On Your Marks
“For Celestia—”
The battle-cries of an Equestrian Guard defense platoon were drowned out by the incredibly intense barking of bolter-fire. The pony war-calls quickly diminished in number, some devolving into shrieking wails. But soon they too fell silent.
Two Space Mareines clad in drab, gray-washed-out lilac-colored power armor lumbered towards the unassuming bunker that the platoon had been defending. They paused only to shift aside pony corpses, or parts thereof. Another Mareine followed in their wake—this one head and shoulders taller than the others’ already towering physiques.
As they approached the massive metal shutters barring access to the bunker, the horn jutting from the larger Mareine’s forehead glowed with a menacing teal light. The magical aura first encompassed her helmet, then broke its pressure seal, and finally wrenched it aside, exposing a face that would have surely stricken the Equestrian Guard with a bout of bowel loosening terror if any had survived.
The massive mare’s sharp eyes passed over a plaque next to the entrance. “Finally,” she rumbled.
“Primare Glimmer,” said the smaller Mareine on her left. “These doors are made of pure adamarentium. We lack the proper—”
They were silenced as Starlight Glimmer, Primare of the “Our Chapter” Renegade Legion, flared her horn and sundered the sealed shutters to shreds. “We are luminous beings,” Starlight said in a chiding tone. “What obstacle is crude matter before us?”
“I apologize for my presumption, Primare. I’ll proceed to clear the interior as penance.”
“Be careful not to damage anything, Sister Hammer. Remember why we are here.”
“It’s so exciting, Primare!” said the other Mareine in what could almost be mistaken for a giddy tone. “Soon we’ll be back in the Princesses’ good graces!”
Starlight turned her head from side to side with glacial slowness. “No, Sister Sickle. This is only the beginning of our journey. But soon enough we will call forth the entirety of Our Fleet and take back what is ours by right. For within these dusty data vaults lies the location… of the Cutie Marker.”
The roar of massive engines echoed through a ventral launch-bay of the Equestrian Naval Heavy Cruiser Solar Ray, causing Commissar Nutmeg to wince and turn his ears down as he galloped toward the Equila landing craft perched in its center. He dodged around a host of tech-savants and mindless servitors, who he could’ve easily mistaken for panicking, if he didn’t know that their emotions had been removed as part of their holy initiation into the service of the Omneighsiah. The ship shook all around them, threatening Nutmeg’s gait and balance alike—and underscoring his suspicion that the massive naval vessel was taking fire from something equally as imposing.
Nutmeg pounded up the Equila’s lowered entry-ramp, through its conspicuously empty vehicle deployment bay, and skidded to a halt before the wide-eyed figures of most of his team, who seemed to have been in the midst of conversation within the Equila’s crew compartment. Before he could even do a quick check to make sure everypony had boarded successfully, a multitude of flashing lights and wailing klaxons burst to life through the enclosed space.
“The launch master says we’ll be at the prime insertion point in less than five minutes,” announced Free Fall, the Inquisitor's cyan-furred pegasus pilot, over the vox. “So strap in, everypony. When we get the launch order, there will be little to no warning.”
“Sir,” shouted the chestnut-colored, lanky figure of Point, one of the squad’s scouts. “Do you know anything—”
“No I don’t… I was woken up by Inquisitor Tracks about thirty seconds before I relayed his orders for everypony to get down here on the double… and about sixty before all Tartarus started breaking loose.”
The whole ship reverberated around them. Ponies stumbled. But everypony in the assembling squad nodded.
“Dammit Tracks, at least give me a hint before dropping us into Celestia-knows-what,” Nutmeg muttered under his breath. “All right everypony, you heard Free Fall! Strap in before we—”
The deck of the Solar Ray shook violently again. Even inside the Equila, it was impossible to avoid the thunderous vibrations.
“That felt like capital weaponry breaching the cruiser’s void-shields and striking the hull,” said Blitz, the bluish-gray mountain-of-a-stallion who specialized in heavy weaponry and demolitions.
“Thank you for stating the obvious,” said Whisper, the team’s gray-furred sniper, via the voxponder that she’d been fitted with following grievous injuries on a previous mission.
“Hey Whisper,” Point said whilst in the midst of shakily buckling himself into his seat harness, “you think with your new voice, somepony might mistake you for a stallion?” Nervous tension stood out clearly in the tightness around his eyes, and the too-toothy grin on his muzzle as he fished a ration bar from his combat vest.
“Doubt it. Besides, nopony mistakes you for a stallion, Point.” The laughter which erupted from the rest of the squad at Whisper’s comment left the fur of Point’s face tinted red with embarrassment.
“Point,” said Trauma, the red-furred squad medic. “If you keep sticking your hoof in the timberwolf’s mouth, you’re going to keep getting bitten.”
“What I don’t get,” said Owly, the squad’s other scout, as he tightened the straps of his flak armor over his deep blue fur, “is where we’re shipping off to in such a hurry—aboard a naval heavy cruiser at that.”
“You really thought we were done being soldiers? How predictably naive.”
Point finished swallowing his ration bar and crossed his forelegs. “What’s that supposed to mean, foal murderer?”
Whisper’s muzzle adopted her favored predatory grin. The effect was magnified by the fact that half of her countenance was expressionless high-end bionics. “Firstly: if I killed foals, you would be long-dead. Secondly: We’ve had surprisingly few combat missions since we joined the Inquisitor’s retinue. It was only a matter of time before we were thrown back into a war zone, where we belong.”
Point shook his head from side to side. “Then why, in Celestia’s name, haven’t we been briefed?” He pulled out another ration bar and took a bite.
“Because it’s Inquisitorial business,” said Nutmeg, silencing everypony else in the squad. “How many times have I told you that the information we get has been redacted because even knowing about the unfiltered data can prove hazardous to your physical and mental health?”
Point started counting on one hoof, causing Nutmeg’s expression to flatten.
Trauma placed a hoof to his face. “He’s… he’s actually counting isn’t he?”
Whisper’s voxponder emitted a stuttering static the others had learned to equate to a chuckle.
“Celestia above!” shouted Fray, the diminutive green close-combat murder-specialist. “Leave him alone! Seriously! Like a bunch of foals in here!”
Nutmeg’s expression hadn’t changed. “Fray, I have no problem with your colt-toy’s intelligence… or lack thereof.”
Blitz snorted, and immediately turned red with embarrassment when Owly leveled a death glare up at him.
Fray reddened and scrunched her face.
“Yes,” Nutmeg said to her, “your irritation with my comments is noted.” He then turned to Point. “Truth be told, knowing more would help me make sure we accomplish our mission while keeping everypony’s flanks in one piece. And I’m not above trying to get more information than I’ve been given. But even if I did know our destination or mission, guess what: I. Still. Wouldn’t. Tell. You.”
“Commissar—”
“Oh, thank Celestia.” Nutmeg turned in response to the sudden appearance of one of the team’s techponies from the Equila’s cockpit. He wasn’t entirely sure if it was Rust or Sheen; the team called the two red-robed amalgamations of metal plates and tendrils “the Twins” for a reason. “What have you got for me… ah, Sheen?”
“This unit is Rust, Commissar. And your request to backdoor-breach the ship’s datafiles was very invigorating!” Rust flailed his mechadendrites about wildly.
“Good,” Nutmeg said with a sudden eagerness to his voice. “What is the fleet’s destination and mission?”
Point scrunched his muzzle into an expression of confused outrage. “Sir! You just said that—”
Nutmeg held up a hoof. “Since you’re volunteering, Point, unbuckle yourself, get up, and go make me up a cup of that dark roast from Umbria III; I need my caffeine.” He ground the frog of his hoof into his forehead. “I need to have Tracks up my coffee rations… Rust, just tell me what you found.”
“Though I was able to gain access to the data files, it appeared that somepony had already erased all of the flight plans and mission logs. I did, however, find a file that actually has your name on it, Commissar!”
