M.A.N.E.

Chapters

Friday
Hole In The Ground
If You're Going To San Franciscolt
Foreign Policy
Mercury Rising
Five Minute Warning
Second Sun
Ground Zero
Surface Tension
Ten Miles High
Mistaken Identity

Friday

For Twilight Sparkle, Friday was unlike any other day of the week. Every Friday evening, she would pack her lunch and her notebooks into her saddlebag and trotted up into the western hills not far from Ponyville, near the Hoofer Dam hydroelectric plant.

Atop the tallest peak, about a mile south of the dam and three miles west of town, sat the Central Equestria Observatory. Its mammoth reflector telescope was the largest in the nation, and Twilight, amateur astronomer and egghead, loved to compare the results she could obtain through her own modest telescope with the ones the observatory could capture with its vastly superior equipment. Since the observatory was state-owned, Princess Celestia had arranged for her favourite student to be able to visit every week to see what she could learn about optics, astronomy and the universe.

This week was no different. She, or rather Spike, had packed her lunch, and she had made her way out of town and up the paved track to the peak, the observatory dome looming above her like the top of a giant salt shaker. She paused near the entrance and turned around. The only sound she could hear was the tumbling gush of the water as it flowed through the spillways of the Hoofer Dam.

Equestria stretched out before her, as far as her eyes could see. The peak, while not particularly high, had unobstructed views in all directions. She could see the faint phosphorescent band of surf far to the west where Equestria's coastline met the ocean. To the south, nearly a hundred miles away, she could see the distant sodium glow of Baltimare. To the east, across the valley, the towering peaks of the Foal Mountains sprung up like a row of jagged teeth, easily visible in the light of Luna's moon because of the snow covering their upper reaches. Ten miles north and easily distinguishable thanks to its blinking anti-collision beacons was Cloudsdale, the floating Pegasi city. In the far north, just visible on a clear night like this, was Canterlot, the capital, perched high above the valley floor on the edge of a rocky outcropping of the northern Foals.

Below her sat Ponyville, her home. A town of some 100,000 ponies, it had grown rapidly within her lifetime. Some of the older ponies, like Granny Smith, told of how in their youth it was little more than a quaint backwater village. While it did still retain some of that charm, especially in the Old Quarter of town, for the most part it was beginning to look a lot like any other mid-level provincial town, like Trottingham, Canterbury or Whinnyapolis.

Twilight smiled as she looked down at Ponyville. All her friends lived down there, in that roughly circular bowl of lights. Her family, however, lived in Canterlot- her parents, and her older brother Shining Armour, commander of the Royal Guard. Canterlot was far enough away that all she could see was the faint glow of the city's lights, but she could picture in her mind the tall, elegant spires and domes of the buildings.

South of town, between Ponyville and distant Baltimare, she could make out the faint lights of some of the string of military installations that dotted the wide southern end of the valley. She knew little of the precise nature of any particular outpost- they were top secret and closely guarded and patrolled, after all. But she knew their general purpose- they were installations of the Equestrian Strategic Command, the branch of the military responsible for the operation of Equestria's strategic nuclear arsenal, and defence against those of the enemy. Headquartered just outside the town of Omareha, the ESC commanded fleets of both missiles and long range bombers. Though they were theoretically under the auspices of the ESC, the Air Force operated the bombers for logistical reasons. The Navy had long been clamoring for its own nuclear weapons, but when tests were made fitting a shortened ballistic missile to one of their submarines, something- although nopony knew precisely what- had gone wrong, and the ENS Phoenix had been lost with all hooves.

There were defence radars out there somewhere, probably up in the hills, and there was a large cluster of missile silos in the southern valley, almost equidistant between Ponyville and Baltimare, each one loaded with a long-range Minutemare ballistic missile. Twilight had read an article somewhere that the Minutemares were so named because only 60 seconds would elapse between the crew starting the launch procedure and the missile clearing the silo. Though she knew nothing of the inner workings of the silos, that seemed like something of an exaggeration to her, but it allowed ponies to give the missiles an amusing nickname- their official designation, according to the same article, was SLS-4, which stood for Strategic Launch System No. 4. What the other three might be, Twilight had no idea.

She loved coming up to the observatory on clear nights like this. The views were great; though what she could see was only a small fraction of Equestria, she loved the scale; everything she could see belonged to her home nation. It was what those missiles silos were built to protect. She felt a surge of pride rush through her every time she looked out across the valley. Being patriotic was rather in vogue at the moment, thanks to the tensions between Equestria and their northwestern neighbour, the Union of Saddle Republics.

Though the two nations shared no land borders, being separated by some hundred or so miles of frigid ocean, tensions had been high for years, ever since Equestria first developed nuclear weapons, testing their bombs in the arctic wastelands of the frozen north. The USR had followed suit shortly after, their test detonations taking place in the western deserts. Over the next few years, tensions had grown as the range of their atomic arms had extended steadily. Within a few years, both sides possessed weaponry capable of reaching the coastal and near-coastal cities of their adversary, and a few years after that the new intercontinental missiles entered service, capable of striking any city and any point in their enemy's homeland.

And so it had remained, for almost a decade now. The missile fleets of both nations had sat, unused, in their silos, their heavy bombers never deployed in anger. Apart from a few naval standoffs and several small proxy wars in places like Azebraijan and Saddle Arabia, there had been no direct violence between Equestria and the USR. Both sides maintained a hefty military buildup, in both the nuclear and conventional fields, both to protect their allies and to dissuade the not insignificant threat of potential invasion.

Twilight had heard the latest news. USR troops were massing on their border with Saddle Arabia, an Equestrian ally. The official report said it was 'large-scale combat exercises,' but Equestrian military and political planners were worried that it was the precursor to an invasion of the country. In turn Twilight was worried that, if war broke out, her brother would be shipped out overseas. She knew this was unlikely, though. As commander of the Royal Guard, Shining Armour's frontline combat days were long gone; these days he was as much a politician as a soldier, representing the Guard on the government's military advisory committee, as well as overseeing the day to day operation of the force.

She also worried, though in a more distant sense, about the possibility of a full-scale war erupting between the USR and Equestria. She knew that, if that happened, sooner or later it would escalate and become a nuclear death sentence for both countries, and most of the rest of the world too. She knew that would be the end of Equestria. She took one final look out across the valley, then turned and went into the observatory.

Though the night air was mild, the air inside the observatory had a certain chill to it. The astronomers kept the air conditioning running to help cool and protect their computing equipment, which churned out a lot of heat. Twilight trotted along the corridor, heading for the telescope control room. As they were every Friday night, the two astronomers Starshine and Quasar were sat at the controls. They greeted her warmly as she entered.

'Hi, Twilight! How are you this week?' Starshine asked, looking up from a chart he was examining.

'Hi, guys!' she replied. 'I'm doing great! How's the work coming along?' Quasar smiled broadly, removing his glasses and gesturing wildly with his hoof.

'Oh, it's simply astounding! We've already discovered so much in the Horsehead nebula, even though we have only scanned about a quarter of it so far. We're working in conjunction with the Las Pegasus Interferometer and...' he reeled off a list of discoveries and statistics. Twilight nodded, listening intently. She loved astronomy; the thoughts of what lay beyond their own planet intrigued her. As far as she or anypony else knew, the only pony to have ever left the planet was Princess Luna when she was banished to the moon. Twilight's thirst for knowledge was not limited to a single planet.

'Tonight we are going to be scanning another sector of the Horsehead Nebula,' Quasar continued. 'Would you like to take a look? We can tell you what you're looking at.' Twilight grinned.

'Would I?' She hurried over to the control panel and sat down to start her lesson.

Princess Celestia watched as the immaculately attired USR ambassador trotted out of the throne room. Like most ambassadors, he was obsequious to a fault. It was almost sickening, she thought. Even if he had been delivering an official declaration of war, he would have been smiling and bowing to her.

As it was, he had been delivering a message of moderation. A call for thought and reasoned debate; a call to the negotiating table. USR ships had sailed into Equestrian territorial waters twice in the past week. The ambassador had told Celestia that it was accidental, had occurred during naval training maneuvers and the ships involved had strayed across the invisible territorial division- 'an understandable but regrettable mistake,' he had said. Celestia knew he was lying. The USR Navy had probed into their waters to try and provoke a response and test their reactions. They had responded in force, by sea and by air, escorting the USR ships back into international waters.

These incidents were the latest in a long string of incursions by the USR over the last year. They had steadily grown in scale and intensity as political tensions between the two nations rose. The USR, as its name suggested, was a collection of republics; their political philosophy was diametrically opposed to that of Equestria, which was a monarchy. This had always been a source of tension between the two nations. As far as Equestria was concerned, Princess Celestia was, or should be, the ruler of all ponies. The USR disagreed- she was not a god, they argued; she was merely a powerful unicorn of royal blood, so what right did she have to rule over those who wanted to be independent?

