Or, All Quiet on the Earthling Front
Expeditionary Force
a snippet by Kris Overstreet
Feli-Marshaller Yorrerl read through the briefing material on his hand-pad while his tom-mother ran the platoon through a final inspection of their drop gear. The landing ship was dropping them into Landing Zone Five, a city in a nation called America by the fractious natives of this pathetic planet. Initial military response had been rapid, but the natives had been clearly outclassed from the start. Not that it was a complete cakewalk- hence Yorrerl's platoon getting deployed as a second wave force to secure a beachhead, rather than as occupation or mop-up forces.
The young officer gave one more glance at the intel for identifying officer ranks among prisoners. The equivalent of feli-marshaller in the native ranks was called lieutenant, which translated as something like "in absence of the landlord". Peculiar concept, Yorrerl thought. What did being a landowner have to do with the army? Even more bizarre, tom-mothers weren't considered officers by the natives; sergeants, literally translated as "servants" were considered just a slightly higher grade of line soldier. Obviously the natives under-appreciated the role of those who saw to the well-being and readiness of the army.
"Twenty to landing zone," the pilot called out, and the twenty Mwew soldiers put away bits of equipment or personal items in preparation for landing. Yorrerl followed their example; they had to clear the landing ship at once so it could lift off before the native air forces could respond. The initial orbital bombardments had been less than effective in this part of the planet because the natives, those idiots, seemed obsessed with plunking their major air bases right next to major population centers. The whole point of the invasion, after all, was to conquer the people. Planets were a deci per deka- the galaxy was full of them. Servitor races worth enslaving, less so. Therefore, the "Americans" still had far too many interceptors. which had brought down a number of the invasion fleet's limited supply of landing craft already, even given the short period of time when the craft were slow enough to be vulnerable.
At ten seconds the pilot engaged emergency deceleration, and everyone grunted as seven times this world's gravity gripped them for a few vital seconds. By comparison the final slam into the pavement of the landing zone came as a gentle tap. But the soldiers had trained for this, and within five seconds all of them had undone their harnesses and risen to their feet, ready to run the instant the debarkation ramp dropped.
Sunlight flooded the dim interior of the landing craft as the ramp clanged down. The soldiers rushed down, followed closely by Yorrerl and the platoon's tom-mother, who banged the exterior of the ship three times with a fist as they jumped off the ramp. Two seconds later, its ramp still retracting back into place, the landing ship lifted, joining three dozen just like it rising into the air around them.
"You! You there!" A claw-leader in dull combat fatigues trotted up to Yorrerl, who saluted in respect. "Are you the police troops I requested?"
"No, sir," Yorrerl said, maintaining his salute. "Second paw, first century, Ninety-Fifth Claw, occupation infantry, sir."
The claw-leader gave a dismissive return salute and snorted. "Recruits," he grumbled. "Command hasn't got my last reports, it seems. I need specially trained police troops to go door-to-door among the natives and clear out the hunting-rifles and other weapons. I've used up all my own police just guarding the weapons armories and shops. We're still taking casualties from civilian pop-shots- nothing significant or organized, but until we stop it we can't establish order."
"Sir," Yorrerl said, pulling out his hand-pad again, "we were briefed that you were tightly besieged by native infantry and armored forces."
The claw-leader shook his head. "They pulled back yesterday," he said. "Making room for their allies."
Yorrerl blinked. "Allies? Sir, they're natives. No offworld contact."
"Apparently they had one offworld contact," the claw-leader said, smiling. "The ponies."
"The ponies?" Yorrerl grinned. "You mean the fluffy, pacifist, cutesy-pie ponies? Homeworld where the sun goes round the planet because they're too silly to know better?"
"That's them," the claw-leader nodded. "We intercepted native communications saying they're expecting a pony force to relieve the native siege force here. I suppose we'll get a parley flag in a while with one of them asking us to 'change our ways' or 'learn the true meaning of friendship' or some other nonsense. It'll be a convenient opportunity to send back a surrender demand by the same messenger."
