Nightwatch: The Elements of Destruction

by SFaccountant

Scream

Nightwatch – The Elements of Destruction
By SFaccountant

Chapter 4
Scream

---

Badlands
Geolocation redacted

“Okay, here we go… I’m seeing a watch tower on each side and a fence with a gate for defense. Not exactly hardened stuff. They set this camp up quickly. And probably recently.”

Dusk Blade, Nacht, Gloom Fang and Neuron Dialect all sat in front of a glowing holo-screen Gear Works was projecting, studying the imagery. The Dark Acolyte was inloading vid data from the Strider, which loomed above them while it studied the enemy camp. Penumbra Shard lay curled up behind the other ponies, dozing on the ground like a cat.

“All right, let’s see about some of these structures… These look like barracks. Of course any structure in an Ork camp usually doubles as a barracks; I’ve seen them napping on ordnance boxes and on fuel silos. Is that a workshop there? I need a better angle to be sure, but it looks pretty likely from here. The scrap yard will be behind it. That’s our target.”

Nacht tapped a hoof against the Strider’s leg. “Hey, can you get another look at the place from a different position?”

“Where do you want me to go? There’s no room up here!” Zariyah retorted. “Is already miracle we have not been spotted by greenskins racing about in dead of night!”

“My magic is very powerful, but I don’t know if I would call it a ‘miracle,’” Penumbra mused.

“Then use magic to survey enemy camp! This is the best view I can obtain!” the Strider pilot snapped.

The ponies were huddled on a narrow bluff overlooking an Ork camp erected within a barren crater. The terrain mostly consisted of jagged rock spires that sat atop the ground like misshapen trees, with some of them smashed or blasted away to clear roads for the Orks’ vehicles. A few distant fires flickered from within and atop the outpost’s palisade, marking the settlement to distant observers without illuminating too much of the interior. As Zariyah had suggested, there were no other obvious vantage points that a Strider could access, at least from this side of the camp.

“Okay, fine. Yeesh. You sure are cranky,” Nacht sniffed.

“Of course I am! I should have gone to rest hours ago and instead I am facing down a small army of Orks! And you say I am not even permitted to tag base for artillery?!”

“The objective will not survive heavy bombardment. We’re here to recover the pylon, not destroy it,” Neuron reminded the others.

“Enough arguing,” Dusk Blade said firmly, “I have a plan.”

The other thestrals perked up with varying levels of excitement, and Penumbra started paying more attention as well. Zariyah made an aggravated noise, but otherwise went silent. Dusk stepped closer to the hololith and pointed to the watchtower.

“Neuro, you take out the guard here at range. The rest of Dagger Squad and Shard will wait over here behind this outcropping for the enemy to investigate. Neuro, after taking the shot, check to make sure someone noticed and then come join us.”

“We’re alerting them and waiting for them to gather together?” Nacht asked.

“Yeah. We’ve got to eliminate them so we can search the camp, so we want them all together.” Dusk turned to Gloom Fang. “Gloomy, when we have a good mob riled up, you’re going in. I think the beggar routine would work all right; we just have to confuse them for a second.”

Gears blinked his optic lights. “Beggar routine?”

Dusk turned his attention to Gear Works. “Don’t worry about it. You and Backfire retreat to that weird petrified glade we passed a minute back. Some of the Orks might head this way after Neuro takes the shot, so you need to have a better hiding place. Stay there and do NOT engage the enemy. Shard will contact you via familiar when it’s safe enough to proceed.”

“I do not understand,” interjected Zariyah. “Keeping Techpriest back is one thing, but surely you could use a lascannon for support when trying to ambush an Ork camp.”

“He’s a Dark Acolyte,” Neuron Dialect said immediately, “and he needs the protection more than we do.”

“Besides that, having a Strider for fire support is… just not part of our usual attack plan,” Dusk admitted. “Does everypony understand?”

“I am concerned about the ability of five ponies to overcome an entire outpost of greenskin warriors,” Gear Works mumbled, “particularly if they are alerted to an attack first.”

“You let me handle the tactics, buddy,” the Lieutenant replied, trotting over and slapping Gears on the back with a wing. “Dagger Squad, let’s go!”

Dusk turned and galloped down the bluff, followed by Nacht, Gloom, and Penumbra. Neuron Dialect walked up to the top of the bluff while the Strider walked backward, and then she drew her galvanic rifle. Letting the barrel rest on the rocks, she adjusted the stock with her hooves while her wing tip reached for the trigger.

Gear Works flinched at the gunshot, surprised at how fast it was made. Neuron flipped the rifle over onto her back, slipping it into a sling with practiced ease. She turned her head to the side slightly, a faint red glow peeking out from her hood.

“They’ll spot the body in a few seconds. You’re going to have to hurry up.” Without another word, Neuron Dialect leapt over the front of the bluff.

Gear Works was perplexed that she would choose that route to depart from, as it was fully exposed to the camp she had just attacked. He was tempted to walk over and explain this point, perhaps by shouting down at the bat pony during her descent, but ultimately decided to take her advice and leave. Zariyah lowered her Strider into a sitting position and Gears clamped onto the support hook with his servo arm before scrambling up top again.

Once the Dark Acolyte was fairly secured, he tapped his bionic hoof against the cockpit hatch. The Strider lurched upright once again, and then rushed down the incline at an easy trot. Soon the battlesuit and its lone passenger had disappeared into the darkness, headed in the opposite direction from the thestral commandos.

---

Badlands
Ork camp (non-designated) perimeter

Dusk glanced over his shoulder as Neuron Dialect appeared. Her body seemed to emerge from empty air, slipping out of the darkness to stand in the glow cast from Penumbra’s horn. Dusk nodded slightly and then returned his attention to the unicorn.

Penumbra’s eyes were murky pools of turquoise light, and her horn had a swirling magic aura of the same hue. Her jaw hung open slightly, moving as if she was speaking words that never quite emerged. Every once in a while her head would turn or tilt, staring at something in the air that only she could see.

“How many do you think are in this camp?” Nacht asked, sitting with her echo cannon laying on the ground in front of her.

“This isn’t a big place. Probably an outpost for harvesting food and scrap that mostly gets traded with the bigger bases. So I want to say… 50 Orks? Maybe 50 again in Gretchin.”

“There’s always more than you think,” Neuron grumbled.

Penumbra gasped, and her eyes quickly returned to normal. She blinked repeatedly and shook her head, and then looked up as a single bat flew overhead. The bat released a gentle squeak, hovering in place for a moment, and then took off, speeding away from the alien camp.

“They’re gathered just inside the gate,” the Moon Mage warned.

“Are they arming up to hunt down the enemy?” Dusk asked.

“No. They’re arguing. Three of the Nobs got in a fistfight.” She shrugged. “I didn’t see any more of them coming from the buildings, so I think this is all the Orks that could be bothered to wake up.”

“All right, then we’re doing this. Gloomy?”

Gloom Fang started fiddling with his ballistic brace, unfastening the bands that secured his splinter rifle to his foreleg. He discarded the weapon, and then took off his mask as well. He shook his head violently to unsettle his hair, and then looked over his armor.

“You think this is good enough? Maybe I should scratch up the plating or leave some of it behind,” Gloom wondered aloud.

“You’re fine. Orks aren’t much for details and you’ll probably need the armor,” Dusk replied. “You ready?”

“Show time,” Gloom replied with a small smirk before walking around the rock spire and heading toward the camp.

The palisade was formed of scrap metal plates hammered together unevenly over a combination of wood logs and rusted scaffolding. It was barely five feet high and riddled with gaps big enough for a pony; a weak attempt at defensive engineering even by Ork standards. Torches were bolted on the sides to provide light, although half of them were burnt out. A large searchlight was mounted on each of the watch towers, providing the only substantial light, and most of them were sweeping across the top of the rocky crags to look for elevated snipers’ nests.

Gloom Fang slowly approached the camp’s front gates, adopting an exaggerated limp in his rear left leg. His forehead creased and his ears pinned back. He extended one wing and let it hang off his body, and then he took a deep breath.

“Help! Someone! Please, help me!” the thestral cried, ending the plea with a loud whine.

The closest searchlight immediately swiveled around, casting a bright light over the stallion. Gloom winced and turned his face away.

“Hello? I need help! I think my leg is broken!” he shouted into the cold night air.

A loud, guttural laugh came from the palisade, followed by a burst of gunfire. Gloom Fang yelped and dropped flat on the ground in a completely sincere display of panic, and he covered his eyes with his hooves as bullets sawed across the dirt next to him. While Orks frequently took prisoners from creatures who couldn’t offer them a fight, the alien thugs hardly had a particular code of conduct or strategy in doing so. It was mostly up to the whim of whichever Ork had the immediate opportunity to enslave a helpless target or dispose of them immediately.

This particular gunner snorted in contempt after seeing the stallion quivering on the ground, and he stopped shooting. “Oi! Sumbody git dat hoss! We need da extree grub!”

“G-Grub?!” Gloom Fang asked, his voice quivering. “You mean you’re gonna… you want to…”

The gates swung open, and a veritable horde of greenskins tromped out of the camp. Gloom remained on the ground, shaking under the searchlight’s beam while the alien warriors crossed the distance. There was no reason for so many Orks to address the capture of one prisoner, but they had converged anyway since they had been alerted and had nothing better to do.

Exactly as planned.

There were four Nobs at the head of the group, and one of them scowled and stepped ahead of the others when he got a good look at the stallion. “Oi! Dis hoss iz wun o’ dem dark fighty gitz! Lookit dat armah n’ da wings!”

The Nob suddenly shoved his weapon forward, and Gloom Fang flinched. The weapon was formed like an axe but had some kind of small, motorized buzz saw blades mounted where the blade edge would be. With a squeeze of the grip the saws sputtered to life, turning into a dark red blur barely an inch from Gloom’s nose.

“Awrite hossy, wayr’z yer mates?” the Nob snarled.

“My… My mates? I don’t know, I-GRK!” Gloom Fang was cut off when the mob’s boss seized him by the throat and lifted him up.

“Yer mates shot da lookowt!” the Nob complained, shaking the stallion violently. “Spill it n’ mebbe Ah’ll let ya livv ta cleen da drops, ya unnerstand?!”

The Ork revved his axe again, the twin buzzsaw blades whirring closely enough to Gloom’s cheek for him to feel the air pressure whipping over the edges of the saws’ teeth. He considered trying to choke out a false reply to buy more time, but first glanced left and right. The Orks were surrounding him but staying behind the main Nob so that they were all facing him. Many were laughing or jeering, or menacingly reloading their guns.

He would never get a better chance than this.

“C-Can’t… s… speak…” Gloom gasped out, one wing curling around and pointing to his neck urgently.

