Iron Hearts: Book 1 - Planetfall

by SFaccountant

Awkward Alliances

Iron Hearts

Chapter 3

Awkward Alliances

****

Centaur III - Fortress Ferrous Dominus

There was nothing so grand, Solon had long since decided, as the death of a starship.

He had lived a long, long time, and seen a thousand kinds of death. The deaths of soldiers, of civilians, machines, aliens, forests, oceans, continents, planets, and even stars. He had seen the resurrected fall again and watched immortals have their all-too destructible physical shells crushed. He had seen the purging of the spirit, the evacuation of a perfectly healthy body by the soul and the lifeless shell that remained. He had seen cities encircled by flame, their inhabitants slowly smoked to death by the millions, and would-be nations wiped from the face of their mother world with a single titanic blast.

But in his opinion, nothing approached the beauty of watching the ruination of a space vessel. No other construct was built with such purpose and such scale, and to see the end of their useful lives, whether that end be a fireball in space or the crude mercy of the scrapyard, was a very emotional sight for the ancient Warsmith.

Such were the thoughts that occupied Solon's mind as he watched the Tau battleship Mev'laaros descend into the atmosphere for its barely-controlled landing onto Centaur III.

Such a vessel was not designed to make planetfall, and was only able to do so on the understanding that it would never leave the planet's surface again.

That was certainly the plan in this case. Macro-cranes, autowelders, and huge squads of servitors with their Dark Techpriest masters circled the landing site like vultures awaiting a carcass. Off to the side, hundreds of slaves - human, Tau, kroot, and a few assorted other species - waited in long chain gangs, their overseers barking orders and handing out tools where necessary.

"Mev'laarosh. It meansh 'Shlayer of Beashtsh'. Evidently it wash deshigned ash part of the campaign to drive off the Tyranidsh. What a beautiful craft."

The Warsmith's legs skittered rapidly as he turned his chassis around to face the only other person with him. Dark Magos Kaelith was in the center of the room, his entire serpentine body strung up with wires and power cables like a larvae in the beginning stages of being wrapped up in a cocoon. The cables and wires were strung out in all directions, some pooling on the floor or hanging loosely from the ceiling and walls, while a great many led to the cogitator banks that lined one side of the room.

+Contention: the sentiment is wasted on a vessel destined to be dismantled for fortress walls and spare guns,+ Kaelith responded in his usual formalized Binaric Cant as he simultaneously managed a hundred equipment deployments, munitions deliveries, and three cases of walking relatively inexperienced Acolytes through the proper ritual establishments of fusion reactor cores.

"Not sho, Magosh. In itsh death, it birthsh a new conshtruct. Bulkhead to bulwark. Death to life. It'sh a far more dignified end than we give sho many of the Imperium'sh craft."

Solon scuttled over to a large hololithic display in the corner that had a detailed blueprint of the deployed manufactorum ship. Already the size of a large town when it landed, it was still in the early phases of deployment, and still growing. Mining drills tunneled deeper while forges, presses, furnaces and stockpiles were placed, secured, manned, and activated one by one.

All around the facility was a ring of Chaos armor and Iron Warriors in trench lines, awaiting the establishment of proper bunkers and fortress walls. Solon had a laser stylus in his augmetic socket, and at its touch great sheets of metal and ferrocrete fortifications flickered into place over and around the industrial base, letting the Warsmith see an estimation of the finished product.

Kaelith remained silent, absorbed in his duties until Solon spoke again.

"Where ish Acolyte Gaela? I thought she wash managing the deployment too."

Kaelith turned his head toward the heavily augmented Astartes, his optics rotating curiously.

+Expressive: incredulity. You have been observing the deployment since initiation and you have only now noticed that I am in control?+

Solon blew a dusty snort from his vox grille. "No, I merely expected to shee her around by now. Didn't I give her the order to shtart this operation in the firsht place?" Solon spoke perfect Binary, as many older Iron Warriors did, but stuck to Gothic habitually. Which annoyed Kaelith to no end, incidentally, since the Warsmith's slurred speech made his Gothic sound ridiculous.

+Explanatory: the difficulty of managing a deployment of this scale with reliable vox range reduced to thirty-two-point-nine-one meters required my superior experience and aptitude. Expansion: Acolyte Gaela was dispatched into the field to secure the probe automata and recover their data.+

"Ah, I shee. I hope she'sh careful. It might be quite dangeroush out there without long-range vox."

Kaelith turned away. +Hypothetical: Judging by current data on enemy presence, resistance will be scarce.+

"Yesh, but we alsho detected numerous life shignsh and evidence of dwellingsh on the shurface. We don't know much about the potential dangersh of this world, putting ashide the Tau."

+Conclusive: the Acolyte can tell us about it in detail when she returns with-+

The buzz of Binaric Cant was interrupted by a loud yelp, and both cybernetic men turned sharply as their autosenses detected something flying through the window at high speed. There was no pane of glass or other barrier in place, as that facing was actually to connect to a tactical command core, and the intruder clipped the edge of the meter-wide cavity before crashing into a rolling tumble through the webs of power cables and wiring.

Kaelith went on alert immediately, his robe splitting open along its long belly to expose dozens of welding lasers and melta cutters stacked in rows along his body like a centipede's legs. Though used primarily for tooling and disassembling parts, it was all too easy to use them to carve flesh when the need arose.

+Alert: unregistered bio-form detected. Hypothetical: local xenos have infiltrated our defense network. Recommendation: extermi-+

"Oh, DO flush your heat shinksh, Kaelith," Solon sighed, raising none of his own weapons as he admonished the Dark Magos. "Nurgle'sh beard, it'sh jusht a bird." He glanced back at the intruder. "Horshe. Bird-horshe. Jusht shoo it back outshide. You're embarrashing yourshelf. And dishcharging weaponsh in here ish a bad idea."

Kaelith reluctantly closed his robes, his optics swirling angrily as they remained locked on the small gray pegasus wriggling free of the wires it had gotten tangled in. It had a blonde mane and yellow eyes that seemed to gaze in different directions, along with a wingspan that seemed rather inadequate to carry something of its size. On its rear were several discolored circles which Solon guessed were blisters at first, although there were no other signs of skin damage.

The pegasus also had a saddlebag wrapped around its neck, which he thought was weird, but his sensors could tell at a glance that it was nothing dangerous.

The tail end of Kaelith's body, which he continually reminded people was not actually a tail, started to shift across the room over the piles of sensitive equipment and wires. Like a snake, it slithered closer to the uninvited guest, twitching sporadically to try to scare it off without damaging any of the wires at its feet.

"Hello!" the pegasus said finally, raising a hoof in greeting as she craned her neck up to look at the room's occupants. "Do you two live here?"

Kaelith's body stopped moving, and he accidentally skipped a crucial communication that would lead to a core shutdown and three deaths later that evening.

Solon, who had returned to his hololith, swiveled his torso around to stare.

"I'm Derpy Hooves! I'm your new mailmare!" the pegasus said with a smile as she continued waving her leg at the extraterrestrials. "I asked my boss this morning, and he said I could add your spooky doom factory to my mail route! So from now on if you have any letters or packages to deliver, just leave them to me, okay?"

Solon tilted his head to the side, and a mechatendril snaked up from his back and scratched at his helmet.

"... We don't have any mail for you today, I'm afraid," he said finally.

"All right! I'll be back tomorrow, and I'll bring you any letters I have for you!" Derpy started looking back and forth, her eyes (or one of them, at least), settling on a half-open green crate on a back shelf.

"Oh! Is that your mail box? I couldn't find it from the air!"

Solon walked up to the pegasus, his chassis alone towering over her without even considering his torso. Really, each one of his legs were large and heavy enough to crush her like a bug.

"That'sh not a mail box," Solon said calmly, "it'sh an ammunition crate."

Derpy blinked, dropping her hoof. "What's 'ammunition'?"

"A shpecial kind of package that we prefer to deliver ourshelvesh," the Warsmith informed her.

"Oh! Well, I'll be back tomorrow then! Goodbye!"

Derpy took off into the air, promptly caught her neck on a data cable hanging from the ceiling, and then tumbled back onto the floor, letters spraying out of her bag wildly.

She started to untangle herself, having gotten her hooves wrapped up in more wires splayed out across the floor, when she felt something hard slide around her leg and tug her up into the air.

The pegasus blinked as the cords and cables slipped off her and onto the floor, and she craned her neck to look up at her back hoof.

Her leg was wrapped in a metal tentacle, one of at least a dozen that seemed to originate from the back and chassis of the gigantic Chaos Lord. Some of them tapered to agile points, some of them seemed to end in clamps and snapping jaws, and a few had strange tools on the end unidentifiable to a pony.

"It'sh not shafe to fly around in here, Mish Hoovesh." As Solon spoke, his free mechatendrils darted to the floor, and his free hand opened Derpy's mail bag. One by one, the tendrils picked up the dropped envelopes and slipped them back into the bag with impressive speed and coordination, and within seconds the loose letters had been collected.

"Oh! Thank you, Mister!" Derpy said happily before she coughed and wrinkled her snout. Being held up so close to the Astartes giant, she had to admit that the man smelled awful, and there was a thin haze of smoke that had risen to the top of the room and collected just beneath the ceiling.

"No trouble," the Warsmith said, wrapping the bag back around Derpy's neck before swinging her bodily out of the opening in which she had entered. The pegasus took to the air with ease and turned around toward Ponyville to complete the day's deliveries.

As Solon went back to designing the fortress, Kaelith, for once, could not think of a single thing to say. No snide remark, no admonishment, criticism, or even complaint seemed adequate to follow what had just happened. He couldn't even bring himself to start analyzing the implications of the planet's (apparently) equine inhabitants being intelligent enough to speak, write, and develop a primitive system of long-range communication.

So the Dark Magos went about his work silently, promising himself that he'd scrub the relevant memory from his datastacks at a more convenient time.

"Where do you put a mailbox in a fortresh? I've never done that before," Solon mumbled, stooping over the construction hololith.

Kaelith's body twitched as sparks blew out of his cranium, and within seconds horrified screams could be heard from outside before a dozen slaves were run over by a mass lifter.

****

Centaur III - Sweet Apple Acres

"Well, that could have gone worse," Rainbow Dash said as she hovered above the smoking body of the Greater Gnarloc.

Applejack was kicking the smoldering corpse repeatedly, grumbling with each spiteful buck about the time and expense of repairing her house and barn.