Looking suddenly wary, Nutmeg lifted a datapad from his greatcoat. “Send it here.”
Rust made a noise somewhere between a bleep and a bloop.
As Nutmeg watched text appear on the screen, he swore, scrunched his face in anger and dropped the datapad to the floor.
As the Commissar repeatedly knocked the back of his head against his crash seat, the others were able to get a look at what was on the screen.
Sorry Commissar, but… nice try - Inquisitor Tracks
Just then, a display sprang to life in the center of the Equila's cabin. “Good evening cycle, everypony,” rasped the hooded, shaky, out-of-focus holographic image of Inquisitor Tracks. “I’m downloading mission specs to your datapad, Commissar—ah, and I see you got my note. Remind me to lessen your coffee rations if you make it back in one piece. Free Fall will bring your squad within five kilomares of the target. You will then debark and proceed on hoof to the coordinates I’m giving you, enter the bunker you find there, and—”
The cabin shook violently, and the Inquisitor’s image vanished.
“Free Fall?” Nutmeg called into his headset vox.
“Hold on,” she replied. “Horseapples—I hope you strapped in, because I’m launching.”
“What happened to the Inquisitor? Have we gotten the go-ahead?”
“No, I’m not getting any signals from the bridge or anywhere else anymore, and that last shudder—”
“I just saw the launch tower get pulverized by that last fusillade,” cut in the voice of Excessive Force. The reddish-orange stallion was stuffed into the Equila’s rear turret, and would be the only pony with a proper view of what was happening behind the lander. “We should go now, in case of secondary explosions.”
Nutmeg frowned. “Free Fall, get us out of—” He was forcibly pressed into his crash seat, along with everypony but Point, who came hurtling to the back of the Equila’s cabin, steaming mug and all. With deft precision borne of his long and eventful service to the Princesses, Nutmeg whipped his hoof out like lightning and managed to catch the mug and keep most of its contents from scalding Point.
“We’re clear,” Free Fall announced. “I just passed through a cluster of debris that got spaced when the launch bay exploded, and… oh… Celestia above…”
The holographic display in the center of the cabin came to life with a blurry three-dimensional auspex return of the Equila's surroundings. Everypony watched with trepidation as myriad multicolored dots burst to life in the airspace all around their lander.
Nutmeg held onto a foreleg-rest and sipped his coffee as he watched Free Fall aggressively maneuver the amber dot at the center of the display around viridian dots representing ejected debris from the Solar Ray’s damaged side, and away from any dots that glowed the angry crimson of enemy craft. “Dammit, she’s too busy to report.” He turned his head to the Rust. “The Inquisitor can’t expect us to carry out our mission if we don’t even know what it is. Get me information, now!”
“Commissar, we’re in the middle of a full fleet engagement,” Free Fall said in an unaccustomed tone of awe. “Dammit, why didn’t Tracks tell me about all this aerial hardware?! Auspex is picking up over three dozen capital ships, and only ten of them have Equestrian Naval transponders…”
A sudden burst of static issued forth from Rust. “I have isolated a relevant communications band, sir. It is issuing forth from the Solar Ray’s auspex officer.”
“Let’s hear it,” Nutmeg said.
“—critical, I repeat; Midnight Rain, you need to maneuver to a safe distance, the Never Dream’s reactor is going critical. You need to—”
Static blurred out the communication.
“EMP from a reactor overload,” Free Fall announced over the vox.
“The Never Dream,” Nutmeg said, his blood going cold.
Trauma turned his head to the Commissar. “Sir?”
Trying to swallow, Nutmeg found his throat completely dry. “The Never Dream,” he rasped, “is a Space Mareine strike-cruiser… from Our Chapter.”
Trauma had lost some of his color. “You mean one of the traitor legions?”
Nutmeg nodded. “They were declared Excommunicate Traitoris for their despicable actions during the Horse Heresy, ten thousand years hence.”
There was the sudden sound of everypony in the cabin spitting onto the floor in disgust.
“Hold on, everypony,” Free Fall announced. “The Midnight Rain must have taken the brunt of that reactor detonation. What’s left of them is hurtling this way.”
“You hear that, everypony?” Nutmeg said into his headset as he looked at the others. “Hold onto something—not each other, you two!” He pointed a hoof at the embrace that Owy and Blitz were sharing. Both stallions reddened in the face and tightened their crash harnesses.
The sound of Point groaning could be heard from somewhere at the back of the cabin.
“I’m soooo glad I got out of my bunk for this,” Free Fall muttered as she rolled the Equila away from another flaming piece of the Midnight Dream.
Excessive’s voice came over the gunner to pilot channel: “Complaining already? We’ve only just started.”
Gritting her teeth, Free Fall turned the control wheel with her forehooves, moved pedals with her back hooves, and moved levers with her wings. “Oh shut up, you ornery sadist!”
“Just because I enjoy dispensing the Princess’ judgement doesn’t make me—” The sound of warning klaxons cut him off for a moment before he broke back in: “Got a large piece of that obliterated frigate closing in; seven o’clock horizontal, ten o’clock high.”
“Roger that,” Free Fall replied, plunging the Equila into the atmosphere away from the wayward wreckage. “Angle is gonna be steep…” She switched the vox to broadcast to the cabin again as the Equila began to shake. “I’m attempting to adjust our entry vector, but it’s going to get rough back there. Everypony stay in your seats and keep holding on!” She could have sworn she heard some sort of snide comment from Point, but her attention was ripped away as a shadow passed over the Equila.
“Princesses be merciful,” she muttered, the color draining from her face.
“Free Fall!” Nutmeg’s panicked voice came over the vox. “Free Fall, we just intercepted a transmission that the heretic cruiser Manifesto has lost attitude control and is—”
Hoofing the vox off, Free Fall’s mind worked overtime to come up with a course of action as the six-kilomare-long Space Mareine strike-cruiser filled her field of view. The stricken vessel glowed red as it began to burn up in the atmosphere, its fatal course passing directly in front of them. If she pulled out of the descent, they’d be torn to shreds by the vibrations—just like the scraps of melting metal that were now peeling from the surface of the capital ship as it continued its death spiral to the planet below. And if she nosedived the Equila, they’d burn up on reentry.
“Princess-damned physics,” Free Fall muttered. She moved her Saint Rainbow Dash pendant to her lips and kissed it before hoofing the vox back on. “The Manifesto is in our insertion window; we can’t completely avoid it. I can only angle us enough that we’ll pass through the dorsal towers.” She left unsaid the fact that she would have to maneuver through those towers.
“This reminds me of your landing on Hoofington Tertius,” Excessive commented over the gunner channel. “Let’s see if the landing-gear survives this time.”
Scrunching her face, Free Fall turned her head on instinct, as if she could actually see through the entirety of the Equila to the rear turret. “Don’t worry back there, I’ll see what I can do about crashing us into something aft-first.”
“Good, I’ve been getting a little wide in the midsection and have been trying to flatten it for months.”
Clenching her teeth into a mixture of smile and grimace, Free Fall carefully caressed the careening Equila’s angle upwards. As the lander swiftly approached the molten wall of steel and adamarentium which now comprised the Manifesto’s starboard side, the violent vibrations increased.
“Be careful,” Excessive said. “The ailerons look like they’re starting to shake loose.”
“I know how much he can take,” Free Fall snapped, though the Equila’s fuselage groaned in protest. “Ok everypony,” she announced into the cabin channel, “some tight maneuvers coming up—brace yourselves.”
Free Fall threaded the Equila between the flaming spires of the Manifesto, which involved frantically turning the wheel for split-second course corrections, pressing pedals to pop emergency flaps, and flipping switches to execute micro engine-bursts. The margin for error was so close that several passes left the wings or hull of the lander singed. Flashing crimson lights warned of temperature spikes and failing thrusters as they passed through the burning plasma fires of the stricken capital ship. She didn’t dare breathe a sigh of relief until the last of the burning towers passed by.
