Burn Barrels And Hot Wheels
Gilda stood beside the burn-barrels, and wished for a lungful of that nice, clean, sulfur-tainted air over last week's battlefield. Canister after canister, box after box of contaminated bedding, bedpan piled upon bedpan, it was truly impressive how much toxic, dangerous filth a field hospital could produce day after day. The wounded and the patients leaked hideous fluids from every orifice, natural and otherwise, and all of it needed to be collected and disposed of without sickening anyone involved in the handling or collection thereof.
Gagging noises were coming from inside the now-abandoned row-house whose windows and entrances were glowing with a air-tight quarantine spell. Rankers Gilford and Gump were inside, mopping against the creeping flood of contaminated septic-tank overflow which was the result of those two imbeciles' having attempted to dispose of said contaminated waste in a simpler, dumber fashion than the right way, the regulation method for disposal of semi-liquid medical waste.
So now Gilda was doing their job for them, laboriously shoving all of it into the burn-barrels to broil away, while they got to mop up their messes inside, where Gilda devoutly hoped it smelled worse than it did out here.
"Come on, Lance Corporal, let us out!"
"Not until you're done mopping up that filth. Send out the next pair of buckets."
"We're going to be at this all week!"
"Come on, let us out!"
"No. This is what you get for trying to flush your obligations down the shitter."
"Come on, let us out and we can just burn this dump down!"
"Yeah, we're just going to put all of this into the burn barrels anyways, this whole place is a shithole! Nogriff will miss it!"
"We're not burning down a rowhouse, it'll send the whole block up in smoke. And anyways, it's somegriff's house. Even if it is a dung-encrusted hovel, it's somegriff's precious dung-encrusted hovel. Get back to mopping, and here's the next couple of buckets."
Gilda fed the burn-barrels with the filth from inside the hovel. As the imbeciles inside passed out the contaminated waste welling up from the compromised septic tank, she fed the buckets back through the seal. She finally let them out when they swore on a stack of princess-medallions that the outflow in the gloryhole had ceased.
Gilda used the stick that Gleaming Shield had given her that controlled the seal on the building. The magenta glow dispersed, and the wind once again passed through that two-storey shack's open windows and doors. It wouldn't help, of course, because that wind was heavy with the foul black smoke from the burn-barrels, but that would have been the case whether or not those two idiots had tried to flush befouled bed-sheets down a septic tank.
Gilda had no idea what they were thinking. They didn't even have septic tanks in Griffonstone, and she knew better than to do that.
She left the tending of the burn-barrels to Gilford, who was the less-imbecilic of the pair, and took the utterly hapless Gump into the kitchen with a fresh set of mops and buckets to see what they could do about the slightly less befouled kitchen. They were putting a bit of a spit-shine on the absent homeowner's cooking area - which might someday be worthy of actually preparing food in, some happy day - when Gleaming Shield stuck her head in the kitchen window, her head surrounded with the glowing sign of a stink-filter spell.
"Are you done with this punishment detail, Gilda? We have another caravan of prisoners who need guard oversight."
"I don't know, lieutenant ma'am," said Gilda, eyeing the cretinous Gump as he whistled and wiped a table-top with a filthy rag. A table-top which hadn't been befouled in the original septic backflow, but certainly was now. "Never mind, I think we've done enough damage here. Put that down, Gump, and get these buckets and mops out of here. Can we destroy these with the other tools, lieutenant ma'am?"
"I don't care, that's what burn barrels are for. Go on, private, do as the lance corporal says."
"Yes'm!" He bumbled out of the kitchen, bouncing once off of the door-frame as he went.
The lieutenant wrinkled her nose as she dispelled her protective spell, taking a cautious sniff. "Doesn't smell too bad in here, after all."
"Huh. I wouldn't know, my beak is burnt out by now. Maybe I'll smell something again in the new year."
"So… have you learned your lesson, Gilda?"
"What, to not talk about the officers behind their backs when they're actually behind mine?"
"That would be a start. Also, not calling my fellow officers 'Blue' Falcon and 'Gold' Brick would be nice."
"Thing is, the captain is a buddy-fucker, and Lieutenant Brick has never seen a job she couldn't foist off on the next victim sooner than I could flick a bit of dung off my left paw. And they both dumped this hospital detail on your back without thinking twice."
"Somepony had to do it. The mobile hospital people had wards full of wounded rebels, and not nearly enough orderlies to keep order."
"This is the least mobile outfit I've ever seen."
"From your long months of service, no doubt. But yes, the experiment seems rather… tentative, doesn't it?"
Gilda tromped out the back, and met Gleaming Shield out by the burn barrels in the courtyard, where the remains of the mops and buckets were burning merrily, aiding in their way the destruction of the medical waste they'd been contaminated with.
