Missing in Action
Neterrian In Equestria
Missing in Action
Morgan groaned. His whole body throbbed. A quiet, but urgent beep repeated on a loop in his ear. He opened his eyes slowly, not sure what he’d find. What he found was what he should have expected to see, the inside of his drop pod through the screen of his helmet visor. The quickly becoming annoying beep was a notification alert from his battle armor Virtual Intelligence. Sensing his consciousness, the VI switched on the HUD and displayed a rotating little picture of him standing upright, with red highlights over his right leg and back of his head. Blue, friendly-looking letters declared SEVERE INJURIES DETECTED, SEEK MEDICAL AID. Morgan stared at the words for a moment. There was something he was forgetting about that alert. He could understand the words, which was a good sign with the possibility of brain trauma, but something should have happened by now. The question is what?
“Oh,” he whispered, his throbbing headache not letting him do any more, “Medical beacon. Is it on?” The screen flashed to another display with the words MEDICAL BEACON ACTIVE, RECEIVING NO SIGNAL FROM FLEET. SEEK MEDICAL AID FROM LOCAL POPULATION. That last bit was helpful, Morgan decided. His next question would have been “what now?” but the VI was on top of things. Now he just had to remember how to get out of the pod.
The seat harness proved to be little problem, and muscle memory had his hand on the door release before he could even think to ask where it was. The first tricky part came went the door opened. While a brilliant design for combat drops, the exploding bolts going off and throwing the hatch ten feet away did nothing to help with Morgan’s headache. He rubbed his head as best as he could with a helmet on, then he went to stand. The second tricky part came when his leg refused to hold him up and he fell flat on his face with searing pain in his leg. So walking’s not going to work, he thought, So I’ll crawl. The third tricky part came when he found that a wire still attached him to the pod. Now what the hell is that for…? My rifle! The fourth trick was getting the Gauss rifle unhooked from its holder, which meant crawling back into the pod and finding the release switch before yanking on it and tumbling back out of the pod to more pain.
Now completely free from the pod, Morgan began to crawl away. The pod had landed, crashed would possibly be a better word, near the edge of a forest. He noticed a road just beyond the bushes, and further down the road, lights. Seeing the lights made Morgan release that it was night. He wasn’t sure why, but that seemed wrong somehow. Regardless, he shook the thought off, which didn’t help his headache, and made for the road.
A few grueling minutes later, following a minor fight with a bush that had got a cheap shot on his wounded leg, Morgan made it to the road. He smiled as he panted, and he carefully maneuvered himself to a sitting position with his bad leg stretched out. He sat upright, then flopped over backwards. He had blacked out.
Had he been conscious for just another few seconds, he would have heard a voice call out along the road “I think it came from over here.”
***
Applejack and Rainbow Dash led their friends along the Everfree road at night. The whole town had been woken up by the thunderous boom from the forest, and as the six de facto defenders of the town, the friends had quickly met up before heading out to see what the commotion was all about. Twilight was glad that Fluttershy had been staying at her castle that night for a slumber party with Rarity. It certainly made it easier to convince her to come along.
“I think it came from over here,” Applejack called out from the front.
“Oh, I hope it’s not scary,” Fluttershy said as they galloped along. Twilight agreed silently. She wasn’t in the mood for fighting off monsters tonight.
Applejack rounded the bend in the road and screeched to a halt, with the other four crashing into her from behind. Rainbow was flying, avoiding the pile. All six peered down the road. There, just over by the ditch on the Everfree side, was a large creature. Even with it lying on the ground, Twilight could see that it would have towered over them if it was standing. For an instant she thought it was human, remembering her brief trip to that strange world, but something wasn’t quite right about it. She was pretty sure that human legs didn’t bend like that. She also knew that a human’s helmet wouldn’t look like a giant wolf’s head, unless they had a taste for odd head wear. There was also the thing that appeared to be a tail. She certainly recognized that awful thing it had next to it. She only ever seen pictures of guns, but she had heard enough about them to know what they were for.
“What in tarnation is it?” AJ asked.
“Is it dangerous?” Fluttershy gulped.
“It certainly doesn’t understand fashion,” Rarity said.
“It’s a soldier of some kind,” Twilight said, approaching it slowly. “See its weapon?” She levitated the gun away. She looked thoughtfully and the creature, and tapped it with her hoof. She got no response. “This is armor. It isn’t metal, but it feels… tough.”
“Armor or not, I bet I could still kick its flank,” Rainbow said.
“Not if it shot you with that,” Twilight said, gesturing towards the gun. Rainbow opened to respond, but decided against it.
“I-I think it might be injured,” Fluttershy ventured. “It’s unconscious , and the right leg looks more crooked that the other one.”
“Yeah, even with digitigrade legs that does seem to bend a bit too far,” Twilight murmured. She looked at the others. “We’ll take it to the hospital, carefully, and I’ll inform Celestia of the situation. Dash, could you fly ahead and let the doctors know we are coming?”
“You got it,” Dash said, and she disappeared in a blur.
“Rarity, help me lift it. We need to keep it as stable as we can.”
“Right,” Rarity responded, her horn lighting up.
“All right, Let’s get this done,” Twilight said, lifting the unconscious mystery off of the ground. The five turned and head for the Ponyville hospital.
***
Elsewhere, in a universe far from Equestria, the news of Morgan’s disappearance reached an orbiting warship from the planet beneath. The warship captain took the news quietly, quickly signed the report, and went to her quarters. There she spent the better part of an hour staring at the picture she had on her nightstand. A picture of her and her husband with their arms around a smiling Morgan in his best dress uniform. Eventually she put the picture back down and shut off the light, and quietly cried. She had hoped that getting him on board the Dauntless would have kept him safer. Instead, all it had done was make her the one who had to sign for her own son to be declared missing in action.