Yorrerl cocked his head. "Very good, sir," he said, "but what should my soldiers do in the meantime?"
"Oh, you might as well relieve my front-line troops for now," the claw-leader said offhandedly. "I can use them to begin the weapons sweep in the city. Which transport has your cent-major? I'll make the arrangements with him, and he'll tell you where to deploy."
"She, sir," Yorrerl said, pointing to a larger knot of solders fifty measures off, surrounding a tall officer in a peaked cap.
"Oh, by the..." The claw-leader shook his head. "I'll have that stupid hat off her head! The civilians make a game of sniping, even if their guns can't penetrate our uniforms. And her face isn't armored! And they learn fast what our insignia mean."
An exchange of salutes later, the claw-leader was off to confer, and Yorrerl was left with his tom-mother. "Rest the troops for the moment," he said. "And send someone to find out where the supply depot is, just in case. I expect we'll be told where to go shortly."
Indeed, less than an hour later Yorrerl's platoon had replaced another in a chain of prefabricated armor shelters on the outer perimeter of the landing zone. The hill below them had been cleared of obstructions for five hundred measures, offering a nice open field of fire right down to the road that ran between a fenceline and a waterway at the bottom of the slope.
But across the slope the next hill over remained wooded... and in the sky behind it, dark clouds were building up, far more quickly than Yorrerl could ever remember seeing. He pulled out his hand-pad and called up the local weather forecast, which showed sunny and clear for the day... and then, as he watched, was replaced with a storm warning.
Abnormal storm clouds building west of LZ, moving east at sixty km/soldec. Conditions inside storm reduce laser range to approx. eighty measures. Expect interference with ground comms and connection to fleet in orbit.
Yorrerl switched on his squad comms microphone. "Marshaller here," he said. "All units switch from laser to railguns. Repeat, laser to railguns."
A chorus of acknowledgments echoed over the network. The railguns had much more limited ammunition than the lasers, but even misses would continue flying downrange pretty much until they hit something, be it a hundred measures off or wherever gravity and air resistance finally forced them to hit the ground. Fog and rain, on the other hand, dissipated laser fire, rendering it a short-range only option.
There was also the minor danger of lightning and static- the latter would disrupt and garble high-bandwidth digital comms, but the former could be safely disregarded so long as the defenders remained within the prefab pillboxes. And since every one of his soldiers was trained to be self-sufficient in cases of communications blackout, a temporary loss of comms would be an inconvenience, not a crippling blow- at least not on the defense.
So I guess the ponies have weather control technology, Yorrerl thought. But that's never been an effective weapon of war, not on the tactical level. We had a whole chapter in OCS about that. But then, you can't expect a species which never fights to know anything about tactics or strategy- or surprise. "Everyone get ready for an assault," he told his troops over the channel. "They're going to come in under the cover of this storm."
Even as he spoke a wing of fighter craft soared overhead and into the clouds. Apparently high command thought the same thing he did. Yorrerl almost hoped the fighters didn't break up the assault completely. Neither he nor any of his troops had seen combat. The experience would do them good- and it might give them a paw up for remaining in the regular army once the invasion was over.
The fighters vanished into the clouds. There was some rumbling and banging, but Yorrerl couldn't tell if it was combat or just more thunder. He could see flashes of light, which might or might not be lightning or lasers or something else.
And then the wind came, a chilling gust out of the storm front, shaking the prefab shelter. "Stay alert! Weapons ready!" he shouted, and got a handful of static-popping responses. Up and down the thin line rail-gun rifle barrels extended from the firing ports of the shelters.
KRAK-A-BLAM!
The lightning strike came down three shelters north of Yorrerl's, lighting up the outward-facing side in a solid wave of plasma. He heard the muffled scream without need of the comms, saw something fly out of the back of the shelter-
- and then a series of lightning bolts showered down like an artillery barrage, striking each shelter with almost total precision. The soldier next to Yorrerl screamed as the railgun in his hands- the well-constructed, EMP-protected railgun- crackled with electricity, smoking from its tiny barrel.
