On Behalf of Soviet Equestria

Foalgograd had been occupied by the Crystal Empire for eight months.

The Reds coordinated a number of offensive strikes, attacking the captured city from the south. The Empire, ready and well-reinforced, crushed every advance and sent the Red Army back to the camps south of the city. Several efforts were made to sail into Foalgograd via the River Foalga, but the imperials fended off these attempts all the same.

The city on the Foalga was completely isolated from the rest of Soviet Equestria as the occupation forces from the Crystal Empire severed all ties to the outside. Telegraph lines had been cut, and sections of railroad tracks and bridges were destroyed. The Empire had established checkpoints on all routes out of the city to ensure that nopony could enter or exit without the approval of the authorities. The northern road was the only one that was to any degree traveled, as it connected occupied Foalgograd with the Crystal Empire and carried the imperial supply lines and heralds.

Support for the Party had naturally been banned in the city. Practically overnight, it became severely punishable to be seen in public with any Soviet paraphernalia. Communal apartments and stores were subject to random searches during which flags, pennant banners, revolutionary literatures and Party manifestos were seized and destroyed. Those ponies that were overly vocal about the imperials found themselves under surveillance by occupation soldiers, and such a designation was the proverbial “kiss of death.” Sometimes, it took only one public outburst for a pony to be placed under surveillance. If imperial officers spontaneously started paying regular visits to a particular venue, it was was a good sign that somepony was being watched and was bound to disappear within the week. It became a frightening reality to wake up in the middle of the night and hear screaming from down the hall, knowing that your neighbor was being taken away to a place unknown, most probably never to be seen again.

A handful of ponies managed to escape from the city over the course of those eight months, and their tales of life in occupied Foalgograd had spread like wildfire.  They spoke of the dangers of walking about the city at night. The soldiers of the crystal army would patrol the streets during late hours and rough up anypony they saw just for the fun of it. They said that others would simply walk into apartment blocks and take food and valuables as they saw fit. There was even a claim that entire districts of the city were being starved to either force their loyalty or punish them for dissidence.

When the ministers in Stalliongrad learned of these stories, they sent a cascade of fiery letters and telegrams off to Canterlot, once again demanding intervention, but this time on the grounds of heinous war crimes. The Crystal Empire denied the accusations, saying that it was all a lie, fabricated by desperate Reds in an attempt to sway the princesses. At the same time, the Empire pressured Stalliongrad to concede defeat, arguing that the fighting was simply prolonging the inevitable. They said that the Soviet republics were fated to be reabsorbed into the Empire, and that the Party’s ignorance of its own hopeless position was single-handedly responsible for the raging battles and loss of life.

Of course, Soviet Equestria never once had any intention of backing down. The revolution had made too much progress. Other imperial territories had joined the cause to guarantee their own independence. Substantial sacrifices had already been made. And now, something else had arisen to solidify the Party’s conviction.

The Soviets had developed a weapon that was about to change the course of the entire war.

*    *    *

Saddlestopol in the winter months was a city without color. The flowers and verdancy disappeared from the seaside gardens, and the skies were always grey. Winter never brought much of a snowfall, as Saddlestopol was the southernmost city of Equusia, the Federative Soviet Republic, and as such had the warmest weather. Instead, the wintertime brought miserable darkness and cold rains that could stretch on for days at a time. One of the most celebrated Equusian authors described it as a city that reincarnates; it dies each winter and is reborn again in the springtime.

But it was wintertime, and Saddlestopol waited once again for its new life. Half of the streets seemed to be made of mirrors. Covered with rainwater, they reflected everything around them. It was late, and with the exception of the main boulevard at the city center, the streets were quiet as everypony was tucked away inside where it was warm, hiding from the frigid embrace of Mother Winter and her cherished rains. And it was a shame that this was the case, for nopony in Saddlestopol was out that evening to watch as history was being made.

A line of troikas, each pulled by groups three of green-uniformed soldiers, thundered along, the wheels of their runners slicing through the puddles as they traveled down the lonely, rainy streets. They made haste for the warehouses by the southern docks, carrying a number of Soviet Equestria’s most influential military officers that had arrived in the city a short while earlier by train. The purpose of the visit was a state secret. Not even the conscripts pulling the troikas knew what was going on at the harbor. They were given a short set of instructions and told nothing more: ready the troikas at the train station, take the high command to the docks, and make the trip without asking any questions.

