The Battleship Ponytemkin

by James Washburn

Chapter Six - The Battle of Nowheregorod

Chapter Six

The Battle of Nowheregorod

Stoker sat with Anchorage on the barricade they’d built in the middle of the National Stroll. He was quietly impressed by it, to be honest. It was a good seven or eight feet high and looked thick enough to take a charging bull, and all it took was some furniture and elbow grease.

It was about midway the street, so there was plenty of space for all the ponies defending it to dither. They mostly sat in small nervous clumps, chatting, drinking tea (the char-wallahs had gone into overdrive, it seemed, dashing about with tea, biscuits and even coffee) and generally being tense. Keel had managed to make an appearance though, having insisted on being brought out by the medical personnel Hardcolt had managed to rustle up. He was down there now, challenging all and sundry to a game of Blackmail. Stoker peered over the top.

“It’s quiet,” said Anchorage. “Too quiet.”

Stoker gave him a look.

“What? When else am I gonna be able to say that?”

There was a snort of laughter from the bottom of the barricade. Anything to relieve the tension. Presently, it started to rain. It moved in like a solid wall of water, drenching the street and churning the road up. The defenders grumbled and dashed off into the lee of buildings. A couple pulled down a banner and held it over their heads. Keel opened an umbrella he’d found somewhere. Stoker turned to Anchorage and rolled his eyes.

Over the sound of the rain, Stoker swore he heard a hissing of steam. He leaned his shovel up against the barricade and hollered to a navigator, who passed him a telescope. He wiped the lens off on his boilersuit (which in all likelihood just made it worse) and rested it on the barricade, peering down the street. He couldn’t see the train, but the plume of steam rising from the train station was clear for all to see. He hunkered down and kept watching. Anchorage gestured and whispered for the defenders to stack up, which they did by and large, even hauling Keel a little closer.

Something moved at the other end of the street. Through the sheets of rain, he could just about make out a cluster of ponies pushing a cart out of the station.

“The deuce...?”

He looked again. There was something on the cart, covered in tarpaulin. He saw the points of half a dozen deck crossbows jut from first storey windows along the street as Hardcolt and his marines took aim. Hardcolt himself was waving from a window at Stoker for confirmation to fire. Stoker bit his lip.

“What do you think, Anchorage?”

“I say perforate ‘em. Hay knows what they’ve got on that cart.”

Stoker turned to Hardcolt and gave a nod. Hardcolt nodded back and all fired at once. The bolts embedded themselves into the cart and the ground (and the mane of one unlucky soldier, who was pinned to the side of the cart). Those that could ducked down behind the cart and heaved off the tarpaulin. The marines were furiously reloading their crossbows as the thing on the back of the cart took shape.

Through the telescope, Stoker saw an assembly of cogs and pedals, a rack filled with some things that looked like oversized comedy cheroots and six long barrels. For the third time in half an hour, his blood ran cold. If this kept up, he might as well become a lizard. It might’ve looked a bit odd, but Stoker knew a cannon when he saw one.

“Get down!” He yelled, leaping from the barricade into the street. He and Anchorage landed in the mud face down, just as the cannon opened fire.

It started slow, sending rounds the size of hoof-balls through the barricade one at a time, but soon it sped up, the blasts mingling and blurring together until it was one sole roar. Ponies ran in all directions as the barricade was torn apart. Chunks of wood flew in all directions and splinters burst in clouds. There was a brief, multicoloured shower as a barrel of rainbow blew apart. Stoker put his hoof on Anchorage’s.

“We’ve got to get inside Town Hall!” shouted Stoker, over the long, rolling explosion.

“You think it’ll be any safer?”

“Safer than here!”

Stoker picked up an abandoned banner and tied it around his neck like a cape. He rushed over to Keel, Anchorage close behind. Together, they hefted the stretcher up on to their backs. They staggered down the street under Keel’s weight. The banner flew like a flag, and Stoker yelled for everyone to follow him. The cynic in Anchorage told him that the others had probably been running to Town Hall anyway, and only appeared to be following Stoker, but at least they ended up safe either way.