Having reassured themselves that the two idiots weren't going to set themselves or anything else in their vicinity on fire, the lieutenant and her bat-hen passed through the passage between rowhouses out into the street that had become, however temporarily, the 93/1st Medical Field Squadron. Each front door on the road was marked with sloppy red crosses, and orderlies and nurses passed in and out of said marked doors with a surprising regularity. The entire encampment was abuzz with activity.
This was, of course, and still, the fault of the previous week's bloodshed, which the officers insisted on calling the Battle of Gilbert Square, and everygriff else called 'the Crab Bucket'. Even one-sided slaughters resulted in far more wounded casualties than corpses, and the Crab Bucket had been no exception. Few rebels had surrendered unharmed, and fewer still got through the process of capture without a little 'Trottish justice', as the locals called it. The 93/1st and the other, more traditional medical squadrons were fully engaged in fixing, repairing, and warehousing the hundreds of enemy wounded in various locations around the Boulevard of the Corbids.
The local charity hospital had been filled to the brim with the doctors and staff of the traditionally-organized 11/14th and 27/14th Medical Squadrons, leaving no space for the eccentrics of the experimental 'mobile field hospital'. Instead, they'd fetched up here, on a side-street known informally as Tinker's Alley and more officially 'Hope Floats Street'. The tinkers had been shuffled off with whatever portable precious goods they could snatch up and bundle away, and the doctors and officers of the 93/1st moved into the appropriated structures, which they'd turned into ad-hoc operating rooms, wards, barracks, and storage stables.
It quickly became obvious that the medicos couldn't operate on their patients, guard said patients when they were conscious, and secure their own perimeter at the same time. The morning after the Crab Bucket, a detail had been called for, and the Fifth Griffish had caught the shit-bouquet.
All the officers with the worst records had been assigned to the detail, along with Gleaming Shield, who had bought herself no grace with the major for disappearing for half the evening in the middle of the closest thing to a fight the battalion had seen in months. And where Gleaming Shield went, her bat-hen followed, weighed down with all the baggage and at least three check-lists.
The Territorials set up shop on the roofs of Tinker's Alley, where they could get some sleep in the night chill, as well as a good vantage of the alleyways and hovels of the griffish ghetto they were supposed to 'secure'. Down below, the row-houses were full of moaning, miserable prisoners and their caretakers, such as they were.
The staff of the 93/1st wasn't all that unusual, as far as pony outfits went, being mostly Baltimarian earth ponies from what sounded like a series of ghettos no wealthier nor more prestigious than the griffish one that surrounded Tinker's Alley. But it was the doctors and some of the doctors' hangers-on that really made the 93/1st something out of Gilda's experience.
For one thing, almost none of them were ponies. The lieutenant colonel, a rather abstracted pegasus named Fishing Pole, was, obviously, a pony, and so was a mean-faced martinet who insisted on being called Major Burn Salve. But the bulk of the scalpel-jockeys were foreigners and weird creatures, some from places Gilda had heard of, and some totally out of her ken.
The diamond dog, for instance, was from a species Gilda knew existed, but she'd never seen one in the hulking flesh before. Bones spoke in a cultured accent Gilda didn't recognize, either, although someone told her that it might have been Saddle Arabian. He didn't talk to griffons outside of the squadron, and in Gilda's observation didn't speak much even at the card-table when he thought nogriff was watching.
Gilda wasn't even sure what Hawk Eye was, aside from incurably randy and handsy. She sort of looked like a pegasus and a monkey had knocked up a griffon and then kidnapped the egg to be raised among dragons. She had a beak, and wings, and feathers on those wings. Otherwise? Freaky-looking.
Most of the other doctors were similar odds and ends, no two alike, aside from Bones' three wives, who worked as a cook, a scullery maid, and a nurse, respectively. Gilda had been assured by one of the Baltimarians that the ability to keep three wives under one roof was why Bones was known as the Mighty Spear. The giggling mare clearly meant it as some sort of naughty joke, but Gilda just rolled her eyes at the pony.
As soon as Gleaming Shield released Gilda from her punishment detail, Gilda hurried back to what she'd been working on before the Territorial officers had caught her cursing their names in front of other enlisted griffons. Or, in this case, enlisted ponies. It took Gilda some scrambling to track down the supplies and logistics sergeants that she'd been talking to before the officers had interrupted.
Sergeant Ration Line was washing bed-pans in the third stable Gilda checked. The converted 'stable' had been, in its civilian life, a metal-worker's forge, but the tiny little reinforced benches, small anvils, and littler forges were instead covered with bales of rolled-up bandages, stacks of clean bedpans, and various packages piled higgledy-piggledy.