The Nob narrowed his eyes and then reluctantly loosened his grip. Gloom Fang gasped in air, and then spoke again.

“Look into my eyes.”

The dark marks running over his cheeks suddenly split open, revealing themselves to be eyelids. A pair of bright golden eyes stared out at the Orks, each of them positioned just below his larger blue ones. Several Orks blinked or leaned in to see better, all of them mildly surprised but hardly impressed with the mutation.

Gloom Fang’s lower eyes pulsed bright yellow.

---

“Hmm… that wasn’t a lot of gunfire. I can’t imagine they spotted the thestrals and killed them so quickly, given their agility and typical Ork accuracy. They’re probably just firing blind out of boredom or paranoia.”

Gear Works sat on the back of the Strider battlesuit, his ears perked toward the alien outpost. They were some way away from the camp, but in the still night air the sound of greenskin weaponry traveled quite far; Orks, never much for subtlety, loved having the biggest and loudest weapons available. It was hardly the only bark of burst fire in the region either, but Gears kept his ears and attention aimed toward the target area.

A groan came from the Strider’s cockpit.

“By Celestia’s sun, I can feel myself dozing off,” Zariyah complained, the Strider rocking slightly from side to side. “Why did they bring me along just to leave me here in the dark with the most boring passenger?”

Gear Works looked down at the access hatch. “I’m the most boring passenger?”

“Do not take it personally,” the pilot said breezily before emitting a yawn that was big enough to hear through the battlesuit’s composite armor. “What do you think all of this is for, anyway? What is objective?”

“I wasn’t told what we were here for, unfortunately,” Gear Works replied. “I know that it’s trapped underground for some reason, so I presume it’s an object of some sort, but scouring the data stacks did not reveal anything of particular interest. Either this object is unknown to the Dark Mechanicus or is simply classified beyond my access level.”

“Take a guess,” Zariyah requested.

“Uh… I… suppose it might be…” Gear Works fretted a bit uncertainly, “a… magic… crystal?”

“Feh. Tedious,” Zariyah complained. “I believe the device we are looking for found evidence of hidden Keeper nest or factory. This is a scouting mission to recover this data and then confirm location by drilling into their underground sanctuary!”

Gear Works blinked his eye lights. “That’s… very interesting and dramatic, but not strategically plausible.”

“You see? This is what I mean. Boring!” the Strider pilot scoffed.

Gear’s ears flipped down and the Dark Acolyte, bizarrely, felt somewhat ashamed. “What’s boring about a magic crystal? Those can be very exciting!”

“We have countless magic crystals in Canterlot. So numerous are they that they trade at discount against common lumen tab, despite lasting longer and providing more light.”

“Well obviously we’re not mounting an expedition to find more everlight gems, but you can’t-”

A distant screeching noise and subsequent explosion cut through the air, and Gear Works immediately dropped the subject. “Echo cannon. The attack has begun in earnest, then.”

“I do not understand these thestrals at all,” Zariyah grunted. “Would the ideal tactic of bat ponies not be to sneak into camp undetected and kill enemy leader in sleep, or perhaps mine fuel supply, or other stealthy sabotage?”

“I suppose that makes some sense, but bat ponies are actually as blind as we are in total silence, so their command of covert tactics is… limited,” the tech-cultist admitted as another distant echo blast rolled through the sky. “They prefer ambushes and night raids, which obviously utilize some degree of stealth, but can turn appropriately noisy very quickly.”

“Won’t this noise and destruction attract the Ork patrols that we were so careful to avoid before?” the pilot asked.

“Probably, yes. I doubt that hadn’t occurred to the Lieutenant.”

Another blast from the echo cannon reached Gear’s ears, although he couldn’t help but notice the general absence of other gunfire. There were a few loud reports that barely managed to be heard over the whining pulses of the sonic weapon, but certainly nothing like the din of a proper firefight.

“So then plan is to sit back and let them get flanked?” Zariyah pressed, the Strider’s head lifting. “Because I am already tracking incoming transport on the path running by this glade. We are in perfect range to intercept.”

“The plan is to sit back, yes,” Gear Works confirmed. “That is what the Lieutenant ordered and-” he squeaked suddenly as the Strider jolted into motion. “Wait! Stop! Where are you going?!”

“I am just observing road to detect nearby threats, do not worry,” Zariyah replied as the Strider moved into a brisk trot.

“No! Don’t do that! You’re not hidden anymore and if you’re spotted the Orks WILL engage and destroy us!” Gear’s head swiveled back and forth in a panic.

“If Orks engage us, then I destroy them first and there is no violation of orders, yes? Everyone wins!”

“Miss Backfire, I am begging you, please don’t do this!” Gears could hear the approaching Trukk now, and the light from its headlamps was visible through the twisted branches of the stone trees.

The Strider slowed and then stopped. “All right, all right,” the pilot sighed, turning her battlesuit around. “I suppose it is quite dangerous for you.”

A beam of bright light briefly crossed over the Strider’s side, and Gear Works squeaked. The light cut back, illuminating the battlesuit and the large rocket painted on its side. The heavy tires of the Ork Trukk screeched as the brake was applied, and a whooping cheer arose from the passengers.

Zariyah jolted in surprise as the first volley of gunfire erupted from the road. Between standard Ork accuracy, the range, and the darkness, the vast majority of the gunfire was wasted, some of it not even aimed in the right direction. Still, Icebreaker was a large enough target that a few shots managed to hit by sheer chance, cracking against the composite shielding with little more than a scratch. Gear Works screamed in terror and tried to flatten himself against the top of the Strider to present a smaller target.

“Run! Hurry up and run!” Gears shouted while more and more Orks on the Trukk opened fire.

“They’ll just chase us down!” Zariyah retorted, swinging the walker around.

Gear Works yelped as the movement threw him over the side of the Strider’s body. He managed to snag one of the carrying hooks with his servo arm, keeping him from falling all the way to the ground, and he swung helplessly next to the walker as it started to speed up. More bullets whipped by with each passing moment, and more impacts clashed against the battlesuit’s armor.

“Zap!” Zariyah said brightly, tilting her head down and firing her lascannon.

A bright red beam lanced through the engine block, reducing much of the engine and the axle below it to glowing slag. Smoke vomited out of the ruptured housing and the vehicle promptly swung out of control, slamming into one of the large stone trees that were scattered around the landscape. Most of the passengers were flung out onto the ground, and the driver smashed his forehead through the poorly-repaired windshield and into the tree’s iron-hard trunk.

“Blast! It did not explode!” Zariyah cursed, turning around again to gallop away from the wreck. Gear Works screamed, flailing his legs as he was nearly dislodged from the cargo hook and bounced painfully against the Strider’s hip. “If they are on foot then I can keep to long range and pick them off. Do not worry, Techpriest.”

“I am very worried!” Gears retorted, feeling a severe strain in his back from where the servo arm was joined.

As the Orks either disembarked or picked themselves up off the ground, Zariyah raced away through the trees. A few bullets chased after the battlesuit, but without the Trukk’s lights it was even harder to aim at the scout walker. After several seconds of retreat the Strider started to turn, and its head snapped to one side to bring the lascannon to bear.

A low-pitched whistle cut through the air as a beam of high-intensity light cut through an Ork, removing a good portion of its upper torso. The alien coughed up a bit of smoke from his remaining lung, and then keeled over while his peers raced past. The lascannon began its recharging cycle, and Zariyah again started running.

“It takes a long time for gun to recharge! Hold on a little longer!” the pilot announced.

“Set the capacitor’s trigger threshold to 50%! Ow!” Gears advised, again bouncing off the Strider’s hip.

“What?”

“In the power settings! You can reduce the charge time for the lascannon by reducing the total capacitor drain!” the cyborg stallion explained. “The beam will be substantially weaker, but most of the lascannon’s killing power is wasted on a single infantry trooper anyway!”

“That sounds good! How do I use that? What menu is it in?” she asked brightly.

“Power settings! I already said it’s in-” Gears squeaked in fright as a lucky burst of gunfire slapped against the hull above him. “P-Power settings! It should be bottom-left access rune! And PLEASE fall back so that this side of the battlesuit isn’t facing the greenskins!”

“Ah, of course. My apologies!” Zariyah turned sharply again, and Gear Works wailed as he was swung about and again slammed into the walker’s hip. “Found the button! Now it… huh?”

The Strider twisted around to seek a target, but the pilot found herself distracted. “I hear a strange noise. Is that coming from the weapon? Is it supposed to do this?”

Gear Works heard it too, albeit it was competing with the ringing sound in his skull. “No, that’s… that’s not coming from you.”

A low howling noise, slowly building in intensity and pitch, was coming from… well, it wasn’t immediately clear where it came from. The sound seemed to roll over them, digging into their eardrums and smothering their other senses under a thrumming vibration. Gears and Zariyah flattened their ears in an attempt to block it out, but it barely made a difference.

The Orks were clearly affected as well, as the gunfire coming at the Strider quickly trickled to nothing. The aliens roared, howled, and cursed, slapping their hands over their ears or shooting their guns blindly into the air next to their heads, apparently finding the noise of shootas far more pleasant. The sound only intensified, however, and the air around the greenskins started to distort and blur as the sonic pulses reached their apex.

With a last, bone-chilling shriek, the ground under the Orks cracked and exploded, the hard-packed ground rupturing around and under the warriors. Sand and dust was hurled into the air in a swirling cloud, not unlike the result of a bomb detonation. A quick check of his thermal scanners assured Gear Works that it was nothing of the sort, however.

“Ha! What timing!” Zariyah cheered. “It looks like the fools attracted some friendly fire support!”

“We cannot presume it’s friendly!” Gear Works warned.

“What do you mean? That was an echo cannon. Who else possesses them?” the pilot asked.

“That was NOT an echo weapon!” the Dark Acolyte retorted. “The temp ratio and diffusion scoring are all wrong! That was not even a sine convergence detonation! I think the force vertices were broken through sheer power!”

“… What?”

Flashes of light were visible from within the dust cloud, and Gear Works could hear the sounds of combat. There was an occasional burst of gunfire, but most of the noise was the gruesome rending of flesh and bone and some sort of odd pulsing sound.

“I’m sorry, there’s no reason you should know the particulars of high-energy aural fracture ballistics,” Gears admitted, sounding panicked but still very apologetic, “but I assure you it reliably informs my conclusion that we are not being assisted by a member of the Lunar Guard!”

An Ork went flying from the shroud, flailing end over end, and slammed into one of the stone trees hard enough to splinter the wall of the trunk along with a number of the warrior’s bones. The dust was starting to dissipate now, and through it the Strider’s thermal optics could now clearly detect an equine form leaping upon the aliens. It was unusually large, and possessed big, thick wings with a profile that Zariyah quickly identified as a bat pony.