He cast an eye back as he kept pace with Stoker. The cannon had now turned its attention on the marines, tearing apart buildings with every sweep, pouring smoke and belching fire as the marines dashed for cover. Buildings collapsed and Anchorage saw crowds of ponies vanish in dust. He noticed that it was getting very hard to see. Idly he wondered how the hay you were supposed to aim that thing, but then again he supposed that wasn’t the idea.

They got inside with the last few stragglers and slammed the doors shut shut. They’d have pushed something heavy in front of it, but any movable bit of furniture had been in the barricade.

He took the time to pant. He scarcely had a moment’s rest before Stoker set off again, leading the mud-spattered survivors deeper into the building. He sighed and followed with.

“I’m too old for this manure,” muttered Keel from his stretcher, “and the rest of you are too young...”

* * *

In the command car, Crossfire seethed silently. She’d heard the Fifty-Cal firing and that had only made her seethe harder. She shuffled in place, but the Lancers gave her a sharp look and she sat still. Well, Lancer. The rest had left now the Fifty-Cal was silent. Going in to mop up resistance, she thought, glumly.

She sighed. This wasn’t the end she’d imagined for her military career. She was thinking maybe she’d work the desks a little longer, build up a good pension, then buy a farm and retire somewhere quiet. Now, though, her military career was promising to be very short indeed. Once the Field Marshall and the Commodore got their business sorted out, she was for it.

She glanced around for any escape, but the Lancer was watching her intently. He knew he was stopping her from getting out, rather than stopping anyone from getting in. This was a brilliant strategy, doubtless worthy of praise in all the best henchmen periodicals. So naturally, it all went wrong.

The door opened behind him and he turned, straight into a powerful headbutt from Vickers. There was a little ‘gwee’ noise before the unlucky guard slumped into unconsciousness.

“C’mon then, look lively,” said Vickers, setting about tying up the supine Lancer. “Good lord but you’ve screwed up royally, eh?”

Crossfire leapt to her feet “Well, I think given the circumstances I’ve done very well.”

“Hm, if y’say so. I guess I got captured too, so I suppose neither of us made much of a go of it, to be honest.”

“Hang on, if you got captured, how are you here?”

“Easy. That huge cannon starts up and everypony panics and loses track of any prisoners they might be holding. Then, you wait until the smoke dies down at the troops go in. After that, simplicity itself, under the circumstances to get into here,” he said, with a touch of pride. “After all, I figured if they were here, then you must either be under guard or in the ground, and I guess I’m an optimist at heart.”

Crossfire smiled. “Well, in that case thanks. I’d be screwed without you.”

“No trouble. Now, let’s get out there, shall we?”

* * *

Stoker, Keel and Anchorage and a good couple dozen ponies were in the main hall of Town Hall, wet and exhausted. Princess Celestia fumed silently, pacing up and down. A few char-wallahs nudged some bits of broken crockery about despondently. Sandblast had somehow survived too, and was sat among a few tattered factory workers. Stoker sighed and slumped down.

“And we were so bloody close, too...” he said, drawing circles on the floor idly with one hoof.

Anchorage lay beside him “Hey, fret ye not, Stoker. I’m sure we’ll get out of this okay.”

“We’re surrounded, out-classed, out-manoeuvred and definitely out-gunned. We’re hosed, Keel.”

Keel smiled faintly. “Well, if that’s the case, why are we cowering in here?”

“Because they have that bloody great thing out there,” said Stoker, despondently.

“Now, that’s true, but they can hardly get it in here, aye?”

Stoker was still frowning. “But we haven't any weapons.”

“Never stopped me,” said Keel, grinning ear to ear. “Just let ‘em try.”

Stoker smiled. It was insane, but it might just work. He felt he had at least one speech left in him. Above, a stray cannon round had smashed a hole in the roof, leaving a shaft of light shining down. Stoker stepped into it.

“Everypony! Gather round! C’mon, over here.”

