From The Past to Now - Defense of the Empire
The nest had been disrupted.
Intruders had come and destroyed members, plus a large part of the caverns with unknown ways.
This was not to be tolerated.
They had lain alone in the cold wastes for generations, hunting and providing for themselves for many many suns. Now something had come and taken a piece of it away.
It was definitely not to be tolerated.
A force of warriors was sent out to deal harshly with those who would do anything against the nest.
They had been in control of the local area so long it was unthinkable that anything would oppose them. Ponies had learned to leave the place alone, the caves that led to certain doom. It was never marked on maps, just a warning never to go near, not understanding what lived there.
Now the enraged creatures swarmed towards the lights of the Crystal Empire at the town, wanting to see who would dare to oppose them. Figuring it was the same race whom they’d taught not to come near, nor explore, the caverns where they dwelled.
But this was Equestria, surprises abound in the magic of the land.
Especially in the forms of one very stubborn human and two angry Bolos.
-----
“I need pinpoint fire here and here!” Wyatt yelled through the commlink, his HUD designating two groups that had gathered in a common area. He was agitated enough that it came through with the tone.
“No need to yell, we can hear you just fine.” Athena’s voice was calm and cool over the commlink.
“Excitement, sorry. Been...a long time.” Wyatt peered through the glass window, not actually glass but crystal cut thin and shaped to fit.
“Acknowledged commander, reinforcements on the way.” Crusader’s voice was even, knowing they could not do any type of battery fire, the combat spiders swarmed into the area along the rooftops.
Drones pinpointed the area, not wanting to scatter them, they did nothing but observe as Wyatt was doing from his vantage point. He was playing forward observer for the moment, wanting to do the most damage without collateral effects.
Shapes moved swiftly along the roofs of the surrounding houses, a green light winked on inside Wyatt’s helmet as he gave the command.
“Fire!”
Energy and solid slug weapons opened up from the rooftops, raking the area and shredding anything that was designated the enemy. Empty shells rattled down the walls as heavy rifles took out the farthest sitting creatures, the automatic weapons screamed like buzzsaws as they swept back and forth.
Barely a minute passed before silence fell, the remains of what once had been formidable warriors in their time and place were no more. Heaping piles of offal smoked in the chill air.
“Well done, give the troops a thanks for me.” Wyatt was off and running down an alleyway, his rifle sweeping back and forth as he moved to the next spot. Adrenaline flowed through him as the old tricks of the trade came back.
He wasn’t an old man anymore, he was the trim soldier from eons past, fighting a guerrilla war against invaders as he’d done so many times.
His mind whirled with possibilities, cut them off here, make a false move and run here. Hit and run was the best way. No standing and fighting where you could get caught in the streets. That would be for later.
He was having the squads check the houses, making sure ponies were out and safe behind the lines as he moved forward bit by bit. Little steps, don’t try to take an entire chunk at once.
Skidding to a halt near the corner of a lovely dwelling, he worked the pad on the outside of the armor along his forearm, bringing up a screen inside his helmet which gave him real time movements of everything. Spotted and marked by drones which were silently cruising the air above in the darkness he could see each and every enemy soldier.
Their thermal readings were odd, matching the background almost exactly, but wavering within a few points which let the Bolos pinpoint the creatures.
Speaking of Bolos...
He looked upward, hearing a sound and bringing the end of his powergun up along with his eyes, seeing shapes leap from the building above, a pony struggling with a massive critter that was definitely not happy about being tossed off the roof.
The thing landed with a sound like an exhalation of air, Athena landing on top of it, planting all four hooves deep into the midsection between the multiple arms.
She leapt off it, standing back and grinning as it struggled to get up on unsteady legs. Turning her head right to left as if to crack her neck, she kept smiling as the thing roared wetly at her, spittle going everywhere as the rage cranked up.
“Come on ugly, you and me!”
As it charged, Wyatt brought up his rifle, forgetting for a moment who it was, only seeing a pony and the large shape that was about to crush it.
Her battle screen snapped on, covering the sable mare in a glittering shield that spoke of high energy physics long ago and far away. Her wings snapped outward, spreading in a glorious shine as she pressed her back hooves into the roadway, lifting her fore end up slightly before pushing off in a jump that pointed her directly at the things head.
The battle screen along her wings was tightly controlled, making an edge that would have a blade maker weeping. It was keener than the finest monomolecular wire and she hadn’t had a chance to do any fighting for a while.