Originally, five hundred years ago, the USR, or rather most of it, had been part of Equestria, forming several overseas colonies. The revolution had been bloody, but it had long since passed from the memories of ponies, with the exception of Celestia. Foals learned about it in school, since it explained the seeds of the current tension, and political commentators loved to poke holes in the government's argument that the only reason the USR seceded was because they were godless heathens who refused to acknowledge Celestia's divine right; time and again the newspaper columns were riddled with lists of reasons for revolution- high provincial taxes, poor healthcare, inequality in the distribution of wealth.

She had been there; she knew they were all legitimate excuses for the revolution. But, whatever the journalists and historians said, she knew the real reason was simple enough. It was a revolution against her, not against Equestria. The ponies of the USR had simply become disillusioned with her rule, for whatever reason; they were fed up. She had been on the throne for half a millennium already, and as far as they knew she would never give up her crown, no matter how much the citizens protested. They wanted change, they wanted elected officials, and so they rebelled.

The army and the Guard had moved in to suppress the revolution, but they found themselves repulsed from the capital, Stalliongrad, and thrown back across the water by the citizens of the newly declared Union of Saddle Republics. Over the intervening centuries, the USR had expanded its borders, claiming empty lands to the west and annexing several smaller nations. An uneasy peace had been maintained with Equestria for most of that time.

All that seemed to be over now, though. As the ambassador left the room, Celestia sighed. Though he had professed a message of dialogue between the nations, his words contained thinly veiled threats. Back off, because we're not going to.

Celestia sighed. There was no way she was going to back down. She would protect Equestrian sovereignty, and that of her allies, no matter the cost, because, when it came down to it, that was all that really mattered. She had already seen the USR break away from Equestria on her watch- she would be damned if she would see them take any more of her nation away from her.

Hole In The Ground

Captain Ice Wind, 14th Strategic Missile Squadron, 5th Strategic Missile Wing, Equestrian Strategic Command, was bored. Like every other day on the job, today was packed full of gripping monotony interspersed with occasional periods of wondrous tedium. The most exciting moments of his day were when he went to the bathroom.

Of course, his was one job where boredom was a good thing. The dark blue Pegasus spent his working day with his partner, the brown-coated earth pony Captain Fireblade, in a horizontal steel cylinder eighty feet underground, about sixty miles north of Baltimare. They were one half of the launch crew for one of the three missile clusters operated by the 14th Strategic Missile Squadron; along with another pair of ponies in a similar underground bunker a few miles away, eight Minutemare missiles in their concrete-lined silos responded to their command. The Minutemare was solid-fuelled, meaning it was always ready for launch, a fact that had contributed in no small part to the speed with which it could be launched, and thus its nickname.

Having two launch control centres for any given missile was considered vital- it precluded the possibility of any rogue, traitorous or insane officer launching the missiles without authorisation. For the missiles to launch, both control centers had to send the same command within a short window after receiving their orders. If only one signal was received, nothing would happen. On a similar note, there were no Unicorns on any of the launch crews; the possibility existed that a single Unicorn officer could use his magic to perform the simultaneous tasks to initiate a launch that normally required two ponies. Each pair of command centres controlled the operation of eight missiles; a Missile Squadron possessed 24 missiles; a Missile Wing, 96. In total, the Equestrian Strategic Command operated nearly 500 missiles, spread across the country in silo farms from the deserts around Las Pegasus to the northern plains near Vanhoofer. In a war, the latter would probably be the first to go- they were the closest targets to the USR, mere miles inland.

Most of the missiles carried a single large warhead, but several Missile Wings had been equipped with upgraded missiles that carried three re-entry vehicles, each with a smaller warhead. These were the citybusters- though their warheads were of a lower yield, they would scatter themselves across a wide area, such as a city, and inflict more damage than a single, larger warhead. It would only take a hoof-full of missiles to destroy a large city like Stalliongrad.

By the same token, of course, it would only take the same number to destroy Manehattan, or Baltimare, or Fillydelphia. The USR possessed a roughly similar number of missiles to Equestria; both nations had more than enough to utterly annihilate their enemy, should the worst come to pass. Both nations knew this, and that was the only thing that had maintained the unstable peace for this long.

Ice Wind yawned. The passage of time itself seemed to slow down whenever he was 'in the hole.' Though he had been on shift for less than an hour, it already felt like weeks had passed since he had descended the ladder from the surface and heard the heavy steel hatch clang shut. The artificial light and the glare of computer screens were already making him miss the sun. The heat, while not quite oppressive, was making the control room a little on the stuffy side. Fireblade sat in the chair at his own console nearby, flipping idly through a magazine.

'Gotta take a leak,' Ice Wind announced, standing up. His companion nodded, not taking his eyes off the magazine. Ice Wind stretched his legs and trotted over to the cramped toilet the planners had thoughtfully included in the underground chamber. He did what he had to do and then splashed some water on his face to try and help himself stay alert. He couldn't understand how Fireblade could sit there reading the tiny print for hours on end in the relatively dim light. Did eye strain mean nothing to him...?

His train of thought was rudely interrupted by a sudden, pulsing klaxon from the main room. Despite his training, a jolt of fear and adrenaline shot through him.

'Get your plot back in here!' Fireblade shouted, throwing his magazine to the floor. Ice Wind moved swiftly back to his seat. A red light flashed on an equally red telephone handset embedded in his desk. He picked it up. Fireblade did the same with the identical handset on his console.

The wailing of the klaxon meant one of two things- either an unannounced test of the Squadron's response time was underway, or the world was ending.

'South Fork, Vulture. South Fork, Vulture.' The pre-recorded voice coming over the phone read the coded phrase that told him if this was an exercise or the real thing. Fireblade was hearing the same message. A string of alphanumerics followed, using the Equestrian phonetic alphabet.

'Apple, Three, Seven, Manehattan, Zebra, Four, Four, Rainbow...' Ice Wind scribbled the characters down on a notepad. Fireblade did the same, and then the two Captains exchanged their pads. The computerised voice repeated the code and they wrote it down again. Ice Wind compared the two sequences written on the pad- only if both of them matched up with each other could they proceed to the next step.

'I have a valid alert code,' he said. 'Confirm.'

'Confirm valid alert code,' Fireblade said, standing up. Ice Wind followed him and together they crossed the narrow room to the grey safe mounted halfway up the wall. Each officer wore a key on a lanyard around his neck- together they inserted them into the two locks on the safe. With a loud buzzing the safe clicked open. Fireblade withdrew two large manilla envelopes and passed one to Ice Wind. They returned to their seats and tore open the envelopes. Ice tipped the contents out onto his console- another key, a red binder and a plastic card.

His next task was to compare the code that was written on his notepad with the pre-printed code on the card from the envelope. He held the card next to his notepad and read off each character.

'Apple!'

Fireblade read from his own card, confirming.

'Apple!'

'Three!'

If all eight characters matched the pre-printed code, the launch order was genuine.

'...Rainbow!'

'Rainbow! I have a valid launch order!'

'I concur, valid launch order,' Ice Wind replied. They glanced at each other.

'Launch checklist!' Ice Wind said, opening the red folder. They rattled off the procedures necessary to arm and ready the missiles for launch.

'Insert launch codes!' he said, quickly tapping his ten-digit code into the keypad on his console. Fireblade entered his own personal code into his console.The next step was to insert their launch keys.

'Launch Enable on my command!' This was the final step. Once the keys were turned, they could not stop the launch. He inserted his key into the slot and glanced over to see that Fireblade was doing the same. Ice Wind gave a quick countdown and, together, they turned the keys a quarter to the left.

The phone on his console buzzed and its light began to flash. Ice Wind picked it up.

'Not bad, Captain. Four minutes, seventeen seconds from the klaxon to the launch sequence start.' The voice on the phone was that of the Squadron's commanding officer, Colonel Spearhead. 'Thirteen seconds under the target time. Well done to you both. This concludes the test.'

They had both known it was a test from the original coded message. Unannounced tests like these were conducted periodically to keep the crews alert and test their reaction times. They followed the procedures of the real thing as closely as possible, but at some point they had to deviate from the reality, for obvious reasons. The firing room had two safes- the grey one contained test orders, and the bright red one on the opposite wall held the real ones. Their keys opened both safes. In the kind of test they had just completed, the test safe was filled with a pair of manilla envelopes with the word 'Test' stamped on them in large, red letters. As an added layer of security, both safes emitted loud, electronic buzzing sounds when unlocked, so that they could not be opened surreptitiously. When opened, they also sent a signal to the above-ground Squadron command building which oversaw the daily operations of the missile complex. As a final precaution, the crew turned their launch keys to the left, to a setting clearly marked 'Test.' In a real situation, the keys would have been turned to the right.

Besides which, Ice Wind thought to himself, the missiles wouldn't have launched even if we had gone nuts. It takes two to tango- the other launch centre would have had to go nuts at the exact same time. No way these missiles could get launched accidentally.

He settled down for the rest of the boring shift.

'Pinkie Pie! Are you down here?'

The pastel pink pony looked up as the cellar door opened.

'Oh, yes! Here I am, Mrs Cake!' She glanced up at her employer, who stood in the doorway at the top of the wooden stairs.

