The Red Sun Rises: Outtakes

by The Atlantean

Reference: Gene Kranz, Apollo 13

“From what you tell me, the enemy camp is right here,” he said, placing a marker on the Cypress Field area, about five kilometers away. “And you say with our current supplies, we have two weeks before we’re overrun. Gentlecolts, that’s not acceptable.”

The Captains and First Lieutenants all began to talk about the situation. Each one either repeated somepony else, or disagreed. After about ten seconds, Captain Midnight Shadow spoke up.

“Whoa, whoa, wait a minute, guys. Soldiers and supplies are everything.”

Crimson was intrigued. “Explain.”

“Soldiers and supplies are everything. Without them, we don’t defend the city, we don’t take down their Pegasi, we don’t communicate with Princess Celestia. We have to pull back to our side of the Bricklyn, Withersburg, and Tartarus bridges. Now.”

“What do you mean?”

“At the rate we’re using supplies, we run out in exactly six days, fifteen hours and forty-five minutes, not two weeks. If we pull back to just this island, we can get them to bottleneck across the bridges. They’ll have to. We shut down all trans-island traffic: taxis, ferries, the whole shebang.”

“Whoa, ferries? What if we need to bring stuff to the Tartarus Bridge area? The streets are too crowded,” another Captain commented.

“We worry about that later. The more we talk here, the more time we waste that could be used to stock up. I’ve been looking at this for the past hour.”

“That’s the deal?” Crimson asked.

“That’s the deal.”

“Alright. As soon as we get some form of organization is this army again, we’ll pull back across the bridges. In the meantime, we’ll only have half as many to defend the port with. I want you guys to talk to the ponies who set up the supply lines. Then I want you to talk to the ponies who actually run them. Find out how to get every last calorie and, arrow, and drop of water out of all these towns.” He walked over to the oversized calendar. “I want this mark all the way down to August 29th with supplies to spare. We never lost an Equestrian city to this army and we’re sure as hay not gonna lose one under my watch. Failure is not an option!”