3. Chain of Command
Farmer Bruener Has Some Ponies
Chain of Command
"I was constantly amazed by how many people talked me into arresting them."
― Edward Conlon, Blue Blood
- - - - ⧖ - - - -
Time: 6:41 A.M. Central Standard Time, June 19, 2015
Highway 24 out of Clay Center, en route to Manhattan, Kansas
- - - - ⧖ - - - -
Occasionally all the good policing in the world could not beat coincidence, but then again, coincidence is where random chance meets good planning, and the Riley County Police Department tried to plan for everything. Prisoner transfers normally went to the lowest rank officers, but on a whim, Captain Samantha Rietz had decided to run up to Clay County herself to pick up the check kiter they were holding for booking back in Manhattan on prescription pad forgery.
Friday was a fairly relaxed day, and it had been a productive trip in the early morning Kansas sunshine, with the ventilated plexiglass partition between the back and front seats allowing a conversation with the young lady involved, and the electronic recorder chugging along silently while they chatted. All it had cost was a cup of coffee for the bleary-eyed prisoner, and the woman-to-woman talk that had resulted was happily revealing all kinds of names who were going to be of great interest to the detective division back at the station on Monday. It was a little deceptive, but so was running drugs into town. Naturally, everything she said was going to have to be checked pretty hard, since the check kiter had a long history, but jails were built one brick at a time.
Unfortunately, the radio crackled when the prisoner was just getting to a good part.
"Captain Rietz, we have an emergency call in your vicinity. Mister Jon Bruener in Randolph is reporting that he hit a child with some farm equipment, and said that there are a large number of casualties in his area. He sounded pretty rattled, and the dispatcher said it sounded like there might be gunfire in the area."
"Jon Bruener?" she asked while flipping on the light bar and mashing down on the accelerator. "Over on Seacrest road?"
"Yes. An ambulance is en route."
"So am I." She hit the siren as the police car continued accelerating to a totally unsafe velocity, despite the muffled curse from the back seat when the prisoner spilled her coffee. "Send any of the other cars in the vicinity. I know Jon from church, and he’s not one to exaggerate."
To her credit, the prisoner was silent during the most of the short trip until the sharp S-curve onto the gravel road, where Sam had to leave up on the accelerator. The ambulance the dispatcher had mentioned managed to beat her to the K-77 intersection by less than a minute, and she moderated her speed in order to keep from running it off the narrow road. While they were driving through the resulting plume of dust, the prisoner leaned forward as close to the plexiglass partition as she could get and raised her voice to be heard over the road noise.
"I’ve got my CNA and I'm working on my RN, you know. In case anybody there is hurt."
"Ma’am, I’m afraid I’m going to have to ask you to remain in the car," snapped Sam while concentrating on keeping from running into the ditch or the back end of the ambulance from all the dust in the air. She swung a little wide to one side when the ambulance pulled into an open barbed-wire gate and stopped, before a…
Sam took her glasses off and ran a quick cleaning cloth over them. It looked like a bunch of calves were out — if somebody had gone insane with food coloring — and she could have sworn that first calf that had stuck its head into the ambulance window had been wearing some sort of golden object over its back. She had just gotten her glasses back on when there was a sharp rapping at her car window.
"Officer? Do you represent the governing authority in this country?"
That’s not a cow.
Her finger had moved to push the electric window button out of habit, although that was the last conscious muscle movement she was able to make for a few moments as her brain tried to make sense of the stern and possibly just slightly panicked horse outside the car window. It was dressed in golden armor of some sort with a distracting blue fuzzy frill on its helmet, but there was a trickle of blood oozing down the pony soldier’s pale grey cheek that brought Samantha back to awareness of the rest of the multicolored little horses spread out across the green grass, all of whom seemed to be injured or traumatized in some fashion.
"Yes, I’m the local law enforcement officer," she could hear herself say. "What seems to be the situation here?"
The armored pony saluted, in a sharp motion that appeared to be reflex. "Evacuation, Ma’am. The town of Ponyville had been attacked by some shadowy creatures from the Everfree Forest. The creatures had captured or trapped many of the townsponies, and were proving resistant to magic and physical force when Princess Twilight Sparkle ordered Contingency Plan Twelve Delta to be enacted."
"Contingency Plan Twelve Delta?" she echoed.