“You worry too much, Techpriest,” Zariyah laughed. “A bat pony is assailing our enemies and you prattle on about scores and signs! You are, what is the saying? Missing forest for trees!”

Another wave of dust swept away as the bloodied remains of an Ork was send rolling through the dirt, its chest caved in and split as if from an axe strike. The pony within looked back and forth, checking for enemies, and then it stopped and looked up at the Strider. Zariyah was still chuckling as she switched vision modes from thermal back to low-light filtering. She stopped chuckling.

“Uh… huh. That is… er…”

As the last of the obscuring dirt fell away, an Ork bleeding profusely from one arm started using the other to drag himself toward a shoota lying just out of reach. The mysterious pony whirled on him immediately, jumping to the side and stabbing a hoof toward his back. In a flash of dark pink magic, a curved talon of shimmering energy extended from the hoof, driving into the alien’s back. A crackling hum came from the contact, and the Ork grunted and twitched. As his arm fell slack the bat pony again turned its full attention to the other equines, a sheathe of magical energy pulsing over its horn.

“H-Horn…” Zariyah stuttered, her voice barely strong enough to be heard outside of the battlesuit. The walker took a nervous step back, shifting in subtle ways to prepare for an imminent retreat.

“That’s… an alicorn? A bat alicorn? What?” Gear Works asked, perplexed. “Wait! What was it you mentioned before? When we were in the hangar! And in the gunship!”

The newcomer started walking forward, eyes locked on the Strider’s cannon. Or rather, a single narrowed eye locked on the cannon; a deep red iris set against a baleful yellow sclera. Only the right eye seemed to be intact, while the left side of its face was a mess of criss-crossing scar tissue.

“IT’S THE BATICORN!” Zariyah shouted, re-activating her external caster and taking several nervous steps away.

“Yes! That! Where did you-GAH!” Gear Works shouted in surprise as the Strider’s side brushed against the iron-hard branch of a tree. The spread of sharpened stone fingers barely scratched the advanced armor of the battlesuit, but they did catch on the servo arm and wrench it loose of the hook it had been latched on to. Gears swung back through the air, flailing desperately, and then dropped to the ground.

The fall was not especially dangerous hanging from a Strider’s height, but it was jarring enough that Gear’s sensors briefly reset. When they were recalibrated and active, the Dark Acolyte found himself staring up into the glowering eye of the mysterious pony, who had apparently crossed the distance during the brief diversion.

The baticorn was a mare with a charcoal-colored coat that had markings of lighter ash gray on her face, legs, and side. These marking resembled bones, bizarrely enough, making her face look like a grinning death mask. Her long mane was reddish violet that turned to dark purple along its length, and the horn parting it had a distinctive upward curve and an unusually sharp tip.

“Hello. I am Dark Acolyte Gear Works, apprentice engineer-mystic to the 38th Company,” Gears said, pushing himself up. “May I assume you were the source of the earlier sonic detonation?”

Her horn started to glow a dark pink. “Yes.” Her voice was rough, with an unexpectedly deep tone.

“Ah! Good! I thank you for your assistance, Miss…?” Gear Works trailed off, waiting for her name.

Instead of replying, the mystery mare summoned a large skeletal hand of seething red energy. It seized Gear Works by the head and shoved his face down into the dirt.

“WHAT IS IT YOU WANT?” demanded Zariyah, still backing Icebreaker away from the strange pony. “YOU ARE PONY, YES? DO YOU NOT FIGHT GREENSKINS AS WELL?”

The horned bat pony glared up at the Strider. “There were others with you. Where are they? What are they doing here?”

“Urk! I’m afraid disclosing that is against protocol,” Gears volunteered, despite still being mask-down in the dirt. “Security code 7-1 section-”

“Quiet.” The mystery mare stomped on Gear Work’s back, silencing him. Then the floating skeletal hand seized the hose of his mask. The mare’s horn flashed, and the hand jolted upward sharply. A loud, agonizing crack accompanied by the squeal of metal tearing cut through the night as the stallion’s head was wrenched too far to one side, and the lights of his optics went dark.

“TECHPRIEST!!” Zariyah screamed in shock, immediately lining up her lascannon.

The mystery mare shifted her magic just before the weapon fired, and a lance of bright red slashed upon a similarly colored magic shield. The bat pony cringed in pain as the laser burned a run of bright pink over the barrier, but when the laser petered out she was unscathed. She launched into the air, leaving Gear’s body in the dust underneath her.

“One shot is all you get,” the mare snarled, swooping at the Strider.

Zariyah bolted, turning completely around and ducking under one of the larger stone trees that dotted the field. Icebreaker accelerated rapidly, its long, nimble legs smashing loose stones and petrified roots to powder as it moved to a full gallop.

“Blast!” she cursed to herself while making adjustments to her path. “I need to find the Lieutenant! If Techpriest is vital to mission success then we are done here!”

A horrible shriek came from above, barely reduced by the cockpit seal, and Zariyah felt a sense of sudden, intense vertigo. Pain surged in her head, her vision swam, and she felt her legs start to numb. It only lasted a second, but by the time she shook her head and focused her vision on the Strider’s cockpit display again she found the battlesuit’s legs stumbling and a petrified tree looming in front of her primary sensors.

She turned the walker’s head away, avoiding a face-first collision before the rest of the machine crashed into the tree. Branches cracked and the bark crumbled from the impact, and Icebreaker lost its footing entirely before hurtling to one side and skidding sidelong against the dirt. Zariyah grit her teeth as the impact with the ground wrenched her body hard, with the safety cuffs on her legs digging deep enough to bruise.

As soon as she stopped moving she started to shift her legs, and the internal gyro started spinning to assist in standing. She managed to place one of the battlesuit’s feet at an angle to push the rest of the machine up, and then braced another to catch the walker once it was upright. Then something slammed into the Strider’s side with explosive force, knocking it back to the ground. Zariyah growled through clenched teeth, and her armor display flashed brightly to indicate minor damage on the right side.

The bat pony hovered overhead, her horn crackling. The Strider twisted its head around and fired on the mare, but the angle was bad enough that she easily shifted a few inches to the side and the beam missed completely, slicing upward into the darkness. The bat-winged mare didn’t even have to use her barrier.

With a snarl, the bat pony landed on the side of the Strider, one foreleg lifted as if in striking position. A bright crimson blade formed over her hoof, and then she stabbed it into the Strider’s side armor.

“GYAH!” Zariyah shouted in shock as the blade punched into the cockpit, the glimmering, bright red tip emerging from the frame substructure and stopping less than an inch from her hip. She bent one front leg as far as she could to get an angle that she hoped could reach the baticorn, and then tried to kick the attacker off.

The bat pony easily lifted up out of reach as one of the Strider’s legs awkwardly swiped at her. “Make it easy on yourself. Don’t make me cut you out of there!” she threatened, landing on the battlesuit’s side again.

“All right! All right! You win!” the pilot shouted. “I am getting out! I surrender!”

The bat pony watched as the Strider’s head went limp, dropping onto the ground. The machine’s engine also deactivated, and the smoke stacks at the rear end stilled. The mare didn’t back off, still standing atop the Strider’s body and summoning her magic blade back to her hoof.

“Good. No tricks, now,” she growled.

“Tricks? Me? Perish the thought,” Zariyah assured her before biting down on the ejection lever and pulling sharply.

Small explosive bolts within the armor frame all fired at once, and a large panel of the Strider’s side armor launched into the air. The horned thestral’s eye went wide as she was launched along with it, but she didn’t even get the chance to spread her wings before her head slammed into the branches of a petrified tree overhead, breaking through several in rapid sequence. The hostile mare was sent spinning through the air with her new concussion, and a second later Zariyah herself was launched along the same trajectory.

“COMING THROUGH, TRAITOR!!” the pilot shouted, flying over the enemy pony.

Zariyah’s legs were still locked into the block of mechanisms that acted as the Strider’s movement interface, and once she reached the apex of her “flight” a small parachute popped out of one side. The fall was short and still quite a bit harder than Zariyah liked, but when she landed the wells for her legs promptly unlocked and she spilled out onto the dirt.

The Strider pilot scrambled upright, and then glanced back and forth. Her heart was pounding in her chest hard enough to ache, and she could barely see anything at all now that she was without the battlesuit’s sensors. Zariyah also didn’t know exactly where the enemy pony had landed or what her status was, and she had no intention of finding out.

She did have a very good sense of direction, however, and immediately bolted in the direction of the Ork camp they had been observing. She sped up to a gallop, but other than the slap of her hooves against the hard-packed dirt she made an effort to make as little sound as possible. She didn’t know all that much about thestrals and their echolocation, but she knew that the less noise there was, the harder it was for them to detect their surroundings. Hopefully the strange alicorn would at least have to scream first and give herself away in order to find her prey.

As if on cue, a screech came from the middle of the glade. It was short and lacked the intensity of the pulse that had sent Zariyah into a dizzy spell, but she felt a chill run down her spine nonetheless.

The pilot kept running, not daring to look behind her.

---

Ork camp (non-designated)
scrapyard

“Pleez! No moh! Yoo win! We, uh, we soo-ren-dah!”

A mob of a dozen Gretchen cowered behind a half-built buggy, with one of their number crawling forward on hands and knees while begging pitifully. At the entrance of the small shack was an armored pony not much bigger than the puny greenskins. The grot at the front quivered, staring into the tinted diamantine visor while wringing his hands. The pony stared back without reply, her breathing quite audible through the respirator mask she wore over her muzzle.

“Dun kill uz! We’z no danjuh to yoo, yeh?”

Then the mare reared up, swinging a wide-barreled cannon around to aim at the alien slave.

With a scream of terror and a little bit of desperate anger, the grot leapt forward while pulling a sharp sliver of metal from nowhere. Nacht thrust her echo cannon forward to meet the alien, smashing the weapon’s mouth into his chest. Gretchen were anything but hardy creatures, but even so the strength behind the blow was surprising. The greenskin slave was knocked clean off his feet and hurled into the exposed machinery of the vehicle.

“I love mopping up the weak ones,” Nacht chirped cutely, pulling back her echo cannon as it released a rapidly rising whine.

Across the Ork camp, Dusk’s ears flipped down as a pulse of high-pitched sound came from the workshop. The pitch suddenly dropped, and then it was followed by a thumping detonation and the screams of dying Gretchen. The scrap sheet roof of the building jumped, and a wave of dust and a splash of blood blew out over the adjacent ground.

Dusk paid it little mind, plunging his hoofblades into the throat of another Ork. The greenskin twitched and gurgled, and dusk pulled his weapon free and flew onward. He moved with no sense of urgency, caution, or military efficiency. He seemed almost exasperated as he flew up to the next Slugga Boy just a few feet away.

