> EaW: Across Burning Skies
>  by Warpony72
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

> AFO
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

July 13th, 1012
Skies Over Dimpeak, Imperial Occupied Whitetail Mountains

”Keiler Two to Flight Lead, come in over.”

“This is Lead, go ahead Two, over.”

“Lead be advised, Anomales Flugobjekt spotted, bearing 330, twenty kilometers out.  Interrogative, is this the target?  Over.”

“Two, Lead.  I see him, that’s the one.  All Keiler Flight elements, this is Lead.  Change bearing to 334 and form up for interception.  Time to see what we’re dealing with here, over.”

“Lead, Three.  Affirmative, over.”

“Lead, Two; moving to comply, over.”

“Lead, Four.  Will comply, but be advised my compass is acting a bit strange…damn, that’s weird.”

“Four, Lead.  Everything okay, Nebelklaue?”

“Lead, Four.  Aye, just had a strange instance with the compass spinning around.  All 100% again, moving to comply.  Over.”

“Confirm, all Keiler elements in formation.  Arrowpeak, this is Keiler Flight, wing of four Habichts responding to AFO, reporting object sighted.  Moving to intercept, over.”

“Keiler Lead, this is Arrowpeak Kommando.  Advise caution, you are moving out of effective radio and radar range.  Interrogative, can you identify the AFO, over?”

“Arrowpeak Kommando, AFO is sixteen kilometers and closing fast, bearing 335, north-northwest.  We are approaching the AFO from behind.  All Keiler elements, arm cannons and prepare for possible contact, over.”

“Copy, armed.”

“Roger, armed.”

“Armed, Lead.”

“Arrowpeak Kommando, be advised that Keiler Lead is now armed and prepared for hostile contact, over.”

“Kommando to Lead, hold fire until positive identification of AFO, over.”

“Copy, Arrowpeak.  Be advised, have moved to…are those wings?  Two, are you seeing this?”

“Confirm, Lead.  AFO is a winged creature, over.”

“Is it a wyvern or a dragon?”

“Can’t tell, gotta get a bit closer.”

“Lock up and cut the chatter!  Observe proper radio discipline!  Sound back confirms, over!”

“Confirm, Lead, over.”

“Confirm, Lead.  Sorry, over.”

“Arrowpeak Kommando this is Keiler Lead.  Can confirm AFO is a winged creature, can’t discern if wyvern or dragon, over.”

“Lead, Kommando.  This creature triggered a reading on our radar set, you’re likely looking at a dragon.  Can you get close enough to confirm, over?”

“Copy that, Kommando.  All Keiler elements, move to overtake AFO.  Let’s get a look at this thing’s wings, over.”

…..

“Uh…Arrowpeak Kommando, Keiler Lead.  Got a better look at the AFO.  Target is definitely a dragon, but err…it looks a little unwell.  Over.”

“Lead, Kommando.  Elaborate, over.”

“Kommando, it looks like its flesh is pretty thin.  Holes in the wing membranes, broken spikes on the tail.  I can see ribs jutting out from here.  Wait is…is that it’s spine?  How can its spine be-HOLY BOREAS!”

“Lead, come in!  Report, what’s happening?”

“Kommando, this thing just swung its head around to look at us!  Half of its face is skull and I swear by the Three it's got this sick green light glowing in its eyes.  I think this thing’s dead, over.”

“Lead, this is Three.  I see movement on the spine.  Look there, just between the wings, over.”

“This is Four, I can see it too.  Is that a…pony?”

“Kommando, this is Lead.  We may have a rider on the AFO’s back.  Advise on what-”

*A squeal of radio static, screaming and cursing over the line.*

“Keiler Lead, this is Arrowpeak Kommando!  Come in!  Report, what happened?  Over!”

“Arrowpeak, this is Keiler Two!  That pony just blew Lead out of the sky with some kind of magic bolt!  Arcturius’ claws, I don’t even know-BREAK BREAK!  THREE, EVADE!”

*More screaming, more static.*

“Arrowpeak, this is Keiler Two!  We are engaging AFO with lethal force!  Nebelklaue, flank from the opposite side, I’m going in from above!”

“This is Four, hard copy!  Moving to-FUCK!  Eyr’s mercy, that bastard blew half my wing off!”

“Four, this is Two!  You’ve got smoke rolling out of your whole frame!  Eject Nebelklaue, eject!”

“Can’t…can’t get the cockpit open!  I’m going in hard, spin’s too fast!  I’m…gonna…pass-”

*More squealing, more static.*

“Dammit!  You son of a bitch!”

*Automatic gunfire rings out in the background.  Two has left his transmit on.*

“Yeah, have some more!  Let’s go, you bastard-”

*The radio squeals, the pilot starts screaming as something audibly tears at the plane.  An explosion, then the channel goes dead.*
> For Queen and Hive
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------


"Does anyone think that maybe...we're the bad guys?"
-Thorax to General Pharynx, January 1007






July 9th, 1012
Royal Spire, Ditrysium Hive, Chrysalis Coast
Queendom of Greater Changelingia

“What am I looking at?”

Helvia knew what an automobile was.  An internal combustion engine (though recovered Equestrian magitek tanks suggested arcane crystals were capable of replacing gasoline) wrapped up in a frame on a staggering variety of suspension (or lack thereof).  Automobiles were spread across Faust, from the snowtractors used by Olenians to clear their roads, the various kinds of trucks used by the hives to transport freight underground, cute little country cars Equestria used for their idyllic green hills, the various aristocratic luxury stretch vehicles griffon aristocrats rode in, the simple but functional Riverpony cars and so on and so forth.  Ditrysium Hive was well modernized, and as a result a large amount of the Royals in the hive and a sufficient amount of drones owned their own machines or at least knew the basics of driving one if they didn’t.  She knew what the object of her observations -was-, but its presence in front of her spire gates was the true mystery.

“A Lowenstein 770 Größer ‘Tourenwagen’ W150!” declared Recina, eagerly sweeping the vehicle in question with her eyes, seemingly hungry to devour it.  An avowed fan of machinery of all kinds, Recina was an expert on naval and aviation engineering.  It seemed Helvia’s sister also had an eye towards luxury cars as well.  “Stretch convertible, inline eight cylinder engine, four forward ratio gears with an overcharged fifth, capable of 3200 RPM while supercharging with a top speed of about 180 kilometers an hour.”

Recina practically looked like she’d fallen in love, ogling the vehicle that they had watched be unloaded from the massive packing crate that had been unloaded from the large cargo truck.  Several mechanic drones and a Royal engineer milled around, having done their job and made initial checks to ensure the car was ready to go.  Hanging from small poles installed over the headlights hung banners of the Changeling Queendom, already affixed when the car had come out, though an orange, yellow and black sash hung over the grille to indicate whom it had been sent by, as if the note that had come with it hadn’t been indication enough.

’To the Queens of Changelingia, from Kaiser Grover VI’ it had read.  Indeed, a quick call had confirmed that the other queens Aurantia, Yaria and Argynnis had all received identical cars like this one, so it wasn’t a trick.  Chrysalis, it turned out, had received both a car -and- several Imperial military vehicles, officially granted to the High Queen to show off the fruits of the Exchange.  The Griefkonig alone was a piece of art when it came to panzercraft, and many in the Luftwaffe were eager to begin looking over the Habicht fighter to discover its secrets.  Word was, Chrysalis planned to pack up an entire Tiger tank to Griffonia to one up the Kaiser and his Regents, which Helvia saw as a bit crass and petty, but that summed up Chrysalis’ personality in a nutshell regardless.

“It…is a nice car, I suppose,” Helvia remarked.  To be certain, it certainly looked sleek, and Lowenstein’s luxury cars were among the most desired in the world.  She didn’t see what made this one special, but Recina was looking at her sister agape, like she couldn’t believe what came out of Helvia’s mandibles.

“Sis, you realize this is the same one the Kaiser himself rides around in?  I wonder if they put the armored panels in?  There’s less than a hundred of these in the -world-!  They don’t even tell you the price until you request it!  And for Grover to send us -five- of these things must have cost a fortune!”

“More like his regents did,” Helvia grumbled.  “You can’t expect a nine year old to know how this sort of thing works.”

She may shrug it off, but the staggering cost of the gift did indeed slap her in the face.  In the midst of two wars, with the oceans contested to the point this had to be flown through Nova Griffonia and Polarland, such a grand gesture was not only a sign of attempts to strengthen relations but a subtle show of industrial and economic might.  Five of the most expensive cars on the planet that were similar make and model to the Kaiser’s own on top of the tank, plane, rifles and who knew what else was a ridiculous cost.  The message was clear; ‘if we can afford to do this at whim as a gift, what else do you think we’re capable of?’

“Don’t be so cynical,” Recina scolded the queen, an action she certainly wouldn’t have gotten away with if they hadn’t been Royal clutchmates.  “And don’t be so dismissive.  Grover’s got a lot of advisors who could have given him the idea.  Have you ever met him?”

“No,” Helvia admitted sullenly.  “Have you?”

“No,” Recina admitted back evenly.  “But that doesn’t mean a thing.  So, are we gonna take this thing out for a roll?”


-----


Fifteen minutes later, the Tourenwagen was leaving the Royal Spire behind, flanked by a quartet of OCA Sd.Kfz. 234/1 armored cars, eight-wheeled beasts with 20mm autocannons mounted in their turrets.  Normally used by the Royal Heer to scout for panzer formations and hunt guerillas in occupied territory, back here in the hives they made sufficient protection for the queens.  Ahead of them, flying Queen’s Guard would alert the traffic ahead of the Queen’s approach, and trailing Guards would let the drones know it was safe to drive once more while also making certain the Queen was not being followed by those who wished to do her harm.  

Like Vesalipolis, Ditrysium had greatly benefited from the massive amount of industrial growth the unification had brought them, and after Olenia had been made a Protectorate had become a primary hive processing newly harvested resources after Vraks.  As a result, it was also one of the most modern, a benefit which it also shared from being Changelingia’s largest commercial port.  Olenia’s ports were technically military facilities now, so all the trade that had previously come to the deer had been piped up into the icy waters around Ditrysium.  Any who wished to sell their goods to changeling companies now came through Ditrysium, and the money had only flowed even further since.  Automobiles were everywhere, all the hive enjoyed a glut of electricity, radio stations and luxuries like foreign alcohol, exotic foods, spacious apartments (for changelings), shopping arcades to purchase new clothes and modern appliances at and motion picture theaters to watch the latest flicks from Applewood Studios and even Talonsberg from across the Celestial when they could be flown in.

The convoy was headed to the harbor.  Helvia wanted a good look at that which had built her hive’s fortune.  Thanks to the Queen’s Guard and the armored cars around them, they made good time with no stops, the insulated window and material of the cab keeping the interior nice and quiet while the luxury suspension provided the best ride Helvia had ever felt.  Even OCA, the company that made the very vehicles escorting her, didn’t make vehicles for royalty like the Kaiserreich did.  Recina leaned over to a small box between them in the backseat, opening it up to reveal the ice inside and several vintages of Erdbeere wine as well as a small selection of glasses.  Difficult to take up without claws or fingers, Recina didn’t even bother to try, levitating two with her magic and one of the bottles, working the cork out.

“How goes the battle for the Spa Islands?” Helvia questioned, wincing at the loud pop.  Recina fixed her sister with a raised eyebrow as she poured two drinks, allowing Helvia’s magic to take her own glass.

“Don’t you have access to those reports yourself?  Ditrysium is literally the center of Armada affairs.”

“Yes,” Helvia admitted, taking a sip of the wine and nodding as she found the flavor to her liking.  “But Chrysalis’ posturing and temper tantrums has left more and more sycophants behind the desks.  I’m not sure I’m getting the full picture.  At this point, the only ones I can trust are you, Mimic and Lysander.”

Recina shrugged, admitting Helvia the point as she tipped her glass back, not bothering with sipping and going straight to downing the whole thing in one go.

“It’s tough,” Recina admitted.  “The Celestia Fleet is a lot better equipped for surface warfare than the Lunar Fleet was.  Now we’ve lost the element of surprise and they have New Mareland and the Reds behind them, I’m not sure we can force the straits anymore.  Mimic’s U-boats are doing well, but there’s a lot of rumbling about Puerto Caballo.”

It wasn’t necessarily the colony itself they were concerned with, Helvia knew.  Puerto Caballo didn’t have the numbers to be an actual threat, and so far had avoided sending troops to Equestria on the basis that they’d be left undefended as a result.  Though Canterlot was literally being besieged at this moment, Celestia would never leave one of her domains vulnerable like that.  Again, however, it wasn’t a few regiments that had the changeling fleet shaking.  It was the massive Arisian fleet playing guest in their waters, leasing their harbor and training UK Marines right outside the conflict zone.  As a good midway point between Zebrica and Equus, it was a natural staging ground for the hippogriffs to become involved, as everyling knew they eventually would find an excuse to.  For now, it seemed Parliament and the throne were more focused on sending a show of force, but Helvia knew through VOPS naval intelligence division that the UK Navy was already enormous.  All they needed to swell even further would be some wartime funding.  It was a serious concern for the Grand Armada.

“Well, they’re not in yet.  Should I be concerned?”

“About the Arisians?”  Recina scoffed, pouring herself yet another drink of wine.  “I would say no, but we all know they’re just waiting to see if Canterlot falls.  Novo can’t justify swooping to save a nation three times their size if they still hold their capital.  The isolationists would raise unholy Tartarus.  Crack Lightning’s already calling for the Phalanx to arm themselves and wait for the disaster.  They’re not shooting at us -yet-.  But that’s not to say they -won’t-.”

“Could you beat them?” Helvia questioned, and Recina choked on her drink in response.  “I mean in the short term,” Helvia clarified quickly as her sister glared back incredulously.  “We can’t fight Equestria, Stalliongrad, New Mareland -and- Aris at the same time, however much Chrysalis keeps saying we can.  We’ll eventually fold under the pressure.  But making the fishbirds back off long enough to secure the continent would be a completely different story.  Give us access to the resources and consolidate everything.  Where’s the UK going to land if we have a bunker on every shore?”

Recina dabbed at her fanged mandibles, giving the idea some thought before she shrugged, clearly not liking the odds regardless.

“With the forces they’ve got deployed now, and the officers I know of, it’s possible.  If we strike hard and fast and get -very- lucky, I could give you…six months of victory at sea.”

“Six months?”

“Maybe a year.  Our sailors have a lot of experience now, and we have a good indication of what works.  The next generation of carriers are doing well at their sea trials, and they’ll be out to the waters in the next month.”

A good thing they had worked on them in secret before even revealing their existence to Chrysalis, then.  All that extra funding that had come after the destruction of Tall Tale had only helped to hurry up a project in progress.

“If a war at sea breaks out with Aris, and I get all the resources I need, I can give you six months of running wild with victory.  After that, I have no expectation of success.  If we had the Kaiser’s vessels onside that might be a different story.  But as it stands…”

Helvia slumped over, sighing as she did so.  With all the advantages they had, with their rampant U-boat offensive and the new power of naval aviation, they were in a good place to contest the Royal Navy.  But Recina was right.  All their advantages would be thrown out the window fighting an enemy at sea the changelings had to go to, where their own industrial base was secure and could move places untouchable to the Queendom such as deeper into Seaquestria.  Right now, the Armada was stretched to most of its limit, each vessel only augmenting where they were now.  They’d need years to consolidate and expand enough to become a world-class fighting fleet with all their naval yards working at max.  The Arisians had the capability now, with their own industry still in a peacetime setting.  Give Novo and Skystar a reason to take off the gloves, and the entire shoreline of north Zebrica would start spitting ships before a year was up.  Their only chance was to deny an easy victory and only let the hippogriffs look forward to the prospect of a long, dragged out, costly liberation.  In that scenario, Helvia could see the soft and sensitive hippogriff monarchy bending to Parliament and public sentiment as they always did and seeking a ceasefire.

“Okay,” Helvia said, downing another glass of wine like her sister had.  It was a shame, such good alcohol deserved better.  But right now, she didn’t care.  “Get with your staff.  Draw up the plans.  Canterlot won’t last forever.  We need to look at doing this soon.  In the next few months, if possible.”

Recina nodded, thoughtfully.  “I can give you something soon.  But sister…I think this isn’t…it’s not a -good- idea.  Chrysalis hasn’t paid much attention to the surface fleet, she’s lavished all this spending on the Heer and the U-boats.  If I’m going to pull off this miracle for you, I need you to get me as many ships as you can.”

Helvia snorted, peering forward as the gates to the harbor came into view, and beyond it the open expanses of the fjord leading out towards Neverwarm Point.

“The second you can figure out how to get anything out of Chrysalis without pulling teeth, you’re going to die rich after the Oberkommando descends on you for your secrets.”  Both sisters chuckled at that, the chauffeur barely batting an eye as he pulled in behind the armored cars, passing the gates to tour the harbor.  “I’ll do what I can…but Chrysalis has her eye fixed on Canterlot.  Nothing’s going to pull her focus off that…unless it’s Sombra.”

Another chuckle between sisters, and a knowing glance.

“Now!” Recina grinned, her expression feral.  “Let’s actually celebrate this marvel of griffon engineering!  I want to drive straight up to Armada Kommand and see what those morons have to say when I get out."
> Liberté, Egalité, Fraternité, Nationalité
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------


”Plus de morgue, plus d'arrogance
Fuyez barbares et laquais
C'est ici la porte de Aquila
Et vous ne passerez jamais!”
-A chorus from ‘Vilain on ne passe pas’, formerly known as ‘Ouestgarde on ne passe pas’, a popular Aquileian marching song written after Aquileian secession from the Empire in 972






July 8th, 1012
18th Régiment d’infanterie, 37ème Division d'infanterie, 8th Corps, 1st Armée
Vilein, District of Rila, Aquileia

The city of Vilein had almost ceased to exist.  Before the war, Vilein and the towns around it had been home to nearly half a million.  Sitting on the border with Fezera had allowed the city to enjoy some small amount of trade and profit from travelers passing through, and even grow a little off of it.  When the Second Revolution came and the Republique was there for good, Vilein managed to avoid the worst of the fighting.  Even when the Armee de Terre marched over the border to conquer the Peripherie, Vilein had sent their drakes and formels off with a smile, and then graciously welcomed them back after the inevitable victory.

Then the War.  This war.

Now, after several back and forths the past year, being conquered by the Kaiserreich, then retaken by the Republique before being pushed back again, Vilein wasn’t a functioning city.  It was a series of shattered buildings, a rat’s nest of mazes and a monument to broken dreams.  The civilian population had, for the most part, abandoned the area.  They had fled either to the city of Rila or even further south when that had proved to not be far enough away.  The only inhabitants of Vilein these days were the soldiers.  Fusiliers and Landsers, Knights and Republican Guard.  Wrecks of destroyed armor, trucks, planes, armored cars and artillery dotted the landscape.  No drake’s land was an ever contested, barely shifting wasteland that had mostly stabilized into its current configuration.  The Republique offensive into Fezera to the east back in June had threatened the Vilein pocket, though that had been steadily beaten back once again.  Now, the stalemate dragged on and on and on, having already sucked up thousands of lives to keep a piece of muddy ground, rendered useless by rampant flooding, shell bombardments, tank tracks and clouds of gas munitions.  No drake's land was a muddy desert, a paradox of chemical and heat baked wet earth that resulted in large pools of filthy, chemically contaminated water surrounded by acres of crater covered crust, under which the slurry of floodlands lay concealed until a soldier tried to walk across it and sunk knee deep.  Vehicles bogged down, corpses slipped into invisibility and the ability to move became even more difficult for all.  In just a few months, the landscape of Vilein had been transformed from green hills and rolling plains to a bare nightmare expanse where death waited around every corner.  What had once been a pleasant town holding thousands of creatures had been reduced to shattered foundations, rotting wood and mass graves.