"Mass evacuation by means of a teleport spell to the Manehattan Teleportation Beacon on the shores of Turtle Lake by the town of Rain." The pony looked around with an expression that Sam caught immediately. It was a look of suppressed impending panic while searching for the elusive Somebody Else In Charge Of This Clusterfuck.
Oh, no. That’s me.
"And they evacuated here because… why?" she asked, afraid she was going to get an answer and still a little… well, more than a little rattled at talking to a horse.
The armored pony shrugged. "I suppose, since the creatures were resistant to magic and the civilians were not, it cleared the field of non-combatants so that the Princesses could give them one serious flank-whupping."
That really did not answer her question, and it was a little odd that she could hear the capitalization of the word ‘Princesses,’ but since Sam was talking to a small horse while looking out at a field of injured colorful talking horses, some of whom were flying above the whole mess, she put that question a few pages back on her list. It was getting to be a long list, and it was still quite early in the morning. And she was almost out of coffee.
"So how long…" Samantha Rietz tried to put together a set of words that would indicate how her police department was pleased to have their unexpected visitors, but would like to know what their plans for going home were. Thankfully, the armored pony officer was thinking along the same lines.
"The Princesses should have a return portal up shortly, so we should be out of your mane in an hour or two," he said. "I hope." There was a thread of doubt in the pony’s words when he looked up into the air. "One of our unicorn officers confirmed that we’ve been displaced dimensionally, so the evacuation spell must have glitched somehow. At least the regular evacuation was nearly completed before the spell was cast, or we would have had a lot more residents here, along with the diplomats attending the Summer Sun Celebration."
Sam looked out at the ponies scattered across the field, trying to wrap her mind around unicorns mixed in with the pegasi and ‘normal’ ponies. "So this is all of them, right? Any other major injuries?"
"At the moment, it looks like all scrapes and fractures, with Widget over there being the most injured. As for if this is everypony yet?" The guard shrugged. "The original spell was supposed to cover all the remaining citizens in Ponyville over the course of a few moments, but we’ve had ponies drop through individual dimensional interfaces for about twenty minutes now with decreasing frequency. It’s just one or two now in an expanding circle, so there could be some sort of interference between worlds that stretched out the spell on this end, or it could be a result of chronological imbalance where time flows at different rates between worlds. The unicorns will know more after the civilians finish triaging the wounded and we take roll call, but for now the situation seems to have stabilized."
"I better move the car so the ambulance can get out," said Captain Rietz. "We’ll set up a command station right here by the entrance to the field so any of the injured can be loaded without bumping across the uneven ground. I’ve got a couple patrol officers on the way up so we can set up a perimeter, look for any injured who might have fallen where they would be overlooked and so forth." She hesitated with a long look at the field full of colorful ponies. "I better brief them over the radio before they arrive, and have Search and Rescue notified in case there are any stragglers out there."
"Thank you, ma'am!"
The armored pony moved a few of his frightened multicolored brethren to one side so Sam could park the cruiser, and after a moment’s worth of consideration, she released the prisoner with the cruiser’s first aid kit to assist with whatever medical treatment she was able. A Certified Nurses Aide in the hand… or hoof, was worth any number of trauma specialists miles away.
For a long moment, the only sound Sam could hear was the wind blowing over the grass. There had to be over a hundred ponies scattered across the field and drawing together in small clusters around their injured, but the wind caught their voices and blew them away. It was the calm before the storm, but the calm would not last long. Whenever humans met aliens in the movies, there were always explosions and gunfire as the earth became a battlefield, or buffet, or just an inconvenient place that happened to be in the way of two well-armed armadas. For all of their alienness, Sam could not put the ‘alien’ tag on the small horses, because they were all acting and reacting much the same as people would have in the same situation, only with less wide-eyed panic.
The contemplative quiet quickly changed as the wind shifted back around, and Sam took the moment to get her phone out and record a long panoramic shot of the ponies, from several older ponies who were gathered together to watch the sky for more falling ponies, to several younger ones who galloped through the tall grass with all of the restraint of their youth. The little wounded pink pony being loaded into the ambulance was the most heart-rending, as she whimpered and clutched onto the paramedic’s neck with one working foreleg while the other stuck out in an awkward fashion, wrapped from hoof to shoulder in a thick restraint.
