PONYHAMMER 40,000. The Warp Incursion.

by Duskrunner

Chapter Six - Sleep

He hadn't been part of the night's ceremonies, hadn't partaken of the party. As Canterlot nobility it had been his obligation and privilege to attend the great coronation ceremony. But he had no relationship, no great love for the ponies involved.
So when the ceremony was ended and he had made enough of his presence at the party felt he moved on, excusing himself as soon as it was polite to do so, and made his way to bed. His tower was sufficiently removed from the ballroom and even if it hadn't been the building had been well sound-proofed.
In short, Prince Blueblood had enjoyed a few hours of restful sleep when Princess Celestia had sent for him.

Compared to everypony else, certainly every pony present at the coronation after-party, he was fresh and well rested.

But even then, still, he was exhausted.

They had escaped a nightmarish dungeon, escaped a monster and its progeny, escaped a legion of crazed... somethings in armor that encased them whole like great scarabs and apparently murdered each other for no more reason than that some were born with distinct differences and some were not.

It was horror stacked upon horror.

But he was tired and nopony so far had needed to talk to him, ask of him or even turn to him for anything. As far as he could tell no one had taken notice of him or missed him. Given the circumstances, he thought it best to excuse himself and stay out of their way.

He found an alcove, another hidden room, one that was mercifully clear of soot stains and burn marks or the stench and entrails of what they now knew were dead bodies. He was tired and nopony had need of him.
Without preamble he bent his legs to bring his belly to the hard metal ground, lowered his head and closed his eyes.

He had fallen asleep by the time the first pony found him. Flitter and Roseluck looked around, the light from their room casting great shadows from the sleeping prince's body. His sides moved ever so slightly with his every breath.
The two made eye contact. The room looked safe, they were both so tired and everything was cold and unfamiliar to them.
They were scared, and they found the shape of a big stallion in the room very reassuring.

They both looked about and found something like motor oil. Rose dipped a hoof and left her horseshoe imprint repeatedly on the door while Flitter smeared the words 'Sleep', 'Blueblood', 'Flitter' and 'Roseluck' next to it. Both wiped off the excess making check marks next to the names and went inside.

They closed the door behind them and lay close to the stallion and each other, sharing their body warmth.

The hours passed by. With both victors and invaders vanquished and their headquarters abandoned Twilight Sparkle set into motion events that would secure their hold in their neck of the wastelands. Carefully she selected the mares she trusted for missions outside and assigned them a complementary partner.

She sighed and hoped nothing would go wrong even as her inner voice insisted she'd overlooked something vital.
Of all the niggling little things what she regretted most was that she hadn't found common parchment: she needed to keep her head straight and a checklist of tasks she had done, tasks she was in the process of completing, and tasks she had yet to begin would have gone a long way towards setting her mind at ease.

"Princess?" A voice called.

Twilight turned a little startled and found herself staring into Octavia's face.

"I'm sorry. I've been looking at screens and listening to voices for too long. Octavia, yes? What can I do for you?"

Octavia nodded confirmation of her name and replied. "A lot of ponies are tired and a few have collapsed in one of the rooms. I thought to ask for permission for everypony else to sleep as well."

Twlight exhaled heavily and brought a hoof over her eyes. She felt a headache that had to be eyestrain combined with exhaustion. "Has it been that long? Yes, it must have been. There's no night and day and I really should consider making an hourglass. Yes that's fine Octavia."

Octavia bowed her head and turned to leave.

"Wait! No. no."

Octavia turned back.

"It's not safe and there's no way to know what could happen in the next few hours."

Octavia stood waiting while Twilight rubbed her head more.

Twilight sighed heavily, a noise that became a yawn. "Get everypony and... and find out who can still stand. Tell them to keep watch, at least for a few hours. Let anypony who thinks they just need a quick nap take one and they can take over for those that kept watch when they wake."

Octavia bowed her head again. "Thank you Princess."

"Please tell Cheerilee I'll need to see her... sometime tomorrow." Twilight called after her as she left.