'Just checking in!' Mrs Cake smiled down at her. 'How are you getting on with the stocktaking?'

'Oh, it's going great!' Pinkie grinned back. 'We have 206 bags of flour, 80 bags of sugar...'

'Alright, Pinkie!' Mrs Cake said. 'I'll leave you to it, then.'

'Okey dokey lokey!' Pinkie replied. Mrs Cake closed the cellar door again.

Pinkie had been working for the Cakes for just over a year now, and she loved it, not least because of all the free cupcakes she got to eat. It was a job that suited her- she was good at baking, good with customers, and, as she had found to her surprise, good at stock taking.

The cellar had two rooms; one was the store room, where Pinkie was currently tabulating stock totals, and, through a metal door in the rear wall, a furnace room. Lined with brick and sturdily built below street level, the cellar was Pinkie's favourite room in Sugarcube Corner, because it was always piled high with bags full of tasty ingredients- sugar, dried fruit, frosting, chocolate. Sometimes she liked to sneak a taste of something, though she knew she probably shouldn't.

The Cakes were starting to get nervous- the following weekend they were due to make a visit to Canterlot, where Princess Luna was hosting some kind of royal banquet. Princess Celestia had recommended the Cakes to her, and she had asked them to bring along as many desserts as they could. They had asked Pinkie to take over the shop that weekend. Working in the shop meant she couldn't look after their foals, Pound and Pumpkin, but Princess Luna had told them they could bring their foals with them and they would be looked after in the castle's nursery.

Thinking about it, Pinkie realised she was getting a little bit nervous about taking over the whole shop, too. it was a big responsibility; she would have to bake the goods, put them on display, and run the shop, all by herself! She had asked her friends to help, but Fluttershy and Rarity had a Spa date booked in, Applejack was working on her farm, and Twilight would be busy studying. Rainbow Dash, however, had agreed to help her out. She was looking forward to that part, at least.

'26, 27...aaaand...28! 28 bags of ground almonds!' Pinkie noted the total down on her clipboard. That was the last of the stores- she was done in the cellar for now. She trotted upstairs, in search of a snack.

Applejack wiped the sweat from her brow and sighed loudly, digging the shovel into the dirt beside her and resting her hooves on the top of its handle.

'Phew! Boy, this sure is hard work!' Below her, in a shallow hole in the ground, her brother Big McIntosh grinned.

'Eeyup. Yer not quittin' on me, are ya sis?' She snorted.

'Course ah ain't! When did y'all last see me quit, 'specially on somethin' important like this?' Big Mac shrugged.

'Can't say as ah ever have.'

'That's what ah thought!' She grinned down at him, then glanced up at the hot noonday sun.

'Maybe we have earned a break, though...'

'Eeyup....ah reckon we have.' Big Mac dropped his shovel and climbed out of the hole, his red coat streaked with dirt. Applejack trotted back to the farmhouse and he followed her. Applebloom was sitting outside the back door in Granny Smith's old, rickety rocking chair, sipping on a glass of fresh cider.

'Hey there sis!' Applejack said with a smile as she approached. 'Hope y'all saved some of that stuff fer us!' The young filly grinned back.

'Course ah did! There's a whole pitcher in the kitchen. What the hay are you two doin' back there, anyway?'

'We're diggin,' Applejack replied. Applebloom raised an eyebrow.

'Ah know, ah can see that. But what are y'all diggin?' Applejack glanced at her brother.

'Well...we're diggin' a bomb shelter.' Applebloom raised her other eyebrow.

'A...bomb shelter? What in the hay for?'

To shelter from bombs, Applejack wanted to say.

'Well...we think it's a good idea ta be safe, given the state a' things. So we thought we should build us a bomb shelter, ya know, just in case.' Applebloom looked uneasily at her siblings.

'W-why? Is there gonna be a war?'

'Well...probably not, but it never hurts ta be prepared, right?' Applejack smiled reassuringly at her.

'Ah guess so...' she returned the smile.

Applejack looked around at the red-timbered farmhouse and the line of trees not far beyond. Though Sweet Apple Acres was located right on the edge of Ponyville, the development of the town had so far spared it. It had grown mainly to the north, across the Coltorado River, rather than to the south towards the farm. Granny Smith was forever reminding her of how the orchards and gently rolling hills looked the same as they had when she was just a filly herself. Something to be proud of, she said, and she was right. The citizens of Ponyville would play merry hell if the town council ever decided to bulldoze the farm and build on it- they couldn't live without their apple products, especially, in more than a few cases, their hard cider. Though mechanisation had come to most of the farms in Equestria, the trademark of Sweet Apple Acres was that everything was hoof-picked and hoof-bucked. Granny Smith steadfastly refused to let Applejack buy an automated cider press or hire seasonal labour despite the potential efficiency gains, and the results seemed to be proving her business acumen- ponies flocked from miles around to try produce from Sweet Apple Acres because of its rustic charm, and most of them claimed it was the best they had ever tasted because of its excellent apples. Despite only having three full-time staff, Sweet Apple Acres was one of the most profitable businesses in town.

Big Mac told her where to site the bomb shelter. He had served in the Army reserves for several years and consequently understood a good deal more about the effects of nuclear weaponry and how to dig trenches than she did. He told her that it should be well clear of the house, the barn and the trees; it had to be above the water table, or else well waterproofed, or it would simply flood. They had found a good spot behind the farmhouse, placing the bulky building between it and the town, It was well clear of the orchard and had good drainage, and so they had dug all morning. They lacked the resources and the time to construct a proper fallout shelter, but, Applejack reasoned, any protection was better than none. Big Mac told her the farmhouse would be a deathtrap if there was a nuclear explosion nearby- it would collapse completely in the blast and probably get smashed into millions of lethal splinters. There were large public shelters in town, but that was much too far to run in event of an attack. The media had long reported that the public would get five minutes warning, if they were very lucky. So, after their break, they dug all afternoon, too.

If You're Going To San Franciscolt

'No survivors, ambassador. Not one.'

Silver Birch seemed to wilt under the verbal onslaught from Princess Celestia. Though she was not raising her voice, her tone commanded instant respect and intense concentration when she spoke.

'Four hundred and twenty three. Four hundred and seven ponies, sixteen zebras, dead, because of a 'miscommunication?' Does your government really expect us to believe that?'

Silver Birch glanced nervously at Shining Armour who stood beside Celestia, his steely expression giving nothing away. Next to him stood Air Marshal Typhoon, who had been advising the Princess regarding the shootdown.

'Your Highness,' the ambassador began. 'I do not know what else to tell you.'

'How about the truth, ambassador?' Celestia said coldly.

'Your Highness, you have already heard the truth as I understand it. I have been told exactly what I told you. Our interceptors tracked an aircraft entering our airspace without authorisation. Air Defence Command ordered a ground-controlled interception. They received no communication from the aircraft, believed it to be a military surveillance jet, and were ordered to destroy it.'

'What if I told you, ambassador, that several neutral aircraft and ships in the area reported hearing transmissions on the emergency channel from the airliner clearly identifying itself to your interceptors?'

'I...was not aware of any such transmissions, and neither were our pilots,' he said nervously, 'or they would never have opened fire.'

'Your pilots monitor the international emergency frequency as a matter of course, do they not?' Celestia questioned. Especially when on an interception mission? Is that not the standard practice for such missions?'

'Well, yes...' Silver Birch began to sweat visibly. 'I...cannot speak to the precise circumstances until we have interviewed the pilots thoroughly and examined their flight recorders...'

'It seems to me, ambassador, that there are only two explanations for this incident. One is that your interceptor force is badly trained and badly led, and the other is that this was a deliberate act.' She stared down at Sliver Birch.

'I can assure you, Your Highness, that this was most definitely not a deliberate act,' he gushed. 'The USR would never deliberately engage in the cowardly practice of attacking unarmed civilian aircraft, no matter what the circumstances.'

'And yet,' Celestia said, 'that is exactly what it has done.'

'Your Highness, that is a slanderous accusation,' Silver Birch said, regaining some of his usual bluster. 'I would caution you against making such statements, as we do not yet know the exact circumstances surrounding the incident.'

'Indeed we do not,' Celestia said, frowning. 'Let us hope that, whatever the cause, similar incidents do not occur in the future, or it may lead both our nations down a dark path from which there is no return.'

'Our pilots did their job,' Silver Birch replied. 'We have the right to defend our airspace, do we not?'

'Yes, ambassador, but you do not have the right to shoot down an unarmed civilian jet that was posing no threat to your interceptors or to anything on the ground.'

'Believe me, Your Highness, we will get to the bottom of this. The USR has no more desire than you to see conflict between our nations.'

'Then I suggest,' she said spitefully, 'that you train better pilots so that something like this does not happen again.'