Fantassin de deuxième Joane Tremblay clutched her bolt-action MS-36 closer, resisting the urge to check the magazine for the ninth time that night.  Her wings fluttered in anticipation as she listened to distant machine gun fire, the rumbling of cannons and the buzz of aircraft.  Rocket trails streaked from Imperial lines as she stares, their arcs lighting up the night even from kilometers away.  It sounded like Tartarus had opened its doors in the next zone over.  Just because the sun had set didn't mean the fighting was over in Vilein.  Both the Empire and Republique had methods to light the way before them, and the boches’ superior radios helped them coordinate the titanic amount of artillery they possessed onto the Aquileian lines, even in near pitch blackness.  Tremblay shivered as she peered out from under her blue-gray helmet again at the dark stretch before her, barely able to discern the Imperial lines beyond.  Black outlines silhouetted by fires and moonlight were all she could see of barbed razorwire, sandbag trenches and machine gun bunkers.  Hidden behind those redoubts, she knew, were thousands of Imperial Landsers, Knights, specialists of every stripe and even panzers waiting to deploy up onto special ramps.  Behind those assorted ranks were battery after battery of guns, all calibers and types ready to rain fire from above.  And, amazingly, those lines were no more than a kilometer away.

The sky filled with light, and she started as she glanced back, realizing no less than six anti-air turrets were spewing flak into the night’s sky.  Up above, amongst the flak bursts, she spied the ghostly shape of Imperial Habicht fighters and K-14 Raubvogel medium bombers dueling Republique Faucon and Vipere fighters, dodging between the deadly black clouds of flak.  The fact they were this far over, and the heavier Rabe had yet to be seen indicated these craft were specifically targeting the troops and trenches far below.  She prayed the Republique’s pilots were skilled enough to hold the Kaiser’s bombardiers.

“Arcturius above, bestow the quickness of lightning to their claws…” she muttered quietly.

“They’re doing okay so far,” said a voice nearby.  Tremblay jumped, wings flaring sharply a heartbeat before she realized the griffon in her dugout with her was Sergent Legrand, her squad leader.  While the space was cramped, two griffons could fit into it, at least snugly.  Over his shoulder, he had his MS-39 rifle slung, the more modern semi-automatic battle rifle that was startingly hard to find in Aquileian claws these days, where at the start they had far more.  Or so she’d been told.  Tremblay had joined up when the war was young, and had just turned on the Republique.  While many in her home province of Griefwald didn’t agree with the Republique or the Entente, she saw it as their best chance to hold back and maybe even defeat the Empire.

Now, her home was occupied by the enemy, and she had been pushed into foreign, if friendly, land.  The word coming down from the memos of General Gerard Simon de Berger, the Republicaine Armee commander who led the defense of the northernmost front, had said the liberation was due any day now.  While it was true he had held admirably, and even orchestrated the offensive into Fezera, Tremblay had not yet seen what new plans the hero of the Miracle on La Matrona could pull to break this poisonous impasse.

Legrand reached a muddy claw out, clutching a cloth-wrapped bundle as he did so.

“Kitchen made soupe de poissons.  It’s okay, and I knew you were out on watch tonight.  I saved you some.”

That was heartening, even if dinner had been hours ago.  Legrand had likely gotten this to her as soon as he could, and he had likely delivered to all of their squad on watch tonight as he checked in with each of them.

“Merci beaucoup, Sergent,” Tremblay thanked him, tugging out her mess kit as she did so.  The tin he had given her opened to delight her nose with a delectable scent, even if the soup was little more than lukewarm.  Still, she felt her beak salivating at the prospect.  In the muddy trenches, surrounded by the stench of shit, mud, panic, gunpowder and death, a good hot meal was a rare and welcome sight.  She absolutely was not going to pass this up.  Papa Gerard, as many in the Republique’s ranks called him, had sustained a good logistics network, assuring that at least the food they ate in these miserable climes was decent and not like the slop many other divisions to the east had to make do with.

“All quiet tonight?” Legrand asked, tugging out his own field glasses to scan the dark horizon himself.  A flash lit up the horizon, a flaming shape spiraling down behind the Empire’s lines.  Neither of them could tell who it belonged to.  Tremblay hoped it hit an Imp ammo dump.

“Aside from that,” she said, already tucking into her food with the fury of the starved, helping herself to some of the dry biscuits her squad leader had also brought.  “There’s a mess going on to the east.  It’s getting harder to hear if something is happening in no drake’s.”

Legrand grunted, clearly not fazed.  If he had been checking in on the sentries all night, he likely already knew of the offensive.  The prospect that there might be infiltrators and scouts moving up on their position while the noise of distraction was covering up quite a lot of noise and movement left them all ill at ease.  It was a clever tactic both sides had used before, after all.

“They’re making a go for Vanguardigo, I hear,” Legrand muttered, practically one with the wall of the dugout by now.  “Now they have Westkeep, they’re going to try to beeline for the capital.  Since they can’t get through here, after all.”

“We’re not moving either,” Tremblay grumbled around a spoon of soup.  She didn’t mean to sound seditious or defeatist, but she was tired godsdammit.  As well as being up all night jumping at scrapes and shadows, she was tired of being stuck in the hellish soup that was Vilein.  Even when (or if) they won this war, the region would never be back to its peaceful splendor.  That town wouldn’t pull itself from the toxic mud, and anyone that wanted to come back was likely already settled elsewhere.  Vilein would remain a destroyed monument to the devastation of this battle, there was little doubt.

“Have faith, Fantassin,” Legrand quietly chided her, peering back out into the dark.  “So long as we keep the damned boche from moving forward, we’re doing our job.  Just have to trust the other divisions to do theirs, nes pas?  Even if not a one of them has as many beautiful creatures as we do.”

Legrand chuckled, and Tremblay rolled her eyes.  Yes, he was hitting on her again, but the comment was also bragging about his own good looks.  It wasn’t a stretch to say Legrand was good looking, but the problem was that the drake was fully aware of it and believed himself to be Eyr’s gift to formels and mares alike.  But his ego was so swollen, it was a wonder some boche scharfschütze hadn’t shot him as he crawled along the trenches.  One could hardly miss such a massive target.

Just as she was about to slip a response, Legrand froze.  Tremblay choked on her joke about his attitude, listening and peering out as she tried to figure out what had him spooked.  Her mind began reeling over every little sound she could hear in the darkness, every scrap of an outline visible from her hiding post.   Was that shape out there an Imperial scout about to come toss a few satchel charges into the trenchline or an engineer there to cut some wire?  Was that quiet rumble a light panzer creeping up on the trenches through the mud?

“Flare,” Legrand muttered, reaching a claw back.  Tremblay didn’t hesitate, taking the wide tube of her flare gun from the holster on her belt (she wasn’t important enough for a pistol) and passed it forward to the sergent.  Legrand pulled back slightly, checking the chamber and reaching up high, field glasses still watching the point just ahead of them, thumbing back the hammer.  With a dull *thump* the flare gun fired in his claw, a ghastly white light streaking up high overhead.  No drake’s land all the way back to the Imperial lines was suddenly bathed in daytime glow, exposing rusty strands of barbed wire, the forgotten hulks of panzers half sunk in the poisoned mud, shell craters and rotting corpses scattered all over.

And, no more than fifteen meters away, what had to be a full platoon of Imperial soldiers clad in dark blue trench coats, muddy camouflage cloaks that broke up their outlines, dulled helmets decorated in a particular kind of ‘smash’ camouflage pattern and vicious black rubbery gasmasks, which made them seem more geist than griffon, dog or pony.  The soldiers froze, only a few glancing up in startled amazement.  Most of the others began hurriedly pushing their cloaks to the side, pulling rifles, submachine guns, pistols, shotguns and long knives or heavy clubs out.  A few of them readied grenades.  A few others tugged cloth off of what were revealed to be crystal rifles, the glowing blue core exposed now the jig was up.

Stormtroopers.

“ALARM!” Tremblay and Legrand both shouted at the same time.  Tremblay was about to reach for her rifle when Legrand simply tackled her.  Feathers and fish soup went flying a split second before their dugout was abruptly assailed by a hail of hard rounds and coherent magical light, ripping the dugout apart.  The scream of alert rang out up and down the line.  But it was too late.

Claw grenades flew over the trench lip, detonating a split second later in amongst the dugouts.  Republique soldiers screamed in pain and panic.  Dark shapes were surging towards the trench.  The Republique machine guns opened up, chattering and roaring as brass shell casings spat from their actions.  Tracer rounds lit up the darkness as the gunners showed their mastery of the two inch tap, circling points where movement was sighted.  Return fire thickened as well.  One of those Stormtroopers must have had a machine gun as well.  The Imperial trenches came alive, spotlights carving through the night air to lance across no drake’s land and trace the Republique trenches.  Machine guns weren’t long after.  The new bullet hose MG 12s were death machines, spitting out tracers with the clatter of jackhammers, followed by the slower staccato of older MG 08s.  Mortars coughed and began dropping payloads both smoke and explosive, light howitzers booming in what was clearly a very well choreographed dance.  How long had the crews been lurking in the dark, waiting for the Stormtroopers to creep across the poisoned mud for an entire kilometer?

“Stand!  Stand and fight with me!  Soldiers of Aquileia, por le Republique!  Ils ne passeront pas!”

“IL NE PASSERONT PAS!”

She didn’t know which officer let out the battlecry, but it spurred the other defenders to their stations, their weapons banging away into the darkness as they chased targets.  MS-36 rifles for the most part, but occasionally a sergent’s MS–39 or a clawful of MAC-40/2 submachine guns would begin chattering off short bursts.  However, the Stormtroopers still came on.  Several dark shapes dropped into their trenchline, more standing on the lip.  An Imperial Krahe machine pistol chattered, the fire never slacking.  This trooper had the new updated 9mm version of the vaunted assault weapon, and the drum magazine he had locked in meant he could sustain his bullet hose habit for some time.  The soldiers who dropped into the trench were a blur of motion.  A Grummond-8 trench gun boomed, blowing another Aquileian soldier in half before an Republique fusilier tackled them, the bayonet mounted on her MS-36 spearing down, trying to catch the Stormtrooper past the enchanted breastplate they wore.  Another boche soldier fired a trio of burning crystal bolts from their weapon, dropping figures in blue-gray nearby, while two more Stormtroopers went to butcher’s work with their long bladed combat knives.  In a flurry of slaughter, ten Republique troopers were dead before the weight of numbers finally swung the trench fight back.  A Republique fusilier leapt onto the crystal gunner from behind, an entrenching tool swinging down to bury in the vulnerable nape of the neck between helmet and enchanted half-plate, sinking in with a *thok* that sounded more like a cleaver preparing a thick cut of meat.  The submachine gunner on the lip dropped as a Republique trooper fired a shot point blank that went in through the eye and exited in a spray of crimson gore, and the last Imperial soldiers were overwhelmed as fusiliers pinned them in from both sides before stabbing and firing pistols and revolvers.

“Panzers!” rang out a call nearby, even as shells and mortars began landing on the trenches around them.  A sickly sweet smell came to Tremblay’s nose as she hurried to the firing step, and she felt a flicker of panic go through her as she wondered if the enemy was drop chemical munitions on them.  Other Stormtroopers had clearly survived breaching other parts of the line, as she could hear the snap and vicious struggle of close-quarters trench battle nearby.  An infernal glow, like a dragon’s breath except ten times more dreadful, told of Imperial flammenwerfers in amongst the assault group, and more grenades detonated.  If the enemy could hold their infiltration beachhead as the panzers moved up, the Aquileians had the choice to either give these trenches and fall back to the next line or stand and fight and try to hold long enough for the reserves to move up and join them.

The clatter of tracks and the rumble of engines came to her ear in full as Tremblay peered over the firing step and out into no drake’s land, her heart sinking.  Sure enough, here came ten Herzland light panzers.  Their small cannons may have been popguns compared to heavier armor, but against infantry in cover the 4 cm was a lethal killer.  Machine guns in the defense line still chattered, bullets sending sparks up the hulls of the advancing armor.  In response, cannons boomed and enemy machine guns spat lead back.  Some of the Republique pillboxes and strongpoints fell silent, but more kept fighting on.  A few of them held anti-tank guns, which cracked and spoke as they felled two Herzlands immediately, spurring the other eight on to plow through the poisoned mud to either engage or evade.

“FUR DEN KAISER!” came a massed cry, and as she watched, Tremblay saw that familiar defense line suddenly devolve as a hundred more forms suddenly appeared over the sandbags of the Imperial trench.  They came in a variety of shapes and sizes, though most were clearly griffons.  Some were dogs, perpetually upright, and a few were ponies on all four, equine as opposed to avian.  Some took to wing, trying to close the distance before they were cut down, grenades and bullets raining from their satchels and weapons.  Plenty of the fliers were cut down with little ceremony, enough that the majority of the Imperial assault wave took their chances on foot, galloping or sprinting across no drake’s land.

Another volley of shells lit up the night, and Tremblay ducked down again, having only fired a few shots.  The artillery and mortars were blanketing the trenches, keeping the defenders pinned down and distracted.  Even as the Stormtroopers battled for their lives in enemy territory, they had to worry about friendly fire dropping on their heads, though they had to know all of that.

“See?  Just a light rain!” Legrand hollered, laughing as he stood up, firing a quick doubleshot that knocked a boche in green-gray back.  “On your feet, Tremblay!  Ils ne passeront pas!”

However, as Tremblay took her sergent’s claw to stand back up and fight, neither of them noticed the next Landser, an Imperial Bronze dog with a flammenwerfer as well, liquid dribbling from the open maw as he crested the lip of the trench.

And by the time they did notice, he was the last thing either of them saw.





When the report passed the desk of one General Gerard Simon de Berger back in the city of Rila, it was simple and to the point.

”Imperial night raid repulsed in Section K, Vilein battlezone.  Moderate casualties.  Situation otherwise unchanged.”
> Out on Distant Seas
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

July 19th, 1012
Jubilee, Viridian Coast, Realm of Kiria
Hg. Hs. De Reyger, C Flottielje, Koloniale Vloot

The whaleboat bumped against the pier, the engine petering out as Hendriks cut the power, allowing Setiawan to toss a line to Visser, who already waited on the dock, having flown over to allow them to tie off.  The three sailors tugged the boat in until it was snug and secure without risk of damage if the tide changed while they were ashore.  That done, Kapitein-luitenant ter zee De Groot stepped over the gap, nodding in approval as she did so.

“Well done zeelieden,” she said, giving a short gesture for the rest of the shore party to accompany her onto the dock.  The shore party was a mixed bag of sailors and marines, equal parts zebras who were native to the isles and griffon colonials.  The Feathisian Zebrides had a little of everything as a result of their location and nature as a trading hub scattered across several islands, but the overwhelming majority of the population were the zebras, who incidentally also comprised much of the Vloot’s lower enlisted and the Koloniale division’s fighting strength being delivered to assist the Kaiserreich in their war with Aquileia, so far from home.  For some time since the Revolution, the Feathisian colonies had enjoyed their nominal independence, but when the Vaderland had come calling for them they had all returned to the colors.  Ironic when, so far away, they had been loyal where the exiles of Nova Griffonia had refused.

“Stay with the boat, keep an eye on it,” De Groot ordered Seitiawan and Hendriks.  The zebra and griffon nodded, both armed with Imperial-made Kralle rifles, fixed with bayonets.  If someone tried to steal the whaleboat, they’d have a good 30 cm reason to regret that choice.  The other sailors and the two marines accompanied the Kapitein-luitenant as she set off down the pier.

The city of Jubilee had existed as a trade port for a long time.  Ships plying the far east Zebrican coast had to stop over at the Kirin harbors for coal and food to stock up.  Even after oil began taking the place of steam, kirin merchants were vital to maintaining the flow of trade to lands such as the Feathisian Zebrides (and through them, Zuid-Zebrikaansche), the Kingdom of Sambovato and the twin powers of the Ancient Pact, Gargiloya and Senturya.  When the Silence had fallen across the Realm, it had certainly hurt their ability to sell goods effectively.  What had once been large businesses and profitable merchant clans were reduced to local businessrins forced to turn to foreigners to conduct such affairs on their behalf.  Now, however, with the entire country caught up in the frantic affair of Premier Autumn Blaze’s ambitious 3 ½ Year Plan and its chaotic aftereffects, just down the river from the industrial hub of Rhapsody it was inevitable that things would pick back up in Jubilee again.  What had once been a thoroughly depopulated and dejected urban area on the verge of being abandoned had new life breathed back into it, and the harbor reflected the city’s renewed wealth.  This rapid development had resulted in a mashing of sights and sounds both from the last century as well as the new one.  Alongside classic kirin junks and smaller fishing boats that may as well have come from the 800s were massive steamships and modern cargo trawlers from across the world.  As the sailors watched, a barge flying the banner of the Gryphus Südkontinent-Gesellschaft -also known simply as the ‘Gryps-Süd GmbH’ or ‘Die Kompanie’- was loading up with large cargo pallets being set onto it with the aid of a crane, likely outbound to the freighter flying the blue and white banner of the Gryphussian corporate entity that had a lock on Empire sponsored trade across most of Zebrica, making it the direct rival of Zebridesian shipping firms.  The only reason the ship hadn’t pulled into harbor likely had to do with the other vessels from the Kasa Free State, Ost-Griffonia, Hindia, the Riverlands, Aris, even as far away as Equestria.  At times, kirin wearing hakka bamboo hats would paddle out to ships where the crews were waiting with riverboats and rafts full to bursting with fish, crops, alcohol, baubles like toys and jewelry and sweets and they’d call up to the crews aboard, creatures of all kinds that they offered their goods to, accepting a dozen different kinds of currency because they knew they could easily turn it around in town to foreign vendors or in exchange to other crews.

Add to this chaos the Kolonial Vloot, C Flottielje.  Waiting out of harbor, the dozen warships and cluster of convoy transports hadn’t been able to enter the port because of both the lack of dock space and international maritime law against ships at war being sheltered in a neutral port longer than twenty-four hours.  Instead, the admiral had ordered a shore party from the Hg. Hs. De Reyger to go into port representing not only the Zava class light cruiser but the flotilla as a whole.  Having departed Beakavia on the mission to deliver troops both from the Zebrides and the Zuid-Zebrikaansche Vrystaat (and ever indignant Talonsvaal) it was time now to fill the coal bunkers, the fuel tanks, the food stores and a dozen other items of supply that they needed to proceed onwards towards Thymíaustadt.  This being the first time the Kolonial government had sent a military mission along this route, they did not have the business arrangements with the Realm established.  New business deals would have to be made, though they had plenty of currency to purchase what they needed.

This pier in particular played host to three smaller tramp freighters, a dozen smaller fishing vessels and several stands where kirin merchants offered fish, vegetables, knick knacks and who knows what else to passersby.  While De Groot and the two marines refused to acknowledge these small time salesrin, Adelborst Visser nudged Adelborst Zahya.

“Look, Berkah,” she said to her friend.  “Do you think that’s real jade?”  The formel glanced up to the kirin who was already grinning eagerly in anticipation.  “Do you take Zuididols?  Duōshǎo?”

Ysolde Visser knew only the smallest of kirin speech, and even that was pigeon speak from merchants on the water she had met and salesrin from kirintown.  Before the dragon-horse could reply to whatever cludging question she had asked, a firm snap from one of the marines sent her scurrying to catch up, and she retook her position next to Berkah Zahya, possibly her best friend in the Koloniale Vloot.  The zebra stallion shook his head at her foolishness.  While he was only a year or two older than her, he had lived his entire life out on the shore as the youngest son of a fishing family while she came from inner city life.  He knew better than to engage the portside hawkers.