Reluctantly, she considered pushing the stop button on the voice recorder in her pocket, but decided against it for posterity's sake and continued to work with the phone and radio until the pony soldier came trotting back up.
"Ma'am, our unicorn detachment reports the dimensional incursions appear to have ceased, leaving this area with somewhat over two hundred civilians, seven members of the Royal Guard, Household Regiment, and Spike. Are you going to need any of our pegasi detached for courier duty?"
"Um…" Sam considered her phone for a while before answering. What she was about to do broke several dozen rules and regulations, as well as hopped over some significant links to the Director of the RCPD who may have been on vacation in Montana today but was going to be livid when he found out. Then again, she was the officer in charge at the scene, talking to a little horse from another dimension, and that warranted some extreme measures no number of regulations could possibly take into account. Somehow, ‘First Contact by Disaster Response’ had been left out of the manual which she had inherited when she had been been promoted to Patrol Captain a few years ago.
Still, jumping over the chain of command as far as she could felt like the right thing to do at the moment, so regardless of any possible repercussions, she pressed the 'send' button on her phone and turned back to the short and quite otherworldly visitor.
"No, I've talked to the office and gotten the process started to get most of my available patrol officers out here, so I don't think I'll need any couriers, Officer…"
"Sergeant Hardhooves," responded the pony with a sharp salute. "I know this is quite unexpected, and we appreciate what you’re doing for us, Ma'am."
"I hope you still are willing to say that in a few hours," said Sam. "If your Princesses do manage to whisk all of you home here in the next few minutes, that’s one thing, but if you’re here for a few days or even weeks…"
She eyed the narrow country road and tried not to think of a stereotypical movie military convoy sweeping down it to capture all of the little aliens and shove them into big laboratories. The situation should not get that out of control, even though there were certainly Military Police on the way from Ft. Riley even now. Their participation in mass casualty events were fairly routine, although they too would have quite a bit of adjustment in front of them, and simply having the MPs present to maintain order in the upcoming chaos would be a hell of a good idea when word got out.
And she was positive it would, particularly because of where she had forwarded her phone video.
The longer it took for these ‘Princesses’ to pick up their wayward ponies, the larger the impact on human society and the more insane it would drive people until some important people who were living examples of the Peter Principle did something really, really stupid. If the ponies had shown up in parts of Sub-Saharan Africa, it probably would have only taken a few minutes for them to have been turned into cutlets. In Southern California, they would be declared some sort of endangered species and dragged off to a nature preserve, but people would still steal them to keep in their basements as pets. In Washington D.C. even outside of an election year… The police officer suppressed a shudder. Better to not even think about that.
When the incoming call she was expecting began to buzz on her phone, she turned her back on the wind and touched the screen. "Hi, Brian. You still on the governor's protective detail? No, slow down. Yes, the video clip I mailed you is real. Yes, I expect you to believe it, because I’m standing right here. Alien ponies, that’s right. About two hundred of them. No, I don’t think they’re registered to vote."
Sergeant Hardhooves raised one hoof and whispered, "Actually, I’m registered with the Lower Reach party. My wife is a pegasus, you see, and she talked me into it."
Taking a breath, Samantha continued, "Well, I suppose they’re registered to vote in whatever place they came from."
"Equestria," whispered the soldier.
"Equestria," echoed Samantha, although after a moment she added, "No, it’s not on Earth anywhere! Look, just put the governor on the phone so I can— Oh, hello, Governor Brown. This is Captain Rietz of the RCPD in Manhattan. We have a little problem. A few hundred of them."
Author Notes
As a reference for people who don’t live in Kansas, Topeka is just down I-70, about a little more than an hour away from the scene location. The governor has a security detail drawn from the Kansas Highway Patrol who handle driving him or her places, which once made for a brief panic when Gov. Joan Finney caught a ride with a friend to work and did not tell them. Even though it is a generally conservative state, the governorship has bounced back and forth between republicans and democrats for years with fairly friendly (as compared to certain other states) relations between the parties, with the most hard-fought battles being over school funding and taxes for school funding. And I’m going to stop there before about half of the readers get all aggravated. (Really, don’t get me started.)