Gilda looked closer, and realized that there were an awful lot of bed-pans stacked in the corners. And… were those partially assembled pans? Like, one hanging on that anvil, half-formed?
The sergeant was using a wash-station for the tinsmiths to clean out used bedpans. The tinkers would be furious if they saw it, Gilda thought.
"What the hades is this? Are you making your bedpans from scratch?
"Ah, the dyed lance corporal," said the pony sergeant. "How are you, hon? I gather our little interrupted conversation got you a morning's worth of unpleasantness, did it?"
"More than a morning's worth, sergeant. What is this, seriously? It looks like somegriff's been making tin shitters in here."
"That's because they were, before we appropriated the place. We aren't getting any more until we move out of this street, these griffons were our suppliers, I think. So, are you ready to talk now?"
Gilda centred herself, and looked him square in the eyes. "All my most humble apologies for wasting your time, sergeant. I must be more careful in observing what's going on behind my tail."
"Especially with Captain Eye in the vicinity, this is a fact. But before we were so rudely interrupted by your superiors, we were talking transportation, were we not?"
"I believe so, sergeant. Namely, your perennial lack thereof?"
"For a mobile hospital, we are sadly…"
"Immobile, so I have seen. I haven't seen a single carriage since we got here that we didn't bring ourselves."
"Ah, and you certainly keep an eagle eye on it, do you not?"
"Ancestry has been kind to my race in that sense, if no other. But really? You have no wheeled vehicles?"
"Well, we did when we got here. But we turn our backs, and poof! The alleys are empty, the blocks kicked aside, and nothing to be found. Once, there was a nice neat pile of medicine and bedding sitting in the middle of the road, where the cart had been. As if somepony had just yanked the cart right out from under the cargo."
"Well, moving a hot carriage, that's a simple matter. There's an endless market for good carts. Medicine? That's a specialized business. Maybe they thought they couldn't move medicine."
"You seem oddly knowledgeable about the matter. Lance corporal, did your griffons steal my carts?"
"Mistral forbid! No, sergeant, my griffons never ventured so far into the pony theatre of operations as to encounter you medicos and your sadly light-wheeled vehicles. Speaking of which, where has the EUP been hiding you all? I have to admit I was surprised to find that so many dedicated medical units had been secreted here in Trottingham, without my having heard of it."
"Far-flung information-gathering apparatus you have, my young hen?"
"Levant forbid! I am merely a… quick study. And there's so much to study here in the Isles. Such as how easily entire squadrons disappear into the metropolis. Let alone a clawful of easily re-painted carts."
"So you don't think you can retrieve them?"
"Not those specific carriages, nor would if I wasn't confident that they wouldn't be stolen right out from under your nose as soon as I turned my back. Your outfit has a sad lack of disreputable blackguards, Sergeant Ration Line. I had hopes that you might be that villain, given your name, but you haven't once tried to blackmail me into doing your bidding. I'm shocked at how badly you're slacking your officers."
"You think I should study evil, to do right by my ponies?"
"I think that is the proper study and occupation of all sergeants, sergeant. Sergeants, corporals, and princes - virtue in all of these is an offense against their chosen professions. You should be claiming your squadrons' vital equipment as your personal fiefdom, and jealously guarding it for your own evil purposes. Nogriff ever washed a borrowed cart, nor will a griffon properly protect a vehicle unless they claim it, selfishly, squalidly, meanly - as theirs."
"That's an unnecessarily cynical point of view. Almost sounds like March Valley."
It was, Gilda had read that disreputable pony's Treatises on Livery's History Of Roam as well as that facile bit of toadying March Valley had written to suck up to Queen Grizelda when he'd been exiled by the pony princess. March Valley had been much more popular in Griffonia than he ever had been in his homeland.
"Well, anyways, something must be done.You're too honest to be a non-com, Rat Line. They should have made you an officer."
"I know! Just because I faint at the sight of blood..." The sergeant used his teeth to pick up another bedpan stained with filth and gore, and continued his washing in the now almost as befouled tin-forge sink.
Gilda crooked an eyebrow at this, but let it pass.
"Well, sergeant," she continued. "If I can't convince you to cheat on virtue with practical villainy, I can at least do something to entertain the lady when you and your wife are not in the room. Let's talk about where I can find some new wheels for your temporarily immobile field hospital."
Stats
Page generated in 0.02 seconds
Total duration
617 users online
939,829 hits today, 2,561,572 yesterday
FIMFiction
My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic Fanfiction
Designed and coded by knighty & Xaquseg - © 2011-2024
Follow & Support Us
Support us
SubStar
Chat!
Discord
Follow us
Twitter
MLP: Friendship is Magic® - © 2024 Hasbro Inc.®
Fimfiction is in no way affiliated with or endorsed by Hasbro Inc.®
There’s just something about a competent and pragmatic bat-hen...