They gathered, lacking anything better to do.

“Look... things look bad, right?” He began. There was a murmur of agreement. “It looks like we’re gonna get creamed, right?” Another, louder murmur. “Well, maybe we are.”

Keel and Anchorage put their heads in their hooves, and Celestia ceased her pacing. Even by the usual standards of last-stand speeches, this was looking unusually bad.

“But I want you all to know that I have faith in you. That this will be a creaming for the ages. Ponies in a thousand years will look back at us now and say ‘good lord but did those ponies get creamed. But at least we will get creamed fighting for what we believe in!”

Celestia had to bite her lip. If you left an infinite number of speech writers in a room with an infinite number of typewriters, she doubted you’d get something as mind-numbingly brilliant as ‘a creaming for the ages’.

“We’re in a tight spot, yes, but you know what? Animals fight best in tight corners. Panthers, leopards, all the cool animals. We’ll kick their flanks so hard they’ll need specially padded coffins! Because together, we can do anything.”

Stoker was grinning ear to ear, slightly out of breath, standing in a little patch of light. There was a lot of glance-exchanging, and no small amount of murmuring. Anchorage decided to break the spell and started applauding. Keel took it up too, and soon the whole room was in rapturous applause, although what about none were too sure.

Doubtless they would have found out too, had events not overtaken the situation. There was a clanking of armour and weapons and the door was suddenly filled with a line of soldiers, all wearing the shako caps of the Pasturekhan Rangers. They parted, and two ponies entered. An earth pony and a pegasus, one olive drab, eyes blazing, the other a funny greenish-blue tinge. The Field Marshall stood proud and tall and owned the space. The Commodore slunk behind like something left to soak too long.

There was a moment of silence. Then, the Field Marshall uttered a lie that was so great, the universe as they knew it winced. Even here, in a place born of stories and half-truths and deeds needlessly cruel, it stood out above all others.

“Don’t worry, Princess Celestia. Everything is perfectly fine.”

Stoker, Anchorage, Keel, Sandblast, the char-wallahs, Princess Celestia herself, the factory hooves, the officers and the crew, all stared at them in shock and awe.

"What,” said Princess Celestia, as though addressing a particularly stubborn dog-turd, “are you doing here?”

“Ensuring the safety of the nation,” said the Field Marshal. Her smile’s smugness and towering arrogance could have been measured in kilo-Trixies. “Just like we said we would in the Serviceponies’ Pledge.”

“Bollocks,” said Keel, quite plainly, “you’re trying to kill us.”

The Field Marshall fixed him with a stare, and he fixed her right back. She blinked first.

“That’s how it is,” said the Commodore, sliding out of his place. “Sometimes, some must die so others may live in peace.”

“I don’t call this any kind of peace,” said Stoker. “Not with that bloody cannon out there.”

“Well, of course it isn’t now,” said the Field Marshall, irritably, “but imagine what it’ll be like when you’re gone. No one will have to worry about where they are in the grand scheme of things. Everyone will know where they stand. Everypony will know their place.”

Stoker lowered his head and snorted, but the Pasturekhan Rangers readied their spears and he thought better of it.

“Surely there can be an agreement,” said Celestia. “Surely this doesn’t have to end in bloodshed.”

The Field Marshall tried to look regretful. It was like a sheep trying to look cunning
.

“You see it does, because if ponies are not shown what happens when they try to oppose the order of things, then what will happen?”

Celestia thought about that, and she knew. The land had got to these two. They were just... plot devices now.

“Nothing,” she said. “The order of things will change and the world will go on.”

The Field Marshall’s mouth opened and shut, like a fish gulping for air. The Commodore looked ready to see his lunch again.

“But... but it can’t change,” said the Field Marshall, her eyes lighting up in anger “It’s our tradition, our history! What are we without it? It makes us strong!”

“Maybe,” said Stoker. He thought about Story, and what it’d said. “But you can't hang on to it forever. Sooner or later, tradition ceases to apply, and when it does, you have to let go.”