"Ya think so, Dash?" Applejack growled, giving the dead alien one last buck in its rear. "Ah mean, Ah only lost mah house, mah barn, one o' mah sheep, mah harvest, and now mah orchard is torn up and covered in dead bodies!"

Rainbow shrugged. "Okay, yeah, that's pretty bad, but at least all of us are still here!" Then she lowered her voice as she pointed a hoof toward the humans that were checking on the fallen and digging through the wreck of the Rhino. "That's more than we can say for the two-legged guys."

"Ah'm sorry, Sis. This's my fault," Apple Bloom said sadly, her ears pinned as she laid in front of Crabapple.

"Naw, it ain't your fault, Bloom," Applejack grumbled, "they were all here for Crabapple, but it ain't really her fault, neither. The aliens did this ta us."

"Eeyup," Big Macintosh agreed.

+Affirmation: blame lies with hostile alien bio-forms and not their objective. Generating contempt...+ buzzed Crabapple.

"Still, Ah feel real bad for 'em," Apple Bloom said, glancing at the men in red overcoats, "a bunch o' their friends died."

Rainbow Dash watched as a couple of the human gunmen got up from the corpse of one of their own, their pockets full of ammunition, ration packs, and small amulets with some kind of eight-pointed star on them. "Gotta say, they're taking it really well."

Twilight remained silent, not because she didn't have anything to add to the conversation, but because she was going over what she wanted to say to the aliens that remained. She wanted to be welcoming, but they were all well-armed and she was more than a little concerned about them bringing an intergalactic war with them to Equestria. How to approach these new, mysterious visitors in a manner that was dignified, cautious, and friendly without suggesting that they might participate in more of their battles, and also hopefully avoiding the topic of how Applebloom had claimed one of their machines?

It was right about then that she realized Pinkie Pie was gone.

"Well, that could have gone worse," a rifleman said as he approached Gaela, toting a backpack filled with supplies scavenged from the Rhino.

"Oh, really?" Gaela said dryly, turning away from Dest. "Our transport is destroyed, vox is still limited to shouting range, half the squad is dead, enemy resistance is significantly heavier than anticipated, and our mission success hinges on an automata that's decided not to take orders from me anymore."

"Okay, yeah, that's pretty bad, but we DID win! A Gnarloc and two xeno squads is a really good kill count for what we lost!"

Gaela wished she didn't have her mask on so that the man could feel the full force of her irritated expression, but she didn't feel like taking it off. "Your pointless optimism is noted, soldier. Now go help salva-hwuh?"

The Dark Acolyte recoiled as one of the pony xenos - the bright pink one with the fluffy mane - galloped up to her and then vaulted onto her chest, wrapping her front legs around her neck.

Gaela briefly considered that it might be some sort of attack, but the idea was ridiculous. It became more obviously ridiculous as the pink pony hung against her chest, not exerting enough force to inflict harm even if she weren't wearing powered armor.

"What are you doing?" the Dark Acolyte asked evenly, keeping one optic sensor locked on the gunman she had been talking to. It was hard to tell with his face covered in a rebreather mask and tri-optics visor, but she was pretty sure he was trying to hold in laughter. "Is this some sort of stupid greeting ritual among your kind?"

"It's called a hug!" Pinkie said, nuzzling the cheek of the helmet mask. Which was quite uncomfortable for the pony, honestly, but the gesture was important.

"I don't follow," Gaela said, positioning her servo arm to pry the alien off if necessary, "do I have to give you something to get rid of you, or what?"

Pinkie loosened the hug so that she could look the Dark Acolyte in the eyes, or at least the asymmetrical arrays of neon-green lenses that covered her eyes. She was smiling, but it was a sad, strained smile, and if Gaela had possessed a shred of empathy for other sentient creatures, she would have doubtless been touched.

"Don't be sad! I'm sorry about your friends! But it's going to be okay!"

Gaela's left-side optics array rotated, which was the closest thing to a raised eyebrow she could manage with her helmet on.

"My what? You're just speaking gibberish now."

"I think she's referring to the men that fell, Acolyte," the gunman said.

"Who, them? Why would I feel sad? I didn't even know their names." Gaela admitted, much to the gunman's annoyance.

Pinkie's expression brightened instantly. "Oh! Okay then! Ooh, what's this thingy?" the pink pony promptly clambered up onto Gaela's shoulder and stared closely at her servo tool.

The Acolyte seriously considered putting a drill through the silly creature's eye then and there, but figured she didn't want to agitate the other xenos; she was already low on guns, and evidently at least one of the bizarre equines was a psyker. However that worked. She didn't really need to be starting fights that could be easily avoided.

"Ahem!" The soldier cleared his throat. "I'm Daniels, by the way."

Gaela was rather confused by the sudden admission. "So what?"

"My name. You said you didn't know it," Daniels pointed out.

"And you confused that for a desire to learn it?" Gaela asked waving a hand dismissively as Pinkie's weight shifted on her actuator pack. "Look, the only reason that I don't use your names is because you don't have noosphere identifier tags. I'm not going to store useless information like that, and it's not MY fault nobody's given you basic ID systems."

"YES, it IS," Daniels disagreed irritably, "when we requested IFF tags from the workshops, you said it was 'on the queue.' That was three systems ago."

"Well congratulations, I'm making you an ID file right now," Gaela said, pressing two fingers against the side of her helmet, "Rifleman Dassel, mercenary unit Delta Nine: whiner. There. That's going right in our databank when we get back."

"My name is Daniels," Daniels corrected.

"Meh."

It was about this time that Pinkie's weight on her back suddenly vanished, and the two humans turned to see that Dest, who had remained largely silent throughout the exchange, had seized the pony by its mane and was holding her up at eye level.

Pinkie didn't seem to mind, however, and was grinning widely.

"What manner of creature is this?" the Chaos Marine asked, curious. He had seen one of the animals use a psychic power, and the beasts had apparently fought on their side against the Tau for reasons that were utterly beyond him.

Pinkie giggled. "I'm a pony, silly! You can call me Pinkie Pie! What's your name?"

Dest felt mildly uneasy engaging in casual conversation with an inexplicably giddy xeno, but saw no reason not to answer her. "I am Dest, Chaos Space Marine of the Iron Warriors Legion. Why do you aid us, xeno?"

The pony laughed, which seemed to startle the Astartes. "Ha! Xeno! That's a funny nickname! Ooh, I know! I'll give you a nickname too! How about Desty?"

"Call me that and your life is forfeit," the Chaos Marine said, his voice a harsh screech through his vox grille.

Pinkie seemed like she was in no mood to listen, and instead started clapping her hooves together as she hung in the air by her mane.

"Desty, Desty, he's the besty! Puts space monsters down to resty!"

Gaela and Daniels glanced at each other, each one wondering how the rhino driver was going to go about eviscerating the pony, and the former coming up with off-the-cuff battle plans to put down the other ponies before they could retaliate.

To their surprise, Dest barked out a short laugh from his vox grille and dropped Pinkie on the ground. "Your lunatic chanting amuses me, offensively pink xeno. I will spare your life."

"Hooray!" Pinkie cheered, bouncing up onto her back hooves and then leaning against Dest's greaves. "Hey! Hey! Isn't it hard to move in all that metal? Don't you get hot?"

"Uh, excuse me, er... Miss Acolyte, I believe they called you?"

Gaela turned away from the bizarre sight of the pink xeno crawling all over the Astartes to face yet another of the creatures, this time the purple one with the horn and wings and some kind of compass star tattoo on her rear.

"Ah, the psyker," Gaela mumbled, leaning against her power axe, "I imagine you have questions, xeno. And since I seem to be stuck here for the foreseeable future, I may as well answer some of them."

Twilight brightened considerably. "Oh, thank you! Uhm... first, what's a 'psyker'? I've been called that before, but I don't know what it means."

"It refers to one with psychic ability, the talent and means to rend and re-shape reality with your mind," Gaela explained, "I imagine you have your own words for them: witch, shaman, sorcerer..."

"Actually, we're just called unicorns," Twilight pointed out, "well, except for those of us with wings as well as horns: we're alicorns."

"Neat. Next question," the Dark Acolyte mumbled, managing to look quite bored and annoyed despite the metal face mask.

"Hey, Ah got one," asked the irritable orange pony with the silly hat, "why d'ya think all you aliens end up here on mah farm?"

"We don't, really. We deployed six probe automata and placed our main camp far from here. It was probably by mistake that the Tau engaged you in combat, and it was pure coincidence that we stumbled upon your agri-facility before they extracted." The Acolyte glanced over at the smoldering corpse of the Greater Gnarloc. "Although I must agree that this is surprisingly heavy resistance; far more than we were expecting."

"Between that big lug and yer shootin' each other in mah orchard, half mah farm is ruined!" Applejack complained.

"An exaggeration. The damages done to your trees, factoring in the other crop damage likely caused by the Gnarloc's approach, barely account for nine percent of total expected yield from this much land."

"Twi, Ah don't really appreciate yer fancy ma-" Applejack trailed off as she realized that it had been the alien speaking, and not her friend. Not that their voices were even remotely similar, but that annoyingly precise, technical correction was something she'd come to expect from the alicorn exclusively.

"Although I admit the loss of your dwelling is probably quite a blow to your livelihood. The Tau should really keep a tighter leash on their auxiliaries, given that they sometimes value diplomatic solutions." Gaela suggested, speaking about the destruction with the detached air of someone going over a flow chart.

"Eeyup," Big Macintosh agreed, close enough to listen in on the conversation. He was currently clearing debris from the gutted farmhouse, having gone straight to work after the danger was over.

"Well, yer here fer the walkin' trash can, aintcha?" Applejack asked, pointing to Crabapple. "Don't she belong to you?"

"Why do you insist upon a gender pronoun when you refer to it? It doesn't have any kind of gender identity, much less genitalia."

Applejack was really starting to get annoyed with this alien. It was like talking to Twilight at her worst, and it didn't help that she had to make eye contact with all the little green lights set in a metal mask rather than a face.

"Ah don't know what's goin' on, all right? I just wanna know if you're takin' the darn machine!"

"Applejack, TEMPER," Twilight said through clenched teeth as she gave the Dark Acolyte a nervous smile. Really, the Apple family had all but declared war on one alien race, and now she was getting testy with the other?

Gaela sighed, leaning her full weight against her power axe. "I wish it were that simple. Sometime between my deploying it and my repairing it, the blasted thing acquired sentience."