“Why are there always so MANY of you?” he groused, staring into the eyes of his next target.

The Ork stared back angrily, steam puffing from his nose, but he otherwise didn’t move. He didn’t speak. He did nothing but glare as the thestral plunged his blade into the Ork’s vitals.

Gloom Fang was doing the same thing several feet away, although he seemed to be having more fun with it, at least. The larger stallion jumped, swung, and kicked at his entirely immobile victims with an energy and ferocity only slightly less than that he reserved for targets that could fight back. His jaws and teeth were stained dark red, which at least partially explained his mood; Gloom Fang always felt energized after a good meal, and by all indications he had fed very well already.

“Lieutenant, I’m all done here!” Penumbra Shard sang. She was surrounded by a spread of magic tendrils and veritable pile of Ork corpses, and one of her Ebon Vectors was curled in a circle on the ground around her to keep the pooling blood from tainting her hooves.

Standing next to the massacre was an Ork Mek, locked in the same apparent paralysis as the others. His bionik arm twitched up and down, sparking angrily while the rust-caked claws opened and shut repeatedly. His face, capped with a metal dome that had been firmly bolted directly into his skull, was frozen into an enraged scowl, which conveniently matched his current mood while watching his outpost crew get slaughtered by a handful of ponies.

“Should I take care of the big one now, or are we saving him for something?” Penumbra asked, gesturing to the Mek.

“We might need his help to find the specific part. Leave him be for now,” Dusk commanded before cutting the throat of another alien.

Penumbra stepped away from the pile of gore she had created, if only so that she no long had to protect her coat from being stained. “How long does the paralysis last? Maybe I should bind him.”

“That’s probably wise. We’ve observed it wearing off between one and eight minutes. We’re not really sure what affects that range; we haven’t done too much experimenting,” Dusk replied. “Gloomy thinks it’s based on willpower, but I think it has more to do with actual mass.”

Penumbra’s magical vectors emerged from the ground with a gesture, winding around the Mek’s legs and arms. One of them wrapped around his throat, and the alien’s dark red eyes seemed to quiver with fearless rage. She found it slightly galling to kill enemies in this sort of state, but she could hardly deny the tactical efficiency. Even she couldn’t incapacitate so many Orks this quickly and easily.

Suddenly the thestrals perked, hearing a sound that was too high-pitched for Penumbra to hear. She definitely noticed when Gloom Fang and Dusk Blade landed, though, and the two stallions started rushing for the camp’s entry gate. Before they got very far Neuron Dialect appeared in front of them, her body seeming to simply materialize from the darkness.

“Contacts?” Dusk asked.

“Friendly. Backfire is coming,” Neuron said evenly.

“The Strider’s coming back? Shard, you didn’t send anything out yet, did you?”

Penumbra was about to confirm she did not, but Neuron corrected him first. “Not the Strider. The pilot. Backfire is approaching on hoof.”

Dusk was utterly perplexed by that, but a more urgent question suddenly occurred to him. “Is Gears with her?”

“No,” Neuron said, imbuing the single syllable with an impressive amount of frustration.

Dusk’s eyes lost focus as the other ponies stared at him, awaiting their orders. Dozens of harrowing thoughts rushed through his mind in quick succession, and he felt his pulse start to race in his ears. He closed his eyes and gulped, forcing himself calm again.

“… Gloomy, get your mask back on. Shard, execute the remaining greenskins. All of them, including the Mek. Dagger Squad, we have to intercept-” Dusk’s voice made an awkward squeaking sound as Zariyah Backfire galloped straight into the camp before he was done giving his orders.

The Strider pilot’s breath was heaving, but still she stopped short at the sight before her. Illuminated by torches and a few electric lights scattered around the camp was a complete and utter massacre. Ork bodies lay heaped in small piles or splayed out next to each other in groups. Gretchen lay shredded or partially ruptured, like their bodies just popped. But most odd, of course, were a handful of greenskins that were still standing on their own, seemingly alive, but doing nothing while surrounded by the carnage and their enemies.

Zariyah wasn’t new to the horrors of warfare, and the scene immediately set off some of her soldier’s senses that normally informed her that she’d wandered too close to the enemy’s defenses or heavy armor contingent. Everything about this scenario seemed off, from the unmoving Orks to the thestrals staring silently at her to the suspicious lack of collateral damage. If she were any less desperate she would have turned right around and waited at the entrance until the bat ponies were ready to receive her, but instead she set her jaw and trotted up to Dusk Blade.

“Lieutenant,” the pilot said grimly, saluting, “would you like my report first or should we first go over why the Orks here are frozen in time?”

The Ebon Vector wrapping around the Mek suddenly shifted violently, tightening and tearing the alien engineer apart. It barely released a grunt in defiance, and as the magic tendrils seeped back into the ground Penumbra turned a gentle smile onto the earth pony.

“Just some magic shenanigans, that’s all. I’ll clean up; you go ahead and tell Lieutenant Blade what happened,” the sorceress tittered while trotting over to the remaining enemies.

“Very well,” Zariyah grimaced. “We were engaged by some stray Orks racing by in their transport not long after we reached our ‘safe zone.’”

“Orks took down your Strider?” Dusk asked.

“Negative. After engaging us the Orks were attacked by another hostile that wiped them all out. Then it attacked us as well. Lieutenant… it was the baticorn.”

The other ponies flinched visibly. Even Penumbra missed a step. Dusk felt a hundred new questions bubbling from his throat, but he pushed them all aside.

“What happened to Gear Works?” Dusk Blade asked.

“Dead. The Techpriest spoke to the baticorn with no hostility, and it broke his neck in response,” Zariyah admitted.

The statement wasn’t completely unexpected, but Dusk still felt like he had been sucker-punched. His chest tightened and his thoughts turned to mush. Neuron seemed to pick up on this and continued.

“The Techpriest was mission critical,” Neuron said, her eyes gleaming from beneath her hood, “and you let him die?”

“That… is accurate enough, yes. I have no good excuses,” Zariyah admitted bitterly. “I attempted to neutralize the baticorn afterward, but it was no use. Now Icebreaker too is a pile of scrap in the badlands.”

Dusk took a deep, calming breath, and then called out behind him. “Shard! Are you finished here?”

“Affirmative!” she sang pleasantly, her mood unchanged despite Zariyah’s news. “Everything is dead! We can leave this dump at your leisure!”

Dusk nodded, although his mood visibly darkened at her cheerful tone. “Backfire, take us to where you ejected.”

“Yes, Lieutenant,” the pilot replied, wheeling around and trotting out the front of the camp.

Dusk Blade followed. “Neuro, go dark. If we find that… that THING, you take the first shot you have. Gloomy, stay close to me until I say break. Nacht, if we have contact, you dive for cover and keep low until you have a perfect shot.”

“Neuro gets to shoot right away, but I have to wait?” Nacht asked as Neuron melted away into the darkness.

“This is a bat pony we’re talking about. It can probably detect the charge-up and avoid the blast,” Dusk reasoned. “Hopefully not, but if you have a good angle and take it by surprise, it won’t matter.”

“Before we start strategizing we should probably ask what it can do, yes?” Penumbra asked. “What did the baticorn do, exactly? What did it look like? Did it say anything?”

Zariyah grimaced, sorting her observations to best answer the question. “Well, first off: she was definitely a mare.”

“HA!” Nacht shouted at Gloom Fang, jumping up and pointing a hoof. “Told you! There are no stallion Princesses!”

A sharp hiss from Dusk promptly silenced the shortest thestral, and she meekly ducked her head in embarrassment. Gloom Fang still seemed quite sour about the revelation though, pouting and muttering to himself.

“Yes. It was a Princess. A bat Princess,” Zariyah continued. “She first attacked the Orks with some kind of sonic ray. It built up strength similar to an echo cannon, but the Techpriest said he could tell the difference right away. When it reached its peak, the ground under the enemy erupted. Then she descended into the dust to finish them off in melee. When she was done with them, she said that there were others with us. She demanded to know what you were doing here.”

“She asked about us? Like, Dagger Squad?” Gloom asked.

“She said there were ‘others.’ She did not give any names,” Zariyah admitted. “When she was fighting she summoned magic energy blades that clung to hooves and wings and tore through the Orks with ease. It did fairly well against Icebreaker’s armor as well, although it did not cut without resistance.”

“Sonic blast, magic blades. Got it. What else?” Dusk demanded.

“She had a magic hand, which she used to snap the Techpriest’s neck,” the pilot said darkly, “and a magic barrier, which is why I failed to burn a hole in her for retaliation. She also used a different sound attack on me when I attempted to retreat in the Strider. It stunned me for a second, robbing me of my senses. That was long enough for me to crash, and after that she was on top of me.” Zariyah shook her head. “I only escaped due to the Strider’s ejection system.”

“Gears INVENTED that ejection system, you know,” Dusk said bitterly.

“I already regret letting the Techpriest perish, Lieutenant, you do not need to go over the things he has done that have apparently improved my career,” Zariyah retorted, sounding equally sour.

“Are you sure? Because I have more of them!” Dusk said, bristling angrily.

“What did the baticorn look like?” Gloom Fang interjected, getting the conversation back on track.

“She was big. Not quite Princess Luna’s size, but close. Her horn was curved, and had a sharp point compared to most unicorns.” The pilot shook her head. “Color was difficult to make out with low-light scopes, but she had these markings on her face, legs, and body. They looked like bones.”

It took Zariyah a few seconds to realize it, but the number of hoofsteps following her dropped considerably. When she glanced behind her Penumbra was still following, but Dusk, Gloom, and Nacht had all stopped short, staring at her.

“What? Were you expecting a different description? Do you think there might be more than one of these?” the pilot asked.

“Describe the markings,” Neuron demanded, reappearing behind her.

After shrieking in terror and jumping away, Zariyah rounded on the sniper angrily. “I told you! They were bones! Her legs had femur bones, her sides had ribs, and her face had a mask like a skull!” Then she blinked. “Right! Her face! I almost forgot! She only had one eye! Her left eye was covered over with scars.”

Neuron stumbled backward, her cybernetic eyes wide. Gloom Fang and Nacht slowly turned to look at Dusk Blade. His expression was less openly incredulous, and after a few seconds he shook his head.

“What’s wrong? Why are you all more surprised now than when I said the baticorn showed up and beat me?” Zariyah asked. “Do you know this mare?”

“No,” Dusk said firmly. “We don’t know any baticorns. Dagger Squad, turn up your sonics protection and use your optics. Stick to the plan and shoot to kill,” he commanded.

Zariyah quirked an eyebrow as she watched each of the bat ponies fit their wing into their ears, adjusting a small node she hadn’t noticed before. “Sonic protection? You knew we would face an enemy using noise weapons?”

