Holding Nerve
“We have to pull back, tell Geldmore to pull everypony back to the border.” Blueblood had been pacing for a minute now and only stopped when none of his cabinet responded. “Did you not hear what I said?”
“If we lose the initiative and have to stop the infiltration mission, we may not be able to establish a bridgehead,” said Greyjoy. “Then, we’ll have to order a frontal assault.”
“I’m not interested in how you’ve swotted up, Greyjoy, not when ponies are going to get slaughtered because we can’t tell what the enemy are doing! We can’t fight without the overwatch!”
“We have before.”
“And look how many died in those wars! I’m not ordering another Barnheim!” He turned from his Secretary of State – maybe ex-Secretary – and stared at each minister in turn, daring them to speak. “I have the final say, not you! Which of you wants to be the monarch and put their name down on the coffin orders?”
Salad Daze looked to her colleagues, then finished off her glass and turned to her monarch. “Is this about the soldiers or about your ego?”
“How dare you.”
“How dare you! You’re the damn monarch in wartime, you have a job and your bloody duty like the rest of us, and part of that involves not wussing out as soon as things get difficult! Not undermining your own war plans because you can’t handle the fact that those plans involve death!” By now she was on her feet and coming at him, and Blueblood, to his credit, was standing his ground. “See? See how you’re standing there, like you’re an actual stallion and not some bratty foal in the playground pretending he’s a bigshot? Do that!”
“This doesn’t help the soldiers or Canterlot,” said Stoutheart quietly, firmly. “If we could all just calm down and be rational about this.”
Salad Daze returned to her seat first, muttering under her breath. She looked sick, like it had taken something out of her. Once she was sitting down, Blueblood sat down.
“Will this ‘duty’ actually achieve anything?”
“Fifty-fifty chance,” said Greyjoy.
“What happens if Chrysalis decides to join the fight herself? Can I call a withdrawal then?”
Greyjoy didn’t smile but she did sound smug: “There’s a plan for that.”
“And is that fifty-fifty?”
“No, your highness.” She didn’t sound smug now.
***
They’d split into three groups, each taking a different path, all regrouping by Breezy Street and storming the station – if one group was spotted, it could (theoretically) distract the changelings from the others. Filthy Rich had sounded very confident when he’d explained their orders. Amethyst Star was choosing to take him at his word and make herself feel confident (it wasn’t working too good but it was a nice try).
Her team crept through the shadows, Amethyst always taking a few steps ahead and then signalling for them to follow; they were leapfrogging their way down each street and back alley. Once, two changelings had flown overhead and her heart had pounded fit to burst but the changelings didn’t look down. Spear dodged.
Then she heard two changelings talking, just round the corner.
She reared up, jabbed her spear up: ‘enemy here’. Cloudchaser, Hayseed, and Scoops crept forward, weapons drawn; in too short a time, they were with her.
Please surrender when you see us.
Cloudchaser mouthed ‘now’.
The changelings had been slacking off and drinking coffee they’d ‘scavenged’ from a house. When four armed ponies charged at them, the quickest witted of them threw his drink – the earth ponies instinctively dodged and that gave him chance to draw his weapon, and it meant Amethyst threw her spear at him.
She’d put telekinesis behind the throw. What would have been a glancing blow hit him dead-centre.
Cloudchaser tackled the second and he screamed “surrender!”. (If he’d known his friend had been killed, Bruzz would have kept fighting; that’s what he told himself afterwards, at least)
When it became clear nopony had heard or saw the fight, the squad moved on, the prisoner wing-bound and gagged and dragged along (in an ideal world they’d leave him somewhere now but on their timescale, quicker to dump him somewhere right before the charge). Amethyst had to pull her spear out of somepony’s chest and hear the noise it made when it came out.
Hayseed put his hoof on her shoulder. “You had to do it.”
“I know. I just wish he’d been doing something evil when we found him, something I could… Never mind. The sooner we get this done, the sooner Chrysalis gets hit and the sooner everypony can go home.”