Applejack had no idea what that meant, but Twilight had an inkling. She wasn't totally clear on the inner workings of the Dark Mechanicus' machines, but she did know that sentience wasn't usually something that was "acquired".

"It became self-aware on its own? That can happen?"

Gaela was actually pleasantly surprised that the purple pony wasn't giving her confused looks. "Occasionally, much to my annoyance. Since then, it's apparently decided to ignore my command authority. However, given that it still recognizes command authority directives means that it probably established one on its own, perhaps through an improvised protocol. Though it won't even tell me who it is."

Applejack shook her head. "Twi, what does all that hogwash mean, exactly?"

The alicorn chewed her lip briefly. "It, uh, means that Crabapple doesn't listen to Miss Acolyte anymore and decided, on her own, to take orders from a new alien." She glanced over at Crabapple, who was now shuffling around in the debris of the Apple household behind Apple Bloom. "Or, hypothetically, a pony."

"It's the yellow one, isn't it?" Daniels asked suddenly. Gaela really wished he hadn't spoken.

Applejack slapped a hoof against her face. "Yer jokin'. Tell me yer jokin' Twi."

"Is there something you'd like to tell me?" Gaela asked. She utterly refused to believe Daniels' theory until she heard it from the horse's mouth.

"Okay, well, we're not COMPLETELY sure about this, or about how this came about, and in fact-"

Applejack cut off Twilight's extended explanation, pointing a hoof at Apple Bloom. "Look, yer dumb contraption has been lettin' mah little sis boss her around. Yer tellin' me that it forgot all about you and will only listen to Apple Bloom?"

"I very much wish I could say otherwise, but yes, it would seem that is the case," Gaela deadpanned.

"And Ah suppose ya can't just reach into its head like before and fix it?" Applejack asked, tilting her head to one side.

"Actually, there are ways to 'fix' a bad case of free will," Gaela confirmed, tapping the chin of her helmet, "but all of them require the destruction of the memory coil, which is rather what I'm trying to recover in the first place."

Their musings were interrupted as a gunman in aviation goggles walked up past the ponies and saluted Gaela. Oddly enough, he was being followed by a blue pony with wings who was hovering over the ground.

"Acolyte Gaela, we've taken stock of our losses with a little help from Rainbow Dash here, since she got a better view of the scuffle," he said in accented Gothic, and the blue pegasus promptly mimicked his salute. "We have Kolath, Nemo, Serins, Honmil, Rogers, and Yeggs."

Gaela didn't respond for several seconds. "So... is that the list of the dead, or the survivors?"

"The dead," Daniels said, "you know, because my name wasn't on it?"

"Ah. Sure, okay."

"You forgot already, didn't you?" he said accusingly. "You didn't make an ID file at all!"

"You've been awfully cheeky today, gun monkey," Gaela snapped.

The pegasus promptly burst into laughter. "Gun monkey! Ha! Nice one!" She floated up to the Acolyte and lifted her hoof in imitation of a high-five.

Gaela made no move to reciprocate,

After a moment the soldier reporting the casualties tapped Rainbow on the leg. "It's all right, Dash. The Acolyte isn't much for that sort of thing."

Gaela's gaze twitched toward him. "What did you say its name was?"

"Rainbow Dash, Acolyte," the man responded.

"I'm right here, you know. You could just ask me," the pegasus in question answered.

"Is that what its called here, on this planet, or is that some sort of sophomoric pet name you came up with?"

"Hey! Don't talk about me like I'm not here!" Rainbow complained, moving to hover in front of the Acolyte's face. "Besides, what does 'sophomoric' mean?"

"It would be far too easy to abuse the opportunity to answer that question, so I won't," Gaela decided dryly.

"That reminds me!" Twilight said loudly, seizing everyone's attention. "We never introduced ourselves properly! My name is Twilight Sparkle, and I wish to PEACEFULLY welcome you to Equestria!" the emphasis she placed on "peacefully" was almost painful in its pleading tone.

Then the alicorn raised a hoof and pointed to the orange pony next to her. "This is Applejack," she next pointed over to the Apples within the gutted farmstead, "that's Apple Bloom and Big Macintosh. And you've already met Rainbow Dash and, uh..." Twilight's voice faltered as she stared past Gaela, and she sighed, "and Pinkie Pie."

Gaela turned to look over her shoulder. Dest had taken his helmet off, exposing his bare, bald, and surprisingly mutation-free head for all to see.

Pinkie Pie was wearing the helmet now, despite it being absurdly large over her cranium. "Ooh! Every time I look at something it draws a red circle around it! Neato!"

"I'm VERY sorry about Pinkie Pie," Twilight said earnestly as Gaela turned back toward her.

"Apology accepted," the Dark Acolyte said. "... Barely." Then she squared her shoulders. "Am I to understand that you represent the dominant form of life on this planet?"

"Yes! I mean, mostly," Twilight explained, happy that the Acolyte seemed at ease talking with her. "Ponies make up the bulk of civilization on this world, but we share this planet with many other creatures!"

"How inconvenient," Gaela grunted, glancing over at Rainbow Dash. The pegasus was squinting at her face mask, as if trying to make out some kind of tiny print. "In any case, it would seem that we ended up on the same side of a conflict, Sparkle, if only by coincidence."

"So, what are you, anyway?" Rainbow Dash finally demanded. She had been waiting for the aliens to introduce themselves, but the one with all the machines on her back didn't seem like she was going to do so.

Gaela's glare of annoyance was lost beneath her helmet. "We are humans. A race of space-faring mammals that have colonized numberless worlds across the galaxy. I'm honestly surprised you've never heard of us."

"We don't get a lot of off-planet tourists 'round here," Applejack explained dryly, "Ah guess we were just lucky like that."

"I was referring more to the fact that you speak our language and to the architectural legacy of your structures, which was clearly not designed for a quadrupedal race."

Rainbow snickered. "What are you going on about? You're the ones who speak OUR language! Your language is a bunch of annoying buzzing!"

Gaela couldn't make any sense of that, but Daniels understood immediately. "No, that isn't our language. That's just Binary."

Rainbow Dash raised an eyebrow. "How's that?"

"Machine language. Most humans don't speak it," the gunman explained.

"That's dumb. Why do you make your machines speak a different language?" the pegasus asked.

"Because a cogitator core is a sequence of electric impulses, not a living mind," Gaela explained, casting a glance toward Crabapple, "until Warp exposure, anyway. Binary is a mathematical language, precise and efficient, and free of the redundancies and idiosyncrasies of other languages."

"Fascinating..." Twilight said, her eyes gleaming.

"Ya lost me at 'mathematical language'," Applejack confessed.

"You lost me at 'electric impulses'," Rainbow Dash confessed, "and also, it's still dumb."

"Wow, this thing is heavy!" Pinkie exclaimed, now handling Dest's boltgun and staring directly into the barrel. "You must be really strong, Desty!"

Gaela stared for several seconds, and then focused her optics on Twilight. "Your species displays a considerable level of divergence in intellectual capacity."

"Hey, thanks!" Rainbow said, grinning. "You're not so bad either, for a metal space person!"

Twilight winced, embarrassed.

"As much fun as it is waiting to see if the xeno figures out how my grenades work," Dest said suddenly, walking up to the others as he put his helmet back on, "do you have a plan of action, Acolyte?"

"I do, my lord," Gaela said, promptly turning and facing the Chaos Space Marine, "it's troublesome, humiliating, and has only a middling chance of success, but I do have a plan."

"Then get to it," the Astartes grunted as he plucked a fragmentation grenade out of Pinkie's hooves, "I want to get another Rhino as soon as possible."

"At once, my lord," Gaela turned toward the nearest rifleman, "David, make sure we're ready to move out on a moment's notice, and prepare for a long march."

"His name's Daniels," Applejack pointed out.

"Now don't YOU start," Gaela snapped, walking toward the ruins of the farmstead.

As Crabapple swept its optical sensors over the scattered debris of the Apples' home, it felt the unusual and unpleasant sensation of dissatisfaction without having to prompt for it first.

Apple Bloom was sitting on her haunches sadly, watching helplessly as Big Macintosh gathered chunks of what used to be a house and then carried them to the slightly smaller pile of chunks that used to be a barn.

Her source of distress was obvious: the structure ruined in the combat had been of central importance to her. Worse yet, according to auditory intercepts and a cursory observation of the conflict, Crabapple itself had been the source of the conflict, bringing Tau, then humans, and then Kroot reinforcements to Sweet Apple Acres. The automata was still new to sentience, but somehow that made its dissatisfaction worse.

The problem, as Crabapple saw it, was that it had no means to provide assistance in any of these matters. It was a recon probe, and its only available tools were insufficient to rebuild or even aid in rebuilding, unless the Apples needed holes drilled in something of a circumference too large for most wood screws.

As the probe mused its options, or lack thereof, it sensed the approach of a Dark Mechanicus unit.

"Ah... excuse me. Apple..." Gaela trailed off as she tried to remember the second part of the filly's name. wasn't it flower? Appleflower? No, that didn't sound right.

"Apple Bloom," the young pony said, looking up at the armored human, "it's Apple Bloom."

With no small amount of reluctance, Gaela established a data file for the xenos' names and started filling it. It seemed like a waste of space, but it seemed increasingly likely that they would be cooperating with these alien ponies rather than exterminating them.

"Apple Bloom, got it. I require a favor of you. You see, the... uh, Crabapple here won't listen to me, and I think you can help."

Apple Bloom tilted her head to one side. "She won't? Why not?"

"I would very much like to know the answer to that question, but it's not important right now. What I need you to do is repeat after me, speaking to... Crabapple." She felt completely ridiculous, and she could hear the ear-grating sound of Dest chuckling through his vox grille.

"Okay, sure, Ah can do that," the yellow filly said, standing up and looking excited to be of some help.

"Good. Repeat after me: override authorization protocol secundus. Establish new command directive: unit D6719003 is given administrative command, effective immediately."

Apple Bloom looked doubtful, but tapped a hoof against Crabapple's leg. "Uh... override author... ization... protocol..."

The filly was struggling, and Gaela ignored the giggling behind her from the gunmen as she repeated herself.

"... seh-coon-duss. Establish new command... uh... directive? Yeah, that was it. Unit... er... whatever she said is in command. Like, right now," Apple Bloom finished.

Gaela winced at that, but noted that the automata was processing actively, its sensor array spinning and its optics blinking repeatedly.