Octavia turned out from the room and made a round inside the headquarters, passing on Twilight's orders.
Applejack and Rainbow Dash were obviously the most eager. Their stamina seemed endless. Cloudchaser and Sparkler accepted a respite gladly, choosing to bow their heads right where they stood. She passed on her message to Cheerilee who started to head to the sleeping room with Derpy and Carrot Top.

She found no sign of Berry Punch or Trixie, assuming the two like so many others had wandered off to bunk in places of their own. She spread the word around to keep an eye out for them and everypony else that wasn't accounted for.
That comment earned her a quivering yelp from a Fluttershy that was crouched under a table facing the door.
Rarity stuck her head up so Octavia could count her as well.

Octavia arched a brow at their choice of hiding places and Rarity responding by shutting the door with her levitation. Her magic held it shut and Octavia got the message. She nodded an approval at Rarity serving as gatekeeper and the unicorn opened the door for her again, letting her continue on her way.

The only stallion in the group, Applejack's brother if she remembered correctly, was a statue. A pillar of marble set behind the battlements left over from the last great siege. He looked ominous, standing behind some great machine that had obviously been the reason the knights had held the choke-point for as long as they did.

There was movement at his hooves and Vinyl poked her head up.
With a glow of her horn a length of wire snapped out from the ground and threaded inside the trigger guard.
"That's the best I can guess. Those guys have fingers, even the little ones. Far as I can tell that's the on switch and that's the dangerous end. I wish we could test it to see if it still worked but, well, it's really late for that and we don't want to panic everypony. If it doesn't work we can fall back to your way."

"Thanks." Mac said stoically.

Vinyl hugged him tight for a second. "Here's hoping you won't need to, ok?"

He nodded, then clutched the end of the wire in his teeth while his hooves settled on the barrel of the weapon to keep it steady and trained on the door.
Vinyl joined Octavia.
"'Sup 'Tavi?"

"Is he...?"

"Sentry. We think that thing helped blow up all those other guys in nasty ways so he asked if I could figure it out so he could run it for us if it came to it. Well, even if it doesn't work at least the noise'll give us warning."

"He's... very brave."

"Yeah..." She trailed off. "You were looking for me?"

"Not exactly. The Princess gave orders for ponies to sleep, I'm sorting through who can stand guard, who needs a nap and who can't stand until tomorrow."

"I'll stay up. I'm too wired to sleep right now. or at least that's how i feel. We'll find out in a few hours. You got enough bodies?"

Octavia twinged at the use of the word 'bodies'.

"Sorry. I wasn't thinking. You got enough ponies keeping a lookout?"

"Your staying awake helps. There are... some ponies unaccounted for."

Vinyl helped her go through the list and presently, after vouching for everyone she saw or heard every one of their friends had been accounted for.
"You look bad 'Tavi. Get some sleep. I'll nudge you awake when I come in for a nap in a while. Or do you need me to let you be until tomorrow... whatever 'tomorrow' means here."

Octavia nodded at the sentiment. Rags and papers had been draped to cover light sources in the ceilings and walls to make the place darker but everything was still abnormally bright. Where the walls cracked to the outside beams of pink light flooded in.
"A short nap will do. Thank you Vinyl."

Octavia turned to walk away, then changed her mind, turned on the spot, wrapped her hooves around Vinyl's neck and kissed her cheek.

Vinyl levitated her glasses out of her face, revealing her eyes and causing Octavia to sigh at the mental picture of a brave unicorn with the air of a battle-mechanic off to war. She'd never really seen Vinyl in that light before.
"Everything'll be ok, right 'Tavi? Just get some rest and make a little room for me, ok?. I'll be in there to wake you up with my snoring soon enough."

Octavia couldn't help a small dignified laugh from escaping her. She separated from her roommate and made her way to the sleeping quarters.

Along the way she stumbled onto the sight of Lyra and Bon Bon. The earth pony was down on the floor like a sphinx while Lyra sat precariously over the edge of a crate. Lyra had scavenged a dark bowl-shaped helmet for her head and it tipped back, almost falling off her skull despite being pushed as forward as it could against her horn.