***
Ten minutes without overwatch and it was all going to cack; exhausted runners were dashing in and out of the Necessary Action’s command deck, and half of them were carrying messages that contradicted the other half; the semaphore network was breaking down. Every platoon, every squad in some places, was fighting on their own right now. Ideally, Geldmore would order the Dragoons to fall back into a larger, more easily directed formation, but then the changelings would have an easier target and at least now, their platoons were all over the place too. In the not-too-long term though, enemy numbers were going to tell.
Geldmore wanted to rip his mane out but on the outside, he was calm and his upper lip remained stiff. He wouldn’t let the side down.
“Signal the Last Argument to support Echo Platoon; then, Echo is to push forward and Last Argument to support Check Platoon.” That would allow both platoons to hit the changeling’s secondary lines. The cost was that the griffin airship would no longer be covering the rear, but he was gambling that it could return to the rear before the enemy could fully exploit that. “Medical clouds?”
“Managing so far, sir—“
“Sir, we’ve got two dozen changelings heading right for us---“
He nodded to Rockit. “Guns to fire at will.”
***
Strect was getting sick of hearing the damn guns. He was getting sick of seeing so many damn ponies in the damn sky. Despatch fliers were telling him that the three breakouts had stalled and that wasn’t enough. What he needed was a massacre, something that would sicken and terrify the ponies into running away.
“Sir!” This despatch runner was grinning like Chrysalis during feeding. “We’ve found their field hospital.”
“Excellent.”
***
There were no more changelings en route and that was a relief; most of them must be at the battle. (You could hear it, distant yelling and zaps and sporadic artillery) With luck, the station would be lightly guarded.
Amethyst Star reached the rendezvous point and the station was not lightly guarded.
Her platoon, once they were all together, turned out to be outnumbered two to one. Heavyset, pike-wielding changelings were ranked at the entrance, and on the roof, and hovering by every large window.
“That’s why we didn’t see patrols on the way here, they’d pulled back!” Lieutenant Rich looked sick. “It makes sense, they’d be patrolling for fleeing locals – and this is the only place to flee too, and our strategy wanted them to think the Dragoons were trying to reach here, so why not regroup here?”
Captain Ironhoof glared at him – the universal ‘not in front of the kids’ glare – and said: “Okay. We can’t overwhelm as planned. Time to improvise.”
“Improvise to pulverise,” said Iron Will, before catching herself: “Sorry, ma’am. Habit.”
“Granted.” There was pain in the captain’s eyes when she looked out at the station, Amethyst could see it. “All unicorns here have been trained for group shields? Okay, good.” At that, Ironfood bent her head down and retrieved a firework (“SELF-LIGHT MAGIC – CAUTION”) from a clip on her left leg.
That was the signal to send the trains.
She had to speak: “Ma’am, with respect, if we send the signal now—“
“The estimate was that it would take five minutes for the first troop train to get here. We can possibly seize the station but we can’t hold it for five minutes, so we tell the trains to arrive early. Success before safety, private.
“Now then: is everypony familiar with the tank formation?”
***
The casualty figures had jumped sharply in the last few minutes and if this kept up, the medical cloud was going to need an extension. Amble On’s life had turned into a blur of painkillers and water and comforting words, and soldiers alternately crying in pain or exchanging how-I-got-mine tall tales. He’d be more tired than he’d ever been if we wasn’t keyed up on adrenaline and patriotism (and coffee); it’d all come back to haunt him when (when?) the battle was over.
“Painkillers, I got painkillers!” he sung out, flapping down to the slightly-less-badly-wounded soldiers, jars of leaf goop strapped to him. “Who wants painkillers? Shady, I know you want paintkillers!”
“Shut up and shove them down my throat,” said the dusk-coloured soldier, “I’ve got an itch and you don’t want to know what happens if I scratch it.”
“Pus comes out,” said Shady’s ward-mate Tumbler.