+Request denied.+ The refusal almost sounded like a buzzer going off, and Gaela's hand twitched toward her plasma pistol.

+Explanation. Now,+ she demanded, speaking in Binary so that the others might not realize she was arguing with a machine, +was it the lack of unit specification? Or is that xeno not actually the one with command authority?+

+Negative,+ Crabapple blurted back, +it is obvious Apple Bloom was being led to cede command authority when she did not understand the significance of what she was saying. You failed to explain your purpose to her.+

Gaela wanted to laugh. Here she was worried about the precision of the command when the blasted thing was simply fully aware that the filly had no idea what she was saying. And yet it didn't think that would warrant reconsidering her command authority in the first place! Hilarious.

+Listen to me, you Warp-spawned piece of scrap,+ Gaela growled, although the combination of her language and her helmet gave no indication of her frustration to spectators, +if you've come so far into self-determination that you can recognize deceit, perhaps I can teach you another common feature of sentience: fear.+

Her servo tool rotated, and the drills and cutters slid away as the laser projector pushed to the fore.

+Give me the data I want or I will destroy you. If the little alien objects to your destruction, I'll kill it. And then I'll eliminate the other horses too, for good measure. Maybe raze what's left of this agri-facility afterwards, just out of spite. Tell me, CRABAPPLE, what do you think of that?+

The probe's sensor array swiveled back and forth briefly. +Projected outcome unacceptable. And extremely rude. This unit advises a trade of services.+

Gaela wanted to make good on her threat, she really did. Even if she fell short of killing the aliens to avoid an unnecessary fight - she was still wary of pissing off a psyker without more troops behind her - it would be easy to turn the probe itself to slag and simply fail in her mission. So much easier than this.

But one thing was stopping her. One bit of data that didn't fit the theories and operating assumptions of the 38th Company's deployment.

What the blazes was a Greater Gnarloc doing with a colonization recon team?

It didn't fit the Tau's colonization doctrine to bring or field heavy assault beasts when exploring a potential new home. It didn't fit with ANY of their principles, really, and Gaela couldn't shake the feeling that something was very wrong.

But she couldn't investigate the possibilities without more data, or at least a functional sensory node.

+What do you want from me?+ the Dark Acolyte said finally.

Crabapple's body rose slightly on its legs, as if perking up. +Unit Crabapple will provide telemetry and active sensor data, and in exchange unit Acolyte Gaela will guarantee construction of replacement facilities for Apple Bloom.+

+You can't be serious... no, never mind, of course you're serious,+ Gaela groaned, looking around at the two walls of the farmstead still standing.

It would be a simple matter. Absurdly simple. The Company had resources to spare, and the construction of a building of this one's former size, plus the barn, was a trifle compared to the monstrous structures normally required of the Dark Mechanicus.

But it was still a negotiation with one of her own machines to build things for the sake of a family of aliens. Not the sort of thing that she took up easily.

Her servo tool drew back against her shoulder, returning to its resting state.

"We've reached an agreement," Gaela said suddenly in Gothic, turning around to face the waiting human and aliens. She noticed that Twilight in particular seemed to have crept close to watch the exchange.

"Crabapple here has agreed to assist us, and in exchange I have agreed to build the xeno farmers a new house and barn. After we return to base to report, of course."

The Apple siblings were startled by the news, and Applejack broke into a tentative smile for the first time all day.

"Ya'll would do that fer us? Really?" the orange mare asked, taking off her hat and holding it against her chest.

"I don't want to talk about it," Gaela deadpanned.

"You made a trade? With our own probe?" Daniels asked incredulously.

"I DON'T want to talk about it," the Acolyte growled, "also, it would seem that it ISN'T our probe anymore, and putting aside the data that I was promised, I say good riddance."

"Ya hear that, Crabapple?" Apple Bloom said, hugging the automaton's leg. "You did it! Yer the best!"

+Experiencing satisfaction at having resolved conflict for commander... this feels nice,+ Crabapple buzzed.

+Yes, fine, now stop reveling in the joys of self-determination and abstract thought and give me my data,+ Gaela snapped. A data port promptly popped open beneath Crabapple's sensor array, and Gaela drew a data jack from her augmetic hand that plugged into the socket.

"See? I knew we could trust these guys!" Rainbow Dash said, landing on Daniels' head. "Way more than those 'Tau' jerks, anyway!"

"I have to admit, we do NOT hear that sentiment very often," Daniels said, "also, you're much heavier than something with your wingspan probably should be."

The blue pony immediately leaned downward so that she was glaring into the gunman's eyes upside-down. "Did you just call me fat?"

"Hey! Hey! I know! Let's throw you all a party to welcome you to Equestria! And we won't invite the other aliens because they're mean! That'll show them!" Pinkie said, bouncing in a circle around Dest. "Also because they're all dead! But mostly because they're mean!"

"Hey, that sounds kinda nice," one of the other soldiers said, resting his lasgun on his shoulder.

Twilight winced and spared a glance at the corpse of the Gnarloc, which was big enough to be easily visible even from here. She was glad to form a rapport with the humans, but she wished it hadn't come at the cost of meeting the other aliens peaceably. By all indications the fight with the Tau had been a mistake that could have been ironed out if she'd reached the offending extraterrestrials before the older Apple siblings had beaten them to death.

Also, she couldn't help but feel there was something... off about these aliens. Putting aside how easily they shrugged off the deaths of their compatriots, whenever she stared at some of the symbols that the men had on their amulets and Gaela and Dest had on their armor, she would start to feel a hornache coming on.

"There will be no party!" Gaela shouted suddenly, disconnecting from Crabapple and turning to her subordinates (and the driver, whose rank relative to hers was actually rather unclear).

A chorus of "Awwww!" met her proclamation, but she ignored the disappointed looks. "I've triangulated the position of a jamming substation two-point-one kilometers from here! We're leaving immediately to take it out!" She was already moving in the direction of the signal, gesturing sharply for the men to follow.

"You're leaving? Now? Already?" Twilight asked, looking almost distressed at the prospect. "But there were a few more things I wanted to ask you! And then, you know, if we had time, maybe a LOT more things!"

"Well, we DON'T have time," Gaela said firmly as the gunmen started marching behind her, "there's little chance that the Tau missed our little scuffle with their kill team, so we have to move before they respond." She glanced back at the orange pony with the hat. "If and when I return to base, I'll see about getting a hab drop down here."

"Oh. Uh... I'll see you later, then?" Twilight asked hopefully.

"I very much doubt that," Gaela responded, waving a hand lazily as she walked off, "goodbye, Sparkle."

****

Approximately 0.8 kilometers outside Ponyville

"Wow, who would have thought that this jamming device was actually in the same direction as Ponyville? Now we can come with you!"

Gaela did not seem nearly so happy as Twilight about this fact, something that she somehow managed to convey all too clearly despite the limitations full power armor placed on her ability to shift posture and display facial expressions.

Although Gaela seemed to be the only one displeased by the coincidence.

"So ya'll are soldiers, but ya ain't here ta fight a war with these here Tau critters?" Applejack asked, walking alongside Daniels.

"It's complicated. We work for this army called the 38th Company, and we usually fight aliens when we meet them, but we're not in a war to seize territory or defeat the aliens' military forces, necessarily. We usually just swoop in, take all their stuff, and then leave before they can stop us. The only reason we're even bothering with the Tau here is because we have to repair our ships and we heavily outnumber them."

Applejack quirked an eyebrow. "So don't that make ya'll a bunch of pirates?"

"Yes. But in our defense, most aliens are total jerks," Daniels offered with a shrug.

"Yer preachin' to the choir on that point, sugarcube," Applejack said as her expression soured, "er, present company excluded, o'course."

"Oh, no, believe me, humans are too."

"So then I threw a party for Crabapple, but I don't know if she liked it very much! She didn't say anything about it either way, but she didn't have any cake either, and Twilight said that she didn't eat cake but I think that's pretty silly because everypony likes cake! Though I guess Crabapple isn't a pony so it doesn't count! But it should count, right? I could understand if she wasn't feeling well, though!"

Dest walked in silence, seemingly oblivious to the pink pony draped over his shoulder pad even as she babbled at him relentlessly and occasionally banged her hooves against his armor rhythmically as if she was playing a tin drum.

"Seriously, I've taken down Orks, Eldar, and even put down a Necron on Dalys V, but I've never even seen something like that Gnarloc at close range, never mind fought one!" a gunman exclaimed.

Rainbow Dash snorted, rolling her eyes. "Oh, please. I fight monsters like that all the time. That thing wasn't nearly as big as the dragon I drove off once! Never mind the REAL villains I've defeated!"

"By yourself?" another man asked skeptically. "I mean, what you did to the freak back there was impressive, but you had help from the ponies with the apples on their butts."

Rainbow Dash's only response was to laugh and wave a hoof at the man. "Well, it would have been pretty rude to hold poor Applejack back. It WAS her place that got smashed."

"Ah can't wait ta show ya off ta Scoots and Sweetie, Crabapple! You'll really like them!" Apple Bloom said happily, practically bouncing up and down as the automata scuttled along next to the yellow filly.

+Noting identities of commanding unit's colleagues. Expanding command protocols to accommodate new administrator hierarchy.+

"Ya know, we should give ya a new paint job, too! Ah think ya'd look swell with bright red!"

+New favorite color registered. Generating sense of aesthetics...+

"So, uh... listen, it might be none of my business, but wasn't there another pony around your agri-facility?" asked a gunman walking alongside Big Macintosh. "A green one? Is it going to be okay being left there?"

"Eeyup," Big Mac answered simply, barely glancing at the masked human.

"Ol' Granny Smith is a tough one," Apple Bloom added, following along on the other side of the stallion, "an' Ah'm not sure she actually noticed the house was gone. She just mumbled somethin' about takin' a nap and shuffled off to her room."

"Ah. She's at that age, huh?"

"Eeyup."

Twilight frowned, following behind Gaela in silence. Although she was very interested in some of the conversations that the others were having (aside from Pinkie), there were a great many questions she had for the humans herself.

"So, Miss Acolyte, I was wondering: how does a machine gain sentience? Does that happen often?"

Gaela turned her head wordlessly toward the purple pony, who returned the gesture of attention with an awkward smile.

"It's Gaela."

