All Quiet on the Equestrian Front

by Tempest Wind

Black Betty

“You hit somebody with your fist and not your fingers spread.”

Eight

Black Betty

—

The welding torch flared to life, hissing and crackling, as the scorching flame touched and began heating the metal on the side of the Riptide Cruiser Tank. The front armor had taken quite a beating, and it had been a miracle it made it back at all. Pockmarks from bounced shells littered the front of the tank, not to mention the full-on hole just left of the gun barrel.

“Jeez, looks like you poor fuckers went through the ringer.” Some Pony’s voice snarked, from off to the left, as Private Applebloom Apple stopped what she was doing, shut off the torch, and stood up from her hunched position atop the front of the Riptide.

“D’ya mind? Ah’m trying to git this varmint back in working order.” The yellow-coated earth pony griped, raising her welding mask above her face.

“Yeesh, you look like you went through three rounds yourself, kid.”

Applebloom just sighed and rolled her eyes, as she let the welding mask fall back over her face. She did look pretty terrible at the moment, sure, but hey, she looked better than the damn tank at least. “Yeah, yeah, why don’t y’all go choke on somethin’ and quit wasting mah time.”

“Meh, nothing better to do at the moment, Apples. What happened, you lose a fight with a boxer?”

The earth pony mare bit off her reply, as a pair of ponies- one a Pegasus and one a Unicorn- helped to roll a large, tank-sized engine into the maintenance bay, strapped to a shop lift that looked like it’d come straight from a mechanic’s shop. With the town of Shire nearby, it probably had in all honesty.

“Oh thank goodness, ah was gettin’ worried ah’d have to try an’ fix up the old one while tweedle dee an’ tweedle dumb here bothered me.”

“You two miscreants giving my engineer bullshit?” The Non-Commissioned Officer- A light lavender unicorn mare with a dirty blonde mane- griped, as she leaned against the new engine block, rubbing a dry cloth against her sweaty forehead.

“Eh, just a bit, Sargeant, ma’am. You guys get hammered out there?”

“You could say that. Betty’s gonna need a lot more than a new motor after all’s said and done. Transmission’s shot to shit too- and stuck in reverse.”

“Damn. And wait a minute. Betty, as in Black Betty?”

“Yeah, that’s right,” Applebloom nodded, as she hopped off the front of the tank, to inspect the new engine.

“No shit. We heard you took down like, twelve of those new bug super tanks.”

The Pegasus mare snorted, shaking her short magenta bangs. “Nah, just one. While we were busy shitting bricks, at that.”

“Understatement of th’ century, Scoots.” Applebloom snorted in amusement. “You wanna tell it, Dinks? Or should I?”

“Ah, you got to tell it last time. My turn to impress the miscreants,” Sergeant Dinky Doo chuckled dryly, before taking a seat at a makeshift table built from a worn metal side-plate. “Right, so… where to start?”
—-
Guess I should start with our old Sarge, Zecora. Zebra mare, but she was a pretty good sort. Not like the freaky tribals across the water. She’d been a friend of ours from Ponyville, back home. Knew a lot about the Everfree Forest, and that neat Zebra herbal magic stuff. Good friend of ours. Liked to rhyme a lot, though. If there was anything bad about her, it was the constant rhyming.

She was our Squad Lead when we first arrived at the town of Shire… We’d seen some minor fighting around Tall Tales before it fell, acting as rear guard for Colonel Berrytwist’s defenders when they finally pulled out. Heard they’d given a pretty damn good account of themselves, before we showed up.

Shire was different. See, the Shire was our first offensive action of the war. Blueblood called it Supercharge.
—
“This fight is sure to be deadly.. Apple Bloom, is the crew at the ready?”

“Yes’m, Sarge. Dinky’s complaining about poor turret pressure, but Scoots and I think we’ve got it sorted.”

The Zebra nodded from beneath her tanker’s skull cap, as the pair trotted purposefully along the line of idling tanks, back towards their own. “Let us hope; otherwise, we shall be useless, and Dinky I think will mope.”

“Mope. Mmmope. That’s a funny word.”

The Zebra shrugged, as the two stopped in front of their own tank, the words “Black Betty” painted on, above the sloppy painting of four Changeling military crosses- the crew’s tank kills up to this point.

“That is quite true. Regardless, without power to the turret, I think we shall have upon our hooves a very sad Corporal Doo.”

“Understatement of th’ day.” Applebloom snarked, as the two hopped atop the tank, a Riptide Cruiser Model. The Riptide itself was an excellent by tank, from what the crew of Betty had seen from using it, truly bridging the gap between the much lighter dart cruisers and the rather heavy Celestias.

However, its real strength lay behind the short barreled 75mm Main gun, almost directly taken off Changeling Panzer models. The key difference between the two models however, lay in the velocity. Whereas the Changeling Panzer Gun was more of a direct-fire howitzer for clearing out infantry, the Riptide’s main gun was designed for fighting tanks- something the Changeling Panzers had learned the hard way, back at Tall Tales.

Mounting up within their tank, Applebloom slid into the loader’s position, next to and slightly behind Dinky, as Zecora slid herself into the commander’s chair, closing the hatch behind her.

“Hey gals. We were worried you weren’t going to make it!” Their driver joked, as she let the Riptide’s diesel motor turn over, grumbling loudly, whilst tanks to their left and right did the same.