Twisting in midair by muscling her body around, the forward edge of her wing caught the head right under what would loosely be called a chin. The almost invisible line of energy lopped it off and cauterized it at the same time, letting her land heavily on the other side flat-hooved and turning already in case of another threat.
Wyatt watched all this happen so fast he hadn’t even had time to squeeze the firing stud on his rifle, standing there for a moment as he watched the terrible shape pause, then fall over in a dead silence. Crashing into the crystal road paving with a last twitch before becoming still.
Her lavender eyes looked sadly at it for a moment, wishing it had put up more of a fight when she noticed Wyatt standing there.
“Hiya, Wyatt!”
“I see you have things controlled.” He flipped up his visor, grateful for fresh air.
“You give the orders, we kill on command!” She laughed, pointing at the lifeless pile, “It was planning on jumping you, figured I’d just remove the problem.”
“I appreciate that, don’t need any bruises.”
“That’s our job..oh wait..” Her eyes became unfocused for a moment, “Move two meters to the left, quick!”
Wyatt didn’t argue, just scampered to the left as fast as he could, the sound of another body hitting the road behind him made him turn, seeing Crusader latched onto another critter which was toppling right where he’d been standing.
It fell on its back with a sound of rage, Crusader weighed it down with his hooves and body as he lifted a fore hoof, putting it directly through what they figured was the braincase a few times, leaving a wet mess on the roadway. The rest of the body slumped into a lifeless pile of flesh, the multiple arms..or were they legs? Flattened out on the roadway like it was, it didn’t really matter.
He shook the hoof disdainfully, letting the slop run off his integument before putting it back down and seeing Wyatt standing agape, watching them both.
“You guys don’t fool around do you?” His voice was quiet.
The umber face held murder in the clear blue eyes, “Never with the enemy, Commander. Never.”
“I really wouldn’t want to get on your bad side.” He laughed, seeing Athena nodding.
Crusader actually cracked a small smile, “I do not think you have to worry, Commander.”
“You know, I’ve told you to call me Wyatt. None of this ’commander’ stuff either, I work for a living.”
Crusader just blinked, “Now is not the time.” The eyes unfocused once more, “We have another group heading in from the wastes. Your permission?”
Wyatt nodded, “Granted.”
Fireworks blossomed in the nighttime. Over by the castle where their hulls were parked, booms rang out into the air, rocking the Crystal Castle and surrounding buildings as portside mortar batteries cut loose with a barrage of death.
Heavy shells carrying their payloads ripped through the still air, far overhead to get as much reach as they could, the tactical cores inside them giving them firing data from the drones that had spotted the incoming group.
Wyatt knew that sound oh so well, how many times on the battlefield when a Bolo had hit ground had he heard that slight whistling that preceeded what was to happen next.
The entire low-lying ridgeline exploded in thunder and fury as the shells hit precisely where the group would be. The fuses set for a maximum delay, they had gone off feet above the ground with every other one set for a below surface detonation. This created a ripple effect along the ridgeline, craters blown deep into the snowpacked ground, flinging bodies upward to be caught in the secondary blasts that shredded what remained, if anything.
Bolos were efficient if nothing else.
From his vantage point, Wyatt could not see the effect but felt it through the ground, the rumbling underneath his feet that told of a massive barrage that had wiped hectares of land clean.
“Annnnnd score!” Athena leapt upwards, punching a hoof in the air.
“You’re just a bit too eager for this Athena.” Wyatt was leaving his visor open for some fresh air, inhaling it as if it were the finest vintage of wine. Canned air in a suit got old, very fast. It was a lull for a moment, the data from tactical was saying the things were holding back for some reason after this massacre.
“You’re right, I am.” Her lovely voice gave him a chill, seeing the lavender eyes burn with an inner light behind the simple smile, filled with a battle lust that all Bolos had, regardless of how they acted.
“Your orders?” Crusader’s voice was filled with it. The soothing sound that was always warm and comforting before had turned into something terrible and looming. The powerful AI behind this avatar was straining at the leash, saying let us go. Let us do that which we do so well.
At your single word, we will take the fight to the enemy and grind them into dust.
With a pointed finger, we will destroy that which stands before it.
A glance and all within your sight shall be gone, laid waste.
Humans and Bolos had always shared something. Deep inside neither knew why. But with humans commanding them, Bolos reacted a hundred times swifter, more terrible and fierce than anything imagined. Together the human race and Bolos had conquered enemies that thought themselves invincible.