“Temanku, you cannot give these swindlers the upper hoof.  Besides, we are here on orders.  I don’t think we’ll be granted shore liberty.”

“All the more reason to grab -something- while we’re here!” Visser replied, hastily dropping a clawful of coins at another stand and hurrying along with a paper full of plump dumplings, already digging into one.  “Mmm, that’s good!  Flavor’s strong, but it’s tasty!”  She held one out to him as she chewed happily, a bit of mess on her beak.  “Want some?”

Zahya could smell the fish inside the dough, vegetables and spices and shook his head to turn it down.  His family may have caught fish to sell to their colonial overlords, but as zebras they were still herbivores themselves.  Visser merely shrugged, taking another bite as she worked to stay close to the formation as it pressed into the streets.

The avenues of Jubilee were just as packed as the waterfront.  Here, kirin haggled and argued, pressed into each other on the tight flagstone avenues.  Again, that same clash of antiquated and modern resonated all around them, with narrow roads obviously meant for carts and pedestrians having to share the same space with the occasional car or truck that went rumbling by.  Paper lanterns hung on strings over their heads while electric streetlights illuminated intersections and streetlights coordinated traffic at the same time that local constabulary regulated the lanes with whistles and cloven hoof held signs.  The Koloniale shore party pressed ever onwards, the Kapitein-luitenant searching for some destination or other.  From what the sailors had been told, they had a list of merchants to visit, warehouses and shippers who would have the supplies they needed for the Vloot.  There was no reason they couldn’t appreciate the view on the way, with high arches leading off into other packed market squares, jade decorated plazas and districts of other buildings that told of who knew what purpose.  The buildings were bizarre in architecture, so different from the Feathisian style buildings of Beakavia.  Roofs with thick aqua or brown tiles were set at all levels and sharp angles, many doors were circular instead of square and quite a few of the buildings were some garish levels of color; it almost made the eyes hurt.  Gold and silver filigree covered almost everything, even in areas that look like they should be poor or less wealthy.  Fire motifs were everywhere, and once she figured out where to look Visser kept pointing to Zahya to indicate all the emblems of Concord, the kirin’s primary spiritual deity.  Dragons also took a place of emphasis, though instead of the dragons that could be found in Equestria and Griffonia these dragons looked more like maned serpents, almost more like sea serpents than the winged monsters griffons were familiar with.

And the people!  Kirin were everywhere, in all colors and dress.  The Zebrides had a small minority of kirin so the sights and sounds around the sailors were not completely alien to them, but to see so many of the draconic equines in one place was like a panoply of color and sound.  Visser remembered reading about pony nations, and how they too came in all colors and sizes.  This had to be a good comparative, with silk tunics right next to old linen coats, grandly feathered and plumed headdresses besides rather boring Griffonian style suits.  At one point, they passed a Hindian elephant with a howdah on its back transporting a score of kirin, obviously some kind of shuttle service, and the next a bus rolled by with several kirin workers on their way out of the city.  The smell of exotic food rolled out of nearby restaurants and outdoor cooking grills where strange pieces of culinary curiosity were seen roasting and frying.  With some satisfaction, Visser noted she wasn’t the only one who quickly dropped some coins down at a stand they passed for a quick snack.

After a time of walking through the district, they finally reached wherever it was the Kapitein-luitenant was searching for, according to the list she carried of possible merchants willing to sell to them in bulk.  The building was like the others, a vivid bright red with a circular door to enter and strange local characters written on the wall next to the door.  A stone wall extended out past the building to the right, encompassing some sort of yard which they could see through an iron gate was busy with kirin and deer laborers hauling around pallets of cargo to load onto trucks or elephant drawn carts before trundling out towards parts of the city unknown.  Kapitein-luitenant De Groot nodded in affirmation as she looked at the sign, though neither Visser nor Zahya could understand the intricate letters sketched there.  To them, it looked more like someone’s idea of an interpretive art piece than letters in an alphabet, but apparently De Groot could read them.

“Stay here,” she told the two marines, gesturing to a small bench next to the door where they could keep an eye out for troublemakers before jerking her head to Visser and Zahya.  “You two, with me.”

Without argument, the sailors in blue moved to respond, the two marines casually unslinging their rifles as they settled in for what they clearly assumed would be a long watch, though at least they had received permission to sit and relax.  The zebra of the two tugged out a cigarette, while the griffon extracted some small book and turned to a dogeared page.  De Groot and her two escorts pushed the circular door open.

Visser wasn’t sure what to expect inside, but the interior was pretty similar to any shipping office or warehouse in Beakavia.  Wooden planks and beams made up the construction of the room, with parcels and packages neatly stacked to one side.  Windows could be seen allowing light into the room, though instead of electric bulbs this office still used oil lamps and in the warm July (this close to the Equator, the North Kirin Sea pulled the heat down south where most of the continent was experiencing a rather mild winter) only half of them were lit.  Small, ornate tapestries and something like cloth posters decorated the walls with more of those curious kirin letters, a few with elaborate pictograms and, surprisingly, a photograph or two of grinning workers in and around the warehouse.  A counter stretched across the honestly rather small office, with a sign hanging on the front in three languages.  None of those was Feathisian, so Visser and Zahya couldn’t read it, but De Groot stepped forward confidently.  The air was sickly sweet with some kind of fragrant smoke, likely from the still lit burner on the counter that was slowly consuming incense sticks.  Behind the counter, a kirin with a blue-gray coat of both fur and scales with a red, curly mane sat and scribbled away at some kind of ledger, only glancing up when De Groot and the two sailors approached.

“Nǐ hǎo, měihǎo de yītiān. Wǒmen shì lái cǎigòu dàzōng shāngpǐn de,” De Groot said, confident in her tone and cadence if not her pronunciation, fumbling a few words as she tried to work through the unfamiliar tongue.  Fortunately, the kirin clerk seemed to understand her predicament, as he smiled (a male, even though he had similar small, slender features like the mares of ponies and zebras) and replied in fluent if still hitched and formal Feathisian.

“Perhaps we can talk in your language?  I presume it is.  Welcome to the White Lotus Shipping Company.  I am the one known as Calm Breeze.  May I assist you this day?”

With visible relief on her face, De Groot extracted another sheet of paper and held it delicately in her talons, extending it to the clerk.

“I’m Kapitein-luitenant ter zee De Groot, here on behalf of Admiral Andrejmaan of the Koloniale Vloot.  I have it on good authority you can sell us some of these supplies in bulk so we can keep sailing.”

Calm Breeze extended a cloven hoof, politely taking the sheet of paper and studying it, his eyes squinting as he attempted to read.  Zahhya got the impression that, while fluent in Feathisian, the kirin stallion likely didn’t use it too much.  Fair enough, trade shipments from the islands had slumped off in the past few decades, not to mention the Realm’s own policies had strictly limited the number of city dwellers until changes had been made the past few years.  After a minute or two, his smile returned and he nodded slowly in polite agreement.

“I can handle much of this.  Mostly the foodstuffs.  But for things like coal and firewood, you will have to see the one known as Hungry Blaze.  She operates an industrial yard on the west side, out of the harbor.  I will write you the address.”

This simple statement seemed to throw the three colonials, who blinked in confusion as the kirin happily wrote the name and address of another business down on the slip of paper before looking back up, his smile never faltering.

“Is something wrong?”

“You’d just recommend us to a rival company?  Just like that?” Visser asked, completely forgetting military decorum in her utter shock.  In all of the Empire and its cast off partner territories, ruthless capitalism dominated the market, and there was little love lost between different businesses, even those of other specialties.  “What about lost profit?”

The kirin seemed confused as well, tiling his head as the smile faltered slightly, brow tugging down as he tried to process the question.  Finally, he asked a question back.

“What profit is lost?  I do not possess some of the goods you need.  As such, I would not be making profit even if I did not tell you where to go next.  This way, I help you find what you need much faster.  Better for you.  I do not understand.”

“That’s alright, Meneer Breeze,” De Groot suddenly cut in, surging back to retake control of the situation.  “We will take what you have for us.  Do you accept Zuididols?”

A few minutes of casual haggling later, and Breeze was accepting the first payment on what was to be a very large delivery of goods for the fleet.  Despite the exchange, Breeze never let his temper rise, and that calm and accepting smile remained in place the whole time.  He even let the goods go at a price that De Groot thought was quite charitable.  Had this been a griffon or deer port, the bartering would have descended into near violence as the merchant tried to exploit the large military coffers to their sheer edge.  But Breeze never pushed too hard, merely trying to cover cost and make a small profit regardless.  After leaving on good terms, the shore party collected themselves up and made their way west out of the harbor, looking to find this industrial yard and get their coal for the older style ships.

It was then that Kapitein-luitenant ter zee De Groot finally realized just what was so strange and foreign about this city.  She was familiar with aspects of kirin culture, after all Beakavia had its own kirintown district, but it didn’t hold a candle to Jubilee.  It wasn’t the clashing architecture and technology, not the strange language everywhere or the exotic decorations, not the new food and drink and smells that roiled out of the hundreds of small stands, shops and market plazas that seemed to be around every corner.

No, what smacked her as so strange was that everyone was so damn -happy-.  Everywhere you turned, smiles on kirin muzzles everywhere.  Even arguments that would have devolved into fierce brawls back in the isles seemed to only provoke energetic debates.  Music was calm and non confrontational, incidents and accidents appeared few and far between.  They even passed a small coterie of scholar-monks, passing by in their fire emblazoned robes as they moved in complete silence down the middle of the street, unconcerned with their surroundings and quite serene in temperament.

It was downright unnerving.  A few clusters of creatures being this happy she could stomach.  Everyone had that right.  But a whole city?

De Groot shook her head in amazement.  Kirin were strange and inscrutable creatures, just as hard to decipher as ponies from Equestria.  Best they get their supplies and sail on, before they accidentally found out just what it would take to upset these people…and its consequences.
> Equestria Stands
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------


”Urban warfare is the most brutal, unforgiving terrain in today’s battlespace.  You’ve got streets creating killzones, buildings turned into bunkers, higher floors for infantry to throw explosives onto tanks, air support is less effective unless you raze a block to the ground and all fighting is up close and personal, house by house, room by room, every window becomes a potential firing port.  If you can’t get the civilians out, you have to watch out for collateral damage, worse yet if the enemy uses them as meat shields.  If I was attacking, an urban fight is the last place I would want to strike, the absolute last.  If I was defending, an urban place is the first place I’d want to put troops.”
-Field Marshal Blueblood, when asked about fortifying Equestrian cities






July 26th, 1012
5th Army, 13th ‘Baltimare’ Onhooves Division, 60th ‘Royal Rifles’ Onhooves Regiment
Bales, Central Equestria

“Down!”

Sergeant Macintosh Apple, better known mostly by his family and friends as ‘Big Mac’ was having a bad day.  From the apartment building they attempted to hold onto, fire poured out of various windows at the streets below.  But it wasn’t a very tall apartment building, and unlike Acornage and several other cities, they hadn’t fully evacuated before the northern horde came crashing down on them.  Positioned on the ground floor, his Grump gun chattering, Mac could hear the screams and cries of civilians as they tried to bunker down in their homes, or made some mad dash to reach the basement or a storm shelter of some kind.  The advance, when it had hit a month ago, had been too swift.  Though a full encirclement hadn’t happened, the word was Bitterberry and Boulderfield had fallen.  With that, the city of Bales was terribly isolated.  About the only reason the city hadn’t fallen yet was thanks to the forked river sheltering them to their west.  Royal Army engineers had blown the bridges and set up artillery to the east, shelling anything serious coming at them.  This of course hadn’t stopped the Hegemony, but it had certainly slowed them down.  The bugs of course could fly, and they could deploy their own temporary bridges.  But the Royal Army could face infantry and battleshifters with their own mage and pegasi units, and anything light enough to send over the bridge either met determined infantrymares dug into the urban battlezone or the tanks that prowled along the streets.  If ever there was anything they couldn’t deal with easily, artillery from up on the Heights was called in, carpeting whole city blocks with rolling barrages.  Counterattacks to retake territory were common.  The landscape of Bales was ever shifting, though it was quickly crawling closer to destruction every day.

It was remarkable to think, but just a few months ago they’d been up in Blackthorn Dale, preparing to throw the Hegemony out.  That had been one humiliating meatgrinder of a fight, but what was worse was its after effect.  Having run into a brick wall, the Royal Army had retreated step by bloody step, falling back behind defense line after defense line as it was slowly overrun.  The issue wasn’t killing the changelings as they surged forth, no.  The problem was that their new wonder weapons were far more capable of killing the pony troopers trying to stand against them.  Between the MG 42 he was already intimate with and a preponderance of magic rifles, flamethrowers attached to urban assault Jager forces and a growing number of MP 10 submachine guns throughout the Heer made fighting them with continually dwindling stocks a hazardous venture at best.  It was one thing to fight the enemy with anti-tank guns, but when the six-pounder that was most common to the troops on the ground had to face off against Tiger tanks, it was an admittedly unfair fight.  Aircraft bombarded the city day and night, though the Royal Air Force made a good show of trying to mitigate the damage.  Rockets streaked overhead, shrieking their ghastly wails as they pounded Equestrian lines.  Lately, modified Panzer IIs that command had dubbed 'Luchs' had swarmed over the small bridges the Hegemony threw up, their small size able to traverse the rubble-choked city streets much easier, bringing needed fire support with 20mm guns.

And, above all, the infantry had caught up.

As Mac had understood it, a large part of why the bugs had overwhelmed Equestria so quickly was a combination of insidious infiltration sabotaging response forces and hard hitting, fast moving armored forces.  Everywhere the Royal Heer found stubborn resistance, they either slammed into it with fast moving panzers supported by close air or simply diverted around it, cutting the city off and encircling it.  By the time Equestria had thrown up a meaningful resistance, half of the country was lost.  Then it had devolved into the slugging match everyone had expected.  That was when the mauled and exhausted panzerdivisions were swapped out with the infantry units that had been steadily pacifying the countryside.  Oh, the war may have slowed down now, but it was still grinding on in the changelings’ favor.

Except they weren’t just facing changelings now.  Kanonvogel Stukas savaged the street, carving wide furrows through the already cracked asphalt with their belly mounted cannons.  As Mac reached for another magazine for his Grump gun, figures moved into the smoky haze of the street.  Several of them looked about pony sized, but he could spot several with antlers.  They moved off to the side, avoiding the clear killzone that was the intersection he guarded, and he hastened to speed up, slapping the new mag in and working the bolt.  One of the figures turned, and a green glow appeared in the eyes and around the antlers.  Mac fired off a five round burst, and the Field Völvur disappeared.

“Damn!” hissed the trooper next to him, squinting down the sights of her Lavender rifle, trying to pick out a target in the gloom.  “Where’d she go?”

Völvur were gifted does with heightened abilities, seers and mystics of exceptional power.  Primarily, Olenian seers were capable of predicting short amounts of time into the future, and could gain visions of many places far away.  But Völvur were another step beyond, practically able to dodge bullets and predict coming ambushes or attacks.  Combined with their infamous Motti tactics of encircling and cutting apart attacks, and Olenian deer were more than capable of striking where a line was weak, withdrawing if the attack failed and then carving apart the counterattack.  Mac, like most ponies, had assumed the changelings were throwing the deer at them as cannon fodder.  No panzers or aircraft of their own, wielding Queendom arms and sent barreling at Equestrian defenses, it was a small wonder they hadn’t turned on their shapeshifter masters.  But something had changed.  Some bug general must have gotten an idea about how to break the deadlock, because no longer were Olenian auxiliaries sent at them in cervine waves but in effective shock warfare groups, supported by older tanks and planes crewed by Olenians as well.  What had once been chaff had been turned to wheat, from mere servant to subservient partner.  And they were just the beginning.

As Mac scanned the street again for targets, a vicious roar rang out, and with barely any time to react a massive shape came barreling out of a side alley.  Panicking, Mac and several other troops dug into this building opened fire, but the quadrupedal form just kept bearing down on them like a freight train, shaking off the bullets like water droplets.  A wall collapsed inwards, blasted down as the armored panserbjørn slashed at the two rifleponies on the opposite side.  Metal sheathed claws tore at flesh and cloth, and the two troopers were cast aside as little more than ragged scraps, one smashing into a wall as the other was rent in two.  He wasn’t alone.  As the bear moved inwards to find more victims, claws flashing with blue enchanted power, another sidled up behind him, brandishing a machine gun like a rifle.  Big, clunky and unsophisticated, technologically it looked like something from twenty years ago.  But the large drum magazine, heavy cooling shroud and sinister axeblade bayonet under the barrel declared that though it looked outdated, it could still kill easily enough.

“COVER!” Mac shouted, rolling as the weapon began chattering, sending high-caliber bullets streaming into the apartment.  Mac had been bunkered down here with two sections, twenty troopers.  All of them began backpedaling in a rush, rifles banging away in fumbled panic as they tried to recover.  Another six troopers fell under the vicious hail of polar fire, and the assault bear roared as he lumbered in for more victims.  Something that damned big should -not- be capable of moving so fast.  Behind the gunbear, more figures emerged from the smoke, Olenian and changeling grenadiers looking to sweep and clear the ground floor of this building, MP 10s stuttering and rifles barking.  Something clattered near Mac’s hooves, but before he could grab the grenades that had appeared a magic aura snagged the explosives up, tossing them right back at the foe.  While the griffon-like enchanted plate of the panserbjørn protected them from mere shrapnel as they turned their armored backs, their comrades were less fortunate, and screeching cries sang out as the hoof grenades exploded in their faces.

“Swivel!  Crank that gun around!” cried Leftenant Pierce, and a volley of Lavender fire rang out as one of the apartment walls was smashed down from the other side, exposing the Buckstar .50 heavy machine gun nest they had set up and allowing the barrel to swing towards the unexpected attack.  Having only just finished before this latest probe, the weapon’s sudden presence had turned an attempted storming of their urban bunker into a trap of their own.  The charging handle was racked by the pony gunner, and then it roared.  The Arisian machine gun thundered more than chattered, cracking carapace and tearing into fur with little care, splattering red gore across cracked plaster.  The bullets even continued on to punch hoof sized holes in the wall behind the targets.  It even pierced the panserbjørn armor.  Mac sat up from behind his cover, letting the Grump gun sing as well, adding to the punishing barrage of repulsive fire.  Even as the two panserbjørn fell, roaring their agony and disbelief, as a second wave of Olenian troops tried to push in through the breach.  The looks of horror on their faces upon witnessing the torn corpses in that charnel house of their comrades and realizing the breach had been annihilated was only temporary, however.  The Buckstar sang again, thumping and thudding away as a rain of hot brass clattered out of the breech and skipped over the ruined floor.  A pair of Mills bombs appeared in the gap, and with twin detonations and under the chatter of machine gun and rifle fire the few survivors of the charge were repulsed in a blind panic, followed by the torn and shredded meat of their comrades.  Even this flight was short lived, as with the clatter of tank tracks the Timberwolf tank that had been moving down the street opened up on the fleeing survivors with its machine guns, turret tracking and cannon booming to annihilate the dug in changelings trying to set up an AT-gun in the ruins of a coffee shop.  Following the Timberwolf was another, and then two Swellert light tanks and a section of troopers behind, maneuvering carefully as they tried to keep up with the counterattack, with three Humber armored cars taking up the rear, machine guns chattering up at some elevated target Mac couldn't see.  One of the infantry troopers readied a flamethrower, dousing the coffee shop in a gout of incendiary fuel, cooking off ammunition and roasting whoever was still taking cover in there.  Overhead, a dozen pegasi skirmishers flew past, submachine guns chattering as they pursued a target on the rooftops.