The Riley County Police Department (RCPD) covers the entire county including Manhattan, Ogden, and Randolph, as the various city police departments and the sheriff’s department were consolidated back in 1974. Most of the rest of Kansas counties have an elected sheriff and deputies, but RCPD has a director, with several direct staff and five captains (Captain Sam Rietz is the Patrol Captain of the Patrol Division) with the officers in the field holding the title of Patrol Officer.
Just a reminder: Any names used in this story are made up, and should not match any real people. If they do (by accident), and the person doesn’t like it, just tell me and I’ll change the name.
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It’s not what you know but who you know.
There's something stuck in my mind, and I'm going to give it to everyone else.
Farmer Bruener, farmer Bruenor.
Every time I see that name I imagine that he's four-and-a-half-feet tall, has a thick red beard, and a thicker Scottish accent.
i.pinimg.com/originals/23/2a/74/232a743a8c996fbc437c9c55b26fc50b.jpg
Cue the FAA throwing a fit because pegasi can fly and weigh more than .55 pounds. Better hope none of them busted class E during their rescue operations!
Edit: Actually it may be Class D or even restricted depending on how close we are to Marshall AAF or Manhattan Regional from the ground to 3600. I wonder if this counts as a hazard to navigation and how they'll put it in the NOTAM? Who wants to bet Bruener's farm is going to get it's very own TFR?
Hardhooves is part of Twilight's house regiment isn't he? Only a pony stationed in Ponyville long term could be this externally calm after a monster assault, emergency evacuation and massive dimensional displacement... Or as they are know in Ponyville... Tuesdays.
I strongly believe the cuteness factor will play heavily in how humans will treat the ponies. From wanting to care for all but the most gruff of stallions, to turning on "Mama Bear" mode when ponies are perceived to be in danger, especially the little ones. The other thing I find hilarious is how the cross-species chatter is almost casual. Yes, there's that thin ice separating casual from crippling panic but it still almost seems like "Oh, it's just another Tuesday here in Ponyville".
If nothing else, at least it stopped raining ponies.
Can't wait to see if magic still works; unicorns doing their thing, pegasi wrangling clouds to ride, and earth ponies making crops grow like time-lapse videos. Would be neat to see a bunch of pegasi gang up on a supercell and buck the guts out of a tornado.
Life in Ponyville tends to inure you to weird and bizarre events, or drive you galloping mad.
Oh, and Spike came along, too? I wonder how the humans react when they realize they have not just a bunch of magic technicolor equines (some injured) in their hands, but an actual (snarky) little dragon, too!
9559885
A lot of people react to the utterly bizarre by just shutting off dealing with it until they have a chance to calm down and proccess. Some people go insane when they meet Jason Momoa in the grocery store, others have a nice discussion about breakfast cereals until they get home, then suddenly squeal.
How to show a mind short-circuiting in just four words.
"I hope" is never something you want to hear when someone's estimating how long the refugees will be staying. Multiple shoulds are only marginally better.
Granted, their eyes were pretty wide to begin with, so maybe they were just keeping quiet about it.
I find myself more intrigued by the possibilities of pony political parties than I probably should.
In any case, good to see some reasonable reactions on both sides. Hopefully that will keep up for a good while.
great story. Did anyone think about checking ponies for matching blood types for blood transfusions for the injured?
9559910
Equines have different blood types. Like.. .Waaaayyy different. I think it was brought up in Ch. 2.
9559910
It's not a simple matter. Pony blood transfusions would have to be the phlebotomist's equivalent of tensor math. BTW, P negative is totally a real horse blood type.
9559917
that was why I said that. Because they don't have the right type of blood at the hospital, but in a crowd of hundreds of ponies absolutely none of them having the right type seems unlikely
9559928
Those are some challenging odds. Enough that blood transfusions in Equestria has to be a real crapshoot.
In my brain, the organizational orders start out like this-
*Triage. Anypony not injured to one side, light injuries to a second, serious injuries to a third (once safe to move).
*Somebody needs to download an app on their phone that can generate ID badges. Get a couple of deputes or volunteers, ask the guards for help, and start getting pony names, pony photos, and parent's names (for kids). Get badges and lanyards (and a lanyard can be a good long piece of string) on them, so you can also generate a list of who's there and who isn't.
*Food isn't critical right now. Water is. Get a couple of deputes down to the nearest supermarket and pick up as many jugs of distilled water as you can and figure out how to distribute it. Have them leave it close to the event site, and people that have been there pick it up.