Applejack sighed. The bomb shelter was looking much more like a bomb shelter than it had done a week earlier. In their spare time, she and Big Mac had worked hard on it, pouring concrete and piling earth. The shelter itself was complete, or at least its concrete shell was. They had packed dirt around and on top of it, filling the hole they had dug and burying the shelter a few feet underground. A steel hatch on top provided access, and all that remained was to fill it with items that would enable them to survive while the fallout dissipated. They had already fitted a large water tank which would be filled if the worst looked likely to happen, and a battery-powered filtration system which would clean the air coming in through the vents. It would house the four of them, Applejack, Big Mac, Granny Smith and Applebloom, in, if not exactly comfort, then at least livable conditions, for several weeks. Exactly how long, Applejack was not keen to find out.

She trotted back to the farmhouse where Granny Smith sat in her rocking chair, reading the day's paper.

'Howdy, young'un!' she said, looking up.

'Howdy granny,' Applejack replied, noticing the paper's headline. USR shoot down civilian jet- 423 dead.

'Lemme take a look at that paper real quick,' she said, tapping the front page with a hoof.

'Hmm?' Granny Smith replied. 'Oh, that plane. Yeah, a terrible business. Looks like the USR's gettin' all uppity again.' She passed the newspaper to Applejack, who turned back to the front page and started reading.

USR shoot down civilian jet- 423 dead.

Government officials announced this morning that a Royal Air Equestria jet has been shot down after it apparently strayed into USR airspace. A spokespony from the Aviation Ministry said that RAE Flight 106 was on a scheduled flight from Manehattan to New Zebraland when it apparently strayed off course and into USR airspace. No information has yet been released by the USR regarding the role its air defence aircraft may have played in the incident, but the Equestrian government states that it is 'certain beyond any reasonable doubt' that the airliner was shot down by a USR interceptor.

'Well consarn it!' Applejack spat. 'What in the hell are the USR thinkin? Are they tryin' ta start a war?'

'Sure looks that way,' Granny Smith replied, only half-jokingly. 'Looks like it's a good job yer buildin' that bomb shelter! They never did know their place...been causin' trouble for hundreds a' years! Ah remember when ah was a spry young filly, they was much easier to deal with back then, they didn't have any a' this fancy new technology, all these bombs and such...what's so special about these bombs, anyways?'

'Nuclear bombs?' Applejack asked. Granny Smith nodded.

'Yup. Just sounds like any other bomb ta me. What's so special about 'em?' She wished Big Mac were here to explain; he knew so much more about it than she did.

'Well, from what ah understand, they're way more powerful than regular bombs,' she began, 'and they leave behind radioactivity.'

'Pff! Radioactivity! What's that even mean? Ah get plenty a' radioactivity, ah just tune in ta that jazz station every night...'

'Ah don't think it means radio like that, granny,' AJ said. 'They release radiation when they go off, and it poisons the land.'

'Aw, hell! They ain't poisonin' this farm!' Granny Smith exclaimed. 'If they wanna stop our apples growin', they're gonna have ta come over here and take 'em!' Applejack smiled at her determination, though inside she knew that there was nothing they could do to stop the farm being wiped out if the missiles started flying.

'Sure thing, granny,' she said. 'We won't let 'em take our apples, will we?'

'A' course not!' she replied, grinning. 'They can drop their bombs and we'll still be here!'

Hope you're right, granny...

The ENS San Franciscolt steamed purposefully eastward, its twin propellers spinning furiously, driving the Manehattan-Class destroyer through the water at a speed approaching 30 knots. One of eight such ships in the Royal Equestrian Navy, the San Franciscolt was based in the city that gave it its name. Nearly 500ft in length, displacing almost ten thousand tons and painted gunmetal grey, the San Franciscolt was fast, well armed and agile, qualities that enabled it to carry out its multi-role mission very effectively. Its current task was to patrol the disputed northern sea lanes that separated the USR from Equestria. Smugglers and drug runners were commonplace in these waters, as were refugees from the USR and the occasional incursion by a USR patrol boat or frigate, and so the Northern Fleet's job was as much a policing role as a military one. The seas were often rough, which added to the drama, and meant they were often engaged in search and rescue missions as well.

Today was no exception. A strong wind was gusting across the open ocean, whipping up the waves into sizable obstructions that the San Franciscolt's bow cut through like a knife. The local coastguard station had received a distress call from a small pleasure craft that had lost its engine and was now drifting aimlessly with the current towards the USR's territorial waters. As the nearest ship, the San Franciscolt had been vectored in to assist them.

On the bridge, Captain Swift peered through his binoculars. The boat was about a mile ahead of them, rolling in the swell.

'Bring us alongside,' he ordered.

'Aye, Captain,' the helmspony replied.

'All ahead one half.'

'Aye, Captain. All ahead one half.' Swift felt the ship's turbines throttle down in response to his order and the ship lost some of its momentum. As they closed on the boat, he ordered a further reduction in speed. A light rain had begun falling, The boat would be taken in tow behind the destroyer and its crew loaded aboard.

'All stop!' he ordered, lowering his binoculars as they came alongside the pleasure craft.

'All stop, aye,' came the reply. The gentle vibration of the ship's engines died away.

'Get them on board,' he ordered. The crew moved to obey. Orders were relayed and a rope ladder went over the side. There were four ponies on the boat, and it would take a few minutes to get them all safely onto the deck of the destroyer. Without the engines, the destroyer was drifting with the current, taking them slowly further north.

'Sir, Ops reports unknown radar contacts on their scope.' The call came from the Operations officer, Lieutenant Cannonball. 'Ops,' or the Operations Centre, was located three decks below the bridge, in the well-protected hull of the ship. It was there that data coming in to the ship was collected and analysed- from radar, sonar, and radio. The ship was fought from there- the weapons and fire control systems were operated from the same room. The ship's search radar had picked up unknown contacts.

'Ops reports four unknown air contacts, sir,' Cannonball said, 'eighty miles north and closing fast.' North.

'Coming from the USR?' he asked the rhetorical question.

'Looks that way, sir,' Cannonball replied.

'We're in international waters. Guess they're trying to intimidate us. Let's take no chances. Action stations.'

Cannonball hit a switch on his console and a loud, warbling alarm began to sound all across the ship. He spoke into a microphone.

'Action stations, action stations. All hooves man your action stations. This is not a drill.' The crew galloped to their stations, donning flash hoods and securing watertight doors as they prepared the ship for possible combat.

'Radio contact, sir! On the emergency channel!' The communications officer chimed in.

'Patch it through,' he ordered. The comm officer hit a few buttons and the radio on the bridge crackled into life, broadcasting the universal emergency frequency that could be used to communicate with ships or aircraft of any nationality.

'Unidentified vessel in USR territorial waters, you are in a restricted area. Reverse your course immediately and identify yourself.' Must be the aircraft.

Territorial waters my plot!' Swift growled, flicking the switch on the microphone on his console.

'Unidentified aircraft, this is the ENS San Franciscolt. We are in international waters and engaged in a search and rescue operation.' There was silence for a few seconds before the reply came.

'Equestrian ship, you are in USR territorial waters. Reverse your course immediately.'

'I say again, we are engaged on a search and rescue mission in international waters.' The radio crackled with static.

'Equestrian ship, reverse your course immediately. This is your final warning.'

'Warning? Who the hell do these guys think they are?' he spat. They wouldn't dare attack without orders...would they?

'I repeat, we are on a search and rescue mission and will not vacate the area until our mission is complete.'

'Are they aboard yet?' Swift asked, gesturing to starboard at the boat that still lay alongside.

'Aye sir, all ponies are aboard,' came the reply.

'Mark the boat's position. We'll come back for it later. Helm! All ahead full. Get us moving,' he ordered.

'All ahead full, aye!'

The ships' turbines began to throb again, vibrating the deck plating. Swift could feel it in his hooves as the ship began to move, leaving the small craft bobbing in its wake.

'Range now ten miles,' Cannonball reported. The aircraft would be visible in seconds off their port bow.

'Take us to a heading of 180 degrees,' Swift said. 'Make sure these lunatics know we are leaving.'

'Aye aye, sir,' the helmspony replied. 'Turning to 180.' The bow of the ship leaned over as it began to turn to starboard.

'Vampire, vampire!' The shout sent a sudden shock through him. Vampire was the codeword for an inbound missile. 'Incoming, eight tracks.'

'Celestia damn them!' he shouted. What the hell are they doing? We're leaving!

Eight tracks meant two missile launches per aircraft. At a range of under ten miles, they had mere seconds to react.

'Helm, flank speed! Bring them down!' Swift roared. 'Don't let any get through.' His crew and his ship jumped into action, the engine whining as the helmspony ordered flank speed, the maximum speed of which the ship was capable for short periods.

The San Franciscolt was outfitted with a sophisticated anti-aircraft missile system that could also be used to engage enemy missiles. It also mounted a five-inch cannon on its bow, and a collection of AA guns, close-in defensive miniguns and decoy launchers on its superstructure. All of these systems swung into play moments after Swift issued his order. The tracking radar had already plotted firing solutions for every missile, as well as their launcher aircraft. With the press of a few buttons in the Operations Centre, the system was ready to fire.