“Free Fall.” Excessive’s voice held a note of concern to it.
“What?”
“Something just went flying from the port side of the Manifesto… it’s an Our Chapter Thunderhoof gunship.” Free Fall’s secondary tactical display came alight, showing that Excessive was powering-up the rear-mounted gatling-las and swiveling it to track the vessel.
“I see it on the scope,” Free Fall replied. “Any signs of that they’ve spotted us?”
“Not yet, they seem to just be trying to make distance between them and—” his voice was drowned out by the sudden sound of a series of seventy-five caliber bolt ricochets sounding throughout his turret. “Never mind,” he yelled over the staccato. “They’re changing course to pursue. I’ll see if I can scratch their paint, but you know we can’t take something that big, right?”
Free Fall ground her teeth. “That sounds like a challenge!”
Excessive’s normally unflappable tone was streaked with hints of panic when he came back in over the vox. “That was not a challenge!” Free Fall counted heartbeats as she watched Excessive lock the gatling-las into a firing arc, and she felt the subtle shudders in her seat caused by him spraying out a stream of rounds.
But he was right about one thing: the aft gun wasn’t big enough to take a Thunderhoof on its own. And as Free Fall watched warning indicators bloom across her structural monitor like springtime apple blossoms, she knew she couldn’t afford to let Excessive waste more time trying—even though she knew she’d have Tartarus to pay later for stealing his thunder.
She needed to bring the forward missile launchers to bear on the Mareines before it was too late.
Gripping her Saint Rainbow Dash pendant tighter, she reversed one of the engines and spun the vehicle around. Neigh-unbearable G-forces hammered her back into her harness. Her vision shrank into a tiny tunnel, and she heard all manner of chaos and cursing over the crew compartment vox-channel; Point was being particularly vocal back there. But Free Fall held a death-grip on both her consciousness and the stick, and she came out of the spin laughing maniacally and applying a huge burst of acceleration directly towards the Thunderhoof. “C’mon, Discord Mareines! I have a present for you! And I bet they didn’t teach you this little trick in hypno-indoctrination!” Her wingtips danced across a long series of switches, and soon her teeth buzzed with the telltale hum of the Equila’s primary targeting-auspex springing to life.
“Is she insane?” came the voice of Trauma over the crew-vox.
“I told you,” Free Fall heard Nutmeg say, immediately before she pushed the Equila through another series of stomach-turning barrel-rolls. “Everypony on the Inquisitor’s crew is crazier than a catnip bag full of cats!”
“They’ve spun out of my field of fire again,” Sister Proletariat said.
“Stubborn Imperials, these ones,” Sister Bolshevik observed as she angled the Thunderhoof’s firing arc to capture the spiraling Equila. “Do they think spinning like that will save them? I commend them for their bravery and tenacity, but these fools don’t even realize that their maneuvers are sending pieces of their own ship flying.”
“Target reacquired,” announced Sister Proletariat. “Celestia be prais… wait, Sister Bolshevik, those aren’t pieces of their ship—”
“What are they then?”
Sister Proletariat growled. “Since when do Equestrian Guard Equilas carry a complement of tactical cluster missiles?”
“Never, to my—RRRRGHAAAA!” Sister Bolshevik screamed in unrepentant rage as several dozen explosive projectiles tore into the Thunderhoof.
“Free Fall!” Excessive yelled over the vox. “What in Tartarus is wrong with you?!”
“Oh, c’mon Excessive, that was awesome!” She kissed her Saint Rainbow Dash medallion again. “Besides, It looks like everypony had… a blast—” Free Fall donned her aviators. “YEEEAAAAAHHHHHH!” Free Fall bounced around the cockpit as she flew the Equila around the falling Thunderhoof wreckage.
“You just blew our entire complement of missiles!” Excessive yelled. “If we run into anything else, what are we supposed to use, harsh language?”
Free Fall laughed. “Aw, quit yer whining! The auspex is clear; I don’t think anypony else is crazy enough to try making planetfall through the mess going on up there. Besides, I still have the forward-mounted lascannon, and you have the gatling las; we’ll be fine!”
“Hey!” Nutmeg voice tore through Free Fall’s headset. “Quit bickering and get us to our Celestia-damned drop point!”
Free Fall harrumphed. “Spoil-sport.”
The Equila’s normally graceful landing process ended with an uncharacteristically huge jerk and a metallic crunching sound. Nutmeg heaved a great sigh with the barely-relieved tension of surviving their atmospheric entry, girded his mind for whatever fresh misfortune had befallen them, and touched a hoof to his vox. “Can I get some good news for once? Please at least tell me that we’re safe to debark.”
Free Fall’s voice burst out in unrestrained cursing. “...Failure of one of the rear landing struts…” was among the few bits that weren’t profanity.
“I believe I can supply us with a happy ending,” said a familiar metallic voice over the vox.
Nutmeg turned his gaze on Rust. True to form, the tech-pony’s prehensile mechatendrils began flailing with presumed excitement. “Sheen Unit? Do I identify you correctly?!”
“Affirmative, Rust Unit! You may undertake extensive physical verification upon our debarkment! This unit and Inferno have been sequestered in the Equila’s vehicle bay for the duration of our launch and landing. We may commence immediate servicing of the flaccid strut!”
“Sounds great,” Nutmeg said. “All right everypony, you heard the—” he thought for a moment, trying to choose a gender specific pronoun, but then thought better of it “—er… whatever. Let’s get out there.”
Half of the squad had already unbuckled; the rest did so and quickly grabbed their gear. But Nutmeg had nothing to grab, so he set down his drained coffee mug and pressed on ahead through the lander’s crew compartment, out into the mostly-empty vehicle bay—and nearly walked into a the huge skull-faced figure that emerged from the shadows.
“Inferno,” Nutmeg said, mostly covering his surprise at encountering the squad’s hulking black-armored flametrooper. “Glad you made it. You must’ve been back here with Sheen?”
“By the grace of Celestia,” Inferno rumbled through his skull-motif mask, “I was able to board just as the Equila’s ramp was closing.”
“Any problems down there?”
“Neigh. Aside from having to endure Sheen’s persistent and perverted prattle, our stay strapped to the walls of the Equila’s vehicle bay was uneventful.”
The rest of the squad filed past them with only a modicum of chatter. But as Rust passed by, Nutmeg heard a binary squeal which could’ve been mistaken for delight from the Equila’s rear end. This was, of course, impossible since priests of the Adeptus Marecanicus were supposed to be devoid of normal pony emotions. Shortly after the excited spurt of static, Sheen slithered around the boarding ramp. “Unit Rust, I—oh, Commissar! I have come to inform you that I have finished lubricating and straightening the Equila lander’s bent shaft! Its capacity for vertical thrust should be restored!”
“A most stimulating outcome,” Rust all but purred. “Now, Unit Sheen—if that is your true designation—are you ready to submit yourself for the aforementioned physical verification?”
“Fantastic,” Nutmeg replied, eyeing the drop-off that Free Fall had narrowly avoided with her impromptu landing. He turned back to the Twins but swiftly averted his gaze from the doubtlessly holy but exceedingly dubious-looking rite that was beginning to unfold between them. He put a hoof to his headset. “You hear that Free Fall? You should be able to get airborne again, the landing gear is fixed.”
“Oh shut up Excessive,” Free Fall’s voice harshly whispered from the vox. “I didn’t totally wreck the landing gear, you goon.”
Nutmeg shook his head. “Free Fall, did you copy that?”
“Yes Commissar,” Free Fall replied. “Now can you get the tech-pervs out of my bay? I want to get airborne.”
“You heard her,” Nutmeg said to Rust and Sheen, who sullenly disentangled themselves and slithered back down the boarding ramp. Nutmeg followed at what he hoped was a sufficient distance to avoid being spattered with any… holy fluids. Once they were clear, Nutmeg saw Rust prod Owly’s flank with a mechadendrite, gaining both the scout’s attention and ire.