Another voice flowed into his ears, that other who had been listening, “Do not be afraid of them, they would die for you.” Calliope’s voice was warming and comforting to him.
He had not noticed the single bead of sweat running down his cheek until he swiped at it with armored fingers, the stares from the two ponies were disconcerting.
“I’m not... Calliope what do I do?” He whispered into the helmet, the throat mic picking it up and transmitting clear as a bell. He found himself in a position he never thought he would ever be. Commanding Bolos was for those who’d gone through extensive training and psychological preparation.
Nothing had ever prepared him for anything like this.
They had already fought in this world, had been fighting. They didn’t need his word, they wanted it.
He’d been in command of forces before, but nothing like this. The thought had never been there, but now, standing before what looked like two simple ponies, connected to the great war machines sitting by the castle, he knew how it felt. He had been giving commands casually, like a simple infantry soldier, but now they wanted more. They wanted everything he could give them.
Wyatt could see it in their eyes.
Come with us.
Come with us and trod our decks, wage war like you have never before. Tell us what to do and we will accomplish it or die trying.
All that we ask, is that you be with us.
“Give them the word, Wyatt, that’s what they wish to hear. Let them take the battle to the enemy as they always have, but they want you to go with them. They have missed humans so much, though they will not admit it.”
He slapped a hand on his rifle, “I can do that.”
“Be careful.”
“Always.”
He stood up, his body feeling like a wire in the wind, tense and vibrating. These first few skirmishes were just the beginning, there were more out there, and from what Crusader intimated, more coming.
Slipping a finger through the wide trigger guard of his powergun, he pointed with the other hand, “Unit CRSD and Unit ATNA of the Line.” He saw both of them almost come to attention, ears pricking forward as they waited.
He wasn’t much for speeches, never had been. He always gave orders crisp and clear, no bull, no pretend bravery. He was scared down to his toes seeing those things which must’ve weighed well over a few hundred pounds. They were much, much bigger than the twisted shapes in that cave.
Multiple arms..maybe legs, they moved so oddly. Mouth full of jagged teeth to rend and tear, not bite cleanly, dripping with what appeared to be a venom, or a thick saliva. Either way, he knew what he wanted to do.
His voice had never been steadier, resolve never more unwavering, “All weapons free. Do your duty.”
The deep night lit up with the bright lights that told of a missile launch. Sub-tactical nuclear weapons were pinpointed on the caverns where they had first met the monsters. More had been streaming out of the opening, heading for the Empire, but this would stop that flow. Diggers, the warheads were called, burying themselves deep in the ground before exploding, took care of any fallout and would destroy anything like caves or subsurface installations.
Of course they had taken underground readings during their search, it was standard procedure. If the things inside had been content to remain in them, there wouldn’t have been a problem. The caves had been mapped as a given with ground penetrating sensors, stored away and brought forward for this strike. They weren’t that deep and what was contained in the payloads would more than take care of the rest.
Wyatt looked up, seeing a flight of cruise missiles flying low over the rooftops, cracking the sky as they went supersonic, speeding their payloads onto the target with swift sureness that only death itself could match.
Athena watched with bright eyes, “We have impact in three...two...one..”
The ground almost lurched upward, but merely rippled along with the thunder that broke the night apart into a million shards. No bright lights, no mushroom clouds would throw fallout anywhere in Equestria, these were as clean as possible. The seismic disturbances they could do nothing about, a consequence of power.
More had slipped toward the city as they had spoken, the mortars and howitzers cutting down their numbers now as they tried to make for the supposed safety of houses and buildings.
Lightning crashed from two war hulls, the sound of heavy shells overhead cut through the night air like knives, bringing with it the surety of doom to whoever was beneath them.
Now the ground away from the city blossomed with explosions, the sound carrying like the booming of drums in the clear skies as they cut loose with everything they could target on the moving masses of creatures.
Drones gave a view of the target area, churned and overturned with the power of one hundred and fifty millimeter cannon fire, leaving a devastated area that would disappear when the snows returned.
Mortars followed them, sowing another maze of fire that was hard to figure out, the shots being randomized but covering certain areas to block, and then destroy the encroaching creatures.
Athena stood by Wyatt, seeing him looking into the sky as the artillery fell on unsuspecting creatures. All they had was cut loose in that moment at his command, sowing the seeds of destruction that would remain in stories told forevermore. Ponies peered out of their houses and looked at the cataclysm wrought by the two large machines sitting near the castle. Crusader had backed up in his tracks, giving Athena reign to fire her batteries in the clear.