Bon Bon woke up, a bit groggy and stared at Octavia.
"I'm awake, I'm awake" she said. Her voice had changed again.

"Shhhh." Octavia cooed. "it's all right. Princess Twilight said we should get some rest. I'm just making rounds and seeing who can keep watch a little longer. Go back to sleep."

"No... no. I'm ok." Bon Bon got up and looked about. "I just need... something to drink or splash on my face. And I should probably find the bathroom."

Octavia nodded. Those were goals worth completing.

"Are you staying up much longer?" Bon Bon asked.

"No. I'm off to take a nap. I'll be replacing somepony else soon."

Bon Bon nodded.
"Take Lyra to the bedroom with you? Bad enough she sits on her spine all the time, she shouldn't sleep like that too."

Octavia was going to point out there wasn't any bedding involved but it didn't seem worth saying. She let the L-shaped Lyra tip over and fall off the crate onto her back and said good night to Bon Bon as she carried the pony to the sleep room.
The door had been grease-written with every last one of the twenty-one names and Octavia stopped to get enough grease to smudge a check next to her own name and Lyra's.

She stepped into the sounds of soft snoring and set Lyra down. The unicorn made a bit of a whimpering noise and Octavia figured what happened, setting the fallen helmet back properly onto Lyra's head. Lyra resumed her quiet breathing and Octavia moved around in the semi-dark, finding a large enough patch of ground for her. She lay down then scooted over to the corner as much as she could. That should be enough space for Vinyl, she decided, as she nodded off to sleep.

For the twelfth time that night Twilight sighed, cursing the fact that she needed help. She had never missed Spike so badly.
Nevertheless, she was making progress even if it was unrecorded: Her introduction to 'mankind' came in the form of a cache of unsecured 'magical' artifacts that self-identified as 'holologs'. They were opened, viewed, and gradually their spoken language was translated.
Disturbingly, the vast majority of holologs were devoted entirely to warnings and threats about anything labelled the inhuman, the corrupted, the lost and the damned. Twilight found it all very unsettling: after all, her vocabulary had never included the word 'propaganda'. Before the day had ended Twilight was sick of the warning 'Beware the alien, the mutant, the heretic.' She tossed this particular device aside to join many others on the archive floor. Because the human documentation boiled down to little more than repetitive paranoia Twilight had started to lose respect for the medium itself.

The translation process was slow because the literature itself was either cryptic or monomaniacal. Twilight began to despair of ever understanding these new creatures when Pinkie Pie trotted in carrying exactly what she needed: Fifteen copies of something she translated as 'The Imperial Infantryman's Uplifting Primer', a mass-produced briefing that was stowed in the kit of literally every single human guardsman around them.

Twilight looked relieved and was about to thank her friend when she noticed the pink pony was still poking around the bodies. Her brow rose as she recognized basic first aid.

"Pinkie, what are you doing? These..." she looked over the notes for the proper term. "Men... they're not asleep."

Pinkie smiled a sad knowing smile. "I know Twilight, but they're not gone. They need something. Maybe this. maybe from us."

Twilight closed her eyes, weighing what her friend said and started thinking aloud. Pinkie watched her begin to pace.
"Everypony that isn't asleep is still out searching and scavenging."
Behind Pinkie, Twilight saw Fluttershy and Applejack poke their heads in the door. Obviously they knew what Pinkie had been going about and wanted to know how Twilight would decide the problem should be handled.

"Come in girls." She said.

"I'm not sure what to do. I'm a Princess, newly appointed, we came here straight from my coronation- I think that was just last night but oh gosh have we been here long? How much time <i>has</i> passed? I lost track with the dimension traveling, twice, and I know we've been here for hours because it took forever to cross the wasteland just to get here and it's hard to tell because I'm not sure there's day or night on this planet or whatever it is so maybe I haven't even been a princess for a full day, but I'm still Princess and that means making decisions because it's my obligation even though I'm not sure what I should do or how. Royalty. I keep thinking of proclamations and decrees and should I really be holding a funeral for these people I don't know and have no clue about? And really, should I make this my first official action in the human realm? I have an obligation to everypony, an obligation that really should include accurate recording. History will judge me for what I do and how I do it and why I do it and so far all I've managed is to broker grudging relations with a goddess who threatened to kill us or at least I think that's what she said because I have no idea what Kaela Mensha Khaine means in her language, barely managed to escape from a legion of daemons, and now we're looking into research for a new civilization that might technically be several new civilizations, most of which hate and are actively trying to kill each other!"