Looking less than amused, Owly pointed an accusatory hoof at Rust. “Keep your pervy tendrils off my backside… Sheen!”
“It is Rust, Owly-unit,” the tech-pony said, depositing an esoteric-looking device into Owly’s outstretched foreleg and then turning to face Nutmeg. “I was able to subjugate a data stream during planetfall, which allowed me to digitally ravage the Inquisitor’s mission files. While they did not contain any information regarding the exact nature of our target, I was able to acquire pertinent information regarding its location. The auspex’s machine-spirit protested at the sheer size of the data-load I was attempting to squeeze into it, but I made it fit in the end.”
Nutmeg looked at the complicated-looking device Owly held. “You and Point scout ahead. If Rust has force-fed the objective into the auspex’s machine spirit, it should lead you straight to it—hey, Blitz, Inferno!” he called out to the squad’s two giants. “Double-check the ridge on the other side of the Equila, I don’t want a bunch of Discord Mareines sneaking up behind us!”
Watching Point and Owly gallop off into the thicket amid the deafening sound of the Equila’s engines, Nutmeg put his hooves to his head in an attempt to drown out the ear-splitting noise. But as the high pitched whine died away, he heard a deep-sounding cry and the sound of sliding rocks.
Nutmeg turned to see Inferno looking over the side of the steep drop-off opposite the trees. Blitz was nowhere to be seen. “Blitz?” He tapped his headset once, then again. “Blitz, report!”
Trauma galloped to where Inferno stood and looked down over the edge. “Oh, balls.”
“Here it is, sir.” Point tapped a hoof against the solid wall of adamarentium plate. “Thing is, we’re not sure if this is the right bunker.”
Nutmeg glared at the two scouts before turning a sidelong glance at the rest of the squad, who he found were largely mirroring his look. “Why not?”
“Show him, Owly,” Point said.
Owly pointed the auspex at the sealed circular aperture which jutted from the side of a steeply sloped hill. “Right, so the auspex says—” he tapped the side of the device with a hoof in an amateur attempt at the holy rites of percussive maintenance. “—it says—” he sighed “—that what stands before us is a giant blob of chocolate pudding.”
“I wish it were pudding,” Point muttered. “I’m starving.”
“Give it to the Twins,” Nutmeg said, eyeing the auspex readout. “I’m sure they can scare its machine spirit back into shape with threats of molestation.” He turned back to the others, and couldn’t resist frowning at the mountainous blue-grey stallion who was leaning heavily on the Twins. “Trauma, is there anything else you can do to help get Blitz back on his hooves before we go in there?”
“Not really, sir. The Twins can keep him upright… probably… but this is a bad break by anypony’s standards.” When Blitz had fallen down the drop-off, he’d caught his left foreleg between two rocks and snapped it like a massive twig… a jagged, splintered, sticking-out-of-the-skin-and-fur twig. He currently looked as if he was about to pass out in the grasp of the Twin’s mechadendrites, despite having had an emergency splint and dose of painkillers.
“Excessive,” Nutmeg said into his headset. “You’re absolutely sure that the Equila doesn’t have the right equipment to treat Blitz’s leg?”
“Negative,” Excessive replied over the vox. “Pinion must not’ve known anything more about our mission than we did, so she only got through the first phase of her planned overhaul of the Equila’s med bay. In the state she left it in, I don’t think we could even treat minor injuries.”
“Pinion’s a she?” Point scratched his head.
“Probably not anymore,” Nutmeg interjected. “She’s been so heavily augmented that I’d bet her gender’s become irrelevant.”
“New subject please,” Fray said as she walked back to Blitz and grabbed his satchel. “All right big guy, we need to get this door open. How much explosive do I put where?”
The Twins carried Blitz over to the metal door. After a few moments of inspecting the portal, Blitz pointed to several locations with his good foreleg. “One charge there, there, there, there, and there. Should be more than enough.”
“You sure?” Nutmeg asked. “Five melta charges hardly seems sufficient to destroy an entire adamarentium vault door.”
Blitz smirked… or grimaced. “It isn’t; but the bolts in a prefab door like this are always placed in the same locations. The charges only need to destroy the… the locking—” Blitz stopped speaking and clenched his teeth in pain.
“Understood,” Nutmeg said. He then pointed to the door. “Fray, place the charges. Everypony else, get up against the hillside, ten mare-lengths back from the door. I want us in there right after it blows. Twins, you’ll be carrying Blitz in, so make sure you have a good hold on him.”
“Sir,” Owly said, looking out into the overcast skies.
“What is it?” Nutmeg turned to the sharp-eyed scout.
Owly squinted. “Looks like an inbound Thunderhoof gunship, ten o’clock, about a hundred kilomares out.”
“Verified,” said Trauma, who was looking through his spotter-scope. “Rangefinder places their speed at… three thousand kilomares-per-hour.
“Hurry up with those charges, Fray,” Nutmeg said. “They’ll be here in less than two minutes!”
“Almost there, Sir,” Fray said. Moments later, she came galloping up the hillside.
“You have the detonator?”
Fray responded by shoving a rotational-device into a small fuse-box, muttering a litany of ignition, and quickly twisting her hoof.
The loud hiss-roar of the melta charges sent a heated pressure wave over the supine squad, causing them to shield their faces from the fierce, fiery temperature shift.
“Ok move it,” Nutmeg yelled, “before the Thunderhoof gets here!”
When the team reached the door, it was still in place.
“Blitz,” Nutmeg said, a hint of worry in his voice, “why is the door still here?”
“In—Inferno,” Blitz forced out between his clenched teeth.
The lumbering flame trooper walked over and turned his skull-motif mask towards Blitz and the Twins. “What do you need, battle brother?”
Sweat poured down Blitz’s muzzle. “You need… need to—” Blitz’s eyes rolled back, and his head fell forward limply.
Tilting his head as if he were examining some bizarre insect, Inferno placed the barrel of his perpetually-lit flamethrower against the part of Blitz’s leg where bone had previously protruded.
Behind them, Owly screeched his displeasure. But Blitz jolted to wakefulness, releasing a hiss through his teeth which almost rivaled the sound of his own sizzling flesh. “Oh—” he looked to the source of his discomfort “—oh, rut you, Inferno.”
The blank expression of Inferno’s mask did not leave Blitz, nor did the flamethrower barrel. “I am saving myself for Celestia, heathen. Now, what am I supposed to do? Be swift, so I can allow you to return to blissful unconsciousness.”
Blitz attempted to speak between shuddering breaths and winces of pain: “You’re the only one… with a foreleg long enough. Reach through the breach at… three o’clock. Then… grab lever, door should roll to the right—” he passed out again.
Trauma ran over, glared at the flametrooper, then inspected Blitz’s burn wound. “I don’t approve of this, Nutmeg—and Owly would’ve killed Inferno if Fray hadn’t grabbed him. Why didn’t you stop this?”
Nutmeg pointed a hoof to where Inferno was rolling the door open, then at the incoming Thunderhoof. “Because now we’ll live.”
He realized he’d spoken prematurely as the incoming Space Mareine gunship opened fire, tearing two rows of exploding bolt-shells across the landscape and into the midst of the squad. Disciplined or not, he heard shrieks from among his troops as they alternately dashed or staggered through the door. But Nutmeg himself stood like a sentinel and kept his gaze fixed upon the Thunderhoof while waving his ponies through the door, silently daring the heretics to just try and cut him down.
He followed after the last of them was through—which he soon observed to be Point, dragging Fray to relative safety behind the solid metal bulkhead. “No, no, no, no, no!” sobbed the scout as he cradled her tattered, crimson-stained barrel armor in his forehooves. Nutmeg saw that her sidearm was gone, and suspected that a bolt round had struck it and exploded. “Trauma,” Point shouted. “Trauma, get over here!”
“Somepony close the Celestia-damned door!” Trauma yelled from nearby.