*Ask what the "quick and dirty" bathroom protocol is-if it's latrines, get some people digging and figure a way to screen them off.
*From a biological front, any potential quarantine has been breached. But, you can minimize contamination by starting to evacuate anywhere downwind, making any deliveries from upwind, no contact between people in the quarantine area and outside of it (I'd call it a rough circle about two miles wide).
*Hope for the best, plan for the worst. Find someone that can help you to figure out what the ponies can eat, get something to provide shade and cover (even if it's tarps and poles), establish security, and take notes on everything. If you have body cams and dash cams, keep them running.
My logic tells me to get Widget to a Vet. Reason is vets are used to multiple biological body types. Humans are human and built primarily the same with some divination.
A Vet handles an assortment of animal types and breeds. Just take dogs, K9s for example the body of a Great Dane is vastly different then a Jack Russell Terrier. So if an alien needed medical help a Vet would have a higher chance of figuring out alien biology.
Would also be smart if a Pony Doctor went with her.
9559991
Isn't that the old quip?
What do you call a vet that only knows how to treat one animal?
A doctor!
I’m finding myself drawn into this series? How far/long will it be going? Is this a full first contact and beyond situation, or will it end with everyone popping home and the story ending? I’m kinda hoping the former cause i love those stories.
These people are responding to the sudden emergence of aliens way better than most would.
9559908
Agreed. Reasonable reactions are a very good thing. Unless it's Twilight. Twilighting is very amusing.
Wait, democracy exists in Equestria?
Oh, don't get me started, either. Two words: Kathleen Sebelius.
But I'm here for the ponies, not politics.
Well I doubt they couldve landed in a nicer state. I think youre handling all this brilliantly, making a peaceful first contact that feels believeable. Fantastic job again, so excited to read what Sam has in mind :D
9560050
To some extent, just not all the way up the chain. We've seen mayors and such.
I love me some good human pony first contact stories :)
9559903
I'd like to think I'd take it in stride, give a shrug, maybe a "Huh, neat" and probably ask if I could scritch ears... (Had way too many pets over the years)
If they had landed in Kentucky, it would mean the hole Firefly made had reopened (G1)
Oh boy, I can imagine the military at Fort Riley getting ready to move out and form a perimeter around the area any moment now. Manhattan KS isn't far from the base.
That poor guard. All he wants is for somepony else to be running this Charlie Foxtrot.
9560050
Constitutional Monarchy nibba. Even if The Princesses aren't elected you still have mayors, governors, senators and a whole host of possible political positions that woulr need to be filled and where Celestia could/would allow the people to choose.
9559878
Maybe we've got some temporal mismatch between dimensions, because it's Friday in Kansas.
I laughed.
9560052
Two far scarier words: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sam_Brownback
Or in Elmont, New York during the Belmont Stakes. Would've shoved American Pharoah's victory to the 2nd page of the paper.
9559948
Of course, ponies aren't exactly the same as real horses, so hopefully their blood types are a bit less of a mess. Though the three tribes thing might cause its own complications...
9560110
That particular bifrost may not be gone so much as just...wandered.
Of course it was also clearly a temporal portal.
Which just confirms to me that G1 was during Discord's reign, just far away from the places he was actively paying attention.
9559963
Drinking distilled water may not be a good idea.
From www.healthline.com/health/can-you-drink-distilled-water:
"Aside from its flat taste, distilled water doesn’t provide you with minerals like calcium and magnesium that you get from tap water. Because it doesn’t contain its own minerals, distilled water has a tendency to pull them from whatever it touches to maintain a balance. So when you drink distilled water, it may pull small amounts of minerals from your body, including from your teeth. Because you already get most of the minerals you need from your diet, drinking distilled water shouldn’t make you deficient. Still, if you are going to drink distilled water, it’s a good idea to make sure you get your recommended daily servings of fruits and vegetables. Storing distilled water could be more of a problem. Distilled water can pull in minerals from any material it touches. This means it can absorb trace amounts of plastic or whatever substance is in the container that’s holding it."
9560266
What's the LD50 dose of fluorine for ponies? Or chlorine? Or iodine? Or magnesium?
We don't know.