As the anti-ship missiles streaked in toward them, plumes of fire erupted from the foredeck of the destroyer, which was studded with small hatches. First one missile, then another, stabbed skyward from the ship's vertical launch system, maneuvering themselves rapidly towards the enemy. Every second, another missile blasted from its launch tube, until there were a total of eight in the air, almost forming a convoy of smoke trails as they headed north.

The enemy missiles were sea skimmers, coming in at wavetop height. Fast and low, they were difficult to intercept, even for an advanced system like that of the Manehattan-Class. Despite this, the first four fell victim to the San Franciscolt, erupting in bright balls of flame that were rapidly extinguished as they plunged into the wind-wracked sea. The other four defensive missiles missed the inbounds, unable to intercept them, their proximity-fused warheads detonating harmlessly behind their targets.

A string of small canisters burst from small tubes on the port side of the ship and burst in showers of silver foil; these were the radar decoys, designed to fool the incoming missiles into thinking that the cloud of chaff was its target. At the same time, the ship's main gun swivelled from its resting position, pivoting left and upward. The radar-guided gun began spitting out shells at the enemy planes that were now but a few scant miles out and clearly visible. The empty shell casings clattered out of the gap below the barrel, clanging together as they rolled around on the deck. The shells began to burst in the path of the incoming aircraft, guided by the ship's fire control system. With just the third shot the gun found its mark, and one of the fighter jets burst into a fireball and spiralled down into the foam-capped waves below.

The ship was executing a rapid turn to starboard, listing heavily as it turned as sharply as it could. The four surviving missiles were now too close to be engaged in time by the vertical launch system. The defence of the ship now turned to its close-in weaponry; two six-barreled miniguns in rapid-traverse mounts were fitted on either side of the ship's superstructure. The chaff cloud had been ineffective, dispersed too rapidly by the strong wind, and the missiles were still streaking in.

With a noise like ripping canvas, the miniguns on the San Franciscolt's port side opened fire. Each one spat out seventy-five round every second, filling the air with a hailstorm of bullets. The four missiles flew blindly into it. Two of them burst apart, shredded by the rapid gunfire. The other two made it through the defensive curtain miraculously unscathed. One of them burst at the waterline amidships, and the other smashed into the bow astride the ship's main gun.

The bridge crew, though braced for the impacts, found themselves tumbling from their hooves as the missiles exploded against the hull of the ship, ripping through the relatively thin armour, shattering internal bulkheads and letting the cold waters pour in. The second missile punctured the main gun's magazine, and the prow of the ship vanished in a sheet of blinding flame as the ammunition detonated in one catastrophic blast.

'Holy Celestia!' somepony shouted. Swift picked himself up from the deck. The bridge windows had been shattered, and there was broken glass all over the place. Acrid black smoke wafted in through the empty frames. One crewpony had a deep gash on his face from where he had fallen against the edge of a console. Swift got to his hooves and peered through the broken windows.

The bow of the ship was broken, shattered by the internal explosion. A huge, jagged hole marked the impact point. Seawater was rushing in, flooding the ruined bow compartments. The gun turret had been blown from its mountings, fractured and distorted by the blast. It rolled about on the deck like the casings it had been spewing out moments before.

'Damage report!' he shouted, not taking his eyes off of the damaged bow. The ship was still moving rapidly forward, its turbines propelling it at flank speed despite the damage. This was actually making things worse- the rough seas were swamping the damaged bow and filling it up with water. They had to slow down.

'Helm, all ahead two thirds!' he ordered quickly.

'All ahead two thirds, aye!' came the response. The throb of the engines reduced considerably.

'Comms, get through to Fleet Command. Give them a report, then send out a distress call on all channels.' Priorities- make the report first. We've just been the victims of an act of war.

'Are our missiles online?' he snapped, as the three surviving enemy jets roared overhead.

'No sir!' somepony shouted. 'The radar has been knocked out.'

'Celestia damn it!' Swift cursed. 'We're sitting ducks here!'

'Damage report coming in, sir,' Cannonball said. 'Flooding on decks one through four amidships. Bow compartments are flooded. Main fire control offline. Several casualties reported on the lower decks.'

The watertight doors should prevent the flooding spreading any further- unless they had been damaged by the explosions. The ship was not sinking, not yet- the few compartments that had been holed were not enough to bring her down. But she was heavily damaged, and helpless to fight back against the enemy aircraft, unless the radar could be brought back online or they were lucky enough to catch one of the jets in the streams of tracer from the short range miniguns. If they come back around...

'Any chance of getting that radar back online?' he shouted.

'Not anytime soon, sir,' Cannonball replied. 'It might need a hard reset...not sure what's been hit or if it's just temporary shock damage.'

'What about the secondary? Can we slave the missiles to that?' The San Franciscolt carried a secondary tracking radar, but it was not designed to be used to guide the missiles- it was merely used for tracking air targets, much like the equipment used by Equestria's civilian air traffic control.

'I suppose we could try, sir, but I doubt it will work,' Cannonball said. 'Either way, we don't have the kind of time we'd need to set it up.'

'I've made contact with Fleet Headquarters, sir,' the Comm officer interrupted. 'They acknowledge our transmission and say we are weapons free to engage any and all USR targets.'

'A little late for that, but thank them for me just the same,' Swift growled. 'What are those bastards doing now?' Cannonball checked his console.

'They're coming back for another pass...'

'Evasive maneuvers!' Swift shouted. 'Make smoke! All ahead full, take us south!'

The destroyer began to accelerate, swinging to starboard, smoke pouring from generators on the superstructure, obscuring the ship from visual observation and containing particulates that blocked infra-red radiation, They were heading for Equestrian waters, where friendly air cover could protect them. Fleet Command reported that they were already scrambling jets from Miramare which, if they could survive long enough, would drive the enemy aircraft away.

'Inbound from astern,' Cannonball reported. 'We can engage with the close-in guns, sir.'

'Do it!' Swift ordered.

The defensive miniguns and the two remote anti-aircraft cannons on the rear superstructure opened up at the incoming jets, though they lacked the radar guidance that would have made them considerably more accurate. They filled the air astern of the ship with bullets and shells, but the aircraft did not need to be that close to fire. A missile leapt from the rail beneath the wing of the lead aircraft, which then turned away to avoid the barrage. The missile, radar-guided, ignored the smoke cloud and speared straight in towards the destroyer. With its high-fidelity combat radar disabled, the San Franciscolt could not engage the missile directly; all it could do was hope that the anti-aircraft barrage would bring it down.

It didn't.

The missile struck just abaft the beam, tearing through the lower deck of the superstructure before detonating. A blast of flame and dust erupted from the side of the ship as the missile punctured through the deck to the engine room. Both turbines were ripped from their mountings, shattered. One of them exploded, ripping another ragged hole in the hull below the waterline. The chief engineer and his team were killed instantly.

'Damage report!' Swift shouted again. 'Get us moving!'

'Engine room has been hit, sir,' came the reply. 'We're dead in the water.' Swift cursed.

'Engine room flooding, sir,' the damage control officer reported. 'It's spreading into adjacent compartments. The pumps can't cope.'

'Seal it off, damn it!' Swift growled. 'Where the hell is our fighter cover?'

'Five minutes out, sir.'

'The bandits must have picked them up on radar, sir,' Cannonball said. 'They're bugging out to the north.'

'About damn time,' Swift said. 'Looks like the damage has already been done.'

The San Franciscolt was crippled and slowly filling up with water. The missile impacts had buckled and punctured several bulkheads and watertight doors, and the flooding was extending to otherwise undamaged compartments. With the engines and electrical system out of action, the primary pumps had no power, and the mechanical secondaries were overwhelmed. They were sinking, and there was nothing they could do to stop it. Swift looked at each of his bridge officers in turn. He knew what order he had to give. He activated the microphone on his console.

'All hooves, this is the Captain. Abandon ship. I say again, abandon ship.'

Foreign Policy

'You understand, ambassador, that this was an act of war?'

'Your Highness, once again we find an Equestrian craft in our territory. It was a military vessel, entering our waters without invitation. That alone would be grounds for a declaration of war.' Silver Birch's tone was just as strident as Princess Celestia's. The atmosphere in the throne room was even more tense than it had been at their last meeting. Both sides knew what was at stake. Though the sudden escalation of tensions between them worried her, she had no doubt that the USR leadership did not want war any more than she did. There had been plenty of chances over the last few decades for them to spin some excuse for war from a minor incident, and, although their nuclear forces were now at the strongest they had ever been, the USR's frontline military had been weakened by budget cuts, lackluster training and equipment problems. Now was not a good time for them to fight a conventional war against Equestria, and there was never a good time to fight a nuclear war.

'Ambassador, the navigation logs of our ship show that it was never within five miles of your territorial waters. It was engaged on a search and rescue mission in international waters when it was struck by an unprovoked and deadly attack that left twenty eight sailors dead and our vessel at the bottom of the ocean.'

'May I remind you that your ship also shot down one of our aircraft?' Silver Birch replied.

'Yes, it did, because that aircraft had opened fire on it,' Celestia said 'If you do not want us to shoot down your aircraft, then I suggest you refrain from attacking our vessels!'