"What's 'Gaela'? Is it an element or-"

"Gaela is my name," the Acolyte answered evenly, "Dark Acolyte is my rank and thus my title. So if you wish to address me, the proper means is either just Acolyte, Acolyte Gaela, or I suppose Miss Gaela would do as well. Do not refer to me as 'Miss Acolyte' again."

"Oh! I see! Thank you!" Twilight said brightly, although she was quite surprised it had taken this long for Gaela to tell someone her name.

"As for your question: the Warp did it."

Twilight tilted her head to the side. "I'm not familiar with this 'Warp'."

"I very much doubt that, psyker."

Twilight's frown returned as they fell silent once again. Meanwhile her friends were chatting up the other aliens like it was nothing!

"As long as we're stuck in some sort of inter-species cultural exchange," Gaela said suddenly, causing Twilight to perk up instantly, "would you like to explain those brands of yours? They're surprisingly colorful, and don't seem to be standardized."

"Brands? Oh, you mean our cutie marks!" Twilight lifted her wings to better display the six-pointed star on her flank. "These cutie marks represent our special talents, and our true destinies! Everypony gets one growing up, and each one is different!"

Gaela mulled that over briefly. "So they determine your area of expertise early in life, and then give you a highly visible identifier. Efficient. Are they distributed via some sort of central agency or negotiated individually?"

"Oh, no, nothing like that. They appear with magic!" Twilight said with a smile.

"Uh... huh..." Gaela mumbled, confused.

"What about the symbols you humans are wearing? I've noticed most of you have that circle with the arrows around the circumference, while you, Dest, and Crabapple all have that symbol of a silver face."

"The Iron Skull is the emblem of the Iron Warriors Space Marine Legion, which is the overall command hierarchy we serve. Dest bears the symbol because he is an Astartes of the Legion. The automata bears the symbol because it belongs... SHE used to belong to the Legion. For us humans, the emblem must be earned; I received mine in recognition of my loyalty to our Warsmith over the Dark Mechanicus, and shed the crimson robes to don the Legion black. Mercenaries and cultists like the redcoats behind us can only achieve such an honor through outstanding valor and wit on the field of battle; a very rare trait, I assure you."

Twilight paid rapt attention, nodding after nearly every sentence. "You said Dest is an 'Astartes'? Is that different from a human?"

"He's a genetically modified human, created for combat under the most desperate and hopeless conditions. They're also referred to as Space Marines. If you want to know much more about them you'll have to ask Dest or one of his brother Astartes. I wouldn't recommend it."

Twilight gazed back at the hulk that took up the rear of the group, encased in a gleaming shell of brushed steel and beaten gold. She remembered how fast he had moved to evade the Gnarloc in the orchard; far faster than anything that size should reasonably manage, even without taking into account that he was wearing enough metal to armor an entire squad of royal pony guards.

"So what about the wheel symbol? And all the arrows?" Twilight asked finally. Gaela had such a symbol in gold bolted onto her chest plate, and Twilight pointed a hoof at it.

"That is the Star of Chaos, a symbol of the faithful. Though we take orders from the Iron Warriors specifically, ultimately we all serve the whims and goals of Chaos."

"What?!" Twilight shouted, startling the others out of their conversations as she jumped back. "You WORSHIP chaos? Why would you do something like that?!"

"Ah, I see you're familiar with it," Gaela said, sounding mildly amused from behind her vox grille. She didn't stop walking, so Twilight found herself falling behind the Dark Acolyte after her outburst.

"But I don't understand!" the alicorn said, dashing past the armored woman and then turning around to face her. "Don't the senseless and irrational qualities of chaos and disorder interfere with... well, everything you do? Why would a principle like chaos have a structured religion? Or an army?"

"You're right. You don't understand," Gaela said simply, adjusting her path slightly to walk past the purple pony, "we don't worship chaos, as in the Gothic word referring to disorganization and confusion. We worship Chaos."

She banged her bionic fist onto the eight-spoked wheel on her chest.

"Chaos is so much more than disorder and misdirection. It is power. It is subjugation. It is truth. It is madness. It is the beginning. And it will be the end."

"That... doesn't really make sense," Twilight admitted, "which kind of DOES make sense, if you think about it, but-"

"It's nothing that I can easily teach to an unbeliever, and I have no desire to try. Make of it what you will." Gaela's tone had a note of finality in it, and she walked past Twilight again without any intention of continuing their conversation.

Meanwhile, the others had gone silent at Twilight's outburst to listen in to their brief confrontation.

"So, wait, you guys are really some kind of loony religious fanatics?" Rainbow Dash asked, turning toward the gunmen that had been chatting with her.

"Eh. It varies," one man admitted, "the 38th Company, our Legion contingent, makes a lot of use of mercenaries and rebels because we usually operate in Imperial space. So it's not like you have to worship Chaos in order to sign up."

"But some of ya do?" Applejack asked.

"Some of the preachers are bloody persuasive," Daniels admitted, "and atheism gets pretty challenging when you see a priest summon a daemon with the power of prayer."

"If we're being honest, though, a lot of us are only in the cult to fit in. And out of a vague hope that we'll survive longer," another man added.

"So you've never made it rain chocolate milk?" Pinkie asked, now sitting atop Dest's backpack power unit.

"No, no chocolate milk," one man shuddered, "though they can make it rain... other fluids when they want."

"HA! Your Chaos isn't nearly as much fun as the chaos we've seen!" the pink pony declared, causing Applejack and Rainbow Dash to roll their eyes.

Another gunman started grumbling. "Well, maybe it would be if we were allowed to join the cult of Slaa-"

The clicking noise of a boltgun's hammer being drawn caused the man to freeze, and suddenly he found himself alone as his squadmates quickly scrambled away from him.

"... Go on," Dest said coldly as he aimed his boltgun with one hand, and the procession of men and ponies ground to a halt. Only Gaela kept walking, though she remained alert for the sound of a gunshot for the purposes of keeping a proper record of her squad's attrition.

"I... I misspoke, my lord," the rifleman said gingerly, not daring to look at the Iron Warrior, "I've always been a big fan of... uh... Tzeentch?"

"Mm. Smart credit's on Nurgle, the way I see it," Dest replied conversationally, slapping his bolter back onto the thigh of his power armor. The Astartes started moving again, and the human soldiers hesitated for only a moment before doing the same.

"What was THAT all about?" Rainbow Dash asked, confused. Twilight looked equally put off by the incident.

Applejack seemed to shrug off the encounter, however. "Ya wanna start a tussle, the quickest way is to bring up religion or politics." She chuckled. "Maybe we ain't so different after all."

"Eeyup."

It wasn't much longer before they had reached the perimeter of Ponyville, and as the group halted Daniels stepped over to Gaela.

"So what's the plan, Acolyte? Is the jammer past the village?"

"According to my calculations, the transmitter is IN the village," Gaela said distastefully.

"You serious, sugarcube?" Applejack asked. "'Cause Ah didn't hear nothin' about no aliens setting up shop in Ponyville. Not yet, anyway."

"The Tau can be subtle when they want to," Gaela explained, her optics scanning the nearest houses, "their jamming substation probably isn't much larger than one of you xenos, and is likely disguised or even cloaked."

"Okay, but... I was actually wondering about AFTER we shut it down. Will we have long vox back?" Daniels clarified.

"No. The field is too expansive, and there are many other transmitters that aren't within walking distance. It should weaken the local jamming effect such that the Harvest of Steel can detect drop beacons, though."

"So we'll be setting up camp out here, eh?" asked another man, pulling off his backpack.

"Wait! I know!" Twilight said brightly. "Why don't we all stay in the library! Applejack and her family need a place to stay until their house is replaced, and since it's almost dusk anyway, I'm sure we can fit the rest of you inside!"

Gaela said nothing, staring down at the alicorn.

"Sounds good to me. Better than sleeping out on the rocks, right Acolyte?" asked Daniels.

"I'm not so sure," Gaela admitted, "rocks don't talk."

Twilight wilted, and after a moment, Daniels spoke again.

"Has anyone ever told you that you make the Iron Warriors look sociable?" the rifleman asked.

"Yes, soldier, that isn't the first time I've heard that joke," Gaela said dryly.

"It's not a joke," Dest said suddenly, breaking the silent spell that he seemed to fall into every once in a while, "the drivers in the vehicle pool draw lots to see who has to put up with you for each mission after you requisition a transport."

The armored giant stepped up to the front of the group, Pinkie Pie sitting upright on his left foot as if it were a chair. "We accept your naïve offer of hospitality, Sparkle. Your settlement is poorly defended and primitive, but the buildings and denizens should provide some cover from enemy fire in case of attack. You have our strictly verbal gratitude."

"That's... uh... okay, then," Twilight said awkwardly.

"See that? What he did just now? THAT was better than you could manage," Daniels said to Gaela, jabbing a thumb at the Astartes. She ignored him.

"Ah really appreciate ya doin' that fer us, Twi," Applejack said, tipping her hat up.

"Eeyup," Big Mac agreed.

"Well, I'll be back in a bit," Rainbow Dash said, circling around the group, "Rarity and Fluttershy have gotta see these guys!"

Applejack and Twilight gave the pegasus a skeptical look.

"Well, okay, maybe not Fluttershy," Rainbow amended, "later!"

"If ya see Sweetie Bell, tell her ta meet me at Scootaloo's house!" Apple Bloom shouted after the blue pegasus. "Sis, Ah'm goin' now, okay?"

"Now hold on," Applejack said firmly, narrowing her eyes, "Ah don't much like the idea of you runnin' off alone with Crabapple when we KNOW those Tau creeps are skulkin' about tryin' ta off her."

"Awww, but Sissss..."

+Concern is unnecessary. Short-range vox access will allow communication with Acolyte Gaela in case of enemy contacts,+ Crabapple buzzed.

+And what kind of processor malfunction makes you think that I'm going to come defend you? Or bother to translate your pleas for assistance for the rest of the xenos?+ Gaela spat back in Binary.

+Generating retort... complete: You suck.+

As Applejack's glare warred with Apple Bloom's teary-eyed begging stare, Big Macintosh stepped up.

"Ah'll watch over 'em."

Applejack saw her little sister's eyes light up, and she gave Big Macintosh an uncertain look. "Ya sure about this? Those varmints ain't foolin' around, Mac." Big Mac had done quite well against the invaders so far, but she didn't think he could take on very many if they got serious; she'd seen what one of those "pulse rifles" did to the humans when they got hit, and they were the ones that dealt with this kind of thing all the time.