Nutmeg stepped aside as Inferno pushed past him and hooked a large hoof around the door’s handle. He grunted and began to roll the door closed. But with only a hooflength of space remaining, Inferno fell back as something struck him square in the shoulderplate and detonated. Nutmeg dragged Owly forward, and the two forced the door shut the rest of the way.
Trauma moved to attend to Fray, but stopped as a distressed wheeze come from the flametrooper. Several ponies turned to see one side of Inferno’s mask and respirator crumble away from his face, exposing the orange fur underneath.
“Luna’s beard,” Point breathed. “Even his fur is the color of fire.”
“Celestia above, Inferno.” Trauma took in the sight of the flametrooper’s bloodshot eyes, and the heavy bags underneath that suggested weeks—if not longer—of severe sleep deprivation. And then there was the dry, heavy, rough breathing. The only words that Trauma managed were: “Are you… hurt?”
“I will be fine,” Inferno coughed out in a voice which most of the squad had never heard unfiltered.
Trauma’s facial expression clearly displayed his displeasure. “You look like a walking corpse!”
“More than can be said of the unrighteous whom I save,” Inferno wheezed.
Gesturing wildly, Trauma shook his head. “How are you even standing right now?”
“Call it faith, or willpower,” Nutmeg answered, turning away and leaving Owly to look through one of the melta-charge blast holes. “Either way, he’s standing and Fray isn’t. Go triage her; we need to get going.”
Galloping over to Fray, Trauma inhaled sharply through his teeth as he examined the wound. “Commissar… she’s got a big piece of shrapnel stuck in her… I don’t think we can move her.”
Point looked up, his eyes wide. “What?!”
“It’s a piece of her laspistol. It’s in far enough that I wouldn’t dare pull it out without surgical equipment. And it’s through her ribs; if we move her, we’ll aggravate the wound, which might kill her.”
Owly turned from the melted door hole he was looking through, his eyes wide. “They’ve landed! They’re coming this way!”
“Dammit!” Nutmeg looked at Point, then at Fray, then back at Point again. “Celestia damn it.” He closed his eyes. “Inferno, grab Point—we’re leaving Fray. Everypony else, come on.”
“WHAT?! NO!” Point screamed as Inferno wrapped an iron-grip foreleg around him. “Get off of me! Let me go! Celestia damn you Inferno, let me go!” He turned his hate-filled gaze to Nutmeg. “Tartarus take you!” he spat as Inferno started to drag him further into the bunker. “Celestia damn you to Tartarus!”
“Celestia above,” Owly said in a shaky voice. “One of them is huge!”
Nutmeg cocked an eyebrow at the scout. “All Space Mareines are huge, Owly—”
“No,” Owly replied. “This one is like… bigger than the rest of the Mareines. Bigger than them the same way they’re bigger than us!”
“It’s the Primare,” Nutmeg said, his tone filled with awe despite his hatred for the heresy she represented. “Run! Everypony RUN, NOW!”
Up ahead, Nutmeg saw Whisper dash down the hallway, luminator in her mouth, passing Inferno and the still kicking-and-screaming Point. Owly and Nutmeg followed closely behind, with Trauma pausing only for a moment to hoof two pills to Fray before galloping after the rest of the squad. Nutmeg could see that one capsule was white, and assumed that it was most likely a painkiller. The other pill was red, however… most likely cyanide. With the prospect of capture by Discordant forces, Nutmeg knew which pill he would choose, and hoped Fray wouldn’t have to resort to taking both. Behind them, he could hear the Twins dragging Blitz as fast as they could, but the giant pony’s sheer bulk impeded their progress.
The group came upon a metal hatchway built into what appeared to be a post-construction-installation blast wall a few dozen paces down the hall. Everypony filed—or was shoved in Point’s case—through the portal. But when the Twins tried to pull Blitz through the hatch, Nutmeg saw him suddenly twist and knock the two techponies through, then slam the door behind them.
Owly spun around and tried to push his way through the tangled Twins. “Blitz?!”
“What the Tartarus is going on?!” Nutmeg barked.
“Commissar,” Blitz yelled through the hatch as the sounds of sealing bolts slamming into place reverberated through the door. “I’m only slowing you down! Keep going, I’ll hold them here!”
“Blitz!” Owly yelled. “Blitz, NO! Blitz! Dammit!”
“Sorry Owls,” Blitz said. “This way you’ll live.” There was a slight pause. “It was fun while it lasted Owls… love you.”
Owly put a hoof to the door. “No,” Owly whispered as he heard the sound of limping hoofsteps moving away from the hatch. “Blitz… don’t leave me—”
Nutmeg grabbed Owly by the shoulder and spun him around. “Move it, soldier! Or he’ll have sacrificed himself for nothing!”
Starlight lit her horn, ripping the adamarentium door from its mountings and throwing it aside like a discarded cider mug. She took two steps into the dimly lit interior of the bunker and watched with casual disinterest as a launched grenade detonated in the air before her. The shockwave passed over her personal forcefield and accomplished nothing other than singeing her immediate surroundings.
“It was worth a try,” said a surprisingly large earth pony from his position propped up against a tunnel wall.
“Indeed,” Starlight said, wrapping the stallion in magical telekinesis and hauling him bodily through the air towards her. “I commend your bravery, little one, but you stand no chance against one such as I.”
“Maybe not,” the stallion said, wincing as he held what appeared to be one broken foreleg with the other. “But I’m not done trying yet—”
“If you’re referring to the excess of explosives in your saddlebags,” Starlight said to the now paling pony, “I disarmed them with my magic after you tried to blow me up the first time.”
“Umm—”
“Again, I applaud your efforts,” Starlight said while affecting a slow clap of her forehooves. “But I have long since transcended the limitations of mortal ponies. I've had millennia of experience dealing with far more unscrupulous beings than yourself. In fact, I believe you are the third pony with the gall to try to assassinate me via suicide bomb. Such commitment to a cause is commendable; if you were a mare, I’d make you one of my Mareines in an instant. Though I’ve been aching to attempt the forbidden rite we uncovered on Androgyne VI; it’s supposed to be able to change such things...”
Ignoring the sudden blush that had come to the stallion’s face, Starlight turned to face in the direction of a wheezing sound, which could be heard from a small alcove to her left. Leaving the blue-grey stallion suspended midair, she took a few steps forward to see a lime-green mare crumpled on the floor. “And who are you, my little pony?”
The bloodied mare responded by suddenly lurching towards Starlight with a chainsword revving in her mouth. The blade bit into Starlight’s forcefield but had a negligible effect.
Starlight lifted the struggling pony into the air to hover alongside the stallion, taking note of the shrapnel jutting from the mare’s side. “Such fire.” She stripped both ponies of their saddlebags and weapons, crumpling everything together into a ball of twisted metal and fabric. “Sister Sickle, summon Apothecary Owns-the-Means-of-Production; have her tend to these two here, lest we risk losing their potential by moving them further.” She looked down the tunnel to the sealed hatchway. “Sister Hammer, follow me. The Marker awaits.”
The muffled and distant sound of an explosion stopped the whole squad dead in their tracks.
Point stopped struggling immediately. His expression became flat, and almost vacant.
Owly whispered a curse before losing control of his tears.
Having deactivated her voxponder, Whisper began exchanging hoof-signals with Trauma.
Even the Twins were surprisingly silent, sending small bursts of binary at each other infrequently, as if their augmented and supposedly emotionless selves also seemed to feel the weight of having left two behind.
“Damn,” Nutmeg shouted, slicing the silence to ribbons. “Damn, damn, damn!”
Inferno reached a hoof toward Nutmeg. “Sir, those who die nobly are—”
Nutmeg whirled on him with gritted teeth. “To Tartarus with dying nobly!” He turned his wild-eyed glare on the rest of the team. “This isn’t the time to mourn, or remember, or regret. If we’re lucky, we’ll have that time soon enough. But for the sake of the ponies who’ve given their lives for us to complete this mission, we will complete it! Do you understand?”