'First you penetrate our airspace with a military surveillance aircraft, and now y...'

'Ambassador, please,' Celestia interrupted. 'You know as well as I do that you shot down an unarmed civilian aircraft, and now you have attacked and sunk one of our warships.'

'It was in our territorial waters!' Silver Birch protested.

'Even if it was, what right does that give you to sink it? Your own naval vessels have entered our territorial waters numerous times, and have we ever sunk one of them? No. We hail them and request that they return to international waters. We shadow them. We escort them out. We do not open fire without provocation. Does your government want a war? Because if they do, then they are certainly proceeding down the correct path.'

'Nopony wants a war,' the ambassador said. 'We simply request that you keep your military forces out of our territorial waters and airspace. We have not forgotten the spy planes that you deny any knowledge of, either, Your Highness. You have provoked us often enough before.'

'But never have we attacked,' she said. 'We are not in the business of unprovoked aggression, and we are certainly not in the business of murdering innocent civilians.'

'That is a relief to hear, Your Highness. Neither is the USR.'

'Your actions three days ago say otherwise, ambassador,' Celestia replied coldly. 'The blood of four hundred and twenty three dead civilians, and now twenty eight sailors, are on your hooves.'

'Your Highness, this is far from the first time our nations have come to blows,' Silver Birch said slowly. 'Surely there is no need for things to escalate any further. I urge restraint and caution in these matters, lest you find things getting out of hoof.'

'Then I trust, ambassador, that there will be no further attacks on Equestrian ships or aircraft that may stray into your territorial waters, regardless of whether they are civilian or military?'

'You have my solemn word, Your Highness. The Chancellor has instructed me to tell you that no such actions will occur again. I can promise you that the USR will not attack any Equestrian vessel or aircraft that strays into our territorial waters.'

She nodded.

'I am very pleased to hear that, ambassador,' she said. It must be clear to you that...' She was interrupted as the double doors to the throne room swung open. A tall guardspony in full ceremonial uniform entered, a sheet of paper clutched in his hoof.

'Your Highness!' he said loudly as he trotted over to her. 'Please forgive my intrusion, but you need to see this right away.'

Silver Birch turned for the door.

'I should take my leave,' he said, but the guardspony stopped him.

'This will be of interest to you also, ambassador.' He passed the dispatch to Celestia, who quickly read it. She struggled to maintain her composure.

'Well, ambassador,' she said grimly. 'It appears that the USR has invaded Saddle Arabia.'

Sandy Oak stood by the high razorwire fence, his face pressed up almost against it. It was his favourite place- he loved the sights, the sounds, the smells. Part of it was simply that common colt love of all things loud, fast and 'cool,' but for him it was more than that. He loved it all the more because his father worked there, and he wanted deeply to be a part of it someday, when he was older.

He was standing by the perimeter fence of Hoofstead Air Force Base, not far inland from Equestria's southwestern coastline. Normally it was home to the 4th Strategic Bomb Wing, which consisted of two squadrons of the Outlaw heavy bombers that formed the backbone of the air force's nuclear strike capability, along with a cluster of supporting units. Among the crews was Sandy Oak's father, Golden Oak, who flew as the bombardier of one of the jets. The Bomb Wing operated as part of the quick reaction alert force, kept at constant readiness to take off in the event of an attack.

Since the USR's invasion of Saddle Arabia two days earlier, however, Hoofstead had been home to an ever-changing array of military aircraft that were using it as a staging post on their way to their ally's aid. The USR's excuse for the invasion was that spy planes had been taking off from bases there and overflying their territory, but everypony knew that an excuse was all it was- they had been champing at the bit to invade Saddle Arabia for years. The country possessed rich natural resources; gems, oil and, importantly, uranium for their nuclear weapons. Under the present conditions, the vast majority of those resources went to Equestria. Some Equestrian military units were permanently stationed in Saddle Arabia, and they had joined the local army in trying to hold off the USR while reinforcements were rushed in by sea and air from Equestria. Right now at Hoofstead, for instance, there was a squadron of Bronco transport aircraft parked up on the hard standing, and another of Mustang fighters, which were lining up for takeoff at the far end of one of Hoofstead's two parallel runways.

This was Sandy Oak's favourite part. He watched the slender fighters turning onto the runway, lining up three abreast on the wide strip of concrete. Imaginary radio transmissions ran through his head as he tried to picture what was going on in the tandem cockpits of the jets as the pilots and weapons officers prepared for takeoff.

Viper, he thought. I bet their callsign is Viper- that's a cool name. The callsign of his father's squadron was Cutlass, which sounded cool, even though he didn't know what a Cutlass was. In times of high tension like this, the strategic bomber crews were kept constantly on alert, taking shifts so that there was always a crew in the cockpit of the jet at all times, with the aircraft themselves kept at a constant state of readiness, so that they could get into the air within minutes in the event of an attack.

From the other end of the runway, a sudden roar went up. He dismissed all irrelevant thoughts from his mind and focused on his favourite sight in the whole world. Though he was an earth pony, he wanted to fly more than anything. He desperately envied his Pegasi friends who could do so whenever the mood took them; for ponies like him, the only route to flight was through mechanical means. His father and hundreds like him proved that you didn't need to be a Pegasus to be in the Air Force, although most members of the service were, for various reasons ranging from simple prejudice to practical arguments, such as that it was easier for a Pegasus to bail out from a crashing aircraft.

The roar grew in intensity as he watched the first trio of Mustangs accelerating rapidly down the runway towards him. Almost as one entity they leapt into the air, and seconds later passed over him, their afterburners blazing like miniature suns. He watched in awe, his heart pounding with excitement as it did every time he stood at the end of the runway to watch. It never failed to thrill him. Long before the roar of the first three jets had died away, the next section were overhead, racing after their comrades, followed by three more, then the final section, for a full squadron of twelve jets. He watched them peel away to the left, turning almost a full 180 degrees to race away to the southwest towards Saddle Arabia. He knew his father wouldn't have to go abroad to fight- as part of the nuclear deterrent force, the Strategic Bomb Squadrons were permanently based in Equestria. He watched the fighter squadron recede into the distance, thankful that his father would never be called away to war.

'Remind me again. What exactly is this stuff, and why should I be enjoying it?'

Rainbow Dash lay on the spa table, a robe wrapped around her body and her face coated in gunk. Fluttershy and Rarity lay either side of her, similarly attired.

'Oh darling,' Rarity chuckled. 'It's called a face mask, and it is to exfoliate and freshen your skin!' Fluttershy nodded.

'Oh yes, it's wonderful. You really should give it a chance, Dashie.' Rainbow rolled her eyes.

'Alright, alright, jeez. You've finally dragged me here, I'm not gonna back out now and have AJ calling me chicken.' Her friends giggled. Though Fluttershy and Rarity made their way to the spa together several times a week, they had never been able to persuade Rainbow to come along before. She was famously averse to such things, but she had to admit, having this stuff on her face did feel quite nice.

'I don't suppose I could persuade you to join us again this Saturday, darling?' Rarity said.

'Nope!' Rainbow replied, happy to have a genuine excuse. 'I'm gonna be helping Pinkie run Sugarcube Corner while the Cakes are away.'

'Oh, yes, I heard about that,' Rarity said. 'Does she not think she is biting off a teensy little bit more than she can chew. trying to run the whole place by herself?'

'I guess so, that's why she wanted me to help out!' Rainbow grinned. 'She needed some help and she knew just who to turn to!' Rarity smiled.

'You know she asked all of us first, darling? You were the last one she asked, and the only one that was free.' Rainbow blinked.

'Oh...'

Rarity giggled, picturing the kinds of chaos that would no doubt befall Sugarcube corner with Rainbow and Pinkie at the helm.

'Yeah, well, at least I wasn't too busy pampering myself to help a friend!' Rainbow countered. Rarity giggled again.

'Oh but darling, I will be helping a friend! She turned to Fluttershy. 'I will be instructing her in various matters here at the spa, and then we shall head back to my boutique, because I simply must measure her for a new dress!'

'Oh yes,' Fluttershy said. 'I really need a new one. My old one got...kind of...damaged.'

'Well, you'll see! We're gonna run that place like clockwork!' Rainbow grinned. 'You should pop in after your makeovers, see how we're getting on!'

'Well, we might just do that! How about it, dear?' Rarity looked at Fluttershy.

'Oh yes, of course!' Fluttershy said. 'I'm sure you'll both do a wonderful job.'

'Yeah! H-hey, this stuff is burning a little...' Rainbow said, rubbing at her face mask.

'Don't worry, it's supposed to!' Rarity replied. Rainbow relaxed a little. The soothing atmosphere of the spa was helping her forget her worries about the conflict in Saddle Arabia. Several of her friends from flight school and the Wonderbolts Academy had been, or were about to be, deployed overseas. She had managed to clear such thoughts from her mind, at least until Rarity brought them flooding back.

'I say darling, do you know if the Wonderbolts are being sent to Saddle Arabia?' she asked. Rainbow glanced over at her.