“We are quite sorry for the wait, but do not fret, for we are not late. Rather, worry for your life. As we are to be the tank dead center, we shall have before us, a fair bit of coming strife.”

“Oh shit, dead center?” Dinky Blinked, as she paused her cleaning of her gun sight. “You gotta be kidding me.”

“Those words I did in fact utter, and furthermore, did you hear me stutter?”

There was a momentary pause amidst the crew, as the only noise audible throughout the tank was the rumblings of it and the others surrounding them.

“Okay, so we’re middle of the damn line. Great. What’s the plan?”

Zecora cleared her throat, as she nodded for Scootaloo to begin rolling forward. As the young mare- barely an adult- did so, to their left and right, other tanks did so as well. “We are to push forward against the Changeling Line. Tonight, in Vanhoover, we are to dine. The enemy line shall be strong, and the battle shall be long. However, our forces shall strike deep, and at the end of the day, her many dead Changelings, the witch Chrysalis shall weep.”
—
Sarge, that is both brilliant and horridly cheesy at the same time. And she was always rhyming like that?

Well yeah, most of the time. She tended to drop the rhyming during pitched battle. No time for minced words while being shot at.
—
The Riptide known as Black Betty surged forward at the front of the armored Spearhead, other Riptide tanks from the armored division taking up the immediate left and right of the spearhead formation. Past them sat two groups of heavy armor attached to the division, making up the left and right flanks. To the far left and far right, out of vision of the medium and heavy tanks, light tanks backed by motorized infantry riding trucks were securing the sides of the spearhead.

Betty rolled across the snow, throwing white powder about, as it chugged across the town of Shire, towards the frozen over river. It was just a few days after Hearth’s Warming, when the river was at its most solid- solid enough, the engineers swore up and down, to support even the heavily armored, motorized bunkers that were Celestia tanks.

“Alright, moment of truth!” Scootaloo barked above the clanking din of the Riptide, as the medium tank rose up the short berm of the riverbank, then down the bank itself onto the frozen river. There was a short, second or so pause, as both Equestrian and Changeling defenders on either end of the river watched in shock, punctuated by the following of several other tanks, as the Riptides found purchase on the slippery ice, and started charging across.

Changeling Anti-Tank Guns roared to life as Machine Guns and small artillery pieces from both banks of the river echoed back and forth across the field. Off to the left, Zecora winced from the Commander’s hatch, watching from her glass viewports as an artillery shell detonated at the front of a Celestia tank. The resulting explosion did little to the vehicle itself, but shattered the ice beneath it, as the impressively heavy tank sunk immediately into the frigid river.

“Do not stop until we are across!” Zecora practically shrieked, as Scootaloo gunned it across the river, the Riptide’s treads and track wheels screeching as they slid and fought for purchase along the slippery ice.

A mighty clang echoed out as something struck the Riptide, sending it spinning dangerously across the ice, as it careened into a Riptide beside it, slamming both to a halt.

“It bounced! Fuck’s sake it was a bounce!”

“Worry later! Get us moving now!” The Zebra tank sergeant barked again, watching the battle unfold from the command ports, as Dinky swiveled the gun turret about to the offending Anti Tank Gun.

“Blasting that Gun!”

“Aim direct, ah’v got AP loaded!”

The 75 millimeter swiveled again and blasted forth a shell, piercing the Changeling AT gun’s heat shield. Inside the Riptide, Applebloom slung open the breach, ejecting the empty shell, twisting behind herself to snag a fresh shell from the rack, before slamming it into the open breech, sealing it afterwards. “HE up!”

Dinky declined to reply, instead adjusting her aim, and letting her cannon do the talking for her. The high explosive shell detonated against the base of the anti-tank gun, sending it careening backwards, as deadly explosive shrapnel scattered outwards from the impact. Up and down the line, the story was much the same, as Equestrian tanks engaged light Changeling Panzers, and copious amounts of anti-tank guns, of varying calibers.

Finally, Scootaloo found traction on the ice, and got Black Betty rolling again, slipping and sliding across the ice until her treads found firm purchase on the opposite bank. A little further down the line, other riptides and a couple Celestias were doing the same, guns chattering away at enemies on the bank.

“This is Betty to all tanks! We are across the river! Advance! Infantry will mop up the defenders!” Zecora commanded, as the Equestrian Armored Unit’s continued to pour onto the enemy held bank.

“Here goes nothing.” Scootaloo muttered, as she lurched the Riptide back into gear, rolling up the river bank. “Wonder what’s out there.”

“Dunno,” Dinky began, sitting back momentarily from her gun sight to wipe a hoof across her forehead, “but all that we’re gonna leave is dead bugs.”

Comments

[Stellar_]

Why the sudden change from real-world vehicles to fictional vehicles?

[Starlight Nova]

May I please get a link to MadHotaru's deviantart page?

[Tempest Wind]

8663867
sure!
https://madhotaru.deviantart.com/

Hotaru's a great artist.

[Tempest Wind]

8663779
Mod things. I'll have to make a blog post about it to avoid confusion.
The Celestia is literally a Churchill I Heavy Tank.
The Riptide is a Cromwell medium tank.
The Dart is a Cruiser IV light tank.

They're just differently named because idk, mod development reasons.

[Stellar_]

8664134
Ah, okay. Just be sure to say what tanks the ones in the fix are equal to.

[Tempest Wind]

8664150
Yep, that’s the idea

[Sassy_Changeling]

Woah Black Betty, bramble jam.