The remainder of the squad murmured their assent, or signed it in Whisper’s case.
“Good. Then let’s get moving again. Point… can we stop dragging your flank? We could use you up front.”
The lanky stallion nodded numbly before falling in with the others. They advanced down a semicircular tunnel that was three mare lengths across and high. Nutmeg couldn’t shake the thought that it’d be easily able to accommodate Space Mareines—and even the Primare—despite the small hatch they’d come through precluding anything that large from passing through.
The corridor consisted of several straight sections which were walled with metal plates. At seemingly random intervals, they would come upon a turn, the direction of which would also seem random. The only constant was the subtle downward slope of the floors, taking them deeper and deeper underground. There were no sounds of pursuit, but the group dared not stop for fear of the Mareines catching up to them.
As they worked their way through the corridors, Nutmeg glanced at his fetlock chronometer, swearing for what seemed like the hundredth time since they’d started. “How long is this blasted tunnel? At this rate, we’re liable to come up on the other side of the planet!”
Rust released a small burst of static. “My clopometer says we have traveled three-point-eight kilomares thus far, Commissar.”
Trauma moved to walk beside Nutmeg. “Did Tracks’ data say how far it was from the entrance to the actual target?”
“No, the only data that the Twins managed to get stated the entry point and that the complex was built deep to avoid casual auspex sweeps from detecting it. I assumed there’d be an elevator or something though, not this endless corridor!”
There was a sudden tapping from up ahead from where Whisper had reached a large set of sliding metal shutters. She made some hoof-signals after she turned around to face them.
Trauma turned to Nutmeg. “She says there’s no panel to open the doors.”
“And Blitz had the rest of the melta charges,” Nutmeg said, his face screwing up. “Please tell me that at least some of you have krak grenades.”
Point and Owly each hoofed over a grenade apiece. Trauma just shook his head. Whisper hoofed him a plasma charge.
The Twins chittered in binary at each other for a few moments before Rust turned to face Nutmeg. “Commissar, I regret to inform you that neither myself nor Sheen possess any conventional explosives within our chassis.”
“But?” Nutmeg had heard a hint of a pause in the otherwise emotionless vocal synthesis.
Sheen flailed her tendrils about. “But if we forcefully dominate the machine spirits in certain pieces of our augmentics—specifically the magnetic compression coils and fuel cells from Rust’s plasma torch, and my backup nuclear power core—we would be able to breed them together to effect an explosion equivalent to a kilotonne of Celestia-four grade explosives.”
“You’re fitted with a nuclear power core?!” Nutmeg’s eyes widened. “Wait, there’s no way we would survive that! Tartarus, the explosion would reach all the way to the bunker entrance!”
“Hold on,” Trauma said. “Isn’t a plasma grenade just a miniature destabilized power core?”
Rust’s eyes lit up, literally. “Correct! Sheen, massage the numbers—”
“The resultant erupting strands of white-hot plasma would be equivalent to the detonation of merely one-hundred kilograms of Celestia-four explosives—still a powerful release!”
“But survivable,” Nutmeg said. He tossed the grenade to Sheen. “Make it happen, quickly. We have no idea how long until—”
“Until I arrive?”
Nutmeg spun to face the levitating forms of two Space Mareines. One was almost double the size of the other, who was already generously-oversized. “Well,” he said, “that explains why we didn’t hear you thundering down the hallway behind us.”
Primare Starlight landed on the floor and flared the glow from her horn, surrounding the entire team in a teal telekinetic field and lifting them into the air. She pulled all of their weapons, including the plasma grenade, from the team and crumpled them together into a ball of useless, twisted metal. When her horn ceased its glow, the team fell back to the floor.
“Why do you wear expressions of despondency, little ones?” Starlight said as she approached, specifically looking between Point and Owly.
“You—” Point couldn’t even finish the sentence, he was shaking so hard with rage.
“You killed the ponies we left behind,” Owly said.
“Absurd,” Starlight declared. “If you mean the gray one and the green one, they are being tended to personally by Owns-the-Means-of-Production, my Apothecary.”
Ignoring the startled reactions of the others, Nutmeg met eyes with the ancient Primare. “Why?”
“For the same reason I will spare you and your squad,” Starlight said. “You are brave warriors fighting for Equestria and the Two Sisters, even though you no longer have the ability to stand in my way. Equestria needs more such as you, despite the fact that you have been misled into thinking that I am a traitor who needs to be stopped. But I cannot—neigh, will not—be stopped.”
Nutmeg blinked. “What?”
Instead of answering, Starlight lit her horn and the impassable metal shutters peeled back like the skin of a fruit being opened for consumption. “Even the ancient wards of the Golden Age of Harmony are no match for my immense power,” she boomed as the entryway pried completely open. Then she strode into the cavernous space beyond the opening, and out onto a walkway leading to a thick platform set over an incredibly deep chasm. All around it were dozens of hundred-mare-length tall translucent glass towers which reached to the ceiling and down below the platform, each tower descending until being lost to darkness. Each of the pillars was split into sections, and those smaller areas were separated even further, until the divisions were only about two hoof-lengths across, tall and deep.
And each glass cube held a floating symbol. They were cutie marks—enough for an entire planet’s worth of ponies.
“Heresy,” Inferno spat upon seeing them. His was not the only sound of disgust as the group beheld the blasphemy before them.
The smaller Mareine ushered the group into the enormous chamber with a wave of her bolter.
“What purpose could a cutie mark storage vault have other than malignancy?” Nutmeg asked. “How were they even extracted?”
“You think this is merely a storage vault?” Starlight turned to him and smiled. “Behold: the Cutie Marker! These magnificent towers—and the ancient Draconic crystal array linking them—are capable of either removing or granting cutie marks on a planetary scale! Oh, for the days when Equestria at large was so much less uptight about scientific research and advancement. When Celestia and Luna traveled the stars, they were wholly supportive of experiments such as this one. It wasn't until after the Horse Heresy and the enthronement of The Sisters that the Ecclesiarchy and the Marecanicus started to compel the calcification of pony progress and effect Equestria to fall into a decadent decline.”
“This place… this facility… is a device made for removing cutie marks?!” Nutmeg’s lips drew back in horror. “Interfering with cutie marks is interfering with a pony’s destiny. It’s wrong.”
“You sound as small-minded as the other Primares, who saw fit to brand me and my entire legion as traitors alongside the truly Discordant! And then they had the gall to use our own creation to deprive us of our marks! We were left without a destiny, without purpose… and once the Cutie Marker was removed from our homeworld, and the data on its new whereabouts was purged from all record, we had no chance to recover them!”
“But why?” Nutmeg asked, nerves alight. “What sin did you commit, beyond this… blasphemy?”
“We committed none other! And this is the thanks we received for serving loyally and doing what we could to fight for the Imperium throughout the Heresy with what we had—despite its unsavory nature—to obtain victory!” She had worked herself up to an ear-splitting shout, and took a few moments to pause and slow her breathing. “One of these towers contains my legion’s marks. The original generation of markless Mareines passed ages ago, but the curse of equality has been passed to all of my genetic line. Thankfully it seems that there are more than enough marks to go around for Our Chapter.” She turned to the smaller Mareine. “Sister Hammer, are you not as excited as I for this day?”
“Yes, Primare.” The Space Mareine’s impassive helmeted features betrayed a jittery, barely contained excitement as her head swiftly swiveled to look from tower to tower. “Our redemption has come at last!”
Nutmeg shook his head. “So, you expect me to believe that you are not a traitor, and are only seeking restitution for something the other Primares did to you? And that restoring your marks… is somehow supposed to get you back into the Princess’ good graces?” He scoffed. “You’re even more insane than the stories say you are. Do you know how much destruction your fleet has caused the Imperial Navy? And for all we know, other Discordant forces might be following on your heels, seeking to exploit what you’ve found here! If you were sane, you’d just drop a kilotonne of explosives on this place and be done with it.”