“All thestrals in the Company have those micro-dampers,” Penumbra informed her. “Their hearing is so sensitive that they would quickly go deaf around heavy weaponry and explosives otherwise. To say nothing of the echo cannons.”

“It’s a pain though because it interferes with our echolocation,” Nacht grumbled. “So if we turn them up we need to rely on the night optics, which just aren’t as good.”

“Nacht, what have I told you about explaining our tactical vulnerabilities in casual conversation?” Dusk asked.

“What? She’s on our side!”

“That depends how forgiving the Lieutenant is feeling when we find the Techpriest’s body,” Penumbra retorted.

“SHUT. UP. Both of you!” Dusk snarled. “Backfire, how much farther?”

“It’s just up ahead,” Zariyah muttered, her pace slowed to a hesitant walk. “Sorry, I need to be careful. I do not have either night vision or armor without Icebreaker.”

“I knew that thing was going to be a liability,” Gloom Fang sniffed.

“My previous order applies to you too, Gloomy,” Dusk snapped. “I see the Strider. Shard, cover me. The rest of you find cover with a good angle and get ready to attack.”

Neuron vanished again and Nacht quickly scurried behind a mass of petrified roots. Gloom Fang prepared his splinter rifle while hiding behind a tree on a different sight line. Zariyah also ducked behind a tree, but without effective vision or a weapon she intended to just hide. Penumbra followed several feet behind Dusk Blade while the Lieutenant trotted up to the abandoned battlesuit, although her gaze was fixed on his rear rather than being alert for threats.

Dusk reached the battlesuit and stared into its inactive “face.” The sensoria lights were dark and the gentle hum of the lascannon capacitor – an irritating and constant noise whenever the weapon was kept charged and ready to fire – was silent. There was a gaping square hole in its side which he correctly guessed was the ejection port, but otherwise the battlesuit seemed to be in good condition. It obviously hadn’t been picked over by scavengers yet, nor did it seem the baticorn had caused further damage after its pilot escaped.

Dusk spent a minute scanning the area with his optics, searching for movement. His impatience grew rapidly, however, and he suddenly tapped off the sonic damper in his ear before taking a deep breath and throwing his head back.

“SKREEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!” the screech was long and loud, illuminating every stony branch and root of his surroundings.

The noise petered out, and Dusk’s ears pivoted to one side and then another. He could see every one of his allies clearly in the echoes of his own shriek, but no one else. No baticorn. No Gear Works.

Dusk turned around. “Backfire, is this where Gears was attacked?”

“Nyet. I managed to get some distance between that point until the baticorn caught me.” She emerged cautiously from her hiding spot, glancing upward frequently to watch for silhouettes flying under the stars above. “Do you want me to lead the way?”

“No. The Strider’s tracks are obvious enough,” Dusk replied. “Shard, you may as well give us some light. Either our mystery mare isn’t close enough to spot us or needs better bait.”

Without a word, Penumbra summoned a half-dozen glowing orbs of blue magic that floated out in all directions. They weaved and bobbed seemingly at random, like fireflies, but the light they cast was substantial enough that it was as good as daylight to the others. Dusk and Gloom pushed up their optics goggles, and then Dusk started following the disc-shaped tracks left by the Strider’s retreat.

“So… I know this is a pretty touchy subject right now, but…” Nacht could practically feel the tension starting to rise around Dusk Blade from speaking up, but she went ahead anyway. “Are we really going to scrub the mission if the Techpriest is dead? There’s no other way to get what we need here?”

“He’s a Dark Acolyte. Unless the Mechanicus gives posthumous promotions,” Neuron reminded her, swooping down from the trees briefly before rising again and melting into the branches. Much to Zariyah’s puzzlement, considering that she could now see the trees perfectly well and there was nowhere to hide where the sniper had vanished.

Dusk clenched his teeth, and for several seconds he considered ignoring her completely. Eventually the words came to him, however.

“Yes, Nacht. If Gears is really dead, the mission is a failure. That’s what I said starting out, didn’t I? Did you think I was joking?”

“Well… no, not joking, but…” Nacht’s ears pinned back. “You always come up with a plan when things go wrong. And it just… kind of seems like everything other than this was going pretty well? We killed so many Orks!”

“Killing ORKS is not the objective, Nacht! Is that mane dye bleaching your brain cells?!” Dusk turned around, his amber eyes glowing like hot coals. “We don’t have a goal here that you can shoot or stab your way through! This required expertise! This required intelligence!”

“We have that!” Gloom Fang protested. He shrunk a bit when Dusk glared at him. “Well, I mean… some of that. Or, you do, at least. That’s why we came to you.”

“Mine wasn’t enough! That’s why I brought Gears!” Dusk barked. “I promised that we’d protect him! And from the moment we left the transport we’ve been putting him in harm’s way instead! What was I even thinking?! How the fang are we going to complete our mission when we can’t protect ONE SINGLE PONY?!”

“But… Gloomy’s dream was-” Nacht started to reply, only for Dusk to turn around again.

“I don’t want to hear it. And Backfire isn’t cleared to,” the Lieutenant said bitterly. “Let’s collect the body and get out of here.”

Zariyah was quite curious about the dream Nacht mentioned, but quickly put it aside. Dusk Blade looked like he was on the verge of stabbing somepony, and anyway it would be much easier to get the details from the small black mare later. She trotted ahead of Dusk, and then passed around a particularly large tree.

“What? Where…?” Zariyah lifted a hoof to point as one of the light spheres passed over her shoulder. “It was here! I remember it was right here!”

Dusk rushed up next to her, his eyes narrowing. “No body. Hmm.”

“So did the baticorn eat him, or what?” Gloom asked.

“I don’t think being a Princess lets you ingest metal. She probably just carried his body away,” Nacht replied.

Dusk tried his best to keep from speaking and gestured above him with a wing. Neuron dropped down from nowhere, badly startling Zariyah again. Then she started studying the ground, searching from the divot in the dirt that was roughly shaped like Gear’s face.

“Why would she take him? He’s dead,” Gloom Fang continued.

“Maybe he wasn’t dead. Or maybe she has necromantic magic. Or maybe his body parts are worth something,” Nacht mused. “Or maybe the Orks got him after Bansh-”

Dusk’s head snapped to the side, eyes blazing bright in the gloom again as they fixed on Nacht.

“... A-After the b-baticorn left him there,” Nacht stuttered, her heart suddenly thundering in her chest. She gulped, ducking her head and shying away from Dusk’s gaze.

Neuron looked up. “Neither.”

“What? Neither of what?” Penumbra asked.

“It wasn’t the baticorn or the Orks. The tracks are wrong. He left. Under his own power,” she glanced back down. “The gait is uneven. Even for him. He’s injured.”

“He’s alive?” Dusk’s voice emerged as a squeak, his emotions getting swallowed by hope and desperation.

“He was,” Neuron clarified, turning away. “This way.”

Dusk Blade did not bother to follow her. Leaping into the air, he flew above the trees and then took in a deep breath.

“GEARS!! GEAR WORKS!!” Dusk screamed into the darkness, his ears twitching back and forth to search for the slightest movement. “WE’RE BACK!! WHERE ARE YOU?!”

Dusk listened intently against the sound of his wings flapping behind him. Then he heard a reply, and his heart seized.

“H-Help…”

The Lieutenant was off like a shot, pinpointing the noise and diving down toward it as fast as possible. There were a few cries of protest behind him, probably with very valid warnings about the possibility that this was a trap, but he tuned them out completely. Dusk’s echolocation picked out a soft mound of robes with a servo arm sticking out, and he immediately landed right next to it.

It was Gear Works, laying on his side. The Dark Acolyte’s neck was still twisted too far to one side, and Dusk couldn’t see the usual clusters of light under his hood. But he was here, and he was moving.

“By Luna… you’re… you’re okay!” Dusk gasped, barely daring to believe his own senses.

“I’m alive, yes. ‘Okay’ is a much more robust standard!” the tech-cultist hissed. “I need assistance!”

“Backfire said the baticorn broke your neck! We need to get you to a medicae!”

“That isn’t necessary, Lieutenant. Just wrench my neck back the way it was, please.”

Dusk blinked in surprise. “What? Really? Are you sure?” Behind him, the other members of the party were cautiously stepping into the area as well, led by Penumbra’s floating spheres of light. Only Neuron Dialect stayed away from the area and patrolled the shadows instead, much less comfortable than the others in the Moon Mage’s glow.

“My spinal cord is almost entirely bionic by now; twisting a disc section out of alignment is not fatal. It does pinch the cabling badly, though, and currently my optics are offline. It also hurts. A lot. Can you pull it back?”

“I got it,” Gloom Fang volunteered, trotting over next to the cyborg equine.

“Why did you move from where you were attacked? The baticorn might have spotted you and decided to finish the job,” Dusk asked.

“I was trying to find a root or branch that I could wedge my head into so that I could twist everything back on my own,” Gears explained, “but between the blindness and the pain it proved impossible to do.”

“Don’t worry metalhead, I’ve got you,” Gloom Fang said smugly, standing up on his hind legs and bracing before placing his forelegs against Gear’s head. “One little twi-”

“Wrong way, Gloomy,” Dusk growled.

Gloom blinked, and then quickly let go and switched sides. “Right! Right. Good call. Here… we… GO!”

Zariyah flinched as a sharp metallic scraping noise came from the Dark Acolyte, but she felt a deep burden lift off her shoulders at the same time. The cyborg pony’s optic lights started growing back on under his hood, like there were droplets of aqua-blue color being squeezed through his re-aligned neck. Gloom stood back, and Gear Works groaned.

“How is it?” Dusk asked anxiously.

“It hurts a great deal less, and some of the wiring needs adjustment, but it will do for a field repair. Thank you, Corporal Fang,” Gear Works slowly stood up, his ears twitching back and forth.

“So we’re good now, right?” Nacht asked. “The nerd is alive and the Ork camp is empty and the baticorn isn’t around. We’re clear to proceed?”

Dusk frowned. “What happened to the hostile, exactly? Did she just leave after attacking Backfire?”

“I’m not totally sure what happened after she crippled me,” Gears admitted, “I could hear some of the altercation, but I was quite panicked and distracted at the time. After that it quieted down, but she did come back.”

Dusk perked up. “And then what? Did she say anything to you?”

“No. I played dead. I don’t think it worked; I had already moved from where she had attacked and her senses are surely keen enough to tell a live pony from a corpse. But she didn’t attack me. There were a lot of strange noises coming from her, but it wasn’t an attack.”

“Strange noises?”

“Yes. Magic noises, I assume.”