'No...not yet anyway. They're still primarily a flight demonstration squadron, even if they are all qualified frontline pilots as well,' she replied. 'Besides, they're all celebrities. Wouldn't be very good propaganda if they went over there and got shot down.'

'I suppose not,' Rarity said, stretching luxuriously. 'Such awful stories coming out of there. I'm certainly glad you never joined the Air Force, Rainbow.'

'Yeah...me too,' Rainbow said grimly. 'I want to be in the Wonderbolts, but I don't want all the other stuff that comes with it.'

'I don't think I could take it if you went off to fight,' Fluttershy said softly. Rainbow smiled comfortingly at her timid friend.

'Don't worry, Flutters. I'm not going anywhere. We're all gonna stay out of this war.'

'It doesn't look too good, Your Highness.'

The table in the war room was covered in documents and photographs, and surrounded by high-ranking military officers. Princess Celestia sat at its head, with Shining Armour nearby. General Charger, Chief-of-Staff of the Army, continued to speak.

'We are outnumbered. They have managed to get eight whole mechanised divisions across the border, as well as three armoured. Their naval infantry have made landings along the northeastern coast behind our lines, supported by Pegasi air assault units. We're being forced back, even with the reinforcements we are moving in. The Saddle Arabians are fighting hard, but they are being overwhelmed.' He gestured at the large-scale digital map he was standing in front of, showing the latest troop positions on both sides.

'As you can see,' he continued, 'we are currently holding a line here, about 60 miles north of the capital.' He tapped a thin blue line on the map. 'The main USR thrust is expected to come here,' he tapped the blue line just east of its centre. 'This is perfect tank country; mostly flat, some gently rolling plains. We expect them to concentrate their firepower here and try to break through to the capital. As such, we have spent the last 36 hours strengthening our positions along this sector. If they come, we will be ready for them, Your Highness.'

Celestia nodded, her eyes red through lack of sleep. She had barely had time to rest since the invasion began. Nor had her staff. Nor, she imagined, had the troops in the field. USR airstrikes and artillery had been pounding their line for the past day and a half, since the combined Equestrian-Saddle Arabian forces had been pushed back from their original positions to the north. Intelligence reports suggested that the USR had moved tactical nuclear missiles across the border on their mobile transporter-launchers, in support of their attack. Celestia knew the USR expected that, in any major ground war between the two, Equestria would find herself overwhelmed by sheer weight of numbers and resort to battlefield nuclear strikes to decimiate the advancing USR formations. Though this strategy was enshrined within the operational doctrine of the Equestrian Army, and their own tactical missiles had been deployed in Saddle Arabia, Celestia herself had no intention of issuing any such order unless the USR fired first. She knew that the use of tactical nuclear weapons was the start of a very steep and very, very slippery slope that would only head in one direction, and that was a direction she had no intention of going. She did not want to go down in whatever history would remain as the pony who ordered the deaths of tens of millions in a fiery holocaust.

'Tell me, General,' she said to Charger. 'If they hit us, can we hold?'

'If they hit us there,' he tapped the same spot as before, 'then yes. If they attack elsewhere along the front, then I can't guarantee anything, especially if they focus all of their efforts in one spot. We simply don't have enough ponies in the line. We don't have enough troops in country yet. Truth be told, they caught us off guard. Even though we saw them massing near the border, we never thought they would actually dare invade. We were spread thin enough before we concentrated our forces to defend against their likely route of advance. If they double bluff us and come at us from somewhere else, then I don't know if we can hold them off.' Celestia nodded, frowning. Equestrian troops were still pouring in to Saddle Arabia's ports and airbases, but they took time to arrive, and even longer to drive to the front. The USR were swarming towards them in great numbers, able to simply drive over the land border from their homeland, and they threatened to punch right through the defensive line. Then, it would be clear sailing to the capital.

'You must hold, General,' Celestia said. 'I will not allow the USR to subjugate our ally. I made a promise to them, and I do not intend to break it.' Charger nodded.

'Yes, Your Highness. We will do our best.'

Twilight climbed the steep road to the observatory, a stiff breeze playing over her, keeping her cool despite her exertions. Low, scudding clouds overhead obscured the moon and the stars, but she still wanted to make the journey, for the company if nothing else. She liked the two astronomers, Starshine and Quasar. Especially Starshine- though she would never admit it to any of her friends, she had something of a crush on him. He didn't fit the traditional, stuffy image of a scientist- he was young, handsome, with a long, flowing mane of deep blue, and she certainly enjoyed his company. Even though they would not be able to see the sky tonight, they could talk, and look at the data they had collected over the past week. They were still scanning the Horsehead Nebula.

She opened the door and trotted down the corridor to the control room.She was surprised to see Quasar, but not Starshine.

'Good evening, Twilight!' Quasar said, fiddling with the control panel. 'I'm afraid we're out of luck tonight. The weather seems to have other plans!'

'Oh, yes...where's Starshine?' she asked as she walked into the room. 'Is he ill?'

'Oh no,' Quasar replied. 'Did he never tell you he is in the Army reserves?' A sudden feeling of unease came over her.

'No...he never mentioned anything about that,' she said.

'Oh yes, he has been for, ooh...just over a year now,' Quasar continued. 'He's been called up, what with all the developments abroad, you know. I had a message from him this morning, actually. He hasn't been sent overseas yet, but if things keep going badly for our colts over there...' She nodded, troubled. This war was starting to get altogether too close to home.

Mercury Rising

For the last three days, ponies across Equestria had been stocking up, preparing themselves in case supplies should run short or the worst should happen with the war abroad. The government had begun crisis preparations; prepositioning emergency supplies, calling up the army reserves, sending out leaflets to the public on 'What to do in the event of a Nuclear Attack.' Bottled water, tinned food, batteries, medicine; all were flying off the shelves, and now, strangely, so were the baked goods in Sugarcube Corner. Though they were perishable and would go stale within a couple of days, the cakes, tarts and pastries were proving as popular as they ever had before.

Pinkie was ecstatic, and also rushed off her feet. The Cakes were away in Canterlot, having taken the early morning train with their foals and a cart stacked high with sugary treats that had been loaded into the baggage car. Pinkie had waved them goodbye, then returned post-haste to the shop, where she had had to start baking immediately; the Cakes had taken the entire stock of prepared cakes with them, meaning she had to bake everything that would be on sale in the shop that day. Rainbow Dash had arrived a little after eight, and together they had finished the baking and opened the shop to the short queue of ponies who had already been lining up outside.

Now, almost half of their stock had been sold, though it was only eleven in the morning. Pinkie was beaming as she served the customers; the Cakes' faith in her had not been misplaced. Rainbow Dash was happy, too- she could rub it in Rarity's face if she popped in later in the day.

'Dashie! We're out of cupcakes!' Pinkie said as she served a mare with the last batch.

'On it!' Rainbow replied, hurrying into the kitchen where there were several more boxes of various cupcakes waiting to be sold. She picked one up and brought it out into the shop, refilling the display case. There was a queue of ponies inside, though it did not quite reach the front door of the shop yet. Pinkie was getting a little worried that they would run out of cakes before they closed for the day, but that was not a particularly bad position to be in. She smiled to herself as the next customer approached the counter. What could possibly go wrong?

Princess Celestia rubbed her tired eyes. An insistent knocking at her chamber door had roused her from the short, fitful sleep she had forced herself to take. She rose unsteadily from her bed and crossed to the door, opening it with her magic as she did so. A messenger stood on the other side, his hoof raised to knock again.

'Your Highness! News from Saddle Arabia.' He bowed to her. 'The USR have broken through our lines, Your Highness...'

They hurried to the war room, where the chiefs of staff were gathered. General Charger looked up, his face lined with stress.

'Your Highness,' he said. 'They did exactly what I feared they would do. They ignored the obvious route. They led with their infantry and their Pegasi airborne troops; broke right through, in the hills about a hundred miles east of where we were waiting for them. We simply didn't have enough ponies to hold them there. Their tanks followed through the gap. Now they're driving straight for the capital.' Celestia seated herself at the head of the table, noting the red arrow on the digital map that was pointing ominously at the Saddle Arabian capital.

'How do we stop them?' she asked in a tired voice.

'I...don't know, Your Highness,' he said. A deathly silence descended in the room. Celestia glanced at Charger, then at Shining Armour, Air Marshal Typhoon and Grand Admiral Bluewater, naval chief-of-staff. Their faces were stoic, but they were blank. Nopony knew how to stop them.

'I have already ordered our troops to pull back from the frontline,' Charger said, pointing at the blue line on the map. 'Maybe, if they drive hard...maybe they can overtake them. We do have defences around the city, but they are not strong enough to withstand this attack. We don't have enough troops in position.' He gestured again to the map.

'The bulk of the 4th Division have landed, but they are still in the port. It will take them at least a day to reach the capital, and if the USR spearhead keeps up its present rate of advance, they will be there before that.'