"Eeyup." Truth be told, Macintosh was glad to have an excuse not to stay in Twilight's library. The mares weren't likely to let him sleep among them (nor would he ask them to), and he didn't really feel like spending the night among the aliens.

"Yay! Thanks, brother!" Apple Bloom bucked the air happily, and then started galloping off. "Come on, Crabapple!"

The group promptly made their way through Ponyville, though the humans were surprised by how little fuss they seemed to generate on the way to the large treehouse. There weren't many more ponies out at this time of night, but those that were simply stared at the procession of unfamiliar creatures as they walked past without interrupting them.

Gaela seemed to get the most attention, ultimately. Even though Dest was much bigger and his armor wasn't partially obscured by a cloak, the Dark Acolyte's servo limbs still stood out as the most bizarre sight among them.

"There it is!" Twilight said, pointing a hoof forward as everyone stopped about ten meters away from the treehouse. "This is Ponyville's public library, but it also doubles as my home. After you disable the device interfering with your communications systems, you can come right back here!"

"That will not be necessary," Gaela said in a monotone. Her servo tool rotated meaningfully, and several of the tools pulled back.

"What? Why? Did you decide not to stay here after all?" Twilight asked.

"No, I mean it won't be necessary to leave."

Gaela's optics switched to electromagnetic scanning, and suddenly the entire area around her seemed to come alive with static and wild bursts of low-level radiation. And at the center of it all was a disk about the size of a manhole cover, covered in antennae and spewing electronic noise into the air like a nuclear furnace.

And it was sitting in the boughs of Twilight's treehouse, just above her bedroom window.

The ponies flinched back as Gaela's heavy laser fired from her servo tool, not having been aware that she had even drawn a weapon. The red beam of amplified light speared through the comms disruptor drone, blasting out its anti-gravity engine and sending it tumbling to the ground while it shimmered into the visible light spectrum.

"Whoa, nelly!" Applejack exclaimed, circling around the fallen machine as smoke started to seep from the molten hole burnt through it. "Was that thing just invisible?"

"Yeah, they do that sometimes," a soldier answered, walking up and aiming his own rifle at the drone.

"Don't," Gaela commanded, causing him to back off immediately. Instead she approached and picked the smoldering husk up with her servo arm. "Tau use good parts and materials. Waste not, want not, as the Warsmith says."

"How long do you think that was there?" Twilight asked, looking startled. She hadn't noticed it at all, obviously, and the idea that she could have gone to sleep with a Tau machine (and Chaos military target) attached to her bedroom was quite unsettling.

"Hard to say. Hours, probably. The grayskins haven't been here very long." She rotated the drone wreck around slowly, zooming in her optics as she observed some of the unique details of the Tau's engineering.

"So those things could be all over Equestria, and we wouldn't even know without you?" Applejack asked, clenching her teeth.

"Assuming that 'Equestria' comprises any sufficiently large local land area, I'm quite sure they are," Gaela answered, clearly distracted. "I'm not sure why they're packing such sophisticated jamming equipment on a colonization drive, but that's what we're looking at."

"Maybe so that they can scout the place without alerting anyone with sensors? I mean, it makes sense if they're also fielding bloody Gnarlocs," Daniels pointed out.

"Those rotten grayskins!" Applejack growled, already adopting the humans' slur for the species. "At least yer gizmo had the decency to make a proper ruckus on the way in! What're these snakebites doin'?"

"They're studying this world. Or at least, that was their mission before we attacked and drove their transport to the surface," Gaela explained with a shrug.

"So, what are they doing now?" Twilight asked.

"Hiding, mostly," Gaela mumbled. Her optics rotated with a soft whir as she zoomed in on some of the alien circuitry. "Shall we move this indoors? I prefer working on a desk."

"Oh! Right! Right this way!" Twilight quickly opened the door and led Gaela inside, although she and Dest had to duck to keep their armor from catching on the doorway.

"You can put your weapons there, in the corner. There aren't really enough chairs, though," Twilight said, starting to rush around her home and move things to make space.

"Ah, don't trouble yourself too much on our account," Daniels said as he dropped his lasrifle next to a bookshelf and then took out a stub pistol from his coat, "we're just glad to be in out of the cold."

"Twilight?" said a new voice from upstairs. "Are you back from wherever you went? I just heard this sizzling noise from outside and..." Spike trailed off and halted in his descent down the stairs, catching sight of the numerous masked men.

"Spike! There you are!" Twilight said. She couldn't quite remember why her assistant hadn't been with her during the earlier debacle at Sweet Apple Acres, but that hardly mattered now. "Go make some tea while I accommodate these heavily armed and sketchy-looking extraterrestrial soldiers!"

"I, er... okay," Spike said awkwardly, walking through the gathered humans and halting briefly in front of Dest.

"What variety of weakling is this?" the Astartes asked Pinkie, who was standing with her front hooves on his shoulder pad and the rear ones on his backpack.

"Oh, that's Spike! He's a dragon that Twilight keeps as her assistant!" the pink pony answered.

Spike didn't much like being called a weakling by someone he had just met, but wasn't about to argue the point with an armed soldier eight feet tall and covered in armor. He scurried away toward the kitchen silently.

Dest watched him go, and then turned his gaze again to the pony on his shoulder. "Is 'assistant' some kind of local slang for 'house slave'?"

"Ha ha! It sure looks that way, doesn't it?"

Twilight finally made her way over to the Astartes, arriving just too late to hear what they had been talking about.

"Dest, you don't need to keep your gun. Just put it-"

"I will keep my boltgun on hand at all times," the driver interrupted, not bothering to make eye contact with the alicorn as he surveyed the treehouse and the numerous bookshelves, "I am not allowed such laxity outside friendly territory."

Twilight blinked, and then placed a hoof to her chin, considering his logic.

"I suppose that makes sense, but I'm hoping you could come to think of Ponyville as 'friendly territory'," Twilight offered with a smile.

Dest paused for a moment, and then a harsh, grating chuckle came from his vox grille. "Do all of your kind have such a splendid sense of humor? Or is your hopeless optimism genuine?"

Twilight's expression darkened as Pinkie hopped down next to her. "I... that wasn't-"

"He thinks you might have a sense of humor!" Pinkie whispered into her ear. "Roll with it!"

Whatever Twilight was going to say to further her attempt to get Dest's unreasonably large firearm away from him, she was interrupted by the front door swinging open.

"Hey guys, I'm back!" Rainbow Dash said, hovering a foot off the floor as usual. "Check these guys out, Rarity!"

The humans all stared as a white unicorn with a styled dark purple mane stepped in behind Rainbow Dash, stretching her neck to see around the blue pegasus.

"So you said these aliens are different from Cra-" her words died in her throat as she glanced up at the masked men. "By Celestia! They're AWFUL!" She recoiled at the sight of the soldiers, her expression one of total disgust.

The other mares in the room flinched, surprised at such a visceral reaction. Rainbow Dash in particular looked shocked.

"Really, Rainbow, you couldn't have WARNED me?" Rarity demanded, shielding her eyes with her hoof.

"What? I don't think they look that bad for a bunch of space aliens," Rainbow Dash mumbled uncomfortably.

Twilight was afraid that the humans might be offended by Rarity's reaction, but thankfully they seemed to shrug it off; some of them were chuckling quietly to each other, while Gaela was ignoring the encounter entirely, disassembling the Tau disruptor drone on a table off to the side.

"I don't understand," Twilight said, scratching her head with her hoof, "their physiology isn't THAT unusual."

"Physiology nothing," Rarity said, dropping her hoof and allowing herself to view the revolting aliens once more, "I was referring to those CLOTHES."

The soldiers' chuckling stopped.

"What, you mean the coats?" Daniels asked.

"Rainbow Dash informed me that the aliens were soldiers. Why, then, are most of you dressed like transients preparing to rob a bank?" Rarity asked, her tone having moved from disgust to pity.

The gunmen didn't answer immediately, glancing at each other and staring down at their dirt-caked coats.

"Well, geez, now I feel kind of embarrassed," one man mumbled, wiping the side of his pants uncomfortably.

"THAT'S what you're freaking out over?" Rainbow Dash scoffed, rolling her eyes. "I thought you were creeped out by the fact that they all have different numbers of eyes."

"Don't be absurd," Rarity said, stepping up to one of the men and staring at him as she would a dead insect, "they're obviously wearing masks, Rainbow. Revolting masks that wouldn't be out of place during Nightmare Night, at that."

"They're wearing..." Rainbow's eyes suddenly widened. "Oh! Right! Masks! I totally knew that! Heh heh..." she glanced over at the humans, as if trying to confirm it.

Daniels sighed and grabbed the back of his leather mask, pulling it down along with his tri-optics. He had surprisingly long, dark hair, and clearly hadn't shaved in several weeks. "Look, not that I take pride in our 'uniforms' exactly, but I won't be taking fashion advice from someone walking around naked."

"Touché. At least your wit is better than your taste," Rarity admitted, stepping from one human to the next and trying to hide her obvious displeasure, "but obviously your race possesses SOMETHING in the way of class. Just take a look at this brute here!"

Rarity pointed a hoof daintily at Dest, who had been perusing the books silently since Twilight had been distracted from disarming him.

"The drab but complementary metallic colors and unvarnished plate! The form! The symmetry! Did they only have enough armor for one of you?"

"No, that's not it. The Astartes and the Mechanicus get the power armor. The rest of us are lucky to get flak vests. That's just part of the job," Daniels explained, glancing a bit longer than expected at the Chaos Space Marine, "although I must admit your armor is surprisingly... normal, my lord." He was used to the Chaos Space Marines boasting all manner of spikes and chains over their armor, even in the Iron Warriors, which was a Legion that prided itself on spartan practicality and function over form. Dest's armor looked like a suit that was fresh from the forge, without even a set of horns.

"The drivers of the Legion cannot adorn their armor excessively, as it makes it hard to fit inside the vehicle cab," Dest grunted before he pulled out a book titled "History of the Royal Guard," "also, I am fairly new to the 38th Company."

Daniels winced at that, although none of the ponies knew why.

"And what do we have over here?" Rarity demanded, walking up behind Gaela. From the unicorn's perspective, all she could see was a black cape stooped over a desk with a bulky actuator backpack mounted on top and the grinning silver skull of the legion stamped below the pack. The servo limbs on top of the pack were pumping up and down wildly, and a spray of sparks would shoot out at an angle every few seconds.

