Operation Pony Liberation
War Were Declared
Admiral Biscuit
When the portal had popped up in the Mojave, everyone had ignored it. It was California's problem. Then the first unicorn had come through.
After that, things got a little fuzzy, but it was clear to everyone that the ponies were harboring terrorists, and the only way to preserve freedom was to go to war. President Cheney said so in an impassioned speech, and all his sycophants in Congress echoed it to their citizens. In no time, the Military-Industrial Complex was in full swing, exchanging fat governmental contracts for shiny new equipment that wouldn't fit through the portal.
But Americans are a persistent lot; scientists figured out how to make the portal large enough for a truck to fit through, and even an F-35 . . . if it was in pieces. Soldiers streamed through the portal, ready to bring diplomacy at gunpoint.
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Captain John Price shot to cruise altitude, quickly crossing over the no-man's land outside the base. Technically, it was a no-pony land, but in this strange new war, old names stuck. Once he was in a combat zone, he instinctively glanced down at his radar for targets, but of course none appeared. The boys at Raytheon were working on that, but for now it would only show airplanes, not pegasi. The missiles he normally carried strapped to the wings were gone, too, replaced with external fuel tanks. Missiles wouldn't track a pony, so they were useless.
Setting the throttles as far back as he could, he shuddered along at five knots above stall speed, looking for targets. He instinctively knew that his plane was more or less useless against the ponies, but for some reason he didn't understand, attack helicopters hadn't made it through the portal yet.
At his low altitude, he was burning through fuel at a prodigious rate, but it was worth it when he spotted a cluster of ponies around some sort of weapon. It looked vaguely medieval.
He tucked the nose down, and brushed his finger over the trigger. They'd never know what hit them. As soon as he got through the scattered clouds. . . .
The plane shuddered, and he could feel the engines coming apart. Alarms screamed through his headset, and Captain Price instinctively grabbed the handle for the ejection seat. Later, a frame-by-frame analysis of his gun camera would show that the F-35 had most likely ingested a piano when it went through the cloud.
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“Hold your positions, men!” The Corporal ducked down as shrapnel whizzed overhead. The fuel dump he was tasked with protecting was blazing into the night sky.
An attack at the perimeter had been the perfect distraction to pull his men away from the precious fuel. By the time he got back, a battalion of flaming red birds had made kamikaze runs at the fuel pumps. He'd seen one land right on top of a valve and while he watched in horror, the metal heated until the pipe burst, soaking the bird and the ground in fuel . . . and then the whole thing had gone up like a torch, and the damned bird flew off completely unharmed.
Shooting them did no good. They'd fall out of the sky, burst into flames on the ground, and then take off as if nothing had ever happened.
He was not looking forward to reporting this setback to the Pentagon.
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Private Argonar was in the mess hall when it happened. A loud thump on the roof was a sign that the unicorns were tossing rocks at them again. At first, they'd been firing them from trebuchets, but as the soldiers got better entrenched, they were able to clear a range that was safe from even artillery fire.
Occasional sparkling rocks still landed on the roof, but they were more of an annoyance than anything. He went back to his lunch.
While he was enjoying a rehydrated brownie, he heard a commotion outside the mess hall. He instinctively reached for his sidearm—along with the other hundred soldiers in the room—and turned to look.
He only had one moment of clarity as something which looked like a cross between a chicken and a lizard rushed into the room. His first instinct was to shoot, but as he was drawing a bead on the chicken lizard, he became overwhelmed with an urge to protect it, and keep it safe from all the other soldiers. He dropped his gun and rushed for it, offering soothing words as it looked into his eyes.
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How he had gotten through the perimeter, nobody could say. A single white unicorn, wearing the obsolete golden armor of the Royal Guard, was standing in the center of the parade grounds, his horn blazing with blue light. A cordon of soldiers all had their weapons trained on him, but not one of them dared pull the trigger—because above them were the target of the unicorn's spell. Dozens of boxes of mortar rounds, all floating fifty feet off the ground, bobbing slightly in the unicorn's wavering field. None of them were fused—probably—but no one was dumb enough to take the chance.