Pinkie was still looking at her and without blinking bubbly answered: "Yup, that's about it."

Twilight collapsed to the floor post-rant. Her eyes stared up at Pinkie
"Am I right to?"

Applejack and Fluttershy joined in and the three of them reached around and pulled Twilight up on all fours, holding her close.
Applejack said "Sugarcube, history's an impartial judge but what Princess Celestia needed was a wise leader. And she picked you."

Fluttershy joined in. "We have the time and everything's relatively safe."

Twilight let them hold her up and weakly answered "I don't know what a funeral would do to everypony. I don't want them to start worrying that one of us might be next and I don't see anything good coming from it. I mean, it might keep everypony distracted and I'm sure we'd learn something... but there's so much to do already."

AJ made eye contact. "We know you got about a hundred different pros and cons fighting in your head right now so I'm just asking: What does yer heart tell you is the right thing to do?"

Twilight looked around and nodded at her friends.
She made eye contact with Fluttershy who said "It's an act of compassion."

"Alright Pinkie, let's do it." She said as Fluttershy and Applejack fell in following her.
Applejack had the good sense to gather clean cloth for all of them. They got into pairs and tied a covering over their partner's muzzle.
"This room will do. Bring in the bodies and let's get to work."

At Pinkie's request they prepared to remove the knights' armor. Twilight felt a little guilty because she thought this would be easy, especially when compared to the jobs she had written up for her other friends. How quickly they realized she'd underestimated human ingenuity.
They had singled out a Vorpal Swords knight, reasoning that when they were done they'd have the expertise to remove ornate armor. The lavender armor was a mess of etched faces and monster body parts and in an ideal world Twilight would be able to remove it without damaging horns, antlers or other such on the lavender knights' heads -and possibly other places on their bodies Twilight didn't want to think about.

Instead fifteen minutes worth of tugging and panting had only rewarded them with the removal of a helmet. The armor turned out to be less clothes than machine.
Applejack frowned and left her friends' frustrated examination to search for a toolkit.
When she came back she was lugging a toolbox while holding a screwdriver in her mouth.

Fluttershy noticed the tiny flathead and made a series of embarrassed noises and apologies.

Applejack's face dropped. "Lemme guess, those fancypants suits ain't held together with screws, are they?"

Fluttershy gave an apologetic smile.

Applejack spat the screwdriver into the toolbox, leaned over, then pulled out a crowbar.

Fluttershy's eyes went wild as she made an 'eep' noise, her imagination wild with visions of the violence AJ was about to use to break the armor apart.

Twilight put herself between her two friends and nervously, calmingly tried to talk Applejack down before she started swinging. "Let's not go to those extremes just yet."

They tried tugging and twisting again and again until, finally, they managed to pry off the armor pieces. First the gloves and vambraces, then the arms followed by the oversized greaves, the pants, and finally they slipped the body from the chestplate. They didn't even bother trying to detach the enormous shoulder pads or the backpack.

Another hour had passed by the time they got the entire suit off.
For all her intentions to keep the affair a solemn event respecting the deceased, however, Twilight Sparkle couldn't help but take advantage of circumstances to perform an impromptu autopsy. No, not autopsy- an anatomical study.

Fourteen giant human males were laid out on the surfaces in front of her, and their bodies were objects of curiosity even without consideration for their fatal injuries. Their bodies and the foreign objects lodged within.