"Ah, this is Dark Acolyte Gaela," Twilight said, rushing up to the unicorn and pointing a hoof at the cloaked figure, "Gaela, this is Rarity, one of my friends." Twilight wasn't terribly surprised to get absolutely no response from the woman.

"Ah, right. Rainbow mentioned this one." Rarity craned her neck to one side. "Come on darling, turn around and let Rarity have a look at you."

"No. If you wish to discuss the aesthetics of power armor design, you may discuss it with the Astartes until he gets annoyed enough to put a bolt round through your skull." Her servo tool rose up, and a high-pitched whine filled the room as her laser activated at low intensity, carving into the drone's internals. "I'm busy."

"Oh, don't be like that," Rarity said, her horn starting to glow.

"Wait, Rarity, don't-"

Rarity wasn't listening to Twilight's protest, and a field of magical energy surrounded Gaela.

Dest's hand slipped onto his boltgun even as he read the book he had chosen, waiting to hear a scream or enraged shout.

Gaela suddenly found herself turning around against her will, and barely stopped herself from crying out as her body was rotated to face the unicorn, chair and all, before it was released.

Twilight was rather more concerned about the laser, which was still active and burnt a thin scar in an arc across the floor before Gaela remembered to turn it off.

"Right. Another psyker. Great," the Acolyte mumbled, staring at the white pony through her neon green optics.

Dest took his hand off his bolter as Spike entered the room again carrying a teapot.

"What's a 'psyker'? Not an insult, I hope," Rarity asked, staring at the hooded figure and taking in the details of her armor.

"Humans use that word to refer to magic-users," Twilight explained, "and generally, aliens don't seem to like magic very much."

"Yeah, we kind of prefer our physics nice and predictable, thanks," mumbled a gunman as he took a cup of tea. Most of the men besides Daniels had removed their masks, deeming it safe enough that they didn't need rebreathers. One or two had even shed their coats as well, and found themselves being stared at rather critically by Applejack, Rainbow Dash, and Pinkie (the latter seemed to enjoy climbing all over them as well).

Gaela sighed through her vox grille. "Whatever you want, hurry up and get it over with. I'm very busy."

Rarity hummed to herself as she tapped the outward fold on Gaela's chest plate. "Pardon me for asking, but would you happen to be a female human? Rainbow Dash didn't say."

The other ponies perked up immediately, glancing at the Acolyte. They were all aware by now that she was female, but none of them were aware of the different anatomies of male and female humans, and they had absolutely no idea how Rarity could tell anyway with a suit of enclosed armor covering Gaela's body and a vox grille scrambling her voice.

"I am. So what?" Gaela mumbled, her optics rotating.

"Ah! I knew it! A lady just knows one of their own!" Rarity looked unreasonably proud of herself for uncovering this very basic tidbit. "Now, why don't you drop the mask, dear? Let Rarity have a look at your face."

"If I do, will you leave me alone?" Gaela asked.

"Not a chance. Come on, now."

With a sigh completely disproportionate with the task being asked of her, she mentally unlocked the safety mechanism on her helmet and pushed a switch on the neck of her armor as she pulled down her hood.

There was a gentle hiss of air escaping as the face helmet split apart vertically, the metal facets sliding to either side of her head before folding in above her shoulders to minimize obstruction. The vox grill and integrated respirator sunk below her chin, forming a gorget around the neck plating.

Gaela's face was smooth and pale, or at least paler than that of the other humans. The left side of her head was dominated by an optics and cranial augmetic implant not completely dissimilar to the one on her helmet, although this one had one large emerald-colored bionic eye in place of her natural one. Her other eye, which was biological and a rich blue, was ringed by a black tattoo of the Star of Chaos. There was not a hair on her head either, her scalp having reached that special level of bald that implied some sort of artificial treatment to remove it permanently.

Daniels, as it turned out, was the first to speak up. "Huh. So that's what she looks like."

Applejack twisted her head to look up at the man. "Ya mean ya'll never even saw her face 'til now?"

"Are you kidding? We wouldn't even know her NAME if she hadn't gotten annoyed at being called 'Miss Acolyte'."

"No hair," another man mumbled, "little disappointing."

"Mechanicus, man," Daniels said with a shrug.

"Can I go back to work now?" Gaela asked. Without her mask the sight of her annoyed sneer was in evidence, and as such she had discarded the closest thing she had to diplomatic skill.

"Certainly, Darling," Rarity answered, pointing a hoof up the stairs, "just take your gadget with me and the girls upstairs."

She glanced up the stairs as Twilight smiled hopefully at her. "Why? I'm fine down here."

"I'm not sure how you humans do it, but here in Equestria it isn't proper for males and females to share sleeping space. I'm sure you understand," the pure white pony gave an unreadable look to the men, some of whom rolled their eyes at her.

"I said I'm fine down here," Gaela snapped, turning her attention to Daniels, "you! Donald! Say something!"

"Take a cup of tea with you before you head upstairs, Acolyte," Daniels said dryly, pausing to take a sip, "it's really good."

"Field protocol demands-" Gaela sputtered, only to be cut off by the only other figure in power armor.

"Stop yelping and join the xenos," Dest snapped, looking up from his book, "you're annoying, and I'm trying to read."

Gaela's protests died in her throat at being admonished by the Astartes, and she wordlessly clenched her teeth before standing and gathering up the drone.

"Come along now, darling. We don't bite," Rarity assured her as Rainbow Dash floated up the stairs ahead of them.

"That's actually a valid concern of mine, though I'm hesitant to take your word for it," the Acolyte mumbled as she followed the unicorn. Pinkie and Twilight ascended after them eagerly, with only Applejack hesitating.

"Well, ya'll have a good night now, y'hear? You too, Spike." The apple farmer bounded up the stairs after her friends, not waiting for a reply.

Spike glanced around nervously at the strange and unfamiliar creatures that surrounded him, uncomfortably aware of the large pile of weapons in the corner.

"Welp, now this is officially a sausagefest," grumbled one of the gunmen, taking the last cup of tea from the young dragon.

"Miss the Dark Acolyte already?" Daniels asked sarcastically, laying down on the floor.

"I was referring more to the xenos, actually. Rainbow Dash is all right. You know, for a horse."

Spike gathered up the courage to speak, taking a deep, calming breath. "So, I was wondering if someone could let me know what, exactly, is going on here? Please?" If he was going to be spending the night surrounded by weirdos from outer space, he at least wanted to know why.

The humans regarded the dragon in silence for several seconds before Daniels spoke up.

"In a nutshell, two alien races have converged on your planet largely by coincidence. One is a group of relatively benign explorers trying to escape from a disastrous encounter with the other race, which in this case is made up of corrupt and ruthless pirates."

Spike blinked. "Oh! Wow! So you're being chased by space pirates?"

"Now, see, here's the funny part..."

****

Gaela placed the gutted disruptor drone on Twilight's reading desk, although the height of the surface meant she was going to have to kneel down in order to continue her work.

Of course, that assumed that she was even going to get that opportunity.

"Do you have to wear all that armor inside? It looks rather uncomfortable," Rarity mused from behind her.

Gaela's eye twitched. "YES. The armor powers the servo actuators, which I need to do my work."

"What are you doing, exactly?" Twilight asked, her eyes sparkling as she leaned around Rarity to stare at the alien device.

"I'm TRYING to analyze the jamming field emitter to find the exact wavelength of the electromagnetic radiation such that I can devise a counter measure. But I can't DO that if you keep-"

"Hey, is this your space gun?" Pinkie asked, removing the plasma pistol from where it had been mag-locked onto her thigh.

"DON'T TOUCH THAT!" Gaela shouted, snatching the weapon back. "If it were to discharge accidentally then the damage could be-"

"Hey, hey, who would win in a fight? You or Dest?" Rainbow Dash asked excitedly, poking at her backpack harness. "I think you could take him! You have more arms!"

"I've changed my mind," Gaela deadpanned, handing her pistol back to Pinkie, "take the gun before I do something I'll regret."

"YAY!" Pinkie happily took the weapon in her hooves, and then started posing with it while making "Pew! Pew!" noises.

"Gotta say, those're some fancy gadgets ya got up there," Applejack mused, scratching at her chin with a hoof, "how's a mare get her hooves on something like that? Could come in mighty handy around the farm."

Gaela's expression teetered between fury and resignation. "I'm not getting any work done tonight, am I?"

"So you may as well take off all that ugly metal and relax," Rarity said with a smile.

"Fine. If I refused you'd probably just strip it off with your damn powers anyway," Gaela grumbled, mentally disengaging the actuator pack's clamps.

The ponies fell silent as the procedure began, and the room filled with the whir of gears and hiss of trapped air being released.

First came the actuator pack, lowered to the floor slowly as cables stretched from sockets mounted along her spine and then popped free one by one. The rubber robes went next, although they were removed in an entirely conventional manner by pulling her arms out of her sleeves. The shoulder pads slid out of place, and then the torso armor cracked open like a clam shell, hinged at the waist, before the rear plate split open along the spine to let her out. The greaves and arm pieces unlocked and split open next, allowing Gaela to free her extremities.

Once the armor finished shifting about, the Acolyte slowly pulled back out of the power armor like an insect molting its carapace as smaller nerve plugs retracted from the sockets drilled into her body. Underneath the armor, she was encased in a form-fitting black suit and studded with plug sockets, although that wasn't what captured the ponies' attention now that she had shed her armor.

"You missed one, darling," Rarity beckoned to Gaela's right arm.

"No, I didn't," the Acolyte deadpanned, cracking her neck absently, "that isn't an armor sleeve. I lost my biological arm to an overheating plasma pistol three years ago."

Twilight blanched, although her eyes were shining. "Your people can build entirely functional artificial limbs?"

"Yes, of course," she continued, flexing the fingers of the arm, "luckily the pistol survived the incident, although it wasn't easy to clean all the burnt flesh off of it."

This seemed like a very strange sentiment to the ponies, but before any of them could ask incredulous questions of her, Pinkie was leaning up against the woman's side, peering at the metal built into the side of her skull.

"Is that what happened to your face, too?" the pink pony asked.

"No. Munitions engraving, five years ago. A heavy bolter round proved to be surprisingly unstable and some of the shrapnel hit me. It revealed a critical flaw in our chemical propellant processing, so the incident was well worth an eye." She sat down against a wall, heaving a sigh. Despite her protests, it did feel good to be out of her armor again.

"Dear, I don't know what you do for a living, but it seems to have a very poor safety record," Rarity said, looking slightly squeamish.