They make good aides. What did you think I meant?
Magic-powered stick. MAGIC-POWERED STICK!
*Suicide is Painless instrumental intensifies*
Bones, a field surgeon? I see what you did there
Was that MASH reference a harpy? I suppose they do theoretically exist in a non-piratical context.
In any case, I get the feeling this chapter is largely setup for something truly outrageous. I look forward to finding out what.
9266095
Hawk Eye is a hippogriff. Which Gilda has never laid eyes on before, and doesn't quite know what to make of, really.
9266107
Huh. Now I'm wondering what this more militarized Equestria did with/to the Storm King...
Look like Gilda is making herself usefull, which is probably part of a scheme to make money, trying to become too useful to be sacked, trying to appease Gleaming Shield or all three.
Any good military operations depends on the soon important sanitary conditions. In Wars of the past, it's was Sickness and Diseases who claimed the more victims. Famine come second and Battles itself a distant third. Maybe not a successful but a good army have whole units whose work it to clean camps, secure drinkable waters, dispose of waste correctly and destroy sources of contaminations.
It's nice too see other species taking their part in this conflict and it make a lot of sence to see them in a medical unit, there is always the need for more doctors and nurses. Nice idea. But I am surprised to see a Diamond Dogs smart enough to become a doctor, most of them are dumbs as rocks!
And was the other that Gilda couldn't identify an Hyppogriff?
But I have to ask, with their new duty, is Gleaming Shield troops still taking parts in the parades or they have been cancelled due to the resent battle? I mean, the Trottingham population must be too scared to assist in case of a new bombing and Pinkie stratagem is already spent so I don't know if it's worth while to continue. Maybe for psychological warfare or to raise moral, I could see those continuing but if not, all the money that went into the new uniforms was kind of wasted...
When did Gleaming Shield disappear? Wasn't she on the carriage Gilda was strapped to a few chapter ago? Did I miss that?
9266121
Excepting the possibility of Not-Psy Corps sabotage as part of a plan to weaken Equestria from within and takeover, I suspect the Storm King’s oncoming air fleet would take the form of a stoppable force meeting a decidedly less-than-movable object.
9266179
I think the events that brings the Storm King to Equestria are not there yet an we will have to content with Nightmare Moon, Discord, Chrysalis and Sombra before SK have the reach to attack an armed Equestria. We will have to see who appears first.
But if the Storm King do attack, Equestria wouldn't be able to just stay on the defensive and would have to go an liberate some on the countries he conquered to weaken his war machine. Come to think of it, Equestria may have to engage some alliance with other countries to be able to counter a foe that conquered a big part of the world.
9266393
Assuming everything outside the current conflict remains the same, yes, we’re about a decade from the Storm King turning his eyes to Equestria.
Equestria and the territories around it are generally portrayed as prosperous and rich with natural resources. Assuming they don’t just assassinate the Storm King, splintering his army among squabbling lieutenants, this alternate Equestria would be perfectly capable of fighting and winning a defensive war.
The Storm King’s army has been show to be more akin to megacorp with its own private army than an actual nation. He conquers nations for their wealth and magical artifacts of power, which he uses to fund his army for more conquests. Giving him metaphorical bloody nose after bloody nose until the venture was no longer worth the cost would likely be enough for Equestria to remain unconquered. His own resources are not limitless, either.
That said, if he started to invade lands directly surrounding Equestria as staging grounds to stifle and box them in, then it would be time to start a reverse-conquest/liberation.
Largely back to business as usual for Gilda, I see...just in a slightly new setting.
Also, MASH references. I approve.
Of course, it helps that they're the first references you've made in this story that I could immediately and directly place without effort. The rest either take me a few minutes, or, even more likely, fly over my head entirely. 
Not really surprised either way. Considering the setting, how can you NOT make a couple MASH references?
BWAHAHAHAHAHHA!
You reminded me of this:
https://www.reddit.com/r/MilitaryStories/comments/9c7tbu/sn_darwinism_and_the_second_poop_debacle_electric/
MASH reference!
Medical waste. Arguably the most unpleasant thing to dispose of that isn’t actively resisting disposal.
I love how this is the thing that finally motivates me to try to learn how the military is organized. Lots of new words to look up as well.
Could someone tell me a term I can look up for the “93/1st” kind of naming for the medical squads? It isn’t particularly conducive to Googling as far as I can tell.
So they have a mobile, nonmoble hospital?
10280356
Just a bit of poking fun at the apparent immobility of the MASH in the sitcom of that name, which seemed to rarely if ever pick up and move in the course of the seasons.
He's a doctor, not a wagon-maker!