She identified optical devices so complicated she suspected they worked as well as real eyes and metal studs implanted in the skin of their foreheads. While she was analyzing the first body her eyes found markings on his skin, the outline of a castle on the bottom left quarter of a buckler. At first Twilight thought she might be looking at a cutie mark but when she saw the way it had faded she knew it was a tattoo. She looked over at the shoulder pad and identified the same icon painted on his armor.

The last of the bodies they had struggled a particularly long time with; the gauntlet they had attempted to remove was impossible and when they succeeded in removing everything else around it they realized it wasn't armor- the arm itself was a grafted machine replacing the original limb. Something didn't feel right.

"Applejack," Twilight turned to her, " strip down one of those small humans for me. Quickly please. Something about this is off."

Applejack grumbled about leaving the poor man his dignity; not so much because he was being stripped naked -after all, Applejack was seeing everything from a pony's perspective and felt no great injury was being caused since ponies ordinarily didn't wear clothes- but because Twilight was beginning to treat the poor man's body like one of her study books.
The guardsman's flak armor at least was mercifully easy to remove, she just had to find and undo a few leather and Velcro straps and they were done. Once they exposed his chest however even Applejack was caught staring at the differences between giant and ordinary humans. Their muscle and bones were larger, their blood was brighter, and their chests revealed a vast integrated breastplate embedded under their skin that joined them to their armor. Ordinary humans, even the ones with minor prosthetics, tattoos and scars, didn't have anything even remotely similar.

"Sweet Celestia... are you sure they're the same species after all Twilight?"

"Not anymore. I wish I had a spell to ... look deeper. Or medical equipment that could do it for me. Look at these things. The real differences can't possibly be just skin-deep."

They looked around at all of them, seeing the obvious differences between the Vorpal Swords, knights the Imperium's holologs defined as 'loyalist', and the lavender 'heretic' knights.
"Maybe I'm stating the obvious, but I think we should separate the bodies. Not because they'd be furious at being buried together, at least not just. If the records are accurate then they're dangerous, maybe toxic."

"Y'all think they might be poisonous Twi?"

Fluttershy nodded sagely "Well, they are a different species. There are over twenty different species of toads, scorpions, spiders, snakes and jellyfish whose skin, oil, glands, or body fluids are poisonous to the taste, smell, or even touch. And that's without counting magically induced maladies like cockatrices and gorgons that can petrify a person upon optical contact."

"Or the effect of incredibly powerful artifacts like the Mantle of Tartaurus or the Alicorn Amulet." Twilight finished. "We don't know what their bodies are like or what their armor and fetishes can do. Be careful and try not to handle anything directly."

Early on Twilight noted that the clean group, regardless of whether or not they had machines and metal in their bodies, stood apart in two ways: their tattoos were neat with patterns suggesting numbers.
The chaos worshipers simply didn't belong and It wasn't too hard to see why the groups were so divided. Laid bare they were as large and impossibly strong as the other knights except that these humans had eyes that popped out from places other than their heads, stalks that sprouted from their backs, gills, multicolored shells, withered vestigial appendages, and other things that made them all queasy. Their decorations were not limited to inking: scars, implants, brands from red-hot irons- their bodies were just another means to declare their devotion and they valued its integrity no more than the armor, trophies and fetishes they carried. Indeed, the line between armor, fetish and man blurred: many could not be disrobed, not because of wiring and cables but because the flesh and metals had become one.

They found that only the lowliest of the small humans wore robes; the giants, the soldiers, everyone wore heavy armor. Even the women; there were a few males in robes but not a single woman outside of armor and not just body plates: every single one of the females was armored in the full-body powered suits the giants wore. Their heraldry markings and mottoes in script echoed the iconography of the Vorpal Swords.

And so the ponies left the partially armored giants, cyborgs and other inert mechanical beings together. Unwittingly they entombed loyalist servitors and techpriests in the same room as <i> traitoris extremis </i> . The ponies had no way to distinguish their 'pious' transformations, enhancements and mutilations from their viler counterparts.