“Hold here!” Lieutenant Pierce declared, holding up his Thundersplash submachine gun as he peered out the window, trying to gauge the state of the battle just outside.  He ducked back down as, with a hiss, a bullet from some distant marksman nearly took his head off.  Cursing, he changed magazines as he tried to form a close relationship with his cover.

“He got close that time, sir!” called Corporal Sweet Breeze, laughing as she fumbled for another clip to her rifle.

“Bet the arty walks over his nest again and he’s still just fine!” shot back Private Dim Haze as the thestral hauled his Nickers machine gun over to the new breach in the wall.  They had a breach to cover, after all.

Mac rose to his hooves again as the troopers tried to clean up and restore their position.  Nothing to do about the corpses right now, especially the polar bears.  The most they had time for was to drag the pieces of the bugs and deer off to the side, reducing the trip hazard.  The fallen ponies would have to be collected later, when the medics reached their position.  Those injured could be seen to then, and the dead would have to wait their turn.

“Molasses, Starshine!  Recover the wounded!” he called out to two of the rifleponies nearby, before kicking a deer corpse with his hoof.  “And get this trash out of my way!  A clean position is a safe position!”

“What do we do about the blood, Sarge?” asked Private Starshine while she started dragging a mutilated changeling corpse to the side.

“Nothing!” called out Private Hot Wind nearby, laughing as he slapped a new magazine into his Limestone gun.  “Bug blood’s decorative!  Good for morale!  I know I like seeing it!”

Indeed, green changeling ichor was mixing with red deer and bear blood on the floor, creating a sort of sickly oozing puddle that could certainly be a trip hazard.  Mac grimaced.  Nothing to be done about the bears right now, but the mess had to be cleared.

“Wind, sounds like you just volunteered!  Use some bug uniforms, get this mess sorted out.”

“Aw, c’mon Sarge!” the orange stallion whined, but Mac simply gave him a glare as he changed magazines for his Grump gun until the younger trooper groaned and moved off the wall.  “Fine, but I get first dibs at the bug guns.”

As a pair of Hawker Typhoon fighter bombers began dropping ordnance onto the apartment building nearby to hunt for Jager skirmishing teams, Mac simply shook his head.  According to the runners that passed information and orders back and forth, they had managed to hold this line, cutting the city of Bales in half.  The furthest position forward, that of Leftenant Froster’s company of Colstream Guards, was bitterly fighting on in one of the most desperate positions forwards.  The RAF base outside the city had long been abandoned, and most flights providing support here came from Manehatten or Fillydelphia.  It was bad.  But tomorrow, they’d probably counterattack, and retake two or three blocks and dig in for the next push.  Another day at war.  At least here, now, they were holding on.
> The North Wind Blows Fury
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

Let me tell you the story of Joris, the Once Overtyrant of Polaria, the Kingdom of Winter.  Once, many years ago when I was just a cub, when we bears were split into feuding clans that squabbled amongst one another, a great warlord returned from Exile.  He had traveled the world as a mercenary commander, and had learned his craft from the griffons across the sea.  He fought for kings, emperors, republics, revolutions and bandits, and when he had learned all he could he returned in a mighty vessel of steel and fire.  He was known then as Paw Wellington, the name he had adopted in Exile.  When he came back, he challenged the lord of Clan Scyfling and won.  As Tyrant, he brought all his knowledge and foreign weapons to bear on the other clans, and after four years of war unified them all under his rule.  Yet all was not right, under the surface.  It would only be another three years after that when he needed to address the issues between the clans, as the society he thought to construct faltered and fell to disorder.  But he saw within us a potential future.  Rather than destroy all the other clans, as Scyfling’s great host certainly could, he saw another way.

Rozenkrantz, Kane and Gotlung, the warlord clans of Onlartir he united by word instead of by force alone.  Dueling those few who challenged him and negotiating with those who would listen, only a few were struck down before the south came to him.  A strange, unbearlike method done in a very bearlike way.  The Warlord clans were made to kneel.  The three minor clans of Falsen, Brodkorb and Benkestok that made the Triple Alliance of Wesslandia he attacked one by one, causing each to capitulate until they surrendered.  Together they were a powerful force in Polaria.  Apart and alone they were no match for the host against them.  The Triple Alliance was brought to heel by force.  Volsungr, the strange southern Harmonist clan, willingly returned when the Tyrant asked, once he had shown due respect.  Clans Anker and Svartpels would never be talked down.  They could only be brought to heel through force.  And so, at the Battle of the Ice, the Despot struck down Torben, the Thunder Lord.  Having surrendered before Wellington’s might, both clans were subjugated by Scyfling’s force once more.  Another Unification War, won.

Now I tell you of what Wellington changed.  He did not go back to the way things were, of relying on the clans and trying to maintain the old ways and balance the status quo.  Instead, the Despot Overtyrant Paw Wellington forged himself a crown of starsteel and on the frozen plains outside of Mathair Fearainn before the lords of all the clans loyal to him he crowned himself King Joris I of Clan Scyfling, First of His Name.  He founded the Kingdom of Polaria, and he swore to make us a great people again as a nation, not merely as a race.

For two years, King Joris worked to achieve that.  He put all his time and energy into founding his new realm.  He built factories, roads, established our economy and currency.  He married the Princess Eira of Clan Volsungr and made her his Queen.  He began to trade with other nations and welcomed Exiled bears, penguins and griffons to his lands.  He wrote a legal code.  He established a police force.  More than anything else, he made us proud.  He showed us his vision of what we could be, and more importantly -we- began to believe.

Then came Chrysalis.  The changelings, our oldest enemy, came to our border.  They demanded oil and gold for no other reason than they thought they were stronger than we.  King Joris said no.  And we prepared for war.  But Chrysalis fought us with words as much as with guns.  She sent in Bjornling.  The Exile, a Rosensverd heretic who had rallied his clan.  With his bear warriors and changeling tanks and aircraft, he marched on us.  And he started from inside our lands, beyond the fortresses we held.

Mathair Fearainn fell first.  He slaughtered all who resisted with advanced weaponry, with changeling jagers at his back.  He overwhelmed Onlartir with artillery and armored firepower.  He split and beat down the minor clans of Wesslandia, and annihilated the halls of the Southern Mountains, purging Volsungr from the peaks.  He sank our navy and defanged Clan Anker.  Then he crushed Clan Svartpels until the Thunder Lord himself emerged to challenge the army attacking him.  And Lord Torben did not falter, smashing a dozen tanks on his own.  Where he went…I cannot say.  I believe the All-Father took him from us in that moment, so He may return our lord in our time of greatest need.

And then Bjornling got to his real task.  He pacified the clans himself.  Began dismantling what made us proud of our traditions, our heritage, our might.  He returned the Heretic Exiles, the worst of those cast out; Rosensverd, Tordenstjerne.  He gave them power over all else and gave the old clans two options; submit or be rendered extinct, like Volsungr and Svartpels.

We accepted.  We had no choice.  With the Hegemony behind him, Bjornling was too strong.  He crowned an exiled changeling Queen and proclaimed us the Northern Protectorate.  He armed us with changeling technology, built strange industry.  He says we are loyal servants of Her Majesty.  He says when Equestria is gone and all this land belongs to the Hegemony, then all the north will belong to the bears.  He keeps using a name; he calls our future nation Hyperbearia.

We were once squabbling savages, too set in our ways.  Then we had a kingdom.  We had a nation, and we had a future.  And now, our past and our future are both stolen from us.  Bjornling and Chrysalis wiped out two entire clans.  They change our history, invalidate our traditions, our culture.  And they give us only one possible future; victory.

So I do not march for what we can gain.  That vision was already given us by our rightful king.  Then it was stolen from us.  I march in Bjornling’s army because there is nothing else.  Be a warrior like we have for thousands of years or be a slave in his unrelenting machine.  He will sacrifice all in the name of his dream of Hyperbearia.  And we are trying to keep alive the murdered dream of Polaria.  I march for what we have lost.

-A record from Vaktleder Hakka of Clan Kane, spoken to Vise-Korporal Rexxar at camp in the Windigo Forest, July 7th, 1011
> For Queen and Hive II
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

August 13th, 1012
Haukhamn, Imperial Haukland, Celestial Sea
Kriegsmarine Unterseeboots-Flotte, III. U-Boots Flottille
U-317

The weather around the Haukland Isles was moderate this time of year, almost balmy compared to the frostiness of the Rocky Sea Strait they had left behind and the frozen shores beyond of the far north.  Polaria and the penguin lands were feeling the chill of a cruel autumn, telling of a sinister winter on the horizon.  Nova Griffonia might have been protected by its mountain ranges at the border, but the former colony would certainly feel the cold snap when the snow rolled over the peaks to the north and west.  For her part, the cold wasn’t much hazard.  U-boats were insulated against such temperatures by the very need for their duties, and U-317 had endured literal icefields before.

Still, it was hard to hate the warm sunny day as the submersible sailed into port, changelings lined across the top from aft to bow, waving at the residents ashore and on board the vessels in the harbor.  Thanks to its position in the middle of the Celestial Sea, Haukhamn was a diverse and well-positioned trading port.  What had once been an anchor to the Entente Combined Fleet had become the protective gateway to the Empire’s shores.  The U-boat passed by ship after ship after ship of the Western Fleet, the recently renamed High Seas Fleet.  Destroyers, cruisers, patrol craft and more sat in their docks, ready for the word to detach and sail for open water.  From their railings, the sailors dressed in uniforms quite similar to the changelings’ own waved down at them, and the submariners waved back up at the ratings.  While U-317’s crew were all exclusively changelings, the Imperial sailors were an odd mix of (mostly) griffon, some diamond dogs and even the occasional pony mixed in.  Korvettenkapitän Pyrestalker wasn’t sure how she felt about that.  The Trident pin hung proudly on her lapels, declaring herself a dedicated follower of High Queen Chrysalis and her teachings.  And one of those was the fact that ponies were inferior.  Perhaps it was different in the Empire.  The ponies hadn’t grown up spoiled and deluded by the effects of alicorn magic or corrupted by the magic of Harmony.  Imperial ponies lived just as rough as their avian and canine comrades.

Still, the fact burned low in her gut, and smacked her in the muzzle a little, making her carapace itch.  The Empire were technically their allies (even if they were neutral in the Equish War), and so far as she knew no pony had any position of import in their government.  That meant, in a way, that Imperial ponies were likely second class citizens, a minority pushed to the side and made to serve in their factories, armies and other places.  In that light, she could assure herself and calm the disgust climbing up the back of her throat.

“Look there, Kapitan,” said her Watch Officer, Kapitänleutnant Thysicor.  He pointed to a carrier as they sailed by, crawling with griffons and dogs and ponies alike across all surfaces.  It and the mighty battleship KMS Gerlach moored next to it both dwarfed U-317, massive titans of nautical power ten or twenty times her size and weight.  “That’s the KMS Herzland.  Imagine what something like that could do in the Celestial.”

“Imagine what the whole fleet could do,” Pyrestalker countered.  “You’ve got most of the Sky Bay Squadron stationed here to watch out for Aquileian ships.  That’s a massive battle line.  The Equestrians only have what?  Maybe two or three carriers and just as many battleships in the Celestial.  The Kaiserliche Marine could sweep them up in one sortie to Manehatten.”

Thysicor sighed as he turned away.  Pyrestalker was like that, taking every opportunity to use a conversation to express her views or flex her displeasure.  Everyling on the boat knew she was frustrated with the Empire not yet joining in on the Equish Theater, their own issues with the Entente be damned.  To Pyrestalker, the would-be allies needed to crush Equestria from both sides, and in her view the griffons weren’t holding up their end of the bargain.  If they had, she’d raved at the crew before, this war would already be over, instead of brawling through defensive lines like blind bulls.

“There they are!” cried one changeling voice, drawing the two officers’ attention away from an old and tired topic before it could get started.  “There’s the fish!”

The ‘fish’ in question were a line of submarines tied up at dock as well, on the far side of the Herzland’s mass.  From what she could see, there were about six of them lashed to their moorings.  She wondered why they weren’t quartered in their own dedicated sub pens like back in Changelingia, then Pyrestalker remembered that Haukhamn was a captured port, only seized a few months back in May.  Given the Imperial attitudes on submarines they had likely been a second priority compared to making sure the grand capital ships of the Sky Bay Squadron could be held here.  She shook her head.  What a waste.  With a great open ocean and plenty of warm water ports, the griffons could be churning out submarines by the truckload.  Instead, they were relegated to a support role as Imperial battleships and heavy cruisers took place of prominence.

The subs she observed weren’t all that impressive to her eye.  Walrus class, if she remembered correctly.  Feathisian designs commissioned when it had been the Ducal Fleet doing the Empire’s nautical work, with the reconstituted Kaiserliche Marine still years away.  Compared to her own more modern Type VIIC, the Walrus class was bigger, a bit faster and a bit better armed.  In contrast, the Type VIIC could dive deeper, needed a smaller crew and was less costly to build and maintain.  Where the griffons had perhaps thirty of their own craft, the Kriegsmarine had dozens and were planning to make even more.  Needless to say, she wasn’t impressed.

“Now there’s the real prize hogs,” Thysicor continued, gesturing beyond the older submarines.  Beyond those, Pyrestalker had already spotted the three far more modern Dolfijn class that VOPS naval intelligence had quietly informed her of a month ago.  Still few in number and just as sluggish coming off the line, the new boats were huge compared to her own.  Ten meters longer, a meter thicker and displacing twice as much, some in the Kriegsmarine had compared them to the Arisian Salmon class.  These boats were clearly meant for open ocean warfare.  Though slower than her Type VII, the Dolfijn class retained the other strengths of the Walrus, including more torpedo tubes and a longer range.  She could almost dive as deep as U-317, and had reintroduced the capability to deploy seamines that the Walrus had lacked.  All these strengths came with a costly price tag, and for now the Kaiser’s fleet was no more interested in prioritizing these subs than its predecessor.  For all that Rottendedam and Skyfall had lavished on designing these boats, the Landsersplatz was clearly not as given over to buying more.

Though she’d never admit it out loud, Pyrestalker was quietly glad for that.  Bad enough the seaponies had a submersible fleet to compete with the Queendom’s own, she didn’t relish the prospect of another potential rival, however much they were supposed to be on the same side.

They guided U-317 to their designated pier, not far from the Dolfijns.  Due to international maritime law, ships at war could only stay in a neutral port for around twenty-four hours at a time.  There was room, however, to abuse such a provision.  U-317 was expected to make her patrols for days at a time in the Celstial, raiding shipping lanes to cut the vital supply artery keeping Equestra and New Mareland in the fight.  That meant she could legally return for resupply and shelter again, up until some observer caught sight of the changeling boat and reported it.  There was no entity that could legally enforce such charter anymore, but the UKA was looking for any viable excuse to get into the war that they could sell to their isolationists at home.  This wouldn’t be legal cause, but it would certainly add to it.  But after slipping through the north pole and past the small but capable Soviet Navy, Pyrestalker couldn’t give two wits about legal cause and what the UKA would say.  She had her orders, though.  And she’d follow them.

The enlisted ratings began disembarking even as harbor workers started hauling supplies towards the submarine.  With twenty-four hours until they had to depart again, shore leave would be tightly controlled and directed.  But this was the first friendly foreign port these crewlings had been to in two years since the war began.  They were eager to stretch their wings and spend the pay stacking up in their pockets on foreign company, alcohol and gambling.  Even under martial law, Haukhamn’s position made it a nexus for trade and foreign visitation, full of strange and exotic things like zebras, rum from the south and a hundred other small curiosities.  Rumor was there were even deer and kirin traders who had set up shop here, bringing imports from their homelands with them.  The Empire, eager to make the most of what they had gained, had encouraged the foreign trade to start letting the idols pour in, and since they had the big guns in the harbor, who would argue with them?

A few uniformed figures approached the boat’s mooring, and from her position on top of the conning tower, Pyrestalker could pick them out in the crowd of workers and departing ratings.  Three of them were clearly Kaiserliche Marine officers, dressed in similar style to the Kriegsmarine.  There were some small differences, but the obvious inspiration from one to the other was quite obvious.  The dog striding at the head of the party, whom she assumed was in charge, wore a blue hat for his uniform, unlike Pyrestalker herself who wore a white cap to designate her command of a U-boat.  She wondered on that, and tilted her head to watch the party approach.  They seemed to be composed of three naval officers and two ratings for escort, armed with cutlasses and pistols.  Ceremonial, then.  No real threat.

“Kapitan,” Thysicor warned quietly, leaning against the rail casually to disguise his observation.

“I see them, Watch.  I think it’s just the welcoming committee.”

“Let’s hope so.  Gonna let them aboard?”

“Probably shouldn’t.  Let’s go meet them.”

In but a moment, the two officers had grabbed a few ratings to join them at the pier, and were patiently waiting for their Imperial counterparts to arrive.  They did so swiftly, and the dog stepped forward first, snapping a crisp salute.

“Kapitan, I am Kapitän-Leutnant zur See Brokk Kupferturm, commander of the Kaiser’s unterseeboot KMU-30.  I’ve been directed to welcome you and your crew to Haukhamn.”

Pyrestalker quickly translated the ranks in her head, and realized that in comparison of the differing naval structures they were both equal grade.  She returned the salute, then accepted his paw with a hoof, shaking in the universal sign of greeting.  Kupferturm turned to the griffon at his left, gesturing.

“My executive officer, Leutnant zur See Elsa Gerritsen.”

“Meine frau,” Gerritsen nodded, saluting in return before extending a claw to shake.  She had a heavy Feathisian accent, not a surprise in the Kaiserliche Marine.  Feathisians dominated the fleet in the west, and in the slowly rebuilding east it was said Cyanolisians and Gryphussians made up the majority of those sailors.

Kupferturm finally indicated the pony, a pegasus stallion with a dun coating and black mane, his expression hard.

“And Leutnant zur See Mikhail Sidorov, my torpedo chief.”

Pyrestalker started in surprise.  That was a Severyanian name.  Sure, their homeland wasn’t far to the west across the sea, but to find one in Imperial service?  However, the pony saw the confusion and merely nodded, the grim set of his face only twisting in what she assumed he thought was a smile.

“My family were White Exiles.  My parents took me to Rottendedam after the Reds took over.”  He snapped a salute as well, crisp and firm as before.  However, when she returned it and he held his hoof out, she pointedly stared at him, expression steely.  He stared back, a small scar on his chin flexing to indicate he was tightening his jaw.  Whether it was her current behavior or nature as a changeling, he clearly disliked her just as much as she did him.

To break the awkwardness, Thysicor stepped forward, saluting Kupferturm.

“Kapitänleutnant Thysicor, mein herr.  Watch Officer of Her Majesty’s Boat U-317.  I can’t tell you how glad we are to be here.”

A faux pas military courtesy wise, as it should be his captain who introduced him, but she was clearly locked in a pointless battle of stubbornness with a creature she considered inferior.  Catching on to the intent, the dog returned the salute, shaking Thysicor’s hoof in return.

“I’m told we’re glad to have you.  The Admiral would call on you for courtesy, though he expresses his regret that his duties will have him occupied for the duration of your stay.”

“We understand Kapitän-Leutnant,” Pyrestalker replied smoothly, finally breaking off from her glaring match with Sidorov.  “The exigencies of international law.  Tell the Admiral we appreciate his compliments, and hope to catch up with him on another visitation.”

“I’m sure you have quite the tale to tell him,” Kupferturm replied, an eyebrow arched under his cap.  “Not many try the frozen seas of the Pole, much less in a U-boat.”  His gaze hardened, the excitement restrained somewhat.  “Have any trouble with the Soviets?”