They were traveling along the avenue by the coastline and could see darker skies farther out over the waters. The strongest part of the storm had yet to come, and the ships that had been out at sea were returning to port. Among them was the Krasnaya Nadezhda, a cruiser that had been constructed a year ago, during the penultimate imperial days. It formerly had been called the Sea Sapphire, and was originally intended to be Duke Saphirov’s private ship. Her proud red flags snapped in the wind as she slowly proceeded home to her port of call. The troikas, however, were going to beat her to the docks.

When the guards saw the soldiers coming, they unlocked the gates. The convoy entered the dockyard and made its way to one of the warehouses by the seaside, chasing off the gulls that had been resting on the rails and fenceposts. Slowing their pace, the soldiers approached the massive, dull-colored building by the pier. A group of workers waited for them, huddled beneath an awning to keep dry. The supervising foreman, a middle-aged blue unicorn with a hammer and drafting compass on his flank, left cover to meet the troikas that had rolled to a halt a short distance away.

“Aha, molodyets! Just in time for the show, comrades!” the foreman called out to the soldiers, trotting toward the higher-ups as they climbed out of the troikas. A stolid-looking black stallion in a thick overcoat and matching woolen hat led the pack. The medals that hung from his coat - a mix of old imperial decorations and recent Soviet orders - clinked with every step as he approached the foreman.

“Comrade General Lusitanov! Sir, it is an honor!” the foreman said excitedly as he approached.

“No need for formalities today,” the General answered. “Let’s get straight to business.”

“Yes, of course!” was the foreman’s reply as he turned and motioned toward the workers that were waiting under the awning. “Alright, comrades! It’s time for the demonstration!” The foreman turned back to the general. His subordinates were standing behind him now, and the conscripts were removing themselves from the troika harnesses. “I wish we could have had better weather for today, but no luck. Heh, you know, if you live in Saddlestopol your whole life, sometimes you forget what the sun looks like. But don’t worry, I think we’ll beat the storm. And even if we don’t…The show must go on, as they say, and I can assure you it’s worth the wet uniforms.”

“Let’s hope,” General Lusitanov remarked as he followed the foreman back to the workers. “They’ve been speaking very highly of your group. If we like what we see, your entire zavod will be given the highest possible honors.”

The workers pulled open one of the warehouse doors, and as it slid aside it revealed an object of moderate size, covered in a tarp. Three workers fitted themselves into the harnesses to which it was connected and pulled it out into the lot. The General and his subordinates whispering among themselves, eying it with suspicion as it emerged from the warehouse.

To the high command, it appeared to be a regular troika, much like the ones on which they had ridden into the dock. It had three harnesses and wheeled runners. It even seemed to have the familiar shape under the tarp, save for something projecting up from the back end.

“It’s a troika?” one of the officers asked with pangs of disapproval in his voice.

“It was,” the foreman responded with a giddy grin. “But now that we’ve fitted it with our little invention, it’s a whole new animal. Just wait ‘till you see her! Okay, comrades, take it off!” Two more workers in soot-covered smocks grabbed the tarp with their teeth and revealed what was hiding beneath it.

The vehicle they uncovered was no longer a troika. The seats in the back had been entirely sawed-off, and in its place was a metal platform surrounded by short walls, upon which was fixed a strange-looking apparatus. Supported by three legs, its body was cylindrical in shape, with number of steel barrels poking out of one end, arranged in a ring. Jutting out from the side of the strange invention was what appeared to be a crank with a cup-shaped hunk of metal on the end. A horizontal wooden bar was fixed at the back.

“The audience holds its breath, the curtain rises, and there she is, the tachanka, the star of our show! And what makes her so special is the thing that’s sitting on her back - a crank-cannon. Commissioned over a year ago by the imperial administration, finished and perfected by the best engineers in the Republic,” the foreman stated proudly.

“A what?” one of the officers asked. The group of soldiers gawked at the small, simple-looking thing with confused stares. They had been expecting something far more grandiose and intimidating.

“This tin can on a troika is what we came all the way out here to see?” the General asked, his voice laced with aggravation. “Is this some kind of joke?” The foreman waved a hoof.

“Just wait… don’t say anything until you see a demonstration,” he told the officers.

Another group of workers emerged from within the warehouse with a few planks, a heavy-looking sack, and a massive piece of plywood, painted to look like the Crystal Empire’s flag of many hues. The plywood was propped up on the planks, and the sack was thrown onto the back of the tachanka.