Rust seemed to blink, despite not having eyelids, or even proper eyes, for that matter. Nutmeg felt himself battling a smile as he watched Rust slowly snake a mechadendrite closer to Sheen… before grimacing at the sight of Rust appearing to caress Sheen’s seat, culminating in a not-so-subtle smack. While this wasn’t an entirely uncommon occurrence aboard ship, Nutmeg hoped that Rust would know better than to commence “servicing” Sheen in the midst of a life-or-death situation…
“If you seek to try my resolve,” Starlight said while continuing to stare at the glass towers, “then you only succeed in trying my patience.”
Sheen suddenly stumbled to the floor of the platform as a piece of their augmentics detached and rolled off of the side. “Curse my malfunctioning continence protocols—my backup power pack has suddenly slipped out of my pony posterior!”
Her eyes widening, Starlight lit her horn and dove over the side of the platform, her head whipping around to look for the falling object. “What foul trickery is this?!”
Nutmeg slammed his shoulder into a very surprised Sister Hammer. “Everypony push! NOW!”
Sister Hammer roared in defiance and dug her armored hooves into the surface of the platform, but even her bioengineered super-strength was no match for eight ponies—one of whom approached her in size, and two whom were heavily augmented. Her enraged shriek dopplered away from them as she fell.
“We can’t allow this kind of technology to fall into a Discordant Primare’s hooves,” Nutmeg shouted, bringing everypony’s eyes back to him. “Twins, rig up Sheen’s nuclear core to go critical… it should be enough to take this place off the map!”
“Yes, sir!”
“Everypony else, give them cover while they wire it to blow!”
After several tense heartbeats of searching, Starlight finally spotted the falling piece of bionics. She enveloped it with her telekinesis, then used her magic to slow her own descent before landing roughly on the stone floor of the chasm. Bringing the device to her face, she blinked as she saw that it was a nothing but a chromed rear flank plate with a freshly engraved inscription which she read aloud:
“Bite my shiny metal—”
And then she heard Sister Hammer’s scream of rage, which swiftly increased in intensity right before the smaller Mareine slammed into the stone mere mare-lengths away.
“—Flank?!”
Rust quickly unscrewed the metal plate from one of the Marker’s panels, and sprayed the opening with holy machine lubricant. Sheen then ejected her hoof-sized auxiliary nuclear power core from her backside and began shoving it into the space behind the plate, stretching the opening with a series of controlled thrusts. Rust returned the plate and vigorously screwed it into place.
“Hey, Point?” asked Owly.
“Yeah?” Point’s expression was still vacant, but he turned to meet Owly’s eyes.
“Y’know, sometimes I wonder with those two—”
“If what they’re doing is what it looks like they’re doing?” Nutmeg interjected. He swallowed his bile, shook his head, then addressed the Twins: “How long?”
Sheen turned to face the Commissar. “Regrettably, my options were limited for locking the core into a destabilization arc that could not be interrupted by magical means. Its final duty cycle will complete in approximately five minutes, at which point we will likely all get blown.”
“Up,” Nutmeg said. “All right, let’s get galloping, everypony! Owly, Point, remember what Starlight said?”
“We can hardly trust the words of a traitor,” Inferno sneered as he dashed by and shouldered past Owly.
The light hit shook Owly out of an apparent funk. He turned and cuffed Point’s shoulder in turn. “Hey, he’s right… if Fray’s alive, maybe we can find her?”
“Yeah,” Point added, hoofing at his empty ration bar pouches. “And Blitz too.”
“Just gotta live long enough to—”
“WHAT HAVE YOU DONE?!” Starlight’s voice screamed up from the chasm as the group galloped through the peeled portal.
“Cease your motions, little pony,” Apothecary Owns-the-Means-of-Production said as she pinned Fray to the operating table she had hastily-assembled just inside the bunker entrance. With the thrashing stilling slightly, the Apothecary continued to stitch Fray’s side shut. “It would be unfortunate for you to perish when the Primare herself wants to see you ascend.”
“Ascend?” Even in her drugged stupor, Fray didn’t like the sound of that one bit. She lazily looked over to where Blitz lay, unconscious on the ground.
“Yes, little one,” the Apothecary said. “Per the Primare’s orders, you will be given the honor of joining Our Chapter.”
“Me?” Fray coughed, some blood still making its way into her spittle. “A Space Mareine?” Her body began to shake.
The Apothecary quickly checked Fray’s vitals. “There is no seizure…” It was only after a few moments that she turned her gaze back towards Fray. “You laugh? You find such an honor to be humorous?”
“I can’t,” Fray sputtered between painful chuckles. “I can’t be a Space Mareine, I’d be leaving too much behind…”
“None of that will matter after the hypno-indoctrination,” the Apothecary said in a calm, almost cheerful tone. “You will only live to serve Our Chapter after your metamorphosis.”
“Hypno-indoctrination?” Fray meeped. Her expression could not have turned more horrified at that very moment.
“Yes,” the Apothecary said, smiling. The look on her face turned Fray’s guts to ice. “You won’t have to worry your little head, because we will remove all of those pesky thoughts and all of that undesirable individuality from you. You will be… equal.” She reached for a device in her saddlebags and removed what appeared to be a set of goggles. “We can actually begin you on that procedure now. It will give you a head-start before we commence with gene implantation.”
“No!” Fray shrieked, struggling futilely against the larger pony’s iron grasp. “No, I don’t want—”
“Hey,” boomed a voice from behind them. “Did you know that medical biogel destabilizes the fusion packs commonly found in Equestrian auto-medkits?”
Apothecary Owns-the-Means-of-Production swiftly turned around and reflexively caught the satchel that had been thrown at her.
“Enjoy!” Blitz said, dropping to the ground and covering his head with his forelegs.
Fray followed suit, rolling backwards away from the Mareine mere moments before the satchel violently exploded, tearing the front half of the Space Mareine apart.
“What was that?!” Sister Sickle galloped into the room, bolter drawn, her aim focused on Blitz’s prone form… just in time for Fray to shoot her in the side of the head with the Apothecary’s bolt pistol. The stricken Space Mareine hit the floor with all of the grace of a bag of bricks.
Fray took a few shaky steps towards Sister Sickle, who was still struggling to crawl towards her own dropped bolter. Fray grunted in pain as she aimed the weapon, which had clearly been designed for a pony much larger than her. She put another round through the fresh hole in the side of Sister Sickle’s helmet, permanently dropping the Mareine.
Blitz stumbled towards Fray, having trouble walking even with his splinted foreleg. “Well, now we just need to get past the other squad outside, and the ones in the Thunderhoof,” he chuckled.
Fray pulled Blitz into a hug. “Thank you,” she said, shaking.
“Don’t mention it,” Blitz said, returning the embrace. “I was gonna blow her up anyways.”
Fray snickered, but then winced in pain.
“Adulter later you two!” Nutmeg yelled as he galloped past them and out of the bunker entrance. Point and Owly galloped by only marginally slower, giving dirty looks to their respective lovers as they fled.
“Shame, shame,” Rust taunted as they and Sheen slithered past.
“Know your name,” Sheen finished, leaving Fray and Blitz blushing furiously.
“Despicable,” Inferno grumbled on his passing.
“We didn’t even do anything!” Fray whined. Then she blinked in surprise. “Wait, was that Inferno?!”
Trauma bolted past. “Get a room, you two!”
As Whisper passed, she pointed a hoof at her eyes then at the two embracing ponies.
Blitz sighed. “We should probably follow—”
There was a sudden reverberation that was felt, rather than heard.
Fray and Blitz looked at each other, and then hobbled as quickly as they could towards the exit. As they passed back into the brightness of daylight, they saw their comrades had stopped and raised their forehooves to the sky… because an Our Chapter Space Mareine sergeant and her accompanying tactical squad had them dead to rights at thirty paces.
The sergeant shifted her bolt pistol from Nutmeg to Blitz. “Freeze.” Fray kept her wits about her long enough to count eight bolters and a rocket launcher that were now aimed at the completely unarmed guardsponies, in addition to the sergeant’s bolt pistol.