Amble On was reaching for the first jar when the cloud exploded behind him – while he was righting his balance, he saw too late that part of it had dissolved and Tumbler had fallen. Up above, a wing of pegasi were turning into changelings and he could hear two other explosions and then—
And then Tumbler was flying up through the hole – his bandaged wing suddenly not-so-bandaged and a dagger in hoof – and a dozen other patients across the cloud were doing the same. The changelings outnumbered them two to one but being attacked that quick, out of nowhere, reduced that number by half and scattered the rest. In seconds, the changelings had broken formation and were retaliating, but the guards were flying in. One changeling bombed his way through a ward out of spite, the rest ran or surrendered.
“How,” began Amble On, watching Tumbler fly down. “You. What.”
“Command thought that the changelings would attack the patients, command knew the changelings would bypass the guards, command had us pretend to be wounded so when—“
“You used the bedpan, you sick—“ Doctors were rushing by; there were more and worse casualties now, Amble On remembered. He rushed to do his job, the rest of the sentence forgotten.
--
GJ: The basic strategy is to use any misdirection, any trick, any bit of technology to keep the changelings confused and off-guard. This will negate their numerical advantage.
HT: Just so I’m clear, ah, if it comes to a straight fight before we can get reinforcements in, the changelings will win?
GJ: Yes.
HT: We’ll resort to underhanded trickery then. Someone get the Conservatives in here!
SD: [laughs]
SH: [inaudible]
- Official War Cabinet excerpts
We estimate that Queen Chrysalis will enter the battlefield as soon as Grand Central is secure and reinforcements can enter via train. Battle plans show enough soldiers can overwhelm – our most recent is the Nightmare Moon Hypothetical Battle Plan - but on an open field, which we will not be on. Cannons could only get an accurate lock at pointblank range, an unlikely occurrence.
No solution at this time. Possibilities will be looked into ASAP.
- Report from Self-Defence Forces to Greyjoy, during planning Operation Celestia Endures
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It's good to see that those bastard changelings weren't able to get off a
verysuccessful hit on the field hospital. Perhaps the ponies have a chance after all.4077291 better hope so, or there's no series afterwards!
I await the moment Chrysalis steps onto the field of battle, her fangs glistening in the sun, her temper reflected within her eyes.
Tremble, ye little ponies, for Death comes.
Death comes in the form of a queen like no other.
Tremble on, quail for your lives!
On comes deathly shadow with form,
Tremble with your wings,
She comes with anger in her throat.
Tremble deep within your hearts,
For Death comes, Death comes.
Never before has it looked so terrible, so beautiful.
Tremble, ye little ponies, for the Queen comes.
(Go Chrysalis...)
I love that the field hospital attack got upended so thoroughly. Bit of a change from how that usually plays out.
And it looks like the Ponyville contingent is taking a bit of a gamble with the train plan.
4077363 If by "tremble" you mean "soil yourself and say OH SOIL really loudly but a bit ruder", that's definitely what the ponies will be doing!
4078656 They are indeed! Thus, the fate of Equestria depends on Filthy Rich rushing someone.
4082731 Are you alive? I see you've been offline for 34 weeks, and it doesn't fill me with hope. I hope you haven't given up, because this story is to me the best in its genre I've seen. It's awesome, really well written, and the characters feel alive.
4082731
Iron Will takes point and becomes the obvious focus for all enemy fire (as changelings realize that the business end of his hammer is as big as their bodies). Unicorn shields should be able to soak a few shots before collapsing, so he might not even start taking hits until he's halfway there. Iron Will might go down at the end of his charge, but with heavy armor over all that muscle, he'll certainly be able to withstand the punishment for long enough to smash into the main mass of changelings like a bowling ball. The rest of the platoon can follow behind and make it into the station. In close quarters, they'll be able to limit the number of changelings that can engage them at any one time, and hold out long enough for the first train to arrive.
Really hoping this gets updated soon...
7915783
Too bad the author hasn't visited the site in three years.
8111385 Yeah, I'm thinking this story is basically dead at this point.
Which is a pity, as it's really, really good, and was really just getting good when the author just basically disappeared on us.
And I really, reeeeeeally wanted to see dear old Chryssie get her sorry arse hoofed to her at some point before the end.
Ah, well.
Them's the breaks, I guess.
Aawww, esperaba más de Blueblood, pero su pasividad es normal.