Penumbra felt a tingling sensation that warned of surging magic, but her shout of warning was too late. Great seams of red shot across the ground, twisting, branching, and sparking at a speed that defied even the thestral’s reflexes. It swiftly formed a simple runic pattern that encompassed some 40 feet, capturing the gathered ponies within its boundary. Then bright webs of seething crimson lashed at each of them all at once, clinging around their legs and chests and entangling them. The bat ponies, all in the midst of taking off, were promptly dragged back to the ground. Gears and Zariyah were too shocked to react much and thus received the lightest treatment as their hooves were wrapped up and glued to the dirt.

Penumbra’s capture was the most dramatic. She reeled backward as the webbing took hold, screaming and bucking angrily while the threads lashed again and again. Eventually the red webs snared around her horn, and the Moon Mage convulsed in pain. The air was knocked out of her at the contact, and then she was dragged down to the dirt with the others.

“GUANO! I knew this was a trap! I told you!” Gloom Fang cursed.

“Oh, you did not!” Dusk snapped back, tugging desperately against the magic webs.

“Nacht did, though! And I was quietly supportive!”

“Stop arguing and help Penny! I think she’s hurt!” Nacht growled while she struggled to free her echo cannon.

“Wait, do you hear that? Something’s coming!”

The baticorn descended with little fanfare, her wings spreading wide and billowing in the chill air to land her atop a particularly thick branch. Her horn was already aglow, a thread of dark pink seeping from the base and writhing about its curved length to meet at the point. A crimson glow seeped from her left eyelid; or at least, the mass of overlapping scar tissue where her eyelid was supposed to be. She was fully illuminated by the glow spheres, which had evidently remained as free-floating orbs even after Penumbra had been disabled. She was exactly as Zariyah had described, right down to the patch of bone white over her face that grinned down at her victims.

“No way,” Gloom Fang said, his eyes (at least, the two that weren’t covered by his mask) wide in disbelief, “it’s really you. You’re alive!” Nacht seemed equally stunned, her hair standing on end.

“It’s not her!” Dusk Blade barked. “This is some stupid trick! Part of the trap!”

The baticorn tilted her head to the side slightly. “A trick?”

“A changeling! An illusion! A magically resonant memory! A conventional disguise! A corpse hauled from a pit and revived! Feel free to stop me if I guess it right! A spool of DNA plucked from a dank pit and grown with human tech! You could be anything! Anything except HER!” Dusk snarled. “Get your heads in the game, Dagger Squad!”

“Dagger Squad. Is that what you’re called now?” the mysterious mare asked. “Things have changed, haven’t they? It’s been some time, Dusk Blade. Lost Prince of the Shad.”

Dusk flinched. The stubborn denial in his eyes faltered, at least for a moment.

“Nacht, chosen daughter of what’s left of the Eisenwing. Gloom Fang, the scion of the raving marauders that were once the Dark Hearts,” the baticorn continued, much to the thestrals’ alarm. She lifted her head, closing her eye. “I even sense Neuron Dialect back there. Refugee of… whatever it is your ridiculous little band of mercenary killers is called now. Ember League? Stalkers? I forget.”

She shrugged, her eye cracking back open to stare at the confused and terrified ponies below. “But there are other equines I am unfamiliar with, and though you be enemies I should introduce myself.”

Gear Works suddenly piped up. “Yes, actually, if I may interject, I would really like to explore the ‘enemy’ dynamic tha-” a patch of crimson webbing latched onto his mask and tugged him down sharply, smacking his face into the dirt.

“My name is Banshee, last survivor of the Haunt!” the one-eyed mare bellowed.

The effect on Dusk, Nacht, Gloom, and Penumbra was stark: even though they each expected to hear the name, it still struck them like a lightning bolt. Nacht shuddered and her ears pinned back, and Gloom turned toward Dusk with an expression that could only be considered helpless shock. Penumbra grimaced, and her eyes started studying the magic web.

Zariyah Backfire furrowed her brow. “Is that supposed to mean anything to us? What is all this Shad, Dark Hearts, Haunt and such?”

“Nothing,” Dusk said, his voice grim. “It’s useless, forgotten gibberish of no importance to anybody. It’s all just dust.” He bared his teeth. “Just like Banshee.”

“If you don’t believe me, that’s fine too,” Banshee said, her head turning toward the position where Neuron Dialect was covering. “I know why you’re here. You will not take the final Element.”

“The final what?” Gears asked, pushing himself up. The webs ensnared on his mask tightened yet again, yanking him back into the dirt.

“No idea what you’re on about. We’re here to solve a problem for the Dark Mechanicus extraction teams,” Dusk lied, “but as long as you’re willing to chat us up, I gotta know: what’s with the baticorn thing?”

Banshee’s eye narrowed. “Chirocorn.”

Dusk blinked. “What?”

“I am an ascended thestral, a chirocorn,” Banshee clarified, her voice very serious even though the cruel smile never left her face. “Kai-row-corn. Got it?”

“… What?” Dusk repeated. Nacht and Gloom glanced at each other, utterly perplexed.

“I believe the name refers to the mammal order chiroptera, which primarily contains bats,” Gear Works noted, again pushing himself up from the ground. “It characterizes the main biological difference from the alicorns quite well.”

“Yes! Precisely!” Banshee affirmed. Then her horn pulsed, and the webs again slammed the Dark Acolyte’s face into the ground.

“Chirocorn… huh…” Dusk dropped his gaze and mumbled the word a few more times under his breath. “You know what? I like it. That’s good. Much better than baticorn. Thanks.” Then he looked up again. “Kill her.”

Penumbra’s horn flashed, and a swirling aura started to build around it. The webbing strangling her glowed in time, trying to restrain the surge, but then crumbled away to motes of light as they were overwhelmed. The Moon Mage cackled, her eyes shining brightly while she stood up again. The web around her legs fizzled away to sparks, and then the effect continued spreading out along the ground around her.

Banshee launched herself into the air as the magic web started to dissipate, sucking air into her lungs. A gunshot rang out behind her, and a blazing white bullet struck a quivering red barrier. She flinched as her horn glowed hot, fighting the force of the shot, and her gasp spared the ponies below from her ear-shattering screech.

“Gloomy, freeze her if you get the chance,” Dusk ordered, his eyes flaring orange. “Nacht, we’re gonna get in close, so wait for your shot.” A shroud of inky black rushed up from the ground, seeping over his body in a swift, inexplicable wave. The crimson web fell through him, and then the mass of darkness sank into the dirt and vanished.

Gear Works stared. “Wh… Wha-”

“Ha ha ha ha! HA HA HAAA!!” Gloom Fang laughed gleefully as the webbing started to crumble around him, and he pulled his mask down to reveal his large, gleaming fangs (though his lower eyes stayed closed). “IT’S BEEN A LONG TIME, LITTLE MARE! I WONDER WHAT A CHIROCORN TASTES LIKE,” he mused aloud, leaping into the sky with a deranged grin.

“Knock her down and I’ll blast her apart!” Nacht shouted, standing upright and lifting the mouth of her echo cannon. A deep thrumming noise came from the resonator core, followed a rising whine as the chambers started vibrating.

Banshee whirled about, darting through the air over Neuron’s hiding spot. Her howl cut through the night sky as she screamed toward the ground, and her horn quivered and pulsed with magic. Neuron Dialect – invisible to the eye but easily picked out by the reflected echoes – suddenly sprinted from her cover to flee the blast, but the sonic pulses reached their peak first.

The ground exploded upward, and a dozen petrified trees shattered at once. Neuron’s grunt of pain was utterly lost in the cataclysmic sound, and she was flung hard against a splintering stone trunk. Dust and debris swirled about her, completely concealing the blast site.

Banshee turned in the air again, just in time to see Gloom Fang rise up in front of her.

“SURPRI-”

Banshee shrieked immediately, blasting the stallion directly with a magical sonic pulse. It knocked him out of the air with a wall of concussive force, sending him flailing back down to the forest. Gloom shouted in surprise, flapping his wings desperately to try to recover control.

She blinked, unsure of what she had seen in that split-second he had been rushing up to her. “Did… Did he have four eyes?”

Her ear twitched.

Banshee summoned a magic blade to her hoof and spun, stabbing into the wisp of shadow that was darting toward her through the air. A hoofblade emerged to meet it, and a jet of crimson sparks sprayed from the contact. Dusk materialized from the darkness, his eyes aglow with quiet fury (and probably some magic).

“Ambush my support team,” his free hoof slashed forward, “cripple my friend,” he spun away from Banshee’s snapping jaws, and a back leg lashed out to strike her in the neck, “use his broken body as bait,” he dove back down, slicing into her chest, “and now you show up pretending to be HER.”

“SKREEE-” Banshee screamed into Dusk’s face and he promptly slammed his forehead into her snout, cutting her off. The pain in his ears was intense, but he pushed through his scrambled senses to focus on the body in front of him.

“Shut up and BLEED,” he snarled, whips of darkness lashing around him.

Banshee sensed Gloom Fang rushing up beneath her again and her horn sparked dangerously, arcs of deep pink running up to a point of crimson at the tip. A magic shock wave exploded around her, crashing into both stallions with a wall of raw magical force. Gloom Fang was hurled back to the ground again, snarling angrily, and Dusk Blade was likewise swatted out of the sky, his aura of shadow breaking apart.

“Gotcha,” Nacht chirped as her echo cannon screamed.

Waves of destructive sonic energy surrounded the chirocorn, scrambling her senses and then converging on her in a disastrous crescendo. Her personal barrier briefly flared and collapsed, prompting a surge of pain through her horn just before the much more severe pain of the impact. A thunderous blast preceded a wave of glassy, distorted air, and then the horned thestral was plummeting to the ground, stunned and bleeding. Nacht cackled and cycled the resonator, and the weapon’s pitch dropped while it prepared another pulse.

Banshee hit the ground hard, her wing striking a great deal of rock debris and tearing badly even before her bones suffered the full force of the impact. She bounced, and then skidded across the ground in a senseless daze. Blood oozed from her ears and several cuts on her legs and chest, but her body was in so much pain that it mostly defied immediate diagnosis. Even so she pushed herself up, and the world spun around her.

Glowing spheres flew through the trees, seeking out the fallen mare and surrounding her. Penumbra Shard strolled after them at a fairly languid pace, stepping delicately over the shattered stone that now littered the petrified glade. Dusk and Gloom landed on branches above, and Neuron – dusty and aching, but still conscious – limped around the opposite side with her galvanic rifle at the ready.

“I really don’t know what you were thinking,” Penumbra opened, staring at the chirocorn with something like pity.

“What?” Banshee mumbled.