"I'm sure the men crushed to death by a Gnarloc this afternoon would agree with you," Gaela said dryly, "now then, since you've made it clear you'll bother me further if I try to get anything useful done, I might as well get some sleep."

Twilight looked crestfallen at the idea, but she was the only one.

"Yeah, that actually sounds pretty good," Rainbow Dash yawned, stretching out her legs.

"Yer tellin' me. What a day," Applejack grumbled.

"But... But... your arm! And I wanted to... the eye..." Twilight stumbled over her words before Rarity patted her on the head.

"There, there, Twilight. Give the poor dear her space," then she leaned in and lowered her voice to a whisper, "besides, we got her up here, didn't we? Give her some time to come around."

Gaela could hear them perfectly well, but pretended not to as she lolled her head to one side and closed her eye (while shutting off her augmetic). She didn't know what the obnoxious pony xenos were up to, but whatever it was almost certainly harmless. Whatever else she could say about the creatures, they seemed intent on helping her despite her hostile nature and affiliation with a malevolent power. Moreover, they were the species that controlled a region where she was lost and hunting Tau scouts without a communications link back to base. Cooperation would make things much easier, and if they really wanted to the Iron Warriors could always bombard the silly horses into ash later.

Her biological eye cracked open. "Get off."

Pinkie Pie shifted and craned her neck around, pouting adorably. She was laying across Gaela's lap, clearly intending to sleep there.

"But-"

"This isn't open for discussion," the Acolyte growled, "get OFF me."

"Oh, I know!" Pinkie perked up. "I'll move if you smile for me!"

Gaela rolled the pink pony onto the floor, ignoring the disappointed noises before she turned on her side.

The Dark Acolyte almost hoped she stumbled onto more Tau tomorrow; if she didn't get to murder something soon, these blasted ponies were going to drive her crazy.

Comments

[Oubliette]

The Iron Warriors are taking this very well. Current favorites: Dest, Daniels, Crabapple.

[Setokaiva]

I really like Gaela... although, the type who scavenge, re-purpose, improve and augment everything in sight appeals to me all the time. Tech-priests / Acolytes like her truly embrace the machine, which is both their blessing and their curse. Their interactions with machinery (especially machine-related language) is very endearing.

[Classy]

I actually really like this story, I didn't think I would for some reason.

[Dragon Dred]

"Still, Ah feel real bad for 'em," Apple Bloom said, glancing at the men in red overcoats, "a bunch o' their friends died."
Rainbow Dash watched as a couple of the human gunmen got up from the corpse of one of their own, their pockets full of ammunition, ration packs, and small amulets with some kind of eight-pointed star on them. "Gotta say, they're taking it really well."

[Aatxe360]

"Welp, now this is officially a sausagefest," grumbled one of the gunmen, taking the last cup of tea from the young dragon.

Your humor amuses me.

[Slip Kid]

I can't help but read all of Solon's dialogue in Sean Connery's voice.

[DATA_EXPUNGED]

Crabapple is best droid.

[Norad2]

Dest's hand slipped onto his boltgun even as he read the book he had chosen, waiting to hear a scream or enraged shouted.

Ha! Wouldn't be a Space Marine if he couldn't react casually to a presumed life threatening situation.

[Dragon Turtle]

Even though the Dark Mechanicus isn't as strict as the Imperial Adeptus, they are pretty dedicated. I don't buy Gaela postponing the mission, and surrendering her tech under such little pressure. I was also actually annoyed with the Mane 6 (minus Fluttershy) at the end. One reason is that I myself can't stand people who keep drawing my attention when I've asked otherwise. The other reason is that until the jamming can be counteracted, these members of the 38th are at risk from the Tau. So the ponies halting progress on that task puts the entire town in danger from another firefight. Furthermore, the entire plot has been stalled now. I really want to see more of Warpsmith Solon and other members of the 38th, and I suspect we're not going to get much more of the company unless they're interacting with the ponies.

Concerning the other humans in this strike team, I don't mind the fact that they're not a bunch of druggies and/or mutants running around screaming "KILL! RAPE! CHAOS!" I would just hope for the fact that they're able to be actual characters. But now, they just seem to vehicles for banter and humorous commentary. I could buy these guys as just being pirates and rogue humans. But these guys are waving the eight-pointed star around! They're not feeling any of the affects of the massive psychic presences they're attracting? Even the soldiers of the Imperium who fight against them are recorded as just hearing voices as they patrol around the battlefield. But none of the guys here act worried or on guard at all, despite nothing being established as actually stopping anything from popping out of the warp and chewing on their minds for all eternity.

Another way I would have bought this if the 38th's soldiers are of this disposition thanks to their association with Nurgle. It's well established that even the demonic entities of Nurgle are actually playful and pretty lax. You yourself seemed to establish that with Solon. But one of these foot soldiers just eeked out the god's name when he was guessing so it's clear they haven't taken up that philosophy at all. Still, I've been a fan of other works involving underachieving, apathetic foot soldiers in dire conditions. Webcomics like Gone with the Blastwave, or Romantically Apocalyptic. Or machinima like

Civil Protection

or Supreme Surrender

Although this story seems to have more stakes than any of these series.

[SFaccountant]

6022292
You have WAAAAY too strict an idea of how Chaos forces are supposed to act. None of the behaviors you found problematic strike me as being a stretch, and I'm obviously not taking Chaos corruption as seriously as many canon sources do.
This is a comedy; sit back and enjoy it.

[MerryGold]

Haven't finished the chapter but now I know why you decided to make the war Smith and his second in command devotees of nurgle it was for the demeanor and nurgle is the only one of the four that doesn't default to kill maim sacrifice.

[SFaccountant]

6306318
That's not quite accurate. Only Khorne "defaults" to kill maim sacrifice (by burning). Tzeentch does what Tzeentch wills and it's not easy to predict or parse his intentions. And Slaanesh... well, let's say it "corrupts", since I don't want to jeopardize the Teen rating.

[BunkerBuster]

Eh, Twilight is the only thing in this that bothers me. I just don't feel her obsession with being peaceful would extend as far as allowing her friend's home to be destroyed. After all the danger they put her friends in, I have trouble seeing her whining "but we need to be NIIIIIICE!"

That being said, this is a comedy, not something serious, and I'm probably just displacing anger at people I know in real life that are like that. That being said, I REALLY like AJ in this.

[SFaccountant]

7038858
I like to think of it less as an obsession with pacifism and more an enhanced awareness of the scope of the conflict.
She's the only pony who sees the big picture: alien life exists, it's intelligent, it's in Equestria, and it's very well-armed. Applejack literally sees this as a matter of random tresspassers and monsters running rampant across her farm, while Twilight alone realizes that the way they treat the invaders could have ramifications far, far beyond her friends having their property destroyed.

[Lunae Lumen]

7038858

Author is not the only one. Twilight is pretty much the only one with even the slightest bit of sense here. If they had the option, the smartest thing for the ponies to do would be to warp the entire country forward a year like Sombra did to the Crystal Empire, and hope the aliens are gone by then.

Picking a side risks the life of every sapient creature on the planet. What if the other side happens to be stronger, and inclined to put hostile new races down with extreme prejudice? No way to know which is which in advance, and right or wrong don't really factor into it, so that's no help, either. You pick the weaker side, everypony dies. You pick right, and you're still caught in the middle of an intergalactic war, and most likely, a lot of ponies die anyway.

Stay out of it, keep your head down, try to establish communication with both sides and discourage them from fighting in populated areas. That's the best starting point. Maybe tell them both that any members of either side caught fighting in a pony settlement will be killed on sight. That's a risk, too, but it avoids picking a side, and is less likely to make you a specific target.

[Der Kaiser]

Has anyone ever told you that you make the Iron Warriors look sociable?" the rifleman asked.

"Yes, soldier, that isn't the first time I've heard that joke," Gaela said dryly.

"It's not a joke," Dest said suddenly, breaking the silent spell that he seemed to fall into every once in a while, "the drivers in the vehicle pool draw lots to see who has to put up with you for each mission after you requisition a transport."

i like this quote it amuses me

i am also rereading the story again

[Spartan III]

I love how relatable and down to earth the soilders are. The characters' dynamic is great as well

[Skulljack17]

I was completely on board for this whole thing. Laughs, funny situations, awkward meetings with culture clash happening. But then one thing pulled me right out of my suspension of disbelief.

"If ya see Sweetie Bell, tell her ta meet me at Scootaloo's house!" Apple Bloom shouted after the blue pegasus. "Sis, Ah'm goin' now, okay?"

Scootaloo having a house? Pfffff, total immersion lost now.

[Seraphimus]

I think my favorite part, is that the only reason they didn't blast the ponies outright was sheer awe and confusion, and then things spiraled out of control from there and now the Chaos marines Are suddenly stuck in a situation where doing so would be at best devastatingly problematic for them.

so Gaela's hands are completely tied and it's great.

[FridayPie]

"Now, see, here's the funny part..."

Bwahaha!

What I don't get, why Nurgle followers are ok with Tzeench, but not with Slaanesh. They aren't Khonre's, so not strictly rival?

[Drachos]

9650468
Not sure you saw Sarraceno's response and I am fairly sure it doesn't come up properly till much latter in the series, but while the Iron Warriors are TECHNICALLY worshipers of Chaos Undivided....lets just say Perturabo has had some bad experiences with Slaanesh. And we aren't talking the sexy kind....more the backstabby, murder you for power kind.

(Which given thats typically Tzeench's thing makes it even worse)

As Astates usually hold the highest respect for their Primarch, the fact that a Chaos god betrayed him in such a manner that almost led to his death, made the rest of the Legion DESPISE Slaanesh and his....or her followers

Now a minor point should be made that since Perturabo became a demon Prince of Chaos Undivided, clearly Slaanesh at least somewhat respects the Primarch. You don't get made a "Demon Prince of Chaos Undivided EXCEPT Slaanesh' after all. However pointing that out is the quickest way to a Bolter to the head.

[Nightsclaw]

I just love how Applebloom and Crabapple are interacting it just so good. Also, this story is just great so far :)

[IneptusMechanicus]

"Are you saying I'm fat?"
No, RD, just dense.

[FanOfMostEverything]

I’ve been meaning to get into this series for years. I especially adore the infiltration capabilities of everyone’s favorite mailmare.

“What manner of sorcery got her through our defenses?”
“Yog-Sothoth’s”
“What?”
“What?”