The spikes in my ass! Yorrerl cursed mentally. "LASERS!" he shouted over the coms. "SWITCH TO LASERS!" He repeated himself twice more as the static roared in his ears, but he thought he heard acknowledgment of the order here and there. How, he wondered, how could they be that precise with static electricity? Lightning is almost random! That kind of precision is impossible!
Then the first sheet of torrential rain fell, followed by another gust of freezing wind, and then the rain returned to stay, almost blinding Yorrerl's view out the gunport. More thunder erupted behind his position as the storm rolled overhead, but he ignored it, focusing on the slope he was assigned to defend... and the softer rumbling he could just barely hear over the lightning strikes and the hissing cold rain. "Here they come!" he shouted. "Suppression fire!"
Flashes of red light, flickering faster than the eye could follow, lit up the rain-swept slope below them. The rain swallowed them up, but here and there a light of a different color- pale green here, hen-blue there, violet, yellow, other soft colors- seemed to flicker back in response.
Then the new colors began to glow steady, one ball after another appearing through the rain. Yorrerl counted twenty-one in all, almost two of them for each one of his emplacements. But as he watched he noticed that the balls were spreading out- apparently the assault was going to hit not just his pawful of troops but the units to either side of his in the line as well. On the one hand, that seemed a bit ill-advised- the enemy's best hope surely lay in a concentration of attacking power, not a dispersal. On the other hand, their weather control, however it worked, had seriously diminished Yorrerl's defensive ability...
... which, he realized with his first undiluted moment of raw fear, might mean that the ponies really did know what they were doing.
His eyes focused on the ball of light closest to his own shelter. It appeared to be approaching very, very quickly. He could just about make out shapes inside the light... and then his eyes flicked to the ball next over, and he could see now it wasn't a ball of light at all, but a wall instead- a shield of energy being pushed ahead of a pair of ponies, garbed in what looked like prehistoric plate-metal armor. Even as he watched, one of the armored ponies lowered its horn, and a blast of light thicker than any laser blast leaped out and slammed into the armored shelter next to his own, rocking it almost off its anchors. Laser fire responded, but bounced off the shield harmlessly.
"And where is our air support??" Yorrerl shouted aloud, as he pulled out his own laser pistol from its holster, stuck it through the gunport next to the soldier's rifle, and began blasting away at the wall of light only twenty measures away-
-which stopped cold at less than ten measures from the front of Yorrerl's shelter. The horned pony not holding up the energy shield blasted the shelter with his own beam, and Yorrerl swore as the heaving of the shelter walls nearly pulled the pistol from his hand. Then, just as the shelter settled back into place, he saw two more primitively armored ponies, these without horns, leap over the unicorns, land directly in front of the shelter, and spin around on their forehooves, presenting their raised hindquarters to Yorrerl's view.
Yorrerl had just a moment to count four brightly shoed hooves coming almost directly at him before they struck the prefabricated armor shelter, ripping it entirely off its anchors and hurling it back over the crest of the hill behind him, leaving him and his soldier exposed to the elements.
Pistol still in hand by some miracle, Yorrerl fired blindly at his attackers. He stepped backwards out of the foxhole which the shelter had protected, looking around to see the rest of his platoon fleeing toppled or destroyed shelters and running to the rear. He flinched as huge spears plunged down out of the skies, followed by winged ponies that pulled out of dives just before striking the turf, then swinging back around to retrieve their weapons wherever- or whatever- they had struck. He could hear his men screaming for help, for medics, or just out of mindless fear.
Something with a sharp point touched his neck. "You are my prisoner, sir," a soft, polite voice told him. "Please open your hand and release your weapon."
Yorrerl let his pistol drop to the ground.