He had a right to be angry.  Not only had the Revolution of 978 been carried off by republicans, it had spawned an underlying flurry of socialist uprisings across the continent, some of which the Empire were still dealing with today.  When Nova Griffonia’s Governor Teafeather had been shot, the Severyanans had attempted to intervene and use force to lay claim to the territory.  The colonials had resisted, and things had settled back to a very tense status quo.  Though Nova Griffonia had refused to return to the Kaiserreich when called, the Empire clearly had intentions to keep their claim on their wayward possession, an agreement Queen Chrysalis had publicly promised to keep.

Then again, thought Pyrestalker in the back of her mind, all of Equus belongs to the Queendom.  Why shouldn’t they take Nova Griffonia too?  Polaria had snapped up the rogue state of Virgilia and the penguin lands, and those were now part of the Northern Protectorate too.  Why stop at Nova Griffonia.

“A few close calls with destroyers,” she said coolly, not letting her thoughts show.  “The Reds are mostly focused down south like the Ponies are.”  She glanced at Sidorov pointedly before returning to the dog.  “They never spotted us though.  We hope to keep up that good luck streak here.”

“Well, perhaps we’ll see you out on the seas.  The Frogs don’t have a lot of ships left outside of the Freeside Gulf anymore.  We’re to end what few supplies are making it through overseas.  I wish you well, Kapitän.  Good hunting.”

“Good hunting to you as well, Kapitän,” Pyrestalker replied, returning his shake before saluting him one last time, shooting a last venomous glare at Sidorov, who pretended not to notice.

Thysicor sighed and shook his head as he brought his hoof down, turning to follow Pyrestalker back aboard U-317 to coordinate the resupply and refueling in their limited timetable.  With massive, devastating wars on both sides of the sea, he certainly hoped they could keep further conflict from erupting between them.  Both nations had few friends, after all.  They needed to keep this connection, as distant and guttering as it was, alive for the future.

But there was that voice in the back of his head warning him that he might not want to get too comfortable here.  Who knew when these would no longer be friendly waters?
> Eine Geschichte der Arbeit
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

November 13th, 1011
VMB Headquarters
Hunfeld, Bronzehill, Griffonian Empire

"They're not serious."

The dog in front of him shifted uneasily from paw to paw, clearly uncomfortable about the question.  It didn't help that it was rhetorical anyway, so answering wouldn't be in her best interest, but neither would remaining silent.  In the end, locked by indecision, silent she remained.

"They're not serious," he repeated, looking around the room.  “Gods above and tunnels below, I hope -you’re- not serious.”

“They’re serious, Hargrim,” said Lena Blechpfote, leaning forward over the sheaf of papers before her.  “It’s come down from Bronzekreuz, straight from the Bronze Council.  The Count’s orders, and he has his orders from Griffenheim.  They want us to increase the County’s total coal output to seventy-five million tonnes this year, and that falls primarily on us and our workers.”

“Impossible!  Can’t be done!” retorted Hargrim Growlsh, Chairman of the Vereinigte Minenarbeiter von 
Bronzehügel (VMB) as he too held up the stack of typwritten reports and letters.  “I’d expect the aristos to just rubberstamp this, but the Count?  He’s been a loyal friend of the people above and below ground, and now he asks this of us?”

“I told you, he has his orders from Griffenheim.  If you look at-”

“What happened to our autonomy, verdammt!” Hargrim ranted, smacking the papers back down on the table.  “What was the point in nationalizing the Grover V Industrial Park if we’re just going to end up taking demands from the same griffs we took it all away from!”

“That’s not the same and you know it, Hargrim,” said the VMB treasurer Stotchel Knöchelbrecher.  He was a hulking brute of a mastiff, a veteran of both labor disputes himself and serving in the Count’s own government as a tax collector.  “It’s an Imperial decree, there’s nothing to contest.  There’s a war on, in case you missed that.  That means more coal for the factories, for ships, to send to the frontline, to the foundries-”

“I know where it all goes, dammit!” Hargrim snarled, hackles raised and fangs out.  Stotchel rose from his seat, his bulk reminding everydog present about his past working the other side of the rope.  But the Chairman didn’t back down.  “Do the nobles, the kompaniegriffs, the Count, the Regents, do they all know what it’s going to take to do that?  A two percent increase alone would require massive shift extension at all the sites!  Expansion of mineshafts!  More trucks for transport!  And they want us to up coal production by a whopping ten percent?  That’s practically slave labor!  Unless the business leaders are willing to do massive amounts of hiring, which of course gives us more worker membership!  That’s the last thing they’ll agree to!”

He wasn’t far off.  According to the figures, ever since the revitalization of Imperial industry and the nationalization of the Grover V industrial park, coal production from the County of Bronzehill had been on the rise since 1008, where total yearly output then had topped out at sixty-two million tonnes of coal.  This despite no significant investment or new machinery being brought in, mostly increased through a slight shift extension and larger workforce, despite the political tensions across the Empire.  It might not have sounded like much, but it was a whopping two million tonnes above the previous highmark of the year 1000, which had been a clean sixty million tonnes.  But the number being asked now was to take what had been accomplished by sheer grit and push it again by another ten million tonnes extracted for the yearly rate.  Not quite a ten percent increase, closer to seven by his quick figures, but the point remained the same.

“Are they?” asked Stotchel, turning to Lena.  As the business manager, it was Lena’s job to coordinate with various industry leaders and the management of mining industries across Bronzehill, or at least across the Raven Lakes district.  Lena sighed, going through her sheaf of paperwork as she considered her answer.  For a moment, things were still in the office.  The other dogs held their breath, carefully considering what Lena might be about to say.  Finally, the terrier cleared her throat.

“Some are.  Initial reports state they’re willing to expand their workforce by twenty-five percent to make up the shortfall.  With worker protections and the right to join our union.”

“Some.  But not all?” Hargrim caught on, raising an eyebrow.  Lena shuffled some more as she looked up from her reports once more.

“Most of those willing to expand draw the line at ten percent, with a provision that they not be allowed to join our ranks for at least a year.”

“Lena, how many of the business owners were even willing to talk about mechanization?  About investments in better infrastructure?  Much less expansion of the workforce?” Hargrim reiterated.  Lena finally sighed in frustration, tossing her own papers down.

“Dammit, fine!  Only about a third, from the reports at the Bronze Council!  Are you happy now?”

A howl of uproarious protest rang out.  A third of the colossal mining industry of Bronzehill, a third of the capitalists and the rich dogs and griffons who owned the companies, the nobles who had inherited their lands and titles.  Bronzehill was the most liberal of all the vassals that had stayed loyal to the Imperial crown, and in exchange for their intense loyalty their affairs were mostly left alone to be sorted out as they saw fit.  But this also meant that the modern concept of labor unions (evolved from medieval guilds) and the millennia old concept of aristocratic entitlement butted heads so hard and so often it put dueling buffalo to shame.  Bad enough they had to deal with suspicious police ‘inspections’ and lecherous industrial heads trying to scrape every pfenning they could out of their workers.  However they saw it, whichever line they stayed on, the upper leadership of the VMB knew a bum deal when they saw one.  As they were orders straight from the Regents, from the crown itself, the nobles could do whatever they wanted as long as they obeyed the order.  How it got done wasn’t Griffenheim’s concern.  The unions, and by extension the workers, were getting the short end.

“We have to do something!” howled Hargrim once he got it under control.  “We have to call an emergency meeting!  Get the representatives in here and vote!”

“Vote for what?  The quota is set and the nobles have made their voice heard!” sputtered Karl Liebarknecht, the VMB’s lawyer.  “We’re literally the last ones to know about all this!”

“Yes, and they want us to rub the workers' bellies and tell them this is for the good of all, to swallow this crap and work themselves to the bone for the war effort!” yelled Gerta Tiefgründig, the Vice-Chairman.  She too bared her teeth in fury.  “You’re the legal agent!  It’s your job to work up a case!”

“Against dozens of private companies?  You’re mad!”

“Strike!”

The room suddenly tapered off, all eyes swiveling to stare at the one who had spoken.  In the corner, tapping quietly at his typewriter’s keys, was Tekton Heldour, the VMB’s press manager.  It was his job to manage and monitor the union’s image in the media, and if possible coordinate with loyal newspapers in order to release stories to the VMB’s interest.  He had been the one to speak, and now everydog was staring at him he seemed a bit nervous.  He wasn’t a big dog, more along the lines of a mutt runt who often went unnoticed at these meets when they were held.  Tonight, however, he clearly meant to make himself heard.

“If they’re not willing to negotiate, to accept the fact that they need to expand their workforce and invest in modern machinery, not just lengthen the shifts and make the workplace more dangerous as a result, we should call for a strike.  A general strike, not just of coal workers.  All the mine workers in the district.  Tartarus, maybe we should kick this upstairs and demand a strike across the whole County.”

“Maar’s ass, whelp!  Do you -want- them to send the Landwehr to put us down?” Stotchel blurted out.  Having been the only former government employee among them, he knew precisely what their response would be.  “Cut into their profits, and the nobles might send strikebreakers at us.  Cause a resource crisis that would hinder the Empire right when we’ve just been invaded and they might just bomb us!”

“You can’t bomb an underground city, Stotchel,” said Karl, always the one to jump on small details.  The big ex-tax collector waved a paw dismissively.

“The point is, Aquileia is invading from the south, the Revolutionaries are invading from the north.  Bad enough the Empire is now fighting at all, they’re fighting republics.  You know what that means?  Any form of liberal organization is going to be labeled a socialist, republican or harmonist group.  Eyr’s mercy, they might even sick the MfÖS on us.”

“Let’s not start on that,” Karl objected, though he was quickly overridden as Lena barked “Why?  We know they’ve slipped agents into our ranks before!  Imagine if they were actually given the power to take us down!”

“I agree with the pup, we need to call for a general strike!  They have to know we won’t stand for this!”

“Bad enough we might get some hired landsknechts called down on our picket line, what if the Landwehr sends panzers in?  They’re certainly going to side with the nobles!”

“There’s nothing saying we can’t negotiate this again!  Just because they’re saying no now doesn’t mean we can’t get them to return to the table-”

“They’re going to use the war to turn the public against us!  Why would they need to say anything to us?”

“Mobilize!  We must mobilize the working class now!  Gather the picks, the rifles, everything we have!  We have to march on Bronzekreuz before it’s too late!”

“ENOUGH!”

The entire room fell silent, looking over to where Hargrim had slumped into his chair, having just barked the statement aloud.  All eyes were on their chairman, wondering what to say, wondering what -he- would say and what they were all going to do.  They were scared, he could see it.  Not just at the possibility of what the response would be, but what could happen if they did nothing.  Tens of thousands of dogs and griffons worked in those mines, hauling valuable coal, steel, bauxite, copper and many, many other mineral ores to the surface to feed the industrial fires of Bronzekreuz, Griffenheim, Osnabeak and a dozen other major industrial centers.  Their district was only a small part of the greater network of unions, all of which strove to protect workers and fight for their decency of living and representation.  Doing nothing was just as bad as making the wrong choice in this instance, for doing nothing and letting the miners be subjected to these hellish work conditions would lose them all the power and representation dogs before them had worked decades to get, bought with blood and sweat and destroyed lives.

Finally, Hargrim shifted, looking out over the room.  His jowls drooped even lower, as he gave the only order he could.

“Call the representatives.  We do this the way we’ve always done it; we vote.  And gods help us all.”
> The Plague
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------


”After it was all said and done, analysts from both sides got our documentation together, began studying everything we could. Even with the Reichsarmee, Republicaine Armee, international health volunteers and local doctors, it still took a decade for us to finally understand the scope of the Wet Plague.  In all, we estimate that in the Peripherie when it was rampaging with little done to stop it during the bitter fighting of mid to late 1012, the sickness was killing one-thousand to twenty-five hundred people a -week-.  That’s at least five-thousand a month.  Soldiers from both sides, civilians.  Didn’t matter.  They dropped like flies, but due to the fighting and all the other circumstances, no one noticed until it was almost too late.  Why didn’t they notice?  Let’s not forget battles like Westkeep, Vilein, Vanguardigo, Vigovia, all happening right after each other.  Death was all around, in its tens and hundreds of thousands. What was another thousand or two a week in one region going to matter?”
-Doctor Gomez Santano, University of Greenback, 1032 ALB






July 23rd, 1012
Balefire province, Imperial Occupied Duchy of Verenia
3rd Armee, 29th Infanterie-Division ‘Knallstädt’, 99th Grenadier-Regiment
Quarantänelager Kaufmann

The camp sat in the middle of a second ring of isolation, though the vehicles and uniforms clad and used by the griffons on the outside wore the same patches and insignia as those within.  There was a barbed wire fence, though no gate, towers or guards at the corners.  Merely a few dozen tents inside and the dim outlines in the dawn light of orderlies in masks and protective smocks hauling their burden out so the troopers in gas masks could collect them.  The bundled loads were corpses, of griffons, dogs and ponies, claimed and twisted by the horrific specter inside. Not even the uniforms were reclaimed off the dead, instead tossed into a pit at the edge of the camp to be burned.  Passing by in the opposite direction, troopers and orderlies carried stretchers laden with living soldiers, hacking and coughing or passed out and limp.  The ground was covered in blood and vomit, rendered to mud by both the light rainfall and the prodigious amount of bodily fluids splashed across the soil.

Inside one of the tents, the griffon surgeon leaned over his patient, carefully examining.  The pony had died not so long ago, perhaps a few hours back.  She looked dreadfully pallid, as if a victim of drowning without the bloating that came from soaking in water.  Sighing behind his surgical mask, he gestured for scalpel and saw.  The bronze dog nurse carefully passed the tools over, her own skin sweaty and pale beneath her coat from all the work they’d already done that day.  The surgeon cut open the mare’s torso, slicing from the base of the throat down the length of the barrel.  The saw he used to carve through the ribs, like a lumberjack sawing off bows.  Then his talons went back in and cracked the bones, taking them out entirely.  Off to the side, an orderly wretched a dry heave behind their mask, and the surgeon paused only a moment as he considered.  Must have been a new one.  Those who had been here for some time either passed out already or became numb to the suffering around them.  He moved on with his work, carefully slicing open the lungs.  Once they were open, foamy fluid began seeping out with the hiss of escaping air that had not already left through the holes dotting the sickly, dilapidated organs.  The surgeon, the nurse and even the orderlies all crowded closer to get a better look.

“Just like those Aquileian POWs,” the surgeon muttered, his voice exhausted and despondent.  “Just like the others out there.”

“Mein gotten,” one of the orderlies uttered, reaching up to touch an emblem of the Triarchy around his neck under his smock.  “She drowned in her own lungs…”

The surgeon straightened up, stripping off his medical gloves before falling back to all fours.

“I need some air.  Orderly, take her away.”

The examination, cursory as it was, was complete.  The orderlies moved to take the stretcher off the table, draping a sheet over the dead mare.  The door opened, and the surgeon stumbled out as he fumbled a pack of cigarettes out, nearly tripping over the next body waiting in the hallway.  From the door to the exit was lined with stretchers bearing corpses, all waiting for a postmortem examination.  Some of them weren’t quite corpses yet, almost on the brink of death as they lingered in their misery.  Some, dead or not, didn’t even have a stretcher to be carried on, piled down and stacked like sacks of grain.  The surgeon pushed to the door, trying to hold his breath as he finally reached the exit, shoving out into the open.  They had all been similar to the mare on the table, choking and coughing and hacking as the sickness struck them down. Caught early enough, some survived.  Most didn’t, and could be struck down as quickly as forty-eight hours or linger for days or even weeks.  It wore all the appearances of a type of influenza from the marshes and swamps, hence the term “Wet Plague”.  But whereas most severe flu killed the very young and the very old but healthy young adults could survive, the Wet Plague reaped an equal toll on the fighting ranks, most of whom were below the age of thirty.  Already, the dying had gotten to the point where separate quarantine camps like Kaufmann were becoming common as munitions dumps across the Peripherie.  Efforts were being made to keep the sickness from advancing north into the Herzland, but reports stated some outbreaks had already been found in Griefenmarschen and Yale.  Strangely enough, few cases had been reported from Angriver itself.

The surgeon finally reached open air, far enough away from the corpses and the ill.  With shaking claws, he lit the cigarette, taking a deep pull and letting it out more for the sake of getting that second one in his lungs.  Weeks he had spent on this case, trying to compile a report for the Reichsarmee on why this had been such a problem that needed addressing.  At first, he had been rebuffed.  Trench diseases happened all the time, it was said.  What was so different about this one?  Most armies lost a significant amount of troops to illness.  It was a factor of war.

Except it wasn’t.

There had been no outbreaks of the Wet Plague when the war was up north in Feathisia, and the trench fighting there had been just as bitter, though chemical weapons had yet to be deployed by either side.  A case could be made that it had spread from Angriver and the war had reached the Peripherie around the time when Angriverian troops were finally allowed to deploy with Reichsarmee divisions.  But then why were there few to no cases in Angriver itself?  Evidence did suggest that the chemical weapons themselves may have had a mutative effect on the Plague, turning what might have been a rather mild if extremely contagious flu into a much more sinister killer. Possibly, but some theaters affected by the Plague had yet to report the usage of mustard gas, the very mutagenic agent being blamed.  What unicorn healing magic the Empire had access to couldn't battle the virus, merely help assuage the symptoms and side effects, almost as if the sickness was able to mutate to resist even magic.

“What -are- you?” the surgeon muttered before taking another drag, finally feeling himself beginning to calm down.  His question, pointless and empty as it was, had been directed at the Plague, an attempt to understand something that had defied understanding.  Why was it so lethal?  Where -had- it come from?  And, most importantly of all, could they contain it before it reached the more populated cities of the Herzland?  And then, could they kill it?

He finished his cigarette, resolved to once more process line after line of sick soldiers.  Many of them hadn’t even been on the line very long, just happened to be stationed in an infected area.  Cloth masks over the beak or muzzle among the veterans were becoming the norm.  Some elected to wear their clumsy, uncomfortable gas masks all the time, seeing their suffering as better than catching the Plague.  It was worse than when the towns got infected.  A town could eventually run out of griffons to infect.  A line unit had fresh victims rotated in to replace the losses.  At this rate, would the forests of the Peripherie have enough wood to supply the Reichsarmee with coffins?  Or would they have to resort to mass graves soon instead of shipping the corpses back to the vulnerable, ignorant and so far unafflicted Herzland?

The surgeon grunted as he started back.  Then he began to cough.  It got worse with every step, sounding more and more strenuous and wet.

Then he collapsed.
> Over Mountain, Under Sea I
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------


“Vertical envelopment troopers.  Death from above.  There are some in the Army who think you will amount to nothing more than a failed experiment in a new kind of combat.  Why use parachutes when wings have worked just fine for millennia?  But they don’t know you like I do!  We know that landing safely is only half the battle, and it takes a unique kind of warrior to land and fight behind enemy lines!  I know you are those warriors, and I’m convinced that the end of tyranny, when it comes, will be delivered by the claws of the Airborne!  Don’t disappoint me.”

-General Nimbus Cloudstriker, during the first graduation of Royal Parachute Infantry from the 501st Parachute Infantry Regiment, August 29th, 1008






November 13th, 1011
36 km southeast of Metztunalia, Howling Mountains Province, Arisian-Occupied Chiropterra
Flounder Company, 511th Parachute Infantry Regiment, 11th Airborne Division
Operation Sucker Punch

The sky blue Downwind C-47 Skytrain rattled and rumbled as it soared through the pre-dawn sky, its fellows on the wings holding formation as they were heading towards their target.  Their escorts, a flight of four P-40 Warhawk fighters, held formation around them, wings tilting as they peered towards the ground, watching out for any sign of hidden anti-air emplacements or movement to indicate spotters fleeing the area.  This late in the fight, the Legionary diehards and guerillas still possessed enough hardware to cause problems for the occupiers.  Today, however, there appeared to be no such firepower to be found nearby.  So far.

