surviving Lords of the Hives stared in mute shock as the drone’s body was dragged unceremoniously from the room. It would be displayed outside the palace with the bodies of the four other sole survivors from the towns the ponies had taken in the past week, to encourage the rest.

“My Queen,” whispered Lord Chitin. “This drone wished only to warn you. He...”

“He should have died at his post!” shrieked Chrysalis. “Then our hatcheries might still be intact! How can we expect our drones to fight when they are less scared of the enemy than us!”

She paced furiously around the room. Chitin dared not speak.

“It cannot go on like this,” his queen muttered. “Armor has the river. If we do not stop him soon, he will move to quickly it will be a town every day! We have no choice; we must face him in open battle.”

“We cannot risk it, My Queen!” protested Chitin desperately. “Our drones lack the skill of the pony soldiers, and if we are defeated, it will be the end of us! Shining Armor wants us to commit to battle: better to wait, to delay and harass him as he marches.”

“And allow him to continue to destroy the future of our Hive?” shrieked Chrysalis. “No more! We shall destroy him on the battlefield and then take back the Lynx territories!”

Any other politician of any other race would have known that Chrysalis could no longer lead. But Chitin and his fellow Lords were Changelings. Their queen was more than just a leader; she was the progenitor of their offspring, the very future of the Hive. To remove her would be to sign their death warrant as assuredly as laying down weapons before the ponies. They said nothing as she stared at the map.

“We will take every legion we have left and march north from Purrillies,” she declared. “We will camp at Softpaw and deploy three legions to hold the river crossing at Silvestris: if Armor wants to continue his advance down the river he needs to clear that town. We will hold the heights and let him waste his strength on our defences. If we defeat him, good. If he wins, his army will be depleted and vulnerable to attack from Softpaw. Either way, we will crush him.”

Comments

[Europa]

Someone really needs to call out Shining soon.

[DarthSonic66]

5151542
Someone did. She nearly got demoted.

[The Good Boy]

dun dun dunnnnn. Chrysalis=