They did not need to move, the weapons they were so familiar with carried death to the things in the night. No more would they trouble ponies if Wyatt and the two AI’s had anything to say about it.
“We have more infiltrators, some got through the barrage.” Crusader was peering into space, his mind focused on the tanks and spiders forming a battle line in the city, ready to push the intruders out.
“I see them,” Athena voice was crystal clear as Wyatt felt the drumming of explosions in his chest, the deep resonance making it a little hard to breath for a moment until it all rolled past him.
“Drones have coordinates, Hounds are moving in. We have stopped the flow from the caves, but many more are on the way, there will be some that get through.”
Wyatt listened carefully to the tactical data feeding through the mastoid patch, it was giving him updates as fast as he could accept them. Finally a moment gave him time to gather his thoughts, bringing up a screen that shone brightly in the night above his forearm, a small holographic display with dots and bars showing the disposition of forces.
He quickly gave orders, setting a line that would not be crossed, no matter what, he was keeping the enemy from filtering into the city any further, cutting them off and trying to pocket them where they could be destroyed wholesale.
Always in the back of his mind, that one rule of Murphys’ played over and over, ‘No plan survives contact with the enemy’.
He tried to figure every angle, every road they could go down, the two Bolos soaking everything up as he rattled off contingency plans one right after the other, his mind in a furious whirl to cover everything he could think of.
Until he was left with nothing else, nothing that his years of experience told him would work. He stood silent for a moment, feeling the gaze of eyes on him before turning to the two ponies who sat like statues beside him. They’d moved while he was thinking, he hadn’t noticed except for a sudden presence to either side of him, like his own personal bodyguards.
The rumbling of tanks cut through his thoughts, the clatter of secondaries lighting the night up with the beginnings of the battle to come.
Skittering sounds as combat spiders took to walls and rooftops, their legs digging into the crystal and climbing upwards to get better vantage points, except for a few which seemed to hover around him. He smiled to himself, knowing they were there to protect him without trying to be overbearing. Didn’t quite work, but he was pleased with the effort.
“Are you sure you would not rather be in a command vehicle?” The question was quietly asked by the umber pony next to him.
“No, Crusader. This may be my last chance to ever do this again. Let me be a soldier one more time.” His own reply was steady, but he could feel the disease inside him, worming it’s way through his body even as the two Bolos bolstered him with nano-docs and everything else they could do.
“You’ll come with us?” Athena was looking upward at him, her lavender eyes shone in the moons’ light.
This was the moment, the one time, where he could back out or fight as he had up until now. There would be no shame, no accusations, the two AI’s understood the situation all too well.
He could feel it though, the wanting, the one last time they ever thought they’d be with a human like those whom they’d protected, fought for and with. He could hear it, though it might be just his imagination.
Wyatt slung the powergun over his shoulder, laying a gloved hand on withers that were strong and unyielding to each side of him. He could feel the power, the thrumming of energy like waves coming off of the two quiet shapes that stood now, looking towards the battle lines that were being finalized.
“Of course I’ll come with you, wouldn’t miss this for the world.” He looked at both the faux ponies, seeing them regarding him more warmly than a moment ago, or was it imagination again?
Unslinging his rifle, he cradled it in one arm as he pointed with the other hand, “Let’s show them what war really means.”
To be continued.....
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what in the name of the Stormfather... that's what I call an update!
Holy crap... so many update e-mails flooding my inbox.
Glad to see this isn't dead, NFire. Don't take it personally if I take this off my tracking list for a couple hours...
So... Equestria really IS a death world?!
grind
So the last stand of humanity begins
Kaboom!
8965900
I seem to have found Demoman.
8965988
* Puts on glasses*
huur derr his real name is Travis Degroot.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i066Jm5R1tQ
8974078
Alright thank you Medic
Nukes? Why not thermobaric or incendiary or even both?
9580512
Sub-surface munitions are a wholesale stop, especially if you're striking for maximum destruction on a cave network. Thermobaric and incendiary by their very nature are open air weapons. They need the open space to reap their bloody tally. Sub-Surface are well... An entirely different beast and when you want to destroy a bunker in its entirety, the best and surest way to do such is right next to the damn thing, or even better if you can penetrate it.
10896347
Explosives, do better in confined spaces and thermobaric weapons do VERY well in confined spaces, incendiary weapons would turn the caverns into an oven.