Nutmeg wasn’t a stranger to being hopelessly outgunned, notwithstanding that he preferred to avoid it. Nevertheless, with slow, deliberate movements, he drew himself up to his full height, adjusted his hat to a crisp, precise angle, breathed a quick prayer to the Princesses, and aimed a sneer at the traitor Mareines who dared level their weapons at his ponies. “Stand aside,” he shouted loud enough to bring a parade ground full of fresh recruits to attention.
“We move for no pony,” the Mareine sergeant said.
He cracked a smirk. “I wasn't talking to you. Move it or lose it, everypony!”
Nutmeg and the rest of his squad shuffled laterally, giving the bunker entrance a wide berth and allowing the Mareines a straight-on view of it.
An earsplitting boom made several members of the squad flinch. It was followed by a secondary explosion that kicked up a head-sized chunk of soil not far from Nutmeg’s hooves, showering him with fresh dirt.
“I said ‘Freeze,’” The Mareine sergeant repeated, waving her smoking bolt pistol for emphasis. “I will not warn you again.”
“Sheen,” Nutmeg said. “How long?”
“Approximately two-point-eight seconds, Commissar.”
“How long until what—”
The Space Mareine sergeant’s eyes widened as the ground bucked and rumbled. Soon the mouth of the bunker began to glow with intense white light.
Before even the bioengineered reflexes of the sergeant could react, a column of white-hot nuclear fire—which barely missed Nutmeg’s squad as they frantically dove further aside—belched from the bunker, fully engulfing the screaming Space Mareines and their Thunderhoof gunship.
After the horizontal column of devastation subsided, Nutmeg paused for a moment to watch the charred corpses and mangled wreckage burn. He then put a hoof to his vox headset, but found it was dead, likely from the elecromagnetic pulse that would come with a nuclear explosion. He gave the Twins a sidelong glance. “Looks like you two aren’t affected by the EMP?”
“That is correct,” Sheen chirped.
Rust nodded. “We always use protection.”
Sheen cocked their head. “Well, except for when we don’t—”
“By chance do either one of you have a functioning communications array onboard?!” Nutmeg shouted over the tech-ponies’ doubtlessly holy litany of servicing.
“Of course,” Sheen said, popping open their posterior storage compartment again. “Please insert your—”
“JUST GIVE ME THE DAMN COMMUNICATOR!”
Nutmeg turned his head away and held out a hoof, not wanting to know any details of what might transpire afterward. Moments later, he felt something warm and metallic being pressed onto it. He ventured a quick glance, and sighed with relief at the sight of a fairly standard-looking vox-caster unit, with a display showing it had already been dialed to the appropriate frequency. “Free Fall, this is Nutmeg,” he spoke into it.
“Copy,” Free Fall replied.
Nutmeg allowed a grin to grace his muzzle. “Hostiles eliminated on our end, including the Thunderhoof. Requesting extraction, if you’re in the clear.”
“Sure am, if you were kind enough to slag that Thunderhoof for me. I’ve been parked behind a ridge a few klicks to your south and maintaining radio silence ever since it came on my scopes. ETA two minutes.”
“Perfect.” Nutmeg heaved a sigh of relief, before concerns about the conflict taking place in orbit began to assert themselves. “Any word about whether we’ll have a ship to land on once we get airborne?”
Free Fall chuckled. “Yeah, we will. I’ve been monitoring comms, and it sounds like the Imperial Hooves dispatched a battle-barge and a few strike cruisers from their own chapter fleet to reinforce ours. They’re still taking a pounding up there, but supposedly Chapter Master Stetson herself is leading things from aboard the Kicks McGee… and they’re driving the heretics back!”
Nutmeg’s eyebrows drifted upward. “The Imperial Hooves.” He frowned, but couldn’t place the feeling that it left him with to encounter another of the original twenty Space Mareine chapters—this one Saint Applejack’s—in a single day.
“You might be glad to know that the Solar Ray is still more-or-less functional despite taking extensive damage to its starboard side and launch bays,” Free Fall said, cutting through Nutmeg’s reverie. “Inquisitor Tracks just voxed me to send his regards.”
“Good. Let him know that whatever he sent us here to deal with—presumably some heretical device called the ‘Cutie Marker’—has been destroyed.”
“Destroyed?” Free Fall didn’t sound convinced.
“We detonated Sheen’s nuclear core,” Nutmeg said.
“Nuclear core?! Hasn’t the Marecanicus banned those?”
“The important thing,” Nutmeg continued, “is that the Inquisitor knows that whatever that crazy cutie mark device was, it was point-blank for a one kiloton detonation… as was Primare Starlight.” He paused for a moment, and the uncertain feeling asserted itself again. “It’s… a shame that one of the last surviving Primares had to die like that, though.”
“No,” Inferno said as the Equila came into view of the squad. “It is never a shame when heretics meet the end they deserve.”
“Of course,” Nutmeg said automatically. Though even as he watched the Equila land before them, he couldn’t shake the thought that the death of a Primare—heretic or not—represented a loss of something fundamental to the Imperium. The first twenty Space Mareine chapters and their Primares had been hoof-made by the Princesses… and in some small way, it was like he’d borne witness to the death of a piece of the Princesses themselves.
“She spoke of them with reverence,” Nutmeg said under his breath, once Inferno had turned away. The discovery of a potentially loyal Discord Primare was unsettling, to say the least.
As the Equila lifted off, Nutmeg found his mind drifting. He pondered the words spoken by Primare Starlight, despite the heresy inherent in doing so. He could understand why the other Primares had condemned her for the use of devices such as the Cutie Marker, for the desecration of another pony’s destiny was anathema. But by that same token, it struck him as hypocritical—and abhorrent—for the Saints to turn around and use that very same device to punish both Starlight and her legion.
How could they declare something heretical and then use that very same heresy to enact the punishment? Wouldn’t that make the Saints themselves a party to heresy?
Nutmeg grew progressively number as the question played over and over in his mind. Despite being a Commissar, he’d never been as fervent a believer in the Saints as some of the other ponies in his squad, like Inferno. Yet even he knew it’d be heresy to question the righteousness of them.
Could they themselves have not been righteous?
Feeling his stomach grow hollow, Nutmeg realized that by destroying the Cutie Marker, he and his squad had placed the capstone on the Saints’ condemnation of all the destinies of the ponies in Our Chapter. The thought did not sit well with him at all. Who was he—or even Inquisitor Tracks, for that matter—to do such a thing?
And what did it say about him that he’d ordered it destroyed without hesitation?
When the shuddering of the Equila lessened, Nutmeg placed a hoof to his forehead and tried to catch a quick cat-nap. There was no way he could speak about his misgivings to any of the others, especially not the Inquisitor; he’d have to work his way through this dilemma on his own.
“Blessed is the pony mind too small for doubt,” Nutmeg recited under his breath.
Deep beneath kilomares of scorched tunnel lay the melted and shattered remains of the Marker. The platform that had supported most of the device’s cogitating circuitry and operating machinery had crumbled, causing several of the towers to collapse as well. Even if any part of the device had managed to survive the fall, there was no way that it would have survived the heat and pressure of the nuclear explosion.
Once the radioactive ash had settled, ownerless Cutie-Marks could be seen floating around the cavern. They moved about like unpowered ships on the ocean, drifting and listing in a seemingly random manner. The only glow in the chamber now came from the myriad marks.
A single charred power-armored hoof pushed its way up from the tangle of rubble on the floor, and a guttural roar ripped through the sounds of creaking and cooling metal:
“Damnable commissar, I will see you pay for this! I—”
A single cutie mark—of a purple and white star, below two wavy aquamarine and teal s-curves—floated towards Starlight, as if drawn by some infernal magnetism.
As Starlight beheld the mark, she began to laugh.
She didn’t stop for quite some time.
The End