“You really thought you could face all the others by yourself? You know they’re stronger now, right? And with me here too? Gutsy!” She stopped just a few feet away, her horn sparking. “But you certainly never suffered from lack of courage, did you? And on that note, I don’t suppose you would be willing to trade live capture in exchange for telling me how this… chirocorn situation came about? Instead of being executed here, I mean.”

Banshee’s breath heaved. Sweat trickled down her brow, mixing with her blood. Her horn sparked repeatedly, but they were brief, sputtering pulses, like a dying lumen glass drawing from a damaged circuit.

“What?” she gasped. “I can’t hear you! Speak up!”

“Oh. Right. The echo cannon probably deafened you a bit,” Penumbra admitted, tapping a hoof to her chin. “Well it would be embarrassing to repeat myself while shouting into your ear, so we-”

Banshee’s horn flashed brightly, and the chirocorn vanished in a wave of pink sparks.

“… Phooey,” the Moon Mage pouted.

“What happened?! Was that an illusory body after all?” Dusk demanded as he dropped to the ground behind Penumbra.

“No. No illusion bleeds like that. That was really her,” Penumbra replied.

“The hay it was,” the Lieutenant spat. “Maybe it was a real body, but that WASN’T Banshee. Did she just teleport out? Only really skilled magi can do that, right? And it has a pretty short range.”

“That was something a little different. An emergency escape spell that dumps you in a prepared location. It’s a much easier cast, although I would have guessed it was still beyond someone like her,” the Moon Mage clicked her tongue.

“Why would you think that?” Gloom Fang asked as he landed behind Dusk. His mask was back in place again, completely covering his lower set of eyes. “Aren’t Princesses super powerful?”

“Not especially, no. They tend to be super experienced, which is a different measure and particularly useful to spellcasters,” Penumbra clarified. “Celestia and Luna are the oldest ponies alive and Twilight Sparkle, while young, is a star student, magic prodigy, and champion of the realm. This mare’s horn is less than a year old.”

“You know how long ago she ascended to a chirocorn?” Asked a voice behind the group. “So you did know Miss Banshee before?”

Gloom, Dusk, and Penumbra all glanced back in annoyance. Gear Works and Zariyah were cautiously picking their way through the ruptured terrain, heading toward them. Nacht was approaching along the same route, although she was flying over the treetops.

“No. Nopony knows who that was,” Dusk said firmly, his eyes narrowed. “Got that? If the chirocorn comes back, you engage and you finish her off first chance you get. I don’t want to hear any more of her stupid lies.” Then he turned around. “Neuro, are you going to be okay?”

“I need a few minutes to dress my wounds,” she admitted, “but I can still fight.”

“I think we can manage that.” Dusk glanced over at Zariyah and frowned. “I’m not sure what to do about a pilot without a gun or a vehicle, though.”

“How badly was the Strider damaged?” Gears asked, perking up.

“Very little, aside from the gaping hole in the battlesuit from the ejection,” Zariyah sighed.

“Then I can have it functional again in 20 minutes. 25 if the liminal torsion was dented in landing. You won’t be able to use the ejection system again until I’m able to replace the explosive bolts, but otherwise mechanical performance should be nominal,” the Dark Acolyte said. At seeing the pilot’s surprised expression, he elaborated. “A proper ejection keeps all of the mobility drivers intact; the battlesuit can be completely reassembled in the field if there hasn’t been other significant structural damage.”

“Wouldn’t you expect there to be a lot of damage in a situation where the pilot has to eject?” Dusk asked.

“Everyone thought so at first, but we found that pony pilots are very quick to pull the emergency escape lever,” Gears explained.

The thestrals didn’t move, but their eyes all slowly shifted toward Zariyah.

The earth pony bristled. “I had no choice! She was already on top of me and cutting into the hull! Any one of you would have done the same!”

“Okay, fine, just calm down. It doesn’t matter now. Gears, if you can really get the Strider running again, do it. Then we ransack the Ork camp. Backfire, you help him out. Shard, you go with them and keep watch,” Dusk ordered.

Gears and Zariyah quickly turned away to do as ordered, but Penumbra pouted. “Why do I have to tag along with the earth ponies? Are you all staying here?”

“We need a minute,” Dusk confessed, “and I’m not leaving Gear Works unguarded again.”

“He wasn’t unguarded, the useless walker just-”

Dusk’s eyes pulsed in the gloom, the amber irises becoming sparks of hot golden light. Penumbra recoiled immediately, and her ears pinned back.

“Sorry! Right away!” the Moon Mage yelped, rushing after the earth ponies with an uncharacteristic nervousness.

Dusk’s eyes dimmed as the unicorn ducked away and moved out of earshot. Then he slowly turned back to the other bat ponies. Gloom Fang was helping Neuron with her injuries while Nacht settled her echo cannon on her back again. She was able to carry the weapon with surprising ease, but it’s bulk and her small size did make it cumbersome.

Gloom Fang pulled a bandage roll with his wing, winding it around Neuron’s leg. Then he cut it free with his hoofblade and pinned it down against the wound. “Technology that can make cities in days and travel through space but we’re still out here wrapping wounds with cloth bandaging. Ridiculous,” he huffed.

“They have much better field meds than this, but none of us care to learn to use them,” Neuron grunted as she tied the bandage with her wingtips. “I don’t know if I’ve ever even met a thestral medicae.” Then she looked up at Dusk. “Lieutenant?”

“I don’t suppose you want to talk about that mare, do you?” Nacht asked.

“No, I don’t. You have your orders regarding that… thing. The chirocorn dies the next time we see it,” Dusk spat.

“Okay, then can we talk about how bad Gloomy whiffed on his attack vector?” Nacht giggled into a hoof. “All you had to do was glare at her, dude.”

“Aw, shut up!” the stallion snarled. “I couldn’t get eye contact!”

“And anyway, no you can’t talk about it,” Dusk ordered. “We have allies who don’t know about our abilities and this place isn’t secure.”

“So… if we can’t make fun of four eyes here and you don’t want to talk about… the chirocorn, what DID you want to discuss?” Nacht asked.

Dusk Blade adopted a glum, resigned expression and stepped closer to Neuron Dialect. He obviously did not want to proceed, but he knew what he had to do.

“Neuro, you said you talked to Banshee in your dream. Tell me what happened.”

---

“Here is the runner block. It looks like it’s in good condition, yes?”

“A decent enough landing. All else aside I’m glad to see the ejection system functions so well.”

“Very well indeed! It certainly caught the chirocorn by surprise! Ha!”

Zariyah Backfire stood on top of the block of interlinking metal plates and rails while Gear Works walked a slow circuit around it, noting minor damage from the machine’s descent. Every few seconds his servo arm would reach out and pull on a piece, testing its integrity or moving it back into place. Penumbra’s glowing spheres floated overhead to provide light to work, while the Moon Mage herself sat in sullen silence nearby.

“I think this unit is ready to be re-installed,” Gears said with a nod, “it will require a brief prayer to mitigate its separation from the host engine spirits, and then we-”

“Oh for night’s sake, GET ON WITH IT.”

A turquoise glow swallowed the machine, and Gears recoiled as it suddenly lifted into the air. Zariyah’s eyes widened in surprise, but she managed to stay upright while standing on the hovering device. Penumbra walked by, fuming, and the floating mass of machinery followed along with her.

“What are you so upset about? The mission has not failed. Did you not triumph over the traitorous pony?” Zariyah asked, dropping down onto her belly so she wouldn’t have to balance on the wobbling mass.

“Some triumph,” Penumbra sniffed. “We only had to bother with her because YOU TWO were too weak to stop her or escape safely. And then she got away!” The unicorn’s horn crackled dangerously, and Zariyah noted that her perch started to warm up noticeably against the early morning chill. “Now the Lieutenant is even more paranoid and he’ll probably make me foalsit you two whenever there’s a fight.”

“And this frustrates you,” the pilot guessed.

“Of course it does! Do you think I’d rather be hanging around with mares and… and whatever HE is than Lieutenant Blade?” Penumbra snapped, gesturing briefly to Gear Works. “What a waste of my time…”

“Yes, yes, a tragedy,” Zariyah drawled. “While we are on topic of Lieutenant, do we want to discuss whatever it is he did during the fight? That weird shroud covered him, and then he just… disappeared into the ground.”

“You were imagining things,” Penumbra sniffed. “Adrenaline, panic, exhaustion, and a profuse amount of magic being flung around a battlefield can make your mind play tricks on you.”

“Uh huh. And I suppose the sniper’s talent for turning invisible is also a trick of my imagination?”

“It is,” the Moon Mage replied, turning her head to glare at the pilot. “A sufficiently skilled infiltrator skulking about at night SHOULD make you feel like they turn invisible, shouldn’t they?” She clicked her tongue. “Do try to keep from spreading absurd rumors about the thestrals. That’s how the Lunar Guard got such a bizarre reputation in the first place.”

Gear Works turned his head briefly to look at Penumbra, and then looked ahead again. “Miss Backfire is not hallucinating,” he said simply.

“So you saw it too, then?” Zariyah asked, perking up. “That weird wave of darkness, and the way the sniper just fades away into open air!”

“Yes. Among… other curiosities,” Gears mumbled. “The Lieutenant definitely possesses some supernatural capability uncommon to bat ponies.”

“And now we have this chirocorn picking fights with him, speaking of mysterious gangs and some final Element? It is all very strange. And has little to do with mineral deposits and extraction rigs.”

Suddenly the machine block tilted sharply, catapulting Zariyah into the air. The pilot yelped as she struck the ground and rolled, although the landing was not hard enough to inflict real injury. Penumbra stood next to the floating mass of levers and cogs, her eyes glowing dimly with the same color as her magic aura.

“We’re here,” the Moon Mage said, her voice thick with contempt, “so stop mewling about chirocorns and secrets and get to work.”

Gear Works shrunk back from the Moon Mage, but Zariyah Backfire stood up and shook herself off. Then she turned a baleful stare toward the unicorn.

“You know what we’re doing here, don’t you?” the pilot asked. “You know who that chirocorn is.”

Penumbra’s visage seemed to pulse and blur briefly, and then suddenly she was nose-to-nose with Zariyah, the glow in her eyes even more intense. “I know what YOU’RE doing here: sealing yourself inside that machine and carrying the rest of us.” Her horn sparked. “Get to it.”

“Of course, Madam Shard,” Zariyah drawled, meeting the unicorn’s gaze without flinching. “Do take care when lowering the runner block into the Strider. Damaging it might delay repair, which would make your precious Lieutenant most aggravated.”

Penumbra’s eyebrow twitched, and her eyes briefly darted to the side to check on Gear Works. The Dark Acolyte looked nervous, his ears pinned back and his servo arm lowered to one side, and did not seem inclined to interject. Penumbra coughed lightly, and then pulled back from Zariyah.