This transport aircraft wasn’t the only one up in the sky.  Not far away, five more Skytrains flew in a loose diamond, each one escorted by their own flight of Warhawks.  This aerial armada had taken off from the strip at New Ayacachtli with exactly one objective in mind; find the Pathfinders that had taken off an hour before hand, land on their designated DZs and move into the forests to find one single thestral.  While the parachute infantry had been informed that ridding these hills of the diehards taking shelter with him would be a great boon in stabilizing the occupying forces, this one thestral in particular was the main focus of their entire mission.  According to Captain Summers, he had to be brought in, at all cost.

Sergeant Stratus Deeptide sat with thirteen other paratroopers, all of them trying their best not to be airsick.  They were all hippogriffs, of course, but the slamming and shaking turbulence of the C-47 was unlike the weather conditions most of their kind were used to experiencing.  It was too cramped to commence anymore inspections of their kit, and too loud to talk to one another, so all they had was staring at the plane’s floor and each other, attempting to burn away the anxiety.  For Stratus, he had tried to prepare by reading his scriptures, having used what little free time he’d had to flip through his Book of An.  That same book (the condensed military version at least) was tucked into his breast pocket, and every now and then he reached a claw up to poke at it and make sure it was still there.  It always was.  His mother had raised him the best she could, and one of those ways was to make sure he grew up religious, reading the word of the gods with proper deference.

”Miss you ma,” he thought to himself.

Abruptly, the interior of the plane was swamped with red light.  The jumpmaster at the door hollered out “Get ready!”  

After a pause to make sure he had their undivided attention and that nothing had gone wrong, he raised his claw, palm up.  The physical sign was for those too far from him, who couldn’t hear over the drone of the engines and to reinforce the message to those who could.

“Stand up!”

The cramped and tight confines of the craft became even more so as all the hippogriffs stood up in single file on their rear legs, packed tail to beak, wings held tight under packs, parachutes and rigging.  The average hippogriff was physically larger than a pony or griffon, so the C-47 did not give much elbow room to fourteen griffs.  But they had trained for this, gotten accustomed to it.  After some shifting and reorientation, they were lined up in just a moment.

“Hook up!” shouted the jumpmaster, making a hook with a talon.  In sync, with practiced movements, they attached their tag lines to the cable running the length of the plane.  Connected to their packs, it ensured the chutes would open upon flying out the door, no matter what.

“Equipment check!” The jumpmaster swiftly patted his shoulders for the assembled troopers.  Without hesitation, every soldier immediately began a swift inspection of the soldier in front of them.  Straps, buckles, rigging, weapons.  Before they had boarded the plane, each soldier had jumped up and down in their gear, and if it rattled or made noise it was strapped down on the ground.  Now was the final check before they threw themselves out into the unknown.

“Sound off for equipment check!”

And it went down the line, from the rear of the line to the front.  Each trooper reached forward, slapping the shoulder of the griff in front of them and confirming they were clear.  It came down to Stratus’ turn.

“Five okay!” he hollered, smacking the shoulder of Corporal Charybdis, who carried the call on forward.

“One okay!” the jumpmaster finally called back, finishing the process down the line.  Abruptly, the plane jerked hard as something with the strength of a giant rocked it hard under one wing, an almighty explosion ringing out nearby from somewhere outside in the pre-dawn light.

”Son of a-hang on back there, fucking Bats finally woke up!” shouted the voice of the pilot over the intercom, and the plane seemed to twist around on a gimbal, more explosions ringing out.  The previously dark sky outside was suddenly full of flashes of light as the anti-air batteries of the enemy reached out to try and smack them out of the sky.  The diehards didn’t make a habit of shooting every Arisian plane out of the sky, mostly to avoid being detected and wiped out from nearby bomber squadrons or have a platoon of Rangers come root them out.  Give their course, they should have merely looked like a flight heading northeast into friendly Warzena, hardly a threat.  But some Bat on the ground must have had a sixth sense, for why else would they shoot at fighters and transports?  Unless there was an intel leak…

No time for that now, thought Stratus.  The Skytrain finally leveled out, the glowing red light switching out for a green one.

“Go go go!” called the jumpmaster, planting his claws on either side of the door frame and, after only a moment, leaping out into the dark, pre-dawn sky.  Three more griffs leapt out before it was Stratus’ turn, and he didn’t even think twice before he too took that wingless jump into the great beyond, feeling the wind rippling at his body as he plummeted like a stone.  For several heartstopping seconds, he tumbled.  The wind ripped at his uniform, at his rigging, the equipment and weapons he wore.  It tried to tear the helmet from his head, blasted the feathers and fur not covered in all directions.  Again and again, he suppressed the urge to open his wings, to take natural flight like he had always done on his own.  But at this speed, with all this rigging, opening his wings would only make things worse, and possibly kill him as he spun out of control.

Then, with a lurch and the deafening sound of silk snapping open, his downward trajectory was arrested and he jerked in the harness.  The parachute had engaged properly.  Stratus let out a sigh of relief.  Everything was working as it should be.

The sky was a deep violet with an edge of pink on the horizon, as the sun they had been flying towards had finally begun to shine across the eastern expanse.  Good.  They’d catch the night watch exhausted and the day shift in the middle of their sleep.  Overhead, the C-47s and P-40s roared away, even as more flak bursts popped around them, malformed black clouds across the sky.  Some of the Warhawks abruptly descended, strafing targets on the ground before pulling back up again.  Stratus couldn’t tell if it did any good.

The fall seemed to take much longer than either the training flights from Jump School or the few preparatory jumps they had practiced before this operation had begun.  The NIA brief had told them time was of the absolute essence, before the target moved again, and they’d have to go and acquire the necessary intel all over again.  That hadn’t left the Airborne with much time to get a force put together and ready.  In the end, they’d chosen Flounder Company to go, and here Stratus was descending on the landscape below.  In the dawn gloom, he could just make out the rocky mountain crags under him, sporadically decorated with the jungle foliage that crept up from Warzena to the southeast.  There, just a ways to the north, was a coil of red smoke, obviously designating the rally point where the Pathfinders had cleared out for them.  He was a ways off course, but it was nothing he couldn’t fix once he was on the ground.

Finally, Stratus approached his landing.  He knew what to do at this part, raising his rear legs as high as he could as he prepared for the shock.  When he finally came down, it was on all fours, allowing him to absorb the punishing impact and roll to dispel the energy.  Having achieved this, he immediately yanked at his rigging, discarding the straps and hurriedly rolling the silk up in a bundle.  The less the enemy had to discover, the better.

Abruptly, Stratus heard a shout nearby, followed by a pair of shots.  He immediately went into a crouch, drawing the Buckstar M982 from his holster.  While the Thundersplash submachine gun was a far mightier weapon, he was tangled up in the silken cords he’d been rolling, and at the moment couldn’t get to it.  Another shot echoed, and he realized it came from his east, through a glade of trees.  It had to be pretty close.  The foliage wasn’t so thick as to disguise shots like that.

After another moment, and Stratus knew he had to go investigate.  Disengaging from the parachute, he holstered the pistol to finally get the Thundersplash clear, moving into the thin brush at a half crouch.  His olive drab uniform and indigo feathers and coat helped him blend into the dark forest hillside, weapon up and ready as he crept towards the disturbance.

It didn’t take him long before he heard voices.  One in anger, another in pain.  He pressed into the underbrush, practically a shadow as his jump boots slipped through with nary a sound.

“One more time, pissant!” snarled an accented voice.  Though it was speaking Arisian, the voice was clearly Chiropterran.  “How many of you are there out here?”

“Highbreeze, Private First Class.  One-five-one-two-five-nine-three-four.”

“Ah bollocks.  Just shoot the bugger already, would you?  No point keeping ‘er round, she en’t gonna tell us anything useful, innit.”

A third voice.  At least two enemies and one friendly, then.  Stratus moved closer, pushing silently past the low-hanging vines and leaves strung between two trees.  There, in the clearing beyond, he spotted what he was looking for, a small clearing bare save for a campfire, a few bedrolls and a dead Airborne paratrooper hanging from his silk, strung up by the trees.  Whether killed on the way down or shot after coming down in an unfortunate and unlikely place, it was clear this trooper hadn’t gotten off lightly.  Laying on the ground nearby was another trooper, her rigging all around her, helmet askew and Cloudfall rifle several yards away.  In the clearing, as it happened, was not two enemy soldiers but three.  One was rummaging through a fallen Airborne pouch, inspecting the contents with a critical eye.  A second one was leaning over the wounded paratrooper, a hoof raised in menace while the third one stood nearby, looking bored but clearly not about to intervene.  Two were thestrals, while the one rummaging through the pack was a unicorn, using her magic to inspect the goods she was looting.  They wore dark green fatigues and forage caps, purple moon patches decorating their shoulders.  All three were armed with BA-12 rifles, bolt action weapons that were likely all they had left in their dwindling stores.   Though only the one standing was up on two legs, weapon held in his hooves, he didn’t seem concerned with watching his surroundings.  Stratus had the jump on them all.

He checked the safety on his Thundersplash.  Twenty rounds of .45 Auto, ready to go.  He lifted the weapon to his shoulder, then hesitated.  He had to time it just right, or he’d risk endangering himself or the other paratrooper.  Had to make sure he could get all three in a short burst.

A whistle cut the air.  Two notes.  The Chiropterran diehard on watch glanced around, but didn’t seem alarmed.  The hippogriff paratrooper, however, recognized the tone just as Stratus had, and threw herself flat.  In a moment, the clearing was full of gunfire, rattling blasts from Thundersplash SMGs, cracks from Cloudfall rifles, snaps from Buckstar pistols.  Stratus had, without thinking, joined in and blew away the thestral threatening the downed para.  In what could only have been about ten seconds, the three Legionnaires were scoured away, blood and viscera spattered across the clearing from the multiple directions they had been blasted.  The swiftly lightening air was clogged with gunsmoke and agonized, racking coughs.  One of the Chiropterrans was still alive.

“Flash!” called out a voice.

“Thunder!” Stratus replied, heart jammed up in his throat.  It didn’t matter how many times he went into combat, that first moment the bullets started flying his heart shot up and his balls tried to follow.

“Welcome!” returned the voice, and at that all participants moved into the clearing, converging on the wounded paratrooper.  One of them was Corporal Charybdis, who nodded across to Stratus.

“Sergeant Deeptide, good to see you,” she said.  “You see the dropzone?”

Stratus nodded in return, thumbing back over his shoulder.

“We’re not far off.  Give it an hour to the north.  We’ll be in place before Barracuda Company launches their assault.”

A shot rang out, prompting all the paratroopers to glance over, only to spy one of the Privates had put the wounded Chiropterran out of their misery with his Cloudfall rifle.  The hippogriff glared back, defiant and daring anygriff to object.  No one did.  They had no time or ability to take prisoners anyway, and none of them felt any kind of pity for murderous, slave-taking torturers.  After a moment, Stratus turned back to their wounded companion.

“How bad is it, Highbreeze?”

“Could be worse, Sarge,” PFC Highbreeze grunted as she was hefted up by Private Blackfin, who had already grabbed the wounded trooper’s rifle.  “Don’t think it’s broken.  I can baby it until we get to the DZ.”

“Don’t dragass, Private,” Stratus shot back.  “You fall behind, we leave you behind.”

That, of course, was a bold faced lie.  Unless in a life or death situation, Airborne never left their wounded behind in enemy territory.  Stratus glanced up at the dead paratrooper, shaking his head.

“Okay.  Scrounge what you can.  We’re out in five.  Be ready, Airborne.  This is just getting started.”

Indeed it was.  Operation Sucker Punch was after a single thestral.  Two whole companies of elite parachute infantry, dropped over the mountainside away from friendly elements, supply or extraction.  The only support they were getting would be from the air, once they got the radios working.  And just who was it the United Kingdom of Aris had sent some of their best warriors to come haul in?

None other than Ocean Spray, the fugitive Commander of the Legionary Medical Research Department.  His involvement in several of the LMRD’s crimes against sentient creatures was undeniable, and while they had already hauled in his superior Lady Commander Emerald Light, there were several remaining elements of the Department at large in the Chiropterran wilds.  Most saw fit to keep their heads down, quietly hiding among the resistance cells that tried to fight back against the Arisian occupation (tried being the operative word, of course).  But Ocean Spray was different.  He was still out there, possessing chemical weapons and ‘testing’ them on towns and villages that didn’t resist the UK Army forces in country, as well as military targets themselves.  He had kept on the move, managing to stay one step ahead of Arisian intelligence.

No longer.  The NIA had finally caught wind of his location.  For his crimes, past and present, the Airborne were here to finally tighten the noose and drag him back to answer for what he’d done.  All they needed to do was swing the two halves of the trap shut around his hiding place.  In this hostile terrain, with mountains to the northwest and jungles to the east, it was easier said than done.

But they were Airborne.  They did the impossible every godsdamned day.
> The Way of Fire
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

July 14th, 1011 (雨晴40年 7 月 14 日)
Sundew, Gossamer Woods Province, Vermilion Realm of Kiria

The whistle of the steam locomotive carried on the wind from the southern railroad, piercing through the serenity of the ancestral shrine.  Previously, he had listened to the quiet motion of the waves on the beach, not far from his home.  The eternal back and forth of the tide had been present with him all of his life, and all of his life had been here in Sundew.  He exhaled, the intruding noise of the still distant machinery acting as a reminder of what he was planning to do.  Was he second guessing himself?  Perhaps, but however much his fears leaked into his mind, he came to the same conclusion again.  He had to go forwards with this, or else risk knowing in his heart he was a deceitful coward.

Virtuous Blaze looked up at the wooden tablets around him, breathing out hard as he tried to center his thoughts, focusing on the characters engraved on their face.  Before him, a raised dais with three plates sat between him and the rows of wooden tablets standing on the alter.  One had a cluster of fruit he had picked himself, another several buns stacked pyramidally, while the third had seasoned steamed rice.  As was tradition, he had fixed the food himself, bringing it into the ancestral shrine to place before his ancestors and light the two candles on it and pray.  Before Concord and those of his family lineage, he laid his soul bare, silently whispering the litanies and hoping he would receive some sign that what he was about to do was correct.

But sadly he just kept getting interrupted.  At first it was by evening songbirds, even though early winter was settling on the southern hemisphere.  This brought back memories of celebrating the Mid-Autumn Festival with his friends and family, and distracted his thoughts.  So he had closed the window shutters, attempting to block them out.  Then it was the food as his mother and sister prepared dinner, and he was already so hungry after preparing the offering he brought to appease Concord and the spirits.  He knew exactly what his mother was making, as well.  Hot stew, and from what he could detect he knew the stock had fish, a collection of vegetables and he even hoped some tofu was added in.  He loved his mother’s fish stew, it was his favorite dish.  But he had persevered, determined to get some answer through all the things grabbing his attention.  Concord was testing his resolve, he was certain of it.  But after the stew, it was the sound of the sea in the near distance, and now the train and-

It was all too much!

“I give up,” he grunted, shaking his head as he rose from the prayer mat.  “I’m sorry, but I just can’t.”

He looked up at his grandfather’s name, etched on one of the tablets.  Would that he could only focus and give Righteous Spirit the diligence and respect he was due, not to mention the dishonor he was doing Concord weighed on his soul.  In his time of doubt, he had sought an answer to possibly the greatest question of his life, and now he could not even focus his mind enough to watch for a sign.

“Am I making the right choice?” he questioned aloud.

“Blaze!” called his mother’s voice abruptly from the other room.  “Dinner!”

Sighing, he brushed himself off, glancing once more up at the tablet a final time before he bowed in the traditional manner.  Once for the spirits of his ancestors, once to honor the goddess Concord.  But as he rose, he could have sworn his eye had caught the briefest glimpse of a kirin, wizened and weathered by endless days in the elements, dressed in battle armor dented, pockmarked and damaged by battle.  But when Virtuous Blaze snapped his eyes fully on the sight, the figure was gone.  No trace of its presence to be found.

But to Virtuous Blaze, he had received his sign.  He knew what to do.


* * * * *


Dinner was just like any other night.  Virtuous Blaze sat at the table with his father, mother and sister, all of them gladly tucking in to their hot dinner with vigor, scooping the stew out of the pot in the center for their own bowls, inside of which they had rice to pour the sumptuous mixture onto.  And it was just as delicious as Virtuous Blaze had thought it would be, melting his taste buds as he gladly stuffed fish, rice, leeks, peppers, rice, tofu, all of it into his muzzle.  The tea was made of Iron Concord leaves, a luxury in most of the Realm but an easy commodity due to Sundew's close proximity to the tea farms in Hyacinth, made even closer by the railroad.  The meal was just perfect.

His mother, Linblaze Pearl, had learned most of her recipes from her own grandmother and sought to carry them on down the family line.  Already his older sister Tempest Glade was learning the secrets being passed down through the family line, even though her job as a typist in town left her coming home late most nights.  His father, Mighty Spirit, had worked on the railroad ever since the Great Gallop Forward had brought the trains to Sundew, leaving the fields to Linblaze Pearl and Virtuous Blaze.  In all honesty, it made far more than what they could pull out of the ground, and the farm had been left to feed the family only instead of being their form of income.  Between the two working members of the family, they pulled in more taels than Virtuous Blaze could have ever dreamed of seeing, though his parents had assured the sixteen year old that it still wasn’t much.  

He hadn’t paid much attention when the scholars had been teaching about markets in school, but from what he had heard the tael was worth less than it had been years ago.  That didn’t make much sense to him.  If they were still poor, why did his sister drive to work in an automobile?  Why did they have electric lights in the house, and one could walk to Sundew and pay for the use of a miraculous device known as a telephone?  The local theater, which had done plays for as long as Virtuous Blaze could remember, now showed motion pictures from a projector, which ran a series of photographs on a screen so rapidly, the scene may as well be playing in real time.  If they were poor, how could they afford so many new things?

Yes, a lot had changed in since 1007.  The fabled 3 ½ Year Plan had brought so much to the Realm, many feared the country would collapse under the weight of it all.  Surely Concord would not condemn her beloved children to such a fate?  Would the kirin be subject to constant strife and hardship in the endless race to keep up with the western powers?  These things weighed on Virtuous Blaze’s mind, even as he outwardly participated in the meal with his family.

His ears tried to keep him connected to the conversation, but the distraction in his mind was too great, pondering at how to specifically word his announcement, when to say it, the anticipation of what everyrin would say.  What if his father was angry?  What if his mother broke down in tears?  What if they forbade it?  He had to do as his family wished, after all.  He wouldn’t want to dishonor them, and he certainly did not wish to go against their word and cause them to lose what little face they had.  Finally, however, his mother seemed to realize something was wrong indeed.

“Blaze, is everything alright?” asked Linblaze carefully.  He looked up, startled.  She had set her chopsticks down, ending the kinetic magic she and everyrin used to pick them up (though some preferred to do so physically, like his father).  She tilted her head to the side, watching him carefully as she sat on her mat, glancing at his bowl and tea cup.  “Is something wrong with the tea?”

“No, Mother.  I’m sorry, dinner is wonderful.”  Virtuous Blaze shifted uneasily, trying to clear his thoughts so he could respond without looking as awkward as he felt.  “I apologize.  I have something on my mind.”

“No better time to get it out than at the table,” said Mighty Spirit around a mouthful of fish stew.  “Go on, spit it out.”

“Spirit!” Blaze’s mother chided her husband before turning back to her son, expression softening again.  “If it's something we can help with, you know you only have to ask.”

The next words came in a rush, something he had no control over as his thoughts vomited forth with no rhyme, reason or order.