“You need a team of two to work the cannon,” the foreman explained as two workers climbed onto the back of the modified troika. One reached into the sack, pulled out a rectangular hunk of metal, and inserted it into a slot on the top of the strange apparatus.

“Throw the clip in the spot on the top, just like that,” the foreman continued.

One of the stallions grabbed onto the horizontal wooden bar with his teeth and spun the thing around to face the propped-up plywood. The second worker rested one of his hooves in the metal cup on the end of the handle.

“One gunner grabs the bar at the back end and uses it to aim, and the other works the crank. Latitudinally, it can be turned to any position, and it’s hinged to aim up and down. She’s got substantial degrees of freedom,” the foreman said proudly. “And now, without further ado...” The foreman waved to the two ponies on the troika. “Alright, boys, show ‘em what she’s got!”

The worker with his hoof in the handle’s cup started cranking away, and a stream of bullets shot out of the cannon as the bores rotated. The plywood replica of the Crystal Empire’s flag was reduced to splinters as the two workers shot it full of holes. Every jaw was on the floor as the officers and conscripts watched the target get torn apart before their very eyes. They had never seen anything like it in their entire lives.

A resonant clank sounded, and the weapon stopped firing. The pony aiming the cannon yanked the clip out with his teeth and threw it aside. He dug his head into the sack resting on the platform, pulled out another clip, and placed it in the slot. When he grabbed the wooden bar with his teeth again, his comrade resumed cranking. Again the gun came to life with a metallic roar as it tore up the target and widened the massive hole it had created seconds ago.

“Ahah, now that’s what I call a show!” the foreman called to the gunners. “Forty rounds in every clip, and replacement is a cinch,” he added as he turned back toward the soldiers. He had to shout over the the wind as it continued to pick up. The officers couldn’t believe their eyes. The crank-cannon was like nothing they had ever seen before.

“This… this is incredible…” General Lusitanov stuttered. “This thing… is going to change the notion of war in ways I never could have imagined.”

“Inevitably, comrades, every good performance reaches its end,” the foreman announced with a raised eyebrow. “Alright,” he called to the workers, “bring out our ‘volunteers,’ it’s time for the grand finale!”

One of the engineers by the opened warehouse door called inside and waved his hoof. Three stallions wearing militsiya uniforms emerged from the doorway, pushing a large platform cart - the kind used to wheel ingot, wood, and other supplies into and out of the warehouses. But on that particular rainy afternoon, the cart bore some unorthodox cargo: three crystal ponies, tied up and shackled to the platform. The petrified looks on their faces made it apparent that they knew what was in store for them.

“A couple weeks back, the militsiya found a few saboteurs lurking around the docks.” the foreman explained. “They were caught red-handed at the shipyard and the telegraph exchange. Half of them got sent to the Academy in Stalliongrad for interrogation. But these three… Instead, we persuaded the commissars to do their interrogation right here and then leave them with us.”

Suddenly, lightning from across the sea lit up the entire sky with a brilliant flash of light, and after a few seconds, a magnificent applause of thunder followed. The worst of the storm was just a short while away from the city.

“Comrade General!” the foreman shouted as the wind continued to grow stronger. “It is the final act, and justice must be done. It is scripted that three imperialists will be struck down by the uncompromising force of Soviet ingenuity. The audience holds its breath as the end draws near... Would you like to do the honors?”

General Lusitanov eyed the crank-cannon on the troika with feelings that he couldn’t characterize. He thought the invention absolutely amazing, but at the same time it almost frightened him. By the looks on his comrades’ faces, he could tell that most of them shared this sentiment. After a few moments of hesitation, Lusitanov nodded and apprehensively approached the weapon. The worker that had been operating the crank stepped off the gunnery platform as the black stallion in the damp, medal-covered overcoat climbed up to take his place. He stood on his hind limbs and rested his front right in the cup.

Watching the crystal ponies that sat helplessly on the platform cart, he felt guilty about the deed that was to be done, though he couldn’t understand why. Many a soldier had fallen to his sabre and shashka throughout the years, in the name of Soviet Equestria and, prior to the revolution, in the name of the Crystal Empire. Technically, this was no different than what he had done before. But the General’s conscience was fighting him tooth and nail, doing all it could to prevent him from turning the crank. Perhaps it felt improper to a stallion that had been trained with a blade. Perhaps he was too much of a traditionalist. But he wasn’t about to step down and make somepony else fire the gun. It was already too late. All eyes were on him. The foreman and his workers had staged a show, and Lusitanov was casted as the star of the closing act.