"Thank you, sir." As Yorrerl turned, he saw one of the two horned ponies who had assaulted his position raise a hoof to its helmet. He could just see a primitive comms headset tucked underneath. "Day Guard Company A reporting: breakthrough successful. Consolidating gains. Company B is clear to follow up. Tell the National Guard we'll be ready for them to relieve us in twenty minutes."
Yorrerl tried to brush the rain out of his eyes. He gaped as more quartets of ponies, horned and not, passed through what had been his position at full gallop. In the air above his hill, not quite two dozen winged ponies, each carrying a spear under each forehoof, soared past just behind them. As he watched, he thought about what artillery might have done to break up the attack, if they hadn't relied on air forces for all their ground support. "What happened to our air support?" he asked aloud.
"I think they said we rescued seven of them," his captor said conversationally. "I'm sorry, but the rest failed to eject before their airships crashed or exploded. We'll do the best we can for any of those who survived, of course."
"How?" Yorrerl asked. He looked around him in shock, which was easier with the rain slacking off at last. "Everyone knows about you ponies. You're pacifists! You always talk about peace and harmony! You have no war record of any kind, going back centuries before you made contact with the galaxy! We thought you too inferior to be worth conquering!" He waved his hands at the ruins of his position, at his platoon being corralled together and herded towards him. "But you just went through my men like a roll through gravy! Where did THAT come from?"
The horned pony gave him a peculiar look. "I know we don't get many visitors besides humans," he said. "But do you really not know anything about us?"
"Only that you talk about feelings and mysticism until people ask you to shut up," Yorrerl said. "And that you always offer your enemies a chance to become your friends."
"That's almost true," the horned pony said. "We do forgive our enemies a lot... but only after we've beaten them." The last words landed like granite. "Young cat, on our homeworld we have monsters who try to eat us, suck our souls out, enslave our minds, level our mountains, set fire to our cities, subvert our leaders, and even rewrite the very laws of nature itself. And we fight them on the regular, youngster. Compared to them, this," he waved a hoof at what had briefly been a battlefield, "this was a cute-ceanera."
Yorrerl blinked.
"It was a kids' party," the horned pony translated.
"Oh." Yorrerl nodded slowly. He had to admit, from the other side it had probably been just that.
"Not that you didn't do the best with what you had, of course," the pony continued, obviously offering what consolation he could. "But you just didn't know what you were up against. And the humans have a saying: He who knows the enemy and knows himself need not fear the outcome of a hundred battles."
"Well, we thought we knew you," Yorrerl admitted. He raised his hand into a salute. "Feli-marshaller Yorrerl, Ninety-fifth Claw."
The pony returned the salute. "Corporal Amber Light," he said. "Canterlot traffic control."
Yorrerl hissed reflexively. He'd been captured... his position had been taken by... "Traffic control??"
The pony shrugged. "I said we fought monsters on the regular. I never said we won." He pointed a hoof skywards, where sun was beginning to break through clouds- clouds, Yorrerl noticed, which were being herded by large numbers of winged ponies. "They only give us the easy jobs. Our real heroes are up there, fighting the real battle."
Yorrerl's hand-pad chose that moment to chime. Slowly he withdrew it from its pocket and keyed it on. Before he could speak, the voice of the claw-leader roared from it: "Repeating, all units report! Pull back to the inner defense line at once! We have enemy soldiers inside the perimeter! The natives are rising against us! We've lost all contact with the invasion fleet! Pull back to the inner defense line and defend the landing field at all costs!"
Yellow light surrounded Yorrerl's hand, and he felt the hand-pad get plucked out of his grip. The horned pony gave him an apologetic look, then spoke loudly and directly at the pad. "Enemy garrison commander," he said, "this is Amber Light of the Equestrian Expeditionary Force. On behalf of our commander Prince Shining Armor, I am authorized to accept your surrender at discretion."
And, as the claw-leader's voice went totally silent, the horned pony looked at Yorrerl and said, "Don't worry. I have the feeling we'll be offering you all the chance to be friends real soon."