The Gathering Storm Part IV: The Continuing Struggle

by WiskeyMikeOne

Chapter One: Ground Zero

The Gathering Storm Part IV:
The Continuing Struggle
Chapter One
Ground Zero

(I know the song is about the main six, but this was so inspirational to me I just had to have it in the story.)

Stalliongrad, a city renowned for its port, industry and hardworking citizens now was reduced to rubble in a matter of seconds. When I arrived at ground zero there was only dust and a few foundations of buildings left. I along with some high ranking officials from the Ministry of Intelligence and military arrived to see the damage for ourselves. We made our way into the destruction, I had to watch my step; the rubble was uneven and could give way. Paint Brush lost his balance and grabbed hold of me.

“Sorry sir.”

“That’s alright.”

There was a genital breeze coming off of the sea and it carried the smell of fire and concrete dust with it. Engineers had marked out a safe path way for others to follow with red tape and white spray paint on the floor. It had been three hours since the missile hit Staliongrad but it felt like just a few moments ago. There were no buildings, no tress and no sign of life at all. We’ve had no contact with any of our forces that were in Staliongrad at the time of the explosion. They weren’t dead that much was clear but where did they go.

We arrived at the epicentre, the crater was vast, at least 500ft across and 200ft depth, there were a few ponies in yellow hazmat suites at the centre of the crater scanning and recording their findings on clipboards and laptops. We needed to know what happened when the missile detonated.

“Sir.” It was Captain Red Light he was the officer overseeing the clean-up. He used his magic to produce a clipboard as he walked towards us.

“Ah Captain, what do you have for us?”

“Large traces of magic residue in the epicentre sir. All of which belongs to one type of spell. Teleportation.”

“So there safe?” Asked Speedy.

“I cannot say for certain sir.”

“Any idea where they might be?” asked an officer behind me.

“I have a hunch. Equestria.”

“Thank you captain, good work.” He saluted me then turned and headed to the research tent. How could the empire get there hoofs on this kind of technology, the stealth ability of the Wonderbolt aircraft and now a bomb than can destroy an entire city. Staliongrad was five times the size of Manechester. “I wonder how parliament is coping with this news.” I asked myself.

“Sir we should go now. I think we’ve seen enough for one day.” Said Blue Berry.

“Alright then. But before we go I have to ask. How many of our forces were in the blast radius of the explosion?”

“Err..” He was hesitant to answer.

“Out with it!”

“13,000…sir.”

I let out a long sigh.

“How the buck am I going to explain this to their family’s back home.”

“I-I don’t know sir. My thoughts are with them. Do you think its best that the Chief of the General Staff deals with the condolences?”

“Maybe your right. We need to concentrate on finding out if there are any more of those missiles out there.”

*

A chopper flew us back to The NLRAF airfield just outside of Moscolt, there waiting for me was Rainbow Dash, Shamrock and some other ponies who I didn’t recognise. When I set hoof on the tar mark Rainbow Dash spoke.

“Whirl this is Dust Ring from the intelligence corpus.”

“Good for him.” I didn’t look at him and kept on walking but he and Dashie caught up with me.

“He has some information on the bomb.”

“I can give him some information. It was big and made an either bigger explosion, here. Now if you don’t mind I have to report to Her Highness as soon as possible.”

“Whirlwind!” Dashie blocked my path.

“Okay fine, what is it?” I turned to face him. He was a bit of a nerdy looking stallion, flat mane, glasses and a jumper underneath his lab coat. Possibly knitted by his mother.

“It’s properly not safe to talk here sir, out on the runway.”

“You know the value of information. Okay where?”

“Follow me.”

He led us to a cluster of camouflage tents on the other side of the airfield, there were ponies working on computers and franticly darting to one desk to another, documents in hoof. On a table at the back of the main tent was a blackbox with cables leading to a to a pull down screen, the box had some writing on it, “Nightfurry” in white pen on the side of it.

“Sir’s, ma’am.” Dust Ring pointed out some fold away chairs in the corner but I preferred to stand.

“Why is my jet’s black box here?” I asked.

“All will be revelled in a few moments sir.” Dust Ring was tapping away at a keyboard. He tapped the enter button and a video append on screen, it was the footage from my gun camera plus the audio from my radio.

“Whirl! Single contact behind us, surface level moving extremely fast towards the city.”

“I see it!”

Dust Ring paused the video.

“Sir, by slowing down the frame rate we can calculate the speed and trajectory of the missile.”

“And that means?”

“We can estimate were it was fired form.”

“From a plane obviously.”

“No.”

I was puzzled. Dashie got up from her seat and went to the computer; a map replaced the paused video.

“It came from Equestria Whirl, namely here.”

The map zoomed in to a gorge just west of Ponyville.

“Ghastly Gorge.” she added.

A wave of excitement came over me, I ran towards the screen to get a better view of the gorge’s layout.

“A perfect place to fire a missile from, good cover and deep within the heartland of the empire.” said Dust Ring.

“Can we get to it?” I asked them both.

“There might be a way.” Dust Ring zoomed out the map and onto the east coast.

“Ghastly George meets the coast here; we could send a strike team through this point and just follow the gorge and destroy the launch site. They would be blow radar and undetected.

“Do we know the precise location of the launch site?” I asked Dust Cloud.

“The calculation to determine the location of the launch site is not 100% accurate; it could be anywhere within this circle.” Dust Ring tapped a key. A transparent red crucial appeared over a section of the gorge.

“Is that as close as you can get it?” I asked Dust Cloud.

“I’m afraid it is sir.”

I studied it map.

“I want to deal with this threat before it threatens Manechester…but…we need more Intel. I’ll contact Hawk Eye squadron, they can survey the area from up high and hopefully pin point the exact location of the launch site.”

“Already taken care off.”

“Pardon Shamrock?” Shamrock was sat in his chair with a smug look on his face.

“I had a feeling you wanted more Intel so I took the liberty of contacting Hawk Eye squad, they’re on their way to Equestria right now.”

“Good. I’m impressed.”

“Hay, I have got something between my ears you know.” he said with a smile.

I thanked Dust Cloud for his hard work then left with Dashie and Shamrock. The three of us headed back to our jets. Over the radio Dashie asked me about Staliongrad.

“There is just rubble and ash left, plus a bucking huge crater. It’s the largest explosion and crater ever.”

“Mother of Celestia.”

“Any ideas on where our ground forces are?” said Shamrock climbing into the cockpit of his jet.

“Possibly Equestria and under heavy guard. We cannot launch a rescue opp until Titian is taken care of.”

“Titian?” asked Dashie.

“Yep, I figured the bomb needs a name.”

“It’s a bit sinister don’t ya think?” said Shamrock over the radio.

“Its needs to be, we cannot understatement this treat not for one second. If we do then its game over, and not just for us but the whole Republic.”

“I hear ya Whirl, don’t worry we’ll destroy the rest of them.”

“I hope so Dashie. I hope so…”