“You’ve been fed lies by your royal oppressors,” he called to the crystal ponies over the wind as the rain blew into his eyes. “They make you believe that you can stomp us out like some small fire. But you can’t.”

Lightning again lit up the dreary skies of Saddlestopol as a roar of thunder shook the ground. The rain was becoming heavier, and the true fury of the storm had almost arrived.

“We’re building a new society, free of the inequalities of imperialism,” Lusitanov shouted over the storm. “And we’ve come too far to be stopped.”

The worker with the wooden bar in his teeth aimed the weapon.

“You know the punishment for espionage!”

Lusitanov turned the crank. It didn’t move smoothly, but required less force to work than he had anticipated. He slowly shifted his position as the factory worker turned the gun on the second victim, and then again as they went for the third. The handle jerked to a halt when the diagnostic clank informed the gunners of an empty clip. But there was no need to replace it.

The rain that fell upon the cart was crystal-clear, but the small, steady streams of water that poured from the edges of the platform ran red. Red, like the flags that fluttered from the masts of the proud Krasnaya Nadezhda that had just arrived at the southern docks.

The black stallion stood there, frozen on the spot, his right front still resting in the cup of the crank as the rain became heavier. Gaping at the lifeless bodies on the platform cart before him and the bloody puddles that were forming on the ground below, Lusitanov tried to shake off the wave of uneasiness that overcame him.

“The final act comes to an end, the actors fall to the stage, and the curtain comes down,” the foreman said dreamily as he turned to the General. “Of course, in the theatre, the actors never die. They merely hold their breath.”

“You’re something of an actor yourself, comrade.” Lusitanov told the foreman as he stepped down from the troika with the second worker.

“I always dreamed of being one,” the foreman replied, eyes fixed on the carcasses on the platform cart. “But I found that I had just as much love for mechanical engineering.”

The three ponies that pulled the tachanka into the lot re-fitted themselves with the harnesses and dragged it back toward the warehouse to take it out of the rain.

“You liken war to some evening at the opera.”

“It’s nothing far short, comrade General,” the foreman smirked. “After all… when war operations play out in a particular area, we call that area a theatre.”

General Lusitanov glanced at the crowd of officers and conscripts. Half of the group could not bring themselves to look away from the carcasses on the cart, but the other half were staring at the black stallion with unease. The rain had grown heavy, and every uniform in the group was soggy and dark, but nopony was paying attention to the storm anymore.

As uncomfortable as it made him to think about it, Lusitanov knew that he was going to approve the invention and motion to allot funds for the production of more tachanki. The war was in its ninth month. Despite a number of successful defensives in the north, the Crystal Empire was pushing closer to Maremansk, and there was widespread fear that the city was going to share Foalgograd’s fate. Belequus and Trotterstan were still holding out against the imperials, but it wasn’t clear how much longer they could last. There was little word from Mustangistan and Grazerbaijan, the youngest Soviet republics, though it was assumed that the Crystal Empire was ignoring them for the time being, given their small size and lacking strength. Without proper support, their capitals, Tashkanter and Bucku, could be taken in a matter of days.

More importantly, this new invention - the crank-cannon - seemed to be the most promising manner of delivering a decisive blow to the Crystal Empire.

“You’ve got your funding and supplies. For sure,” the General said to the foreman. “When we report back to the Council of Ministers, they’ll send a wire to the Workers’ Soviet, and every factory at the seaport will be under your group’s direction.”

“Ahah! Brilliant! Thank you, comrade General!” the ecstatic foreman responded. “We’ve got the approval!” he called to his team of workers and engineers beneath the awning, who cheered and congratulated one another on a job well-done.

The soldiers that had arrived with the General were making their to the awning and the doors of the warehouse to escape the falling rain. Lusitanov and the foreman followed along behind them.

“First the news from the Council, and now this! Oh, this whole day has just been filled to the brim with good fortune!” the foreman sang as he shook his mane dry under the awning.

“What news from the Council?” Lusitanov asked.

“You… you don’t know?” the foreman said in bewilderment. “It came over the radio just a few hours before you got here. The Council of Ministers… they unanimously named Vladimir Orlov as the chairman!”

Lusitanov and his comrades had missed the message during the train ride. Soviet Equestria had elected her first premier.