A char-wallah, ever one of life’s natural audience members, whistled appreciatively, and another started clapping.

If the Field Marshall had been beyond rage before, she was beyond that now. She was in the anti-rage, the point at which it reached a singularity and collapsed in on itself. The Commodore recoiled like a slug in a frying pan. She turned to the Pasturekhan Rangers. Her expression was blank, burnt clear.

“Kill them. Kill them all.”

* * *

Vickers and Crossfire flattened themselves against the wall of a half-collapsed building on the National Stroll. Crossfire had been adamant they try and stop the Field Marshall and the Commodore, and Vickers had hardly been in a position to disagree. They hadn’t got terribly far when they realised that there was little hope of achieving anything, though. The Fifty-Cal had been wheeled into the middle of the street, and was surrounded by a small picket of Lancers, but no one was at the controls now.

That, at least, they had on their side. Of course, they were still facing a force of well-armed, well-trained and fresh troops. Surprise (one of the lesser known elements of disharmony) could only get you so far. They hunkered down behind a slab of masonry and pondered their next move.

“No way we’re getting in,” said Vickers. “They’ve got it locked down tighter than a cutesy similie.”

Crossfire’s face was set. “We’ve got to at least try. We owe it to the ponies in there.”

“You don’t even know them,” Vickers pointed out.

“Well, no, but shouldn’t we give them a chance?”

Vickers chuckled mirthlessly under his breath. “Was that your battle-cry at Thursk?”

Crossfire sighed and slumped down, only to have the rubble beneath her grumble and shift. She stepped back, and a pony emerged. He was dressed in the remains of a marine’s uniform, the sergeant’s stripes just visible on his sleeve beneath the grime. He shook himself down, then he noticed who he was with.

“Don’t panic!” said Crossfire, in a stage-whisper. “We’re on your side!”

"I’ll be the judge of that!” said the marine, hackles raised and glaring at Crossfire “Who are you anyway?”

Crossfire introduced herself, and gave a quick run-down of her immediate life story. The marine listened patiently.

“Hm. Well, we’re all in the same boat now, I suppose,” he bit his lip and cast a glance at the picket around the Fifty-Cal. “I suppose if you had that bit of hardware our job’d be a bit easier, eh?”

Crossfire nodded. “But for want of a nail, and whatnot”

The sergeant looked faintly puzzled for a moment “Or whatever that thing is. Well, look, I could buy you some time, eh? Then you could rush it while they’re distracted. Once you’ve got it, you’ll have them by the sweetmeats.”

“But, what’ll you do?” said Vickers, ever sceptical of a plan that put him in the line of sight of armed ponies. “More to the point, you’d do that?”

“Having that thing out there isn’t improving anyone’s day,” said the marine, with a look that knew Vickers through and through. “Alright, on the count of three, okay?”

The sergeant counted down and leapt across the ruins before the others had time to stop him. He dashed out into the middle of the street and stood for a moment, posing dramatically just long enough for the guards to get a good bead on him and rush forward as one. Not all of them, of course, because they weren’t all needed to take down one measly marine.

Those who didn’t rush forward, though, were caught unawares. Vickers homed into view and pounded their heads together like so many coconut halves. Crossfire leapt past a couple who lunged at her and scrambled on to the cart. She put her hooves on the pedals and immediately felt out of her depth. She hadn’t realised this thing had gears, for one thing. Still, nothing ventured, nothing gained. She put it into first and pushed down on the pedals.

The barrels all pointed skywards and Crossfire fired a long burst, pumping out smoke like a dry ice machine in a humidor. All the soldiers stopped in their tracks. Crossfire finished firing and swung the barrel down over their heads. Vickers and the marine hit the dirt. Crossfire’s eyes had developed a worrying gleam to them.

There was a moment of silence. From nooks and crannies and piles of debris, ponies dressed in tattered naval uniforms (some with red, some without) slipped out behind the transfixed Lancers and surrounded them in short order. The Lancers might have been armed, but they knew when it wasn’t worth it. A few bowed down.