"I've decided to enlist," Virtuous Blaze finally blurted out.  "I'm going to town tomorrow with Furious Gale and Red Flower to join the Banner.  I'm going to follow Grandfather's legacy."

Stunned silence.  His mother and father nervously glanced at one another, clearly unsure of what to say.  His sister, however, immediately knew how to cut her younger brother down.

"Grandfather wasn't Bannerkin," she pointed out as she popped a piece of tofu into her mouth and chewed.  "He was a levy, and you're an idiot."

"Tempest!" Linblaze snapped, whirling her eyes over to fix on her daughter.

"What?  It's the truth," Tempest Glade shrugged.  "Grandfather was conscripted, there's no military legacy to follow.  If there was, we wouldn't need to rely on the Plenum to give us better jobs.  Or, well, promise to and then sell us out to foreign businessrin."

"Don't start with that Rising Fire spewage," Mighty Spirit growled, smacking his chopsticks down on the table sharply.  "I'll have none of that heresy here in my house."

But Tempest Glade was not dissuaded.

"They're on the Plenum, Dad, and the Morning Secretariat.  A little hard to call them heretics when they're in government."

Virtuous Spirit deflated, his thunder stolen.  All day long, he had agonized over how he would tell his parents about his monumental decision, and it had been snapped away the moment it was out of his mouth.

But surprisingly, the endless debate about politics between his father (far more tradition minded and a fervent follower of the classic teachings of the Way of Fire) and his sister (who had hinted several times at her support for the Rising Fire) ceased in a flash, and all of his family turned to Virtuous Blaze again.

"Son, you know you don't have to do this," Mighty Spirit began.  "Your grandfather was levied to fight bandits.  He had no choice.  He was called to the Banner by Concord and the Matriarch.  If this is about your friends enlisting-”

“It’s not,” Virtuous Blaze interrupted his father, pausing in embarrassment as he realized his mistake, but pressed on regardless.  “I mean, we talked about it with one another.  Made the decision together.  But I never felt like I had to because of them.  Look, Kiria is better than ever before.  The world’s changing, and so is the Realm.  I feel like now is the time to become part of something greater than myself, and this could be my only chance.  I know I could get work with the railroad like you or in town.  But when am I going to get the chance to be there when our country is in possibly the greatest age since the First Realm?  It’s a time of heroes.  Kiria is calling, and I want to answer.”

There it was.  All of it laid out for them.  Now he held his breath, waiting to see what they would say.  If his parents refused, he could still run away and enlist regardless.  But he would never be able to hold his head high and know he was standing for his family's honor, rendering part of his effort meaningless.

His father and mother glanced to one another, clearly unsure of what to say.  His sister, for once in her life, was silent as well.  All she could do was stare at him, gobsmacked…and seemingly a little sad.  That took him by surprise for a moment, but he ground it out with irritation.  So what if she thought she knew better than him?  If she understood what he was talking about, she wouldn’t look at him with such pity.

Finally, Linblaze turned back to her son.

“We just don’t want you to get hurt.  There’s a lot of war and problems in the world.  I heard on the radio that Equestria was invaded by one of their neighbors a few days ago.  Who knows what will happen.”

“Well when it happens, I want to be there to see it, and to make my mark on history.”  Blaze softened his tone, seeing the apprehension and concern on his parents face’s.  The last thing he wanted was to get them so worked up they snapped into the nirik state.  “Look, the most that will happen in Kiria is that I’ll fight bandits or pirates or Zeblu raiders.  We’ve got the Hindians to the north, the colonizers to the southwest and Zaikiria to the south.  I just want to do my part.”

“I’m just concerned you’re getting in over your head,” his father continued, idly playing with his chopsticks in his cloven hoof, poking at his bowl.  “This isn’t like making a bad pot of tea.  If you join and regret it, you won’t get the chance to come back until you’re done with your term.”

At this, Virtuous Blaze grinned eagerly.

“Trust me, there’s no way I’m going to regret this.”

And with that, he lifted his tea cup and took a big gulp.  For some reason, the taste was rather more bitter than he had thought it was.





February 8th, 1012 ((雨晴41年 2 月 8 日)
2nd Cānlǐng, Banner of the Amaranth Pavilion
14 km southwest of Frangipani, Monsoon Fields Province, Militarchy-Occupied Sen Kinh

Rain fell.  Thunder, in the distance, rolled and echoed through the air.  Rivers, overflowing with water, swamped their banks.  The foliage was constantly hammered by the sheets that descended with the summer showers.  The tropical storm had struck, and was raging with the fury of a descending god.

And kirin died.

Artillery shrieked overhead as the line of kirin advanced, moving through the forest  gully as the water and mud threatened to drown them as surely as if they were underwater.  While they wore tan fatigues, puttees and newly issued steel helmets that were all caked under a layer of gray and black filth, weapons magically hovering over their heads as the bannerkin did their best to keep them from getting even filthier.  With the exception of their squad leaders and dedicated assault soldiers, they all carried Rhapsody Arsenal Flare rifles.  Private First Class Virtuous Blaze remembered when he was in training he had been given an old Equestrian Lillia rifle to use.  From the stories he had been told, some units had been forced to make do with lever-action Spark rifles, and many Militia Levies still bore century old Arquebus weapons.  A Flare rifle was still a good weapon, and it had kept him safe on many occasions.  He only prayed to Concord that it would continue to keep him so.

When it had been announced two months ago that the Realm was marching into Zaikiria to liberate it from the nirik menace, he and his bannerkin comrades had cheered and celebrated.  After the news of the Lan-Kir menace invading Sen Kinh and Khamrin last November, a call had gone up to go in and end the violence.  The entire Zaikirian region had once been a close part of the Vermilion Realm after all, and even now fellow kirin were slaughtering each other in droves right over the border.  But the Banners had remained, training and preparing.  But then, on the eve of the New Year, the announcement had gone out; prepare for military action.

Oh, how joyous they’d been in their barracks, crowing and crying and celebrating while they prepared to load up onto the ships in Hyacinth harbor.  Enough hunting for bandits in the countryside and managing rioting crowds.  An army of fanatics and their rampant nirik shock troopers was a real threat to Kiria and her cousins, to everything the Way of Fire and the Great Gallop had built for the nation.  At last, here was the reason Blaze had signed up.  A chances to be heroes.

While one army force of Banners and Vanguards crossed the border from the south, his Banner would follow the Seafarers in from the coastline.  Between the two thrusts, they would catch the enemy in a vise and end him once and for all.

A month ago, he had stepped off the ship into Frangipani after the Sycee trained marines had seized it, finding scorched buildings, rubbled choked streets and grateful if exhausted looking kirin civilians.  The long march through the ruined city had quieted some of the cānlǐng, four hundred bannerkin, levies and volunteers seeing what actual war was like for the first time.  The thanks and praises of the newly liberated kirin around them had bolstered their spirits, and they pushed on with quiet, determined purpose once more.

But now, Virtuous Blaze was beginning to understand just what the difference was between shooting at starving, desperate bandits and zealous, fanatical warriors who were determined to slaughter him where he stood.  After weeks of fighting, they were barely progressing into the heavily forested hills, despite the numbers and firepower they brought with them.  And a grim reality and truth had settled in for PFC Virtuous Blaze.

The infantry squad had only just spotted the end of the gully, their pointmare turning to alert the rest of them, when the treeline erupted in fire.  The pointmare died first, her chest riddled with bullets, likely not even realizing what had happened as she collapsed into the mud, nearly buried in the first few seconds.  The rest clumsily attempted to fire back, grabbing up their Flare rifles with muddy hooves and firing back up at the treeline.  But whatever was up there seemed to be a belt-fed weapon, as it simply kept chattering on and on and on.  Two more died where they stood, trapped in this gully with nowhere else to go.

“Up the sides!” cried Sergeant Frost Blossom, her hooves scrabbling as she pushed up and out over the muddy slope.  Her uniform was spattered in mud that looked almost black in the light-choked storm, but through it all Blaze swore he could spot the red rank patches on her lapels, with twin gold triangles and a single indigo stripe, even though the rain obscured his vision and the flashing of machine guns and rifles blinded and deafened him.

Then Blossom reached the crest, and was perforated by a flurry of rounds.  Her corpse lurched back, tumbling down into the gully and landing on another soldier, Firecracker submachine gun disappearing into the muck.

“Grenades!” hollered Corporal Astral Dasher, throwing himself flat on his back in the gully next to the corpses of his comrades.  In the next moment, six stick grenades were telekinetically chucked by kirin magic over the lip of the gully to explode in the treeline.  The machine gun fire stopped, only to be replaced by pained screaming.

“Up!  Up and have at them!” Dasher cried, and six muddy forms clambered from the muck, pulling free of its suctioning grasp as they surged in both fear and adrenaline towards the position formerly inhabited by their foes.  Blaze was the first to reach the machine gun nest, only to pause and wretch.  The grenades had done their work alright, leaving not much behind but tattered meat, shreds of uniform and the machine gun itself, limp and harmless on its tripod.  A Griffonian model, he’d been told.  Apparently the Lan Kir Militarchy had bought most of their equipment from the colonials across the border who had in turn received it from their Imperial masters.  The result of this was, sadly, that the nirik were often using more modern firearms than the Vermilion Banners.

One of the forms Blaze had thought was dead twitched, and he automatically brought up his weapon, fumbling to get his cloven hoof in the trigger guard.  The soldier wore green fatigues and kepi cap which blended in well with the surrounding forest.  His umber coat was rent by wounds, and both it and his uniform were spattered in blood.  Blaze hesitated, unsure of what to do.  Sure, this trooper had been attempting to kill them mere seconds ago, but he was clearly no threat now, right?  The wounded kirin coughed, spitting up more blood onto his muzzle as his horn glowed weakly, groaning loud enough to be heard over the constantly hammering rain.  Thunder pealed distantly, and the rolling rumble of artillery came after it.

Then Corporal Astral Dasher moved into the position after him, his own Flare rifle raised and scanning the downed soldiers.  When he spotted the wounded Lan Kiran, his eyes went wide.

“He’s still alive!”

Before Blaze could reply, a flash of heat suddenly swept over him, momentarily creating a pocket of dry air as the rain was knocked away by the pressure, staggering the kirin backwards.  Blaze and Dasher looked up, their heat resistant scales managing to dissipate the worst of the flareup (though the edges of their uniforms briefly smoldered before being drenched again by the rain) only to find that where there had once been a badly wounded kirin trooper on the verge of death, there now was the purple and black, blazing form of a nirik, uniform curling away as the cloth burned off, rising from where he had been laid out.

“FOR THE SUPREME COMMANDER!” the nirik screamed.

He didn’t raise a rifle, or ready a grenade.  He simply charged.  Both Blaze and Dasher raised their weapons, the rifles snapping and clattering as they worked the bolts.  The two of them each got a pair of shots off before the nirik struck.  Lucky for them (and unluckily for their comrade) another kirin had entered the position as the rest of the squad reached them, the nirik's blazing hoof smashing down and denting the helmet.  The Bannerkin dropped where he stood, likely not even realizing what had killed him.

“By Concord!” another Bannerkin shrieked, leveling her own rifle and firing in blind panic.  “Kill it!”

Fortunately for them all, the nirik was indeed just as on the verge of death as he had been when he had laid there dying.  Even for all their fury and power, they were not invincible.  Through their rage, their ability to ignore pain did not keep them from death.  The monster staggered, snarling and lashing out as he tried to land a hoof on his attackers, while the rest of the squad caught up and lent their fire.  Six rifles banged away, bolts cranking as the wounded nirik thrashed even as he was perforated again and again by 8x57mm rifle rounds.

Finally, the nirik spun in a clumsy kick, smashing one of the bannerkin in the foreleg before, at last, he dropped to the mud once more, his form slowly cooling as the accursed flames that had enveloped him finally flickered away.  The five survivors stood there in the rain, panting as they stared at this enemy that had so abruptly erupted from seeming defeat.  

As one of the other privates leant down to check on their wounded comrade, Corporal Astral Dasher scowled, stepping over and used his magic to lift a down Lan Kir stahlhelm and smash Virtuous Blaze with it, knocking the younger kirin over.

“What were you thinking?” he snapped, looming over Blaze with rifle in hoof, the battered enemy helmet hovering over his shoulder.  “Do you not understand who we’re fighting?  You’re lucky this wasn’t one of their elites and he had no idea how to control his nirik state!”

Down and down again came the helmet as Dasher rained insults and admonishments on a confused, wet, miserable Virtuous Blaze.  All Blaze could think about in the meantime was that, thanks to him trying to do what he had thought was the right thing, another of his comrades had died, another was injured and he had almost joined them.  His eyes welled up in tears, fortunately drowned out by the rain as he weathered the pummeling and the insults.

Finally, though it likely could only have lasted a minute or two, Dasher backed off, panting as he dropped the stahlhelm to the side, sniffing as he glanced around, clearly trying to figure out what to do.  Half the squad dead, and he had been left in charge of their portion.  They were supposed to be the trailblazers for the rest of the cānlǐng, finding a safe route to join the rest of the Banner as they moved in a dispersed fashion westwards.  According to the captain, the generals planned to use the recomposed Banner to smash the Lan Kir positions there.  If they cut the Militarchy forces off from their capital and supply, the liberation of both Sen Kinh and Khamrin was, they had claimed, all but assured with the Seafarer Banners moving down the coastline.

To Blaze, the grander plan he had been told had faded insignificance.  His squad had already been butchered, and they still needed to find a way forward for at least another kilometer or two until they reached the open ground spotted by the recon scouts.  The storm prevented the Realm’s biplane aircraft from lending much assistance, and the 18-pounder guns were only able to fire in a general direction until accurate scouting reports could tell them where the foe was dug in.  Who cared about what was supposed to be happening back on the coast, when here in the muddy, disgusting jungle they were getting carved up before they even joined the battle?

Finally, Corporal Dasher seemed to come to a decision.

“We have to press on.”  He glanced down to their wounded comrade before nodding at the kirin tending him.  “Take him back, if you can.  Get him aide.  We’ll keep blazing forwards.”

And like that, they went from ten down to four.

Blaze sighed, trying to peer up the sorry excuse for a forest path lay ahead.  What else was waiting for him in the obscuring foliage?  And if this was what it was like on the way to the battlefield, what would the actual fight be like?
> Heil dir im Siegerkranz
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------


”The problem is not whether we can defeat the Republique on the field of battle.  We have proven we can.  The problem is whether the Aquileians admit defeat.  The republican movement had their revolution smashed into the ground and numerous attempts to stamp it out killed who knows how many creatures.  But it endured and struck when the time was right to overthrow King Moriset.  We must be cautious about the will of the Aquileian people to resist and the lengths to which they will go to in order to make our occupation, justified as it is, as difficult and costly as possible.”
-Generalleutnant Alard Hakstroo, commander of the Imperial occupation of Westkeep, June 20th, 1012






June 27th, 1012
Imperial-Occupied Westkeep, Aquileia
46th Infanterie-Divisione “Imperium”, 71st Infanterie Regiment, 6th Kompanie

”Attention, all citizens of Ouestgarde: all civilians must stay within their residences from eight o'clock until six o’clock.  Failure to obey this curfew may result in detainment or death.  Only civilians with a special signed pass may be allowed out after curfew.  Keep your issued passbook on you and current at all times.   Report all suspicious behavior.  Remember that proximity to a violent act places you in the most suspicion.  A report may save more than those directly affected.  Join the Kaiserliche Hilfsfreiwilligen to help restore peace and order to your city.”

The green-gray Ozelot half-track rattled down the ruined street under the newly erected loudspeaker tower, passing by burned out cars and the occasional wrecked panzer.  The occupation was only two weeks old, and the Hilfsingenieure attached to the occupying division had not completed their work clearing the roads.  But they had help, as a line of Aquieleian POWs were shifted out of the half-track’s way by landsers with bayonets on their rifles, hollering in broken Aquilan as they shifted the laborers aside.  Not all of them wore tattered chalk blue uniforms, either.

Inside of the open-backed transport, five landsers sat in silence.  One tapped her bootheel in an attempt to dispel her nervous energy.  Another tapped his talons on the barrel of his rifle, likely not even conscious that he was doing it.  The halftrack could hold eight plus a dedicated machine gunner, but their squad was a bit short for the time being.  Made up largely of conscripts and reservists pulled from regional militias, they weren’t exactly the fighting fit for the frontline.  Instead of the semi-automatic Gerund the grenadiers and others in the trenches bore, these garrison soldiers had bolt-action Kralle rifles instead, wore soft caps instead of coal-scuttle helmets and only had one submachine gun amongst them in the claws of the feldwebel.  But they were expected, as well as ten-thousand other soldiers from the 46th and 99th divisions, to hold on to this ground.  They were, in all honesty, little better than Landwehr.

Except this squad had with them a knight.

She sat rigid, still and silent before them, her faceplate down, having already boarded the half-track before the squad had even reached their vehicle back in the garrison motor pool.  She sat across from their bronze dog squad leader Feldwebel Kordhel, and though the two hadn’t exchanged a word the squad leader seemed to understand she was now in charge.  The tension in the half-track was thick, even as they had the noise of the city in early evening to distract them.  The sky was overcast with summer clouds, seemingly casting the ruined cloud in a pall of gloom.  Not that it needed help.  The final fires had only just been put out, but there wasn’t a single avenue not affected by the fight, choked with rubble and ruin.  Thanks to the vicious artillery barrages and close-range panzer clashes there wasn’t a structure left with more than two stories.  The dead had been astronomical, Imperial and Republicaine both, and the civilians caught in between had likely suffered the most.  If they had helped the MPA, they were arrested as guerillas and set to the labor gangs clearing the battle damage, tugging corpses and pieces of corpses out of the ruins.  If they hadn’t been arrested, strict curfews had been put in place to keep them from wandering about during sensitive hours.  The war, after all, wasn’t over yet.

The Ozelot turned off the main road, around a few cars (one of which was smashed by what looked like a panzer tread, the other still intact though the windscreen was shot out) and pulled into a lot next to a structure that looked very much like a tenement, more abandoned or burned out cars parked nearby.  The building was old, though it too had suffered its share of battle damage.  The plaster was pockmarked with bullet holes, one window had been blown out by an errant shell, part of the roof was gone.  As the vehicle finally halted, the knight finally stood, and they could all see her iconography on her breastplate.  Der Ritterorden des Krankenhauses, simply known as Der Ritterhospitalier.  Judging from the ribbons hanging off her pauldrons, she was from the Rot Banner.

“Listen up!” the knight called to them all, her voice ringing behind her visor.  “I am Schwertschwester Rosenkralle!  I am here to help you secure this city, in the Kaiser’s name!  My Order has committed to the frontline, and my Banner has remained here with the garrison and the wounded!  We are ready to help the city heal.  But before a wounded body can heal, it must have the disease carved out.  That is what we are here for.”

She pointed up at the structure without looking, as if daring it to do something about her attention.

“A trusted source has informed us that an MPA stay behind cell is operating within this structure, likely with the assistance of local civilians.  This cell has possibly captured a Reichsarmee codebook from the garrison.  You will come help me flush the vermin out, and we will investigate to see if they possess the codebook in question.  Assume all armed civilians inside to be hostile.  If you see a firearm, do not hesitate to fire.  Unarmed civilians are to be ordered aside immediately.  If they do not comply, remove them by whatever force is necessary.”

“What if the armed griffons try to surrender, Schwester?” asked one of the landsers, a fresh faced young drake whose Herzlandisch was peppered with Katerin inflections.  Feldwebel Kordhel growled, advancing on the soldier before checking himself and holding back, glancing over at Rosenkralle.  This was, after all, her mission.  The knight merely swiveled her head over to the trooper, who suddenly cowered in his green-gray fatigues, trying to disappear in plain sight.