“My apologies if I seemed… pushy, Miss Backfire. It’s been a long night and I’m a little cranky after that ambush,” she said coolly, gently lowering the machinery onto the ground. “I also don’t know one end of this device from the other, so I’ll leave the rest of this affair to you two.”

“Thank you for the help, witch,” Zariyah replied blandly, “please leave a magic light above the Strider. It will help us work while you patrol the area.” She turned away without waiting for a reply.

Penumbra grumbled under her breath while she trudged away, but did exactly as instructed. One of the glimmering magic orbs sailed over the fallen Strider battlesuit and started floating in a small circle there. Zariyah climbed onto the side of the walker and peered into the gaping hole in its body left by the ejection mechanism. Then she glanced behind her, checking that the Moon Mage had wandered out of earshot.

Gear Works dragged the mobility driver closer, and then started climbing up onto it himself. “The battlesuit is in excellent condition. This should not take long at all.”

“I am most grateful that I do not have to leave Icebreaker here to be scrapped by Ork thugs. Thank you, Techpriest.” Zariyah coughed lightly, her eyes darting away. “I would also like to… apologize. It was due to my recklessness that you were at the mercy of the chirocorn, my negligence that she was able to hurt you, and my ignorance that you were left for dead so I could retreat alone.”

“Apology accepted, Miss Backfire,” Gear Works said. “Thank you for your consideration.”

The mare seemed slightly surprised. “You… are taking your near-death and abandonment quite well, I must say.”

“Most of the time I’m brutally crippled during my duties the damage is much more serious, and apologies are rare. I would just like to proceed as quickly as possible.”

Zariyah glanced behind her, and then leaned forward and lowered her voice. “So then you still mean to proceed with the mission after all this?”

“I…” Gear Works paused in hauling the driver up into place. “I do, yes.”

“Surely you do not believe the Lieutenant when he claimed he didn’t know what the chirocorn spoke of?” Zariyah asked, dropping down to help lift the machine. “Or that they didn’t know who she was? He sneers that it is an illusion, but who is this mirage? The thestrals will not say.”

“No, I do not believe any of them. They’re definitely lying to us and very likely to the Company as well.” Gears hauled the machine block up onto the Strider’s side, and then his servo arm reached into the hole in the cockpit to make some adjustments. “I intend to continue with the mission as presented, however.”

Zariyah glanced at the surrounding trees, checking on Penumbra’s position from the light of her hovering spheres. “If you get Icebreaker running, I know where the Lambda pack rendezvous is,” she advised, her voice so low as to be barely audible just inches away. “We can abandon these zhulikov and join up with the Strider team, and then we can extract back to base.”

Gears froze. “Desertion? You can’t be serious.”

“If these thestral dogs are lying to command and using us for their own secret purposes, it is hardly desertion to abandon them, no?” the pilot asked, pausing to spit over the side of the battlesuit. “I signed up to fight Orks and protect Equestria, not quarrel with bat Princesses and serve the Moon Mages. If my life is to be thrown away for the machinations of some untrustworthy villain, I insist he at least be a proper Chaos Space Marine.”

Gears finished making adjustments inside the Strider and then pulled the mobility block into place. “I understand, Miss Backfire. And you’re not wrong.” The machine sank into the hole in the walker, scraping loudly against the railing. “However, I do not believe our suspicions as they are warrant such action. Not yet.” At seeing her skeptical look, he clarified. “Whatever the Lieutenant is after, I do not believe he would go to such lengths if it were not important. It may not be important to us, or the 38th Company… but he can answer for that when the time comes.”

Zariyah clicked her tongue, looking back to check on Penumbra’s position again. “This does not feel right, playing along while waiting for other horseshoe to drop…”

Gears paused again. “Well, perhaps there is another way. But first let us restore the Strider. Its machine spirits are restless…”

Author's Note:

Slowly chewing through the next chapter of Horizons, but this stuff is coming to me much quicker, so you get more bat pones.
Chapter art done by OnyxStreak, and this piece is by Alrumoon!

Comments

[Hey its that Pony]

The newcomer started walking forward, eyes locked on the Strider’s cannon. Or rather, a single narrowed eye locked on the cannon; a deep red iris set against a baleful yellow sclera. Only the left eye seemed to be intact, while the right side of its face was a mess of criss-crossing scar tissue.

Unless this is from the point of view of Gears and Zariyah, this first description is slightly misleading.

As for the chapter. Lots of answers but also even more questions!
Banshee at least has some nice art.

Chirocorn is a nice name, but I can see Baticorn being used as the layman's term if it happens to get around before Chirocorn gets mentioned. If these events become more well known.
Also, glad you thought to include how to pronounce it in the story.

[Mix-up]

I would say Zariyah can't be blamed completely for the parent death of Gears work at the time, she wasn't informed of their actual objects they were there for and didn't know what else could be a treat and she wasn't in a position to to just fire at the batycorn with Gears in the way without risking killing him either with her lascannon or with the Striders whole body, trying to shove her away would have likely lead to accidently crush Gears anyway, she was probably trained to see any pony around her to be as delicate as twigs. It's nice to hear that Gears actually survived his head snapping like that. From the looks of it all the Theastral's who are associated with the Elements has some unknown powers for that normal Theastral's don have and that even unicorns can't use as such, I wonder how that happened to be transmissible like that to a family line.

[SFaccountant]

11820747
Geez, first description of a pivotal character and I immediately muck it up smh

[Bugsydor]

What a cute murder machine in the author's note!

And I'm glad they found a better name than Baticorn. A couple of them, actually...

[ColdReason]

She's cute. Can we keep her?

[SFaccountant]

11821582
"No! We have angry murder bats at home!"
derpicdn.net/img/view/2023/9/29/3209555.png

[Yotz]

11820747

baticorn versus chirocorn

Well, we all know that The Destiny Cube is not, indeed, a cube - but rather an octahedron: and local pony Techpriest is, in reality, a Dark Acolyte, so...
Correctness of the particular term-in-usage or lack thereof have never stopped anyone before, let's put it this way.

[Sarraceno]

If my life is to be thrown away for the machinations of some untrustworthy villain, I insist he at least be a proper Chaos Space Marine.”

🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣

[ColdReason]

11821787
And? You can never have to many :P

This one is a limited edition baticorn.

[Wydril]

Dagger Squad is doing a really bad job of keeping Gears safe on this mission. They've all got super powers but it's nonstop injury and calamity for the poor stallion.

Gear World screamed in terror and tried to flatten himself against the top of the Strider to present a smaller target.

Foreshadowing! Gears will become an Archmagos with his own forge world!

I suppose chirocorn was the most reasonable name for the baticorn, but...my fingers are still crossed that Gears overrides it with something else out of a sense of payback or even petty spite. After all, he was the first pony to be attacked by Banshee on this mission, that usually confers some 'patient zero' naming rights to the victim.

[Sarraceno]

11822508
I think tha is fortunate that Twilight is easily a galactic sector away, one just shiver thinking what a woeful naming convention se would come by

[Yotz]

11822508

Arcmagos Gears

Since the quote rescuing unquote of the USS Defiant HHSS Omen I came to hold the opinion that certain Dark Acolyte would be soon put on a track to super-fast promotion to full blown Dark Techpriest.
If only because a spaceship needs one; and DarkMech, seeing as they are inclined to deliberately forget that ponies exist - certain Dark Acolytes in particular, would be not very keen on sending anyone to such a demeaning duty - save, perhaps, for Gaela, but Solon would never agree to send his daughter favorite Techpriest to be stationed there permanently. Promoting Gears into oblivion and sending him to be Omen's resident Techpriest seems to solve both of thouse problems in one fell swoop.
Following, naturally, by them finding some asteroid to be mined, DM proclaiming it to be the separate Forge World under the 38th Company control, solely responsible for maintaining and resupplying HHSS Omen, and sending Gears there to be stationed permanently as a sole member - and de facto Magos - of the new branch of DarkMech. Bonus points for naming brand new smallest in the Galaxy Forge World "Exupéry".

Chirocorn naming dilemma

Nah, Gears is too reasonable (and meek) to be that petty. It is a logical name for an ascend thestral, so he would continue to refer to her like that unless someone else would rename it. The rest of the Bugger-off Squad, however - certain Lieutenant especially...
And of course, calling her a baticorn after she went to such a degree to even accentuate the proper pronunciation could make her mad, making rush an sub-optimal decisions thus granting them a tactical advantage at some point - but beside that "chirocorn" would probably stick.

[Wydril]

11822636
She might even create a neurotic singularity from the opposing forces of wanting to study the chirocorn and wanting to stay as far away from Lieutenant Dusk as possible.
11822680
Rather than an asteroid, I think Solon might come up with a more devious solution. If Luna wants her own ship, she'll need separate manufactorum facilities for the Omen's parts and munitions. As luck would have it, she already has an untapped planetoid under her control. Drop a few prefab structures on it, a couple mining rigs, Gear Works, and a crew of pony laborers, and bam! Behold the Pony Forge World, Gear World!

[Yotz]

11822723
Well, if Orks are allowed to have Battle Moons with image of Gork (or, possibly, Mork) on them - turning Equus moon into a navy base/Forge World/orbital battlestation with image of resident Princess stamped on it instead is only fair.

- That is unusually large orbital station...
- It's not a station - it's a moon!

[Wydril]

11822805
If her moon is rotationally locked into always facing Centaur III with the same side, I had a marginally stupid and silly thought come to mind with the idea of putting her face on it. The light side could be named Gears World/Best Princessworld, and the dark side could be named Her Tiny Haunches.

"Whose posterior is superior now, sister? Huzzah!"

[Yotz]

11822835
...
Cue Fart of Doom *ahem* alpha-strike of local satellite fortress destroying half of the invading armada.

"Firing from both ends" idiom truly goes ways here...

[SFaccountant]

11822835
11822891
Okay I fixed the typo you have to stop now

[Yotz]

11822934
NOOOOO - my Galaxy's smallest Forge World!!1oneOneeleven

[Wydril]

11822934
Aww, but it wasn't about the typo after that first post! The DarkMech are never going to give Gears proper recognition and respect, and the same goes for any other pony techpriests who join/stubborn their way in. The only way Solon can appease Kaelith over this is to assign the ponies their own forge-place where they'll be out from underfoot.

Between that, the Omen, needing new manufacturing capacity for Tau parts and ammo, and the ponies' affinity for Tau ceramic armor since it's lighter than Imperial gear, turning the moon into a pony Forge World that produces Tau wargear lines up very nicely.

[Blewfire]

I am actually more interested in this right now then Horizon. I like bat pones and bat alicorn is even better.

[Chillean]

How did I totally miss this story!? This rocks!
I'm glad you found a new muse, bat pones rule 🤘🏽