Water supplies were found and loving hooves did their best to wash away the superficial marks of war from broken bodies. Trying almost in vain to match up damaged pieces to incomplete wholes, severed limbs were splint together with broken sections of plasteel and unstained cloth was torn into long bandages to cover what was unsightly and make them appear whole. They had a hard time of it: many sections were nothing more than hollow sleeves, wraps stuffed to replace body parts that had been vaporized. Twilight's magic did most of the delicate labor.

They considered burial but Applejack refused to allow it, even for the Traitor Knights. Even if the Infantryman's Primer was accurate and it had been their choice in life to serve whatever the planet was she couldn't bring herself to feed these cultists and heretics to the blighted earth.

The ponies who returned from scouting the facility and foraging, as well as those who woke from naps to relieve the guards that had kept vigil all night, entered to find themselves in the middle of a mass funeral.
Twilight was proud that everypony acted with solemn dignity.
Twilight found she had no words, no insight to share. Instead they all bowed their heads in respectful silence. She nodded and the bedsheets were drawn over the faces one last time.
In the tense silence of the proceedings, Pinkie sang.

"Close your eyes and look up at the twilight
it's time to see all you never could before
moving away
far from home
away from all you once knew.
It's the new
and it's calling out to you.

It's your dreamer's day
and every song has gone away.

And believe me
there still... will be... a dawn"

The rooms they chose to serve mausoleums had already been searched and their useful contents scavenged.
Fluttershy nodded to the ponies that had been prepped for the door commands. The security bulwarks sealed and AJ replaced her hat on her head. Good, and bad, they'd been honored and laid to rest. Now there was work to do.

"What do you think AJ?" Twilight asked.

"It's an evil world and all them folks, good and bad, act like they're trying to steal it. I think this here house belongs to the good folk, like the ones we buried together with the smaller ones. We've barely passed any debris in the mud like this, whatever was out there must've sunk in like this one would have. Call me crazy but the only thing different here is that there singing in the air and color me embarrassed if all of it ain't related."

"I agree. If it isn't the music itself then something about it or the fortress is holding the world's evil off.
I don't know if we should find a way to replace it or just leave it be. Right now it's protecting us from getting swallowed up but it also makes us stand out: if we found it there's no telling what else will react to it. And judging from these bodies even if it does ward off the planet and its monsters it won't keep the corrupted humans out."

"You gonna make a decision now sugarcube or you want us to find something to help you, maybe buy some time?"

"I don't think we have a choice. Keep everypony working, we need to know what we're dealing with."

Twilight walked away from AJ and headed towards a strange lit room. The walls were dotted with alcoves filled with scrolls and devices like the holologs but so much of the material was indecipherable to them.

Thorough research was now possible, but as much as alien literature called to Twilight everypony needed her attention and she didn't have the time to delve into it herself. Fortunately she had the perfect pony to pass it to:
"Cheerilee. Have you found anything?"

Octavia had passed her word. While everypony else had been on guard on paying their respects Cheerilee had been reading.
"This is... so strange Twilight. Even with your translation cypher everything I read feels like it was written in a foreign language. Every book I find makes references to listed addendums or treatises and each one has a security clearance requirement. Everything is so... paranoid."

"Is there anything on these knights? Something quick?"

"There are a few illustrations I saw as I leafed through. These sections are simpler than the others. I get the feeling this primer is a compilation rather than the work of a single... hand. Some parts of it are complex and others," Cheerilee winced, "others read like they were intended for the illiterate."

Twilight nodded, adding that the the growing list of things she'd need to look into later.
"Go on please."

Cheerilee began to read, the slow pace of the cypher translation made her words sound dramatic. "They shall be my finest warriors, these men who give themselves to me. Like clay I shall mold them and in the furnace of war forge them. They will be of iron will and steely muscle. In great armour shall I clad them and with the mightiest guns will they be armed. They will be untouched by plague or disease, no sickness will blight them. They will have tactics, strategies and machines such that no foe can best them in battle. They are my bulwark against the Terror. They are the Defenders of Humanity.
They are my Space Marines and they shall know no fear."

Twilight frowned as she echoed the words. "Space Marines".

Comments

[FluffyPanzer]

i had my reservations when i first started this story, but i must say youve managed to get me hooked...kudos to you