He was weakening, everyone could see that. Sweat was pouring off his body from the intense concentration required to maintain a field that large for that long. The base psychiatrist was talking to him, trying to coax him to set the weapons down gently and he would come to no harm.
“I want my brother back!” he shouted, and it was the last thing anybody heard, because he slammed the munitions into the ground. For a single heartbeat, it seemed that his plan had failed . . . but a badly-packaged round triggered, and set the rest off in a terrible chain reaction.
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The Diamond Dogs were a new threat. Orders had come down for a spearhead of tanks to make an attack on the capital. The men weren't sure how they were supposed to get the tanks up the mountain, but they followed their orders anyway, racing across the low ground and blasting anything which crossed their path to oblivion. They hit a broad expanse of flat ground and stopped in a defensive formation while the supply vehicles caught up. The sky and ground were clear of threats; they could see around the tanks for miles. Nothing but small rocks, and a drone that followed their progress checked those out thoroughly.
All was well, until the first tank suddenly shifted, and dropped nose-first into the ground. A few brave soldiers got out of their tanks and began thumping on the ground, wondering if there were sinkholes or something. By the time the second and third tank had fallen into holes, they realized that this was no coincidence, and began their heroic retreat.
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“Sir! The second cavalry is calling for backup. Should we gear up?”
“Negative, soldier.” The commander’s eyes flashed green. “Maintain our position. It's another spoiler attack.”
“I can call down an airstrike,” the soldier protested.
“Our planes are committed elsewhere.” The commander patted him on the shoulder. “I know it's hard, but we won't succeed If we stretch too thin. If you love me, you'll follow my orders.”
“Um . . . yes sir?”
"Tell me, does you . . . our army know of changelings?"
"What's a changeling?"
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“Uh, Twi?” Applejack looked at the frazzled alicorn warily. “What is it you're doin' again?”
“Parasprites!” Twilight looked up at the farmer with bloodshot eyes.
“Y'all know that last time they ate half the food in Ponyville, and near destroyed mah farm. I ain't too comfortable with this.”
“Well, these won't.” Twilight rubbed her hooves together, then tapped the bell jar gently. “These have a special spell cast on them. They only eat one thing.”
“Let me guess—gunpowder?”
“Huh.” Twilight’s eye twitched. “I guess that would have worked, too.”
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The first Apache helicopter through the portal lasted three days. It chewed up the streets of Canterlot, almost entirely unopposed. Unlike the F-35s, it could dart around like the pegasi, and needed no runway to land at. Equipped with a Faraday shield around the body of the helicopter, and EMP-resistant avionics, spells just bounced harmlessly off of it, and the poor unicorn who announced himself by casting a spell was dispatched with extreme prejudice.
Until one of them discovered that it was possible to grab only the rotor in a telekinetic field. True, he could only hold it for a second, but that was long enough for the delicate blades to disintegrate and turn the helicopter into a very expensive rock.
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President Cheney paced around the Oval Office. The news from his generals was bad. The troops weren't losing—but they weren't winning, either. Their Princess had offered several peace treaties, and he had ordered his diplomats to reject them all. “Tell them,” he snapped at Secretary of State Cammy White, “that we are gravely concerned for their flagrant disregard for human life, and if they persist in their attacks against our troops, we will have no choice but to launch a nuclear weapon at one of their cities.” He fell briefly silent as the message was relayed. “We should probably pick something small to start with,” he mused aloud. “Something which will strike terror in their hearts, but leave their leaders alive to surrender to us. It's about time we play hardball with these ponies.” He looked up at the ashen face of his Secretary of State.
“Mr. President? She replied—and I quote—'Thus far, civilians on your side have not been involved in large numbers. Should you chose to use your so-called 'nuclear' option on one of our cities, I will have no choice but to respond with our 'fusion' option. My sister has proposed seeing if I can control your sun well enough to make a mile-wide straight-line path from Los Angeles to Washington D.C. with a small portion of your sun. She irreverently calls it “Bowling for Humans.” That is kinder than her earlier suggestion of reuniting the moon with the Earth.
“'If you surrender now, lay down your arms, and quickly abandon all hopes of conquest, I will not do this, and I will also prevent Discord from going through the portal. If you do not . . . Mr. President, do you have any idea what Chaos really is?'”