Until we know exactly what the ponies need and what they don't need, distilled water is the safest because it has the fewest possible things that could cause issues. I would rather deal with the issues of an initial lack of minerals versus dehydration and the problems that come with that. Especially with ponies that are probably dealing with the stress of things happening.
Is this the attack where G1 Tirac shows up with the REAL Smooze and uses it to tear Equestria apart, and demonstrating he is the true master of Dark Magic by throwing a spiraling spear made of the stuff through Celestia's heart while she's holding a shield with her full power to allow the others to escape?
(That's G5's secret mid-series cliffhanger, you idiot! You spoiled everything!)
Yes. Yes I did.
(I hate you.)
9560440
Can you donate blood if you don't know your type? I don't remember mine, and my birth certificate and stuff is still in my father's safe deposit box somewhere.
9559878
Kansans have a similar attitude towards seasonal weather. In most of the country, you have four separate seasons. In Kansas, we call that Tuesday.
9560462
Of course you can! The Red Cross conducts tests on every pint of blood donated in order to ensure the blood type and to rule out any bloodborne pathogens.
Some people go to the Red Cross not to donate blood, but to have their blood checked for diseases. On the form, there is a box that you can check stating that you do not wish for your blood to be used for transfusions and you only wish to have it checked.
9560462 Yes. First-time donors get the red (pardon) carpet rolled out for them. There's a lot more questions that old-timers like me have cruised through a dozen times, and you get to find out what dura matter transplants are and how many months you can spend in Europe while still being eligible to donate etc.. so make time. They'll treat you nice. And your first donation gets typed and cross-matched, then you get notified so you find out what your type is too (I'm A- which I remember because it's about the only test I took in college that I scored an A on.) The process changes a little every three months (your 'recharge' time), so be aware. Both my wife and my daughters were saved by blood donations, so I'm more than happy to endure that needle stick and encourage others likewise.
9560307 I'm actually headcanoned the other way around, supposing that Equestria is a high heavy metals world, which would explain the preponderance of gemstones and the relative dearth of high-end predators.
"The testing for the Equestrian's vitamin pills came back, sir?"
"And?" General Drummond gave his aide a fierce scowl. "Don't make me wait."
"Well, they had to run the tests four times before accepting them. All of the regular terrestrial vitamins as they said, quite a few minerals." The aide cleared his throat. "And enough arsenic, molybdenum, bismuth, mercury, and selenium to kill a human if taken for extended periods of time."
Awesome
9559948
AFAIK not all antigen mismatches provoke a severe reaction. Human blood group systems are similar. There are a lot more than AB0 and +/- aka Rh(D).
This is great! The mark of a good POE fic is believability, and this has it nailed.
I also love the update speed, I know how hard it can be to stay consistent with updates.
At this time, which would be closer to aquiring? A dedicated selection of resources from various sources assembled then transported, or the first supermarket supply 18 wheeler with a container back for security that can be diverted from the nearest supermarket in town etc?
Pity the cruisers dont have drone assistance yet, Then again, the lights would get in the way of a roof sized micro Hawk?
I kinda want to see some earth ponies wander onto the worm farm.
Does the inverse apply? Can I request a name to show up?
Somewhere in Kentucky...
I walk in to find my supervisor (who rescues animals all the time) surrounded by all our other co-workers. "What's broken this time?" I ask.
The crowd parts and I see what everyone is staring wide-eyed at. "I just don't know what went wrong!" came a plaintive voice. Or in this case, who. I do a double-take, then breathe a sigh of relief. "Oh, thank Faust! There you are! You're supposed to be in Kansas. I'll just let Georg know. Somepony should be along shortly to escort you there." My coworkers look at me funny. I pull my dessert out of its brown paper bag. "Want a muffin?"
Temporarily displaced refugees fleeing a conflict, inadvertently gone off course. I’m sure the State Department and, more specifically, the Foreign Service have contingency plans for just that sort of event—even if this is a bit more outré than the usual.
Doing research for Cookie Pusher has turned up all kinds of odd and interesting information. . . .
If they landed in the Canton region of China... there'd be a new elicit aphrodisiac...
But, most likely they'd land in an ocean. Highest probability being the Pacific.
Anyway, the military shows up and guns them all down! Because that's what Hollywood believes the military do... because Hollywood is filled with spoiled A-holes who have no idea how the world works.