“Alright, you lot, I know what you’re all thinking,” she said, because some history comes pre-written. “‘Did she fire fifty shots or just forty nine’ and you know what? In all this confusion, I’m none too sure myself-“

Common sense stepped in.

“The magazine is just there, if you need to check,” said a helpful voice below her hooves. A soldier was pointing with one hoof, the other being held over his eyes. “That metal frame next to the feed assembly.”

Crossfire tried not to look flustered “Oh, thank you. Well, it looks like I just fired twenty. I take you understand what this means for all you punks down there?”

“Not a big fan of punk, myself,” said one soldier, with suicidal regard for his own individuality.

“No, I’m more of a new wave chap,” said another.

“Can’t knock a bit of jazz, I always feel.”

“I’ve got a soft spot for Electro, personally...”

Crossfire was having none of this.

"Everypony shut up about your taste in music,” voicing the concerns of many since the dawn of record collections, “or I’ll fill you full of so much lead they could melt you down and make you into,” she paused, ”... more bullets.”

She looked around and frowned. This wasn’t going quite as she planned, but then again, what had the plan been?

One idea suggested itself.

“Right, all you lot, help me get this thing into that hall,” she said, pointing at Town Hall.

There was some shuffling of hooves and some muttering, but eventually, everypony, Lancers, marines and crew put their weight behind it and shoved the cart down the street and into the entrance of Town Hall.

* * *

The atmosphere in the hall was so tense you could have cut it into strips and sold it as elastic. The Pasturekhan Rangers stepped forward as one, perfectly in step, as the cluster of revolutionaries and Princess Celestia retreated. The Commodore was rubbing his hooves together and Field Marshall was grinning broadly, her shoulders shaking and little ‘tsh, tsh, tsh’ noises escaping between her teeth. Any minute she was going to laugh, Celestia could just feel it.

“I don’t want to hurt you,” she said, lowering her horn and glaring at the Rangers. She felt the history of the room, all the strength and blind fury, there if she needed it. This could all be over in one very messy minute. She didn’t want to, but if she had to...

The Rangers’ step faltered slightly, but one look at the Field Marshall’s eyes reaffirmed their purpose. They’d rather face uncertain death at the hands of a monarch than the certain death promised by the Field Marshall’s glare.

Stoker hunched his shoulders forward and stood his ground. Anchorage saw and did likewise. Sandblast did so too, trying to control his shaking knees. Keel, who had no choice but to lie down and fight, gnashed his teeth at a height that made one or two Ranger stallions wince and put their back legs closer together.

The Rangers’ line advanced nonetheless. Stoker became aware he was shaking, and hoped it wasn’t fear. Then he noticed the floor was shaking, the boards were creaking. The char-wallah’s broken crockery shook and jumped. The high windows rattled. Oh no, thought Anchorage, not again.

Through the double doors behind the Rangers, a cart burst through. It had been pushed with quite some force, and was propelled by its own momentum some way into the hall, huge iron-bound wheels crunching across the wooden floors. One rolled on to the Commodore’s tail, making him squeal in a most satisfying way. Hardcolt rushed around the side with his ex-prisoner, a spear in his teeth to threaten all and sundry, but a more impressive threat was above him.

Lieutenant Crossfire Hurricane stood, front hooves on the pedals of the Fifty-Cal, eyes wild, hair matted, and still dressed in her mangled snow camouflage coat. She didn’t look like the most stable of ponies.

“Don’t nopony move!” She shouted. “I’ve got this... thing, and I’m not afraid to use it!”

One look at her assured everyone of the truth in both of these statements. The Rangers stopped in their tracks, flummoxed by with this new tactical consideration. Each one of them weighed up their own personal allegiances and how likely they were to survive a cannon ball.

The world turned on a pinhead. Speeches were all very well and good, Stoker thought, but sometimes the right word in the right place was just as good. He turned to the Pasturekhan Rangers and pointed at the Field Marshall.

“Get her.”

The Rangers gave one look and, Celestia love ‘em, did just that.