“If they surrender, kick the guns away fast.  Bring them to the floor.  Check them for hidden weapons or explosives.  Most importantly, don’t do it alone.  Have somegriff covering you.  Then push them out into the hallway and sit them down.”  She swung her visored face back to address the squad as a whole.  “Make no mistake.  We are not here for a long fight.  If this turns out to be bigger than we assumed, we leave and call in backup.  Let the panzers deal with it.  Our job is to find the hostiles and recover the codebook if it is here.  But do not let your sympathy for them let you risk your life or mission.  If you have even a shred of doubt about whether somegriff is trying to surrender or if they are bringing a weapon to bear, do not hesitate.  Gun them down where they stand.  Do you understand?”

“Ja, meine fraue!” the landsers all chorused.  Rosenkralle grunted, nodding slowly as she tugged her Type-11 crystal rifle from where it was slung over her pauldron.

“That will have to be enough.  Let’s see how it goes.  Feldwebel!”

“Let’s move, sweep and clear!  You think just because you’re behind the line that gives you an excuse to sit on your tails and relax?” Kordhel snapped, racking the bolt on his Kralle submachine gun.  “Move in teams at all times!  Remember your training, close quarters drill!  Fix bayonets and for the love of Eyr, watch your corners!”





When the half-track had pulled up in the parking lot, Lionel Merle had just about shit himself.  When the knight stepped out with the Imperial landsers, he had almost fainted.  It was lucky, then, that he had remembered he was supposed to be lookout, and ran from the window.

“Belmont!” he cried, wings smacking painfully into the doorframe as they uncontrollably flared in panic.  “Belmont!”  He rounded a corner, galloping down the hallway as he passed room after room, the scavenged Modèle 1006A pistol he possessed bouncing in its holster against his flank as he ran.  Finally, he found the door he was looking for, bursting through the door only to find himself staring down the yawning muzzle of a shotgun.  With a gasp, Lionel felt a bolt of terror run through him as he tried to get his breath back into him.  “Mon dieu!  Belmont, we’ve got boche!  Five of them, and a chevalier!”

The looted Grummond trench gun pulled back, revealing the holder to be a drake in his mid 30s, still wearing the dark blue jacket of an MPA fighter though it had clearly seen better days.  His gray coat and feathers were covered by clothes scavenged from the city, such as a grimy white shirt and green-gray trousers that had belonged to an Imperial landser.  Across his chest he also had the scavenged plate from a dead Stormtrooper, pockmarked with impacts from rounds that hadn’t quite penetrated over which he’d painted the Republicaine double-headed eagle and the word ‘Vive’ underneath.

“What?” said Sergent Pierre Belmont, beak hanging open in astonishment. “La vache!  A boche chevalier?”

Before even waiting for Lionel to confirm, Belmont was quickly moving from where he’d been sittig and taking stock of his inventory.  As a stay behind, it was his job to keep the spirit of Aquileia alive in the people remaining, those griffon and pony citizens who remained trapped in Ouestgarde at the dubious mercy of the Reichsarmee.  Using looted weapons and salvaged radios, he stayed in touch with other MPA soldiers like him.  There were a few Armee de Terre fusiliers left in hiding as well, having either holed up in basements or discarded their uniforms and blended into the population.  Those who had previously been underground revolutionaries just a few years ago already knew their business, and were valuable in this case.

But after two weeks, Belmont had only gathered a few who were willing to bear arms.  For the time being, he had used this abandoned housing tenement to keep their stockpile of arms and hidden materials away from the garrison’s eyes and use it as a place to train the beginning of his resistance.  The Imperials had so much going on lately, they should have gone unnoticed, able to build up slowly and continue their work harassing the boche until they grew large enough to link up and commence operations with their comrades across the city.

That damned codebook, he thought.  What had seemed like a feat of good luck and Imperial inefficiency had allowed one of his recruits, Reine, to get a job as a courier with the garrison.  A stroke of good fortune, especially this early on into the occupation.  But then, Reine had come back with something unexpected; a Reichsarmee codebook for their communications.  True, not as valuable without the encrypting machines, but with it they could listen in on the enemy’s radio communications for a time.  Still, it had been very risky, and might have garnered attention.

‘Well, the boche finally decided to do something about it,’ he thought as he quickly rallied his few fighters together, passing out their meager supply of arms.  As well as his trench gun and Lionel’s pistol, they had gathered up a snub-nosed police revolver, two MS-36 bolt-action rifles and a single MAC-40/2 submachine gun.  Reine had been given the revolver so she could be quietly armed when outside the garrison, the two rifles had been handed to two pony shopkeepers who hadn’t received a day of firearms training before the war came to Ouestgarde and the MAC-40/2 had been left in the trusted claws of André Hébert, a fusilier who had slipped into the ruined city as just another battered civilian.  Between Belmont and Hébert they’d been trying to get the others caught up in understanding the basic fundamentals of firearms combat, but they just hadn’t the time.

Now, their carelessness had come to bite them in the hindquarters.  Lucky him, Hébert had some experience with booby traps, and had already set up their contingency.

“I think they’re inside,” Reine said quietly as she closed the door all the way.  “They’ll clear the lower level first.”

“See any more?” asked Belmont, quietly passing out ammunition and trying to be the very picture of an MPA stalwart that he was supposed to be.

“Non,” said one of the pony shopkeepers from the window, carefully watching from his vantage over the main entrance.  “Just the six of them.  There are two staying in the half-track.”

“Merde!” hissed Hébert as he carefully slid back the bolt on his MAC, frustration rolling off him in waves.  “Why’s there a chevalier with them?  Should have just gunned them down in the open…”

“Oi!” Belmont snapped, immediately heading off that train of thought.  Hébert may have been an experienced fighter, but he certainly lacked the discipline to keep his beak from running.  “Keep your head.  We knew they might respond in force.  We’ve got a plan, and this is just a scout team.”  Belmont paused, considering all the information rushing at him carefully before he added on “And those salauds don’t go down easy.  Trust me.”

He glanced around, meeting the eye of each of his fighters carefully, nodding to reassure them.

“Now, we just wait until they get up here.”





Every room was empty.

It was disconcerting to enter the building, moving down the central hallway between the various tenements and checking to look for signs of habitation, only to find nothing at all.  Much of it looked like the residents had, at some point, just left everything behind and taken off.  They found scattered empty cans and torn sheets that showed evidence of past squatters taking shelter, but not a soul could be found regardless.  Books had been scattered from shelves, silverware and platters damaged and shattered respectively.  Valuables had been looted obviously, but by whom or where they went there was no sign.

Schwertschwester Rosenkralle led the way down the hallway, taking point with her crystal rifle at the ready, head on a swivel as she checked room after room from the doorway, her weapon quietly humming with arcane energy as her enchanted armor plating scraped and clattered with her movements.  Following behind her, the landsers cleared the residences out in two teams, one to either side.  Kordhel led one team, his weapon far more suited for the tight confines than the rifles of the others but also far more experienced as he checked corners, doorframes, anywhere a guerilla might hide with the barrel of his weapon first.

But every room was empty.  Touched by time and overlaid by dust, and certainly damaged by looters or the battle.  But empty.

The squad cleared the first floor, slowly mounting the stairs as they moved to the second story.





Reine carefully checked the cylinder of her revolver, snapping it closed with quiet, delicate movements of her claws.

“Merde.  Here they come,” said Lionel from the door he had his head pressed up against, pistol in claw as he listened to the noise out in the hallway.  “Think they’ll come down this far?”

Belmont pulled back the slide of his shotgun a hair, double checking once more that he had loaded the slug shell first.  Against enchanted armor it might not do much, but if he could get a round through the visor slit or hit the enchanted barding underneath, he’d need as much power behind that one shot as he could get.

“Guess we’ll see,” he muttered.  The fact that the boche were on the same level as them was sinking in, never mind the fact that there were several walls and doors between them.

“Shut it,” Hébert hissed as he trained his weapon on the door, gesturing everyone to the side so he had a clear shot.  Beside him, Reine thumbed back her hammer, Belmont leveled his trench gun as well, Lionel pressed up against the wall and quietly hyperventilated and the two ponies glanced to one another as they clutched their rifles close.





They cleared the second floor in the same way as the first.  The silence was oppressive.  This deep into the building, they no longer had the comforting, distant rumble of the half-track outside or the distant sound of trucks and panzers to reassure them.  One landser opened a door and spotted a flash of moment, lunging forward in panic.  In her fright, it turned out she had bayoneted a sweater, hanging on a coat rack just inside the doorway.  Another soldier abruptly cried out, staggering back as a trio of large rats skittered across the floor.

Rosenkralle glanced back and locked eyes with Kordhel.  The bronze dog shook his head, and the knight sighed.  She had assumed the rebels would hide in plain sight, using civilians as living shields as they fired on every iron cross they spotted.  It was the reason she had accepted this assignment, as she had thought it would be a simple cakewalk.  A few dead MPA stay behinds and the rest would give in and they’d have a long line of prisoners to take back to the stockades.  But the atmosphere was oppressive, and the landsers with her were raw rear-echelon garrison troops.  Her first mission leading regular troops since she had earned her knighthood after a period of being a mere schildknappe, and she had misjudged all the signs.

Perhaps it was time to leave and call in the Feldjagers to-

A voice spoke up from right behind her.

“Meine Fraue, you should come see this!”

They had found a locked door at last.





Hébert glanced back at Belmont.  The MPA sergent simply flexed his claws, talons clenching his trench gun tightly.  The tension in the room was at an all time high.  From out in the hallway, the sounds of Reichsarmee boots thumped and clunked, gathering around one spot.  The sound of clattering armor plate stomped back to where the landser had called from.

Then, the rattling of a doorknob, locked and resisting all efforts to open normally.  A pause.  All sound seemed to halt, as if the building itself was holding its breath.

Then the pounding as a massive form barreled towards the door.





In a shower of splinters, the lock burst out of the doorframe as Rosenkralle used her weight and bulk to blow it in.  Crystal rifle raised, she strode into the tenement as she switched her aim from corner to corner.  Behind her, Kordhel stormed right in, submachine gun up and scanning.  Behind him came the entirety of his squad save two, who stayed out in the hallway to cover their rear.  The landsers spread out, sweeping to cover each direction as they went.

“Clear right!” Rosenkralle announced, having peered into a foyer, empty and shadowed with only a few pieces of furniture.

“Clear left!” said another trooper, having gone in the opposite direction and peering into a bedroom.

“Clear front!” Kordhel announced, sweeping his weapon over a small kitchen.

After a few seconds of nothing else coming out of the shadows to come plunging down on the Imperials with a vengeance, Rosenkralle announced “Room clear.  Area secure.”

“Found something, meine fraue,” Kordhel announced, moving into the kitchenette.  Scattered across the table were a few tools, a disassembled Reichsarmee radio, a cartridge box and a red covered paper booklet with the words Codebuch für Funkschlüssel and the Reichsarmee iron cross emblem on the front.  “I think we have our missing codebook.”

“Secure it,” Rosenkralle stated, fighting to keep the relief out of her voice.  “We’ll take it back to the garrison.  They’ll likely have to change the codes regardless.  But at least we’ll have something for our efforts.”

“Got it,” Kordhel replied, shifting his weapon to reach out and take the book.  Then he paused.  Something seemed a bit off.  The book didn’t look right, though the cover was correct.  Concerned, he reached a paw out and carefully opened the red cover, brow furrowed.  His eyes shot open in shock as he realized that under the cover was a farmer’s almanac, the red cover merely stapled to the front.

“Damn those bastards!” he snarled, reaching and grabbing the forgery.

A soft click rang out.

“Oh…scheiße,” the dog managed, spotting the tripwire attached underneath the book and the hole carved in the dining room table.

A heartbeat later, the explosives attached under the table detonated.





“Go!” Belmont cried, and the door where the resistance fighters were hiding flew open.  He and Hébert were the first out, weapons raised.  The landsers left guarding the hallway at the booby-trapped room (just one unit down and across the hall) were still dazed and responding, just now peering in through the door.  They didn’t even realize what had happened when a shotgun blast and a rattle of automatic fire took them both, and they collapsed in a heap.

The two soldiers moved in on the doorframe, one on either side, glancing in to look over the room and the damage.  Hébert whistled at the scene.  Every landser that had packed into the room had been shredded by the landmine and frag grenades he had hidden in the room, rigged up to detonate when some idiot picked up that fake book.  Blood and shrapnel covered the walls and floor, feathers still settling once more.  Of the poor sucker who had set off the mines, there wasn’t much more than ragged flesh and diced organs.

“Putain, that worked better than I thought.  Look at all that, nothing but raw poultry.”

Hébert stepped into the threshold as Belmont glanced around from the doorframe, the other resistance fighters crowding around him to look over his shoulder.  Something didn’t look right.  Something was missing.  The MPA sergent started counting bodies.

And then one of the landsers popped upright, coughing and gasping, her face a ruin of shattered beak, shrapnel wounds, tattered uniform.  One of her eye sockets had been torn apart, and Belmont could almost swear he could make out some bare skull.  The sounds she made were a desperate, agonized gasping noise as a mouth that couldn’t suck in enough air tried anyway.

Hébert fired a three round burst into her head, and the landser collapsed again like a wet sack of grain.

“What was that?” Reine called out from the hallway, trying to look over Belmont’s shoulder, her wings flared in alarm.  “Hébert, are you alright?”

“Oui oui, I’m fine ma chérie,” the fusilier replied, glancing back down at the corpses again, clearly wondering if he needed to body check any more of them.

From the room off to the right, the sound of scraping steel rang out.  Belmont’s eyes widened, but before he could say anything in warning, a bookshelf that had fallen over the doorway shifted.

“Merde!” Hébert snapped out, his MAC-40 flashing around as he jammed the trigger down, spraying the bookshelf at point blank range.  Bullet holes pock marked the wood for a split second before the furniture rent itself in a shower of splinters, and a flash of steel glowing with blue runes flashed out, messily beheading Hébert with such force that his torso was smashed into the wall before it slid down in a bloody wreck just as savage as what he had rent on the landsers.

“No!  Merde!” cried one of the shopkeepers, lunging back for the door directly behind him.  “Get to cover!”

“Run!  RUN!” Belmont hollered, immediately pushing the others back in a blind panic.  By all the cruelties of Maar, it -had- to be the chevalier left alive after all of that!

The massive armored form lumbered through the doorframe, enchanted sword clutched in one claw, crystal rifle in the other.  By the three, why did she seem to almost take up the entire hallway?  Reine screeched, firing her revolver as the crystal rifle blasted away.  The first beam missed the fleeing resistance fighters, but Reine’s bullets were barely making a dent in the enchanted plate, and by the time the formel realized and turned to flee, the Imperial had straightened her aim, squeezing the trigger again.  The hallway glowed blue as the beam smashed into the back of Reine’s head, carved away half of her skull and erupted out the other side, flash frying what was left of her brains and boiling away a good portion of blood, ironically leaving little to spatter on the walls and floor.  Reine’s corpse collapse to the ground, her head a ruined mess as her legs twitched, wings flaring and smacking around in her death throes.

The pony shopkeeper who had leapt away fired his rifle from nearly point blank range, the round smacking off the Imperial’s helmet.  If he had hoped for the visor, he had missed and the bullet spanged off into the woodwork.  The bolt was clumsily cycled, and another shot rang out to just as useless effect.  But the chevalier had reoriented, and the magitek weapon flared again, blowing the pony’s right foreleg away and destroying the rifle, peppering the equine with vicious shrapnel.  For a split second, the shopkeeper howled and thrashed in pain and agony, though before he could draw another breath the enchanted sword flashed again, destroying part of the doorframe and beheading him as well.

The screaming ended.

“Kader! Ton aus!” the Imperial shouted out, taking the brief moment to resheath her blood-soaked blade, advancing with the glowing rifle raised as she tried to get to a more secure position.  “Überlebende! Ton aus!”

No response.  Quiet had settled on the building once more.

In another room, Belmont, Lionel and the other pony shopkeeper by the name of Coraline Étoile huddled, deathly silent as they quietly willed the Imperial to go.  Her entire squad was down, she was all alone.  Surely, this would push the formel to retreat to her half-track and call for help.  That might give them enough time to grab what they could and flee.  Hideouts were a dime a dozen in ruined Ouestgarde.  With half of their group wiped out, they’d need to start over again, and Belmont had the feeling these two wouldn’t stick with his resistance cell regardless.

“Attention, Resistance Fighters,” called the Imperial in stilted, difficult Aquilan, muffled by her helmet.  “I am ordering you to surrender to Imperial authority.  This is your final warning.”

Fat chance, thought Belmont.  He hadn’t given up when the city fell, he wasn’t surrendering now.

A light clink came to his ears.

Belmont’s eyes snapped over to Lionel, who was staring straight down from where he’d tried to become one with the wall.  His boot had nudged an empty bottle and knocked it over.  All three of them became still as statues.  Had the Imperial heard?

A clatter of boots, the brightening glow in the hallway.  The chevalier had them.

“Lionel, down!” Belmont hollered.

The drake didn’t need any more than that, throwing himself down to the ground like a long lost lover, feathers flying as his wings flared, retracted, flapped and shook.  The first blast blew a hole the size of a bowling ball in the wall right where the griffon had stood a second ago, the next one a few feet to the left, the next a few feet after, following the sound of Lionel’s desperate attempts to live.  The griffon crawled, lurched and clumsily rolled behind an inner wall and a bookcase as his environment continued to erupt into splinters.  Coraline, not so lucky, wound up taking another bolt as the Imperial fired her tenth shot, blowing the pony off her hooves with a massive gaping hole in her chest.

The Imperial rushed the doorframe, the magitek rifle clattering to the floor as, with the ring of steel the sword came back out.  She seemed to take up all the space available in the tenement as she advanced, looking around for a target but not finding one, a plate armored juggernaut of fearsome death.  She glanced into the next room, advancing on Lionel’s position…

When Belmont kicked open the closet door he’d been hiding inside, trench gun leveled.  The first shot bounced off the Imperial’s plate, but the power of the slug round from mere feet away still caused her to stagger, enchanted sword slashing.  Half of the room disappeared into yet more wreckage as the wild swipe annihilated a coat stand, a grandfather clock, a cabinet and meters of peeling and faded wallpaper, but Belmont had thrown himself to the floor as well, hurriedly racking the slide, an empty shell flying out of the chamber.  The Imperial advanced, sword raised, and Belmont knew this was it, do or die, a matter of seconds as he pulled the trigger again.

The chevalier’s head lurched backwards, her claw automatically flying up towards her visored face.  But the reflexive motion lost the strength halfway up.  Her other claw loosened on the sword, causing it to clatter to floorboards.  The Imperial staggered backwards, wings flaring erratically before she smashed into the paneling, sliding sideways as she jerked and gurgled, trying to somehow rise.  But that was a little difficult when the slug had punched clean through the visor, into her left eye.  Having lost momentum, it had erupted out her skull, ricocheted off the enchanted plate of the interior and come back again.

By the time she stopped moving, Schwertschwester Rosenkralle had been dead for several seconds.  Her corpse had merely needed to run out of energy and momentum.

Silence returned to the structure.  In the distance, Belmont swore he could hear the rumble of engines, the distance buzz of the canned announcements from the loudspeaker tower.  Maybe some of that noise was the half-track crew, trying to figure out what was happening and radioing for backup.  They couldn’t stay here.

Belmont realized his claws were clenching the shotgun so tight, his talons were beginning to dig into the wood.  Letting out a breath he didn’t realize he had been holding, eyes still locked on the dead Imperial, he racked the slide.  The empty shell popped out, ringing merrily off the floor.  The corpse did not rise.

Swallowing, Belmont called out “Lionel?  C’mon, we’ve got to go.”

This building was no longer safe.  It was time to start over.