'We are hitting their columns from the air,' Typhoon interrupted, 'but they don't seem to be slowing down.' Celestia sighed. Equestria's big advantage in the theatre of operations was in air power- they had far more combat aircraft in Saddle Arabia than the USR had been able to muster, and that didn't seem to be helping at all.

'The Saddle Arabians could deploy their reserves,' Charger said. 'It will not stop their advance, but it might be just enough to hold the capital until the 4th Division arrives...'

He was interrupted as the door to the war room swung open. A staff officer rushed in.

'Your Highness! Flash traffic from Saddle Arabia!' She stood, glancing at her chiefs, before following the officer into the next room, which was full of communications equipment, radios and video screens, allowing Canterlot Command to stay in constant contact with its military units around the globe. On the left side of the room, a teleprinter was spewing out a sheet of paper. An officer ripped it off and passed it to Celestia, who quickly read it.

Priority Mercury
NUCFLASH II

Possible nuclear detonation approx. 12 miles north of Phase Line Apple, grid reference 346 311 804 192, in path of USR advance
Detonation occurred at 08:12:54 Local, 11:12:54 EST (Equestrian Standard Time)
Estimation of Yield approx. 4KT
Weapon type u/k
Casualties u/k

End

Celestia's blood turned to ice. A nuclear explosion? She had not authorised the use of nuclear weapons. Weapon type unknown...a USR attack? But it detonated over their own troops...she passed the printout to General Charger.

'What is this, General? Is it one of ours?' Charger read the printout and shook his head.

'No, Your Highness. Not without your command, our troops would never use such weapons.'

'But they could. The tactical rockets do not need the same level of authorisation as our strategic forces, correct?' Charger nodded.

'That is correct, Your Highness. A division or corps commander could theoretically authorise such an action if their troops were being overrun, but they would report it to Canterlot Command immediately. We have received no such report.'

'Then what has happened?' Celestia asked, her voice rising slightly. 'If the USR think we have used a tactical nuclear weapon on their troops...'

'Then they will respond in kind,' Charger nodded. 'And then we will respond to that, and then...'

'Your Highness!' the staff officer interrupted. 'A confirmation just came through. It wasn't a nuclear weapon. It was a large Saddle Arabian ammunition dump that came under fire and exploded.'

'Damn it!' Charger cursed. 'Why didn't anypony spot that from the coordinates?'

'Get me in contact with the USR, now!' Celestia shouted. 'They have to know it wasn't a nuclear detonation.'

'H-how, Your Highness?' the staff officer questioned. 'There's no direct line...' Several times Celestia had proposed the installation of a direct line of communication between her palace and the chancellery in Stalliongrad, but the Chancellor himself had vetoed such an idea, since he, and by extension, his government, refused to acknowledge that Celestia had any legitimate claim to be the leader of Equestria.

'Go through the embassy!' Shining Armour said. 'Where is ambassador Silver Birch?'

'He's at the embassy, sir,' another officer piped up. 'We can try patching a call through.'

'Do it!' Celestia ordered. The communications staff hurried to obey. Before they could act, the teleprinter began to whirr again, churning out another printout. The staff officer tore it off, took one glance at it, and handed it to Celestia. Almost at the same instant, the telephones in the communications room began to buzz. With a sinking feeling in her stomach, she read the message.

Priority Mercury
NUCFLASH III

Multiple confirmed nuclear detonations along Phase Line Apple
Detonations occurred between 08:18:21 and 08:21:47 Local, 11:18:21 - 11:21:47 EST (Equestrian Standard Time)
Estimation of Yield between 5-20KT
Weapon Type various USR tactical warheads
Casualties u/k

End

The staff officers were all talking at once. Most of them had phones pressed to their ears or radio headsets on.

'Your Highness, Major-General Firestone of the 9th Division is requesting permission to return fire with his tactical rockets.'

'Marshal, Tactical Air Command requests orders to engage enemy launch sites.'

'They're reporting 30 confirmed detonations along the line...'

'General, I have Colonel Broadsword of the Strategic Command on the line for you.'

'Sir, the 5th Division report they are preparing to launch their tactical nuclear weapons.'

Everything was going much too fast, and Celestia could see it all unraveling before her very eyes. Her chiefs-of-staff were talking urgently to each other, too.

'Less than six minutes between the explosion and their response!' Shining Armour was saying. 'How the hell could they launch their rockets that fast unless they had them ready to fire them anyway?'

Celestia held up a hoof and called for calm, trying to get a handle back on the situation that was rapidly running away from them. They had to focus- the fate of millions rested on their shoulders, and they were wasting time shouting over each other. In little more than six minutes, this war had escalated and brought them all to the brink of catastrophe.

'Everypony listen up!' she said. 'I want a line to the embassy right now, and I want you,' she gestured to the staffers manning the radios, 'to inform all field commanders that they are not to retaliate with their own nuclear weapons!'

A chorus of affirmative replies greeted her orders, and she turned to speak with her chiefs of staff. Before she could say anything, one of the communications officers called out.

'Your Highness! 5th Division says they have already launched their nuclear weapons.'

'What? No!' she shouted. 'Nopony must retaliate!'

'The 5th Division has already done so,' the officer said. 'They have already fired all 48 of their missiles.' The icy blood in her veins cooled still further.

'No...' she breathed. 'Get me through to the ambassador, now, and let us pray we are not too late...' Celestia looked around at her chiefs and, for the first time in a thousand years, knew fear.

The Strike Warning Centre, or SWC, was an oft-overlooked branch within the Strategic Command. The SWC was responsible for the operation of the Equestrian early warning radars, designed to detect, classify and track missile launches and enemy aircraft at extreme ranges. Two over-the-horizon radars on the western coast, and various smaller radars scattered across the country, meant the SWC's operators would be the first ponies to receive a warning of any attack on Equestria.

Lieutenant Dawn Crest sat at his console in the SWC's command centre near Detrot, the radar display an unremitting sea of black and dark green. There was nothing on his scope; no surprises there. He had seen very little unusual on his scope since he took up his post six months ago; apart from a stray weather balloon, a few high altitude surveillance aircraft, and a solitary USR sounding rocket that had been sent up into the upper atmosphere two months ago, setting alarm bells ringing and causing a great deal of embarrassment within the Strategic Command when they figured out what it was. The over-the-horizon radar had a range of just over 3000 miles, allowing it to 'see' the whole of the USR. Five other operators sat around him, each monitoring a different sector, with several other officers monitoring a composite image showing the combined radar returns of every station. Tensions were extremely high since the shootdown, which he had monitored on his screen, and even more so since the war broke out, and the SWC had been on high alert.

A sudden, urgent beeping drew his attention. A blood red icon on his console was flashing, and something had appeared on his radar screen- a blip, small and distant.

'I have a contact!' he called, alerting the other operators and Colonel Redmane, the SWC commander. Redmane made his way over and Dawn Crest pointed to the blip on his screen.

'Identification?' the Colonel asked.

'Nothing yet, sir,' Dawn Crest replied. 'It's at 40,000ft and climbing.' As he spoke, three more blips appeared on the screen.

'Multiple contacts!' he shouted. 'Possible launches in progress. Stand by for ident.' The computers were working rapidly to extrapolate launch sites and trajectories of the radar contacts.

Surely this isn't real? It has to be an exercise- please let it be an exercise...

'I have contacts!' one of the other operators shouted, staring intently at her screen.

It could still be an exercise...even if there is already a war going on...

'Contacts!'

'I have contacts here!'

Within half a minute, every one of the six operators had flashing blips on their screens. Dawn Crest counted twenty on his alone.

It's not an exercise, is it?

'Track their trajectories,' Redmane said, his voice as steady as though he were in his office reading out the morning reports. 'Let me know as soon as you have them.' The computers worked, analysing the radar tracks. The plots appeared on the screen as green lines, data appearing at the side of the screen. Dawn Crest's heart rapidly made its way up his throat into his mouth.

'Confirmed,' he said, swallowing hard. 'Confirmed multiple USR ICBM launches...trajectories indicate their targets lie within Equestrian borders.'

'Now tracking one hundred seven contacts!' somepony called. Colonel Redmane nodded slowly.

'Send the alert signal!' he said loudly, before reaching for a phone on his console.

'Get me Canterlot Command.'

Dawn Crest watched, dismayed, as more and more blips appeared on his screen. Thirty, forty, fifty contacts in his sector alone. Fifty missiles, fifty nuclear missiles, all of them heading for Equestria.

'Colonel Redmane, SWC. Priority Mercury, Flash Override.'

Now there were fifty eight missiles on his screen.

'Yes sir, it's confirmed. They've launched against us. I've already sent the alert signal,' Redmane was saying, but Dawn Crest was no longer paying attention. The thought, that single, terrifying thought, had just struck him. The missiles were heading for Equestria, and he was sitting in the middle of one of their first targets.

'Your Highness, you have to give the orders now!'

'Your Highness, please!'

'You have to do it now, Your Highness, and then we have to get you out of here!'

They had retreated to the war room. An alarm sounded in the communications room outside. Princess Celestia was almost panicking, an emotion none had ever seen her display before. Things had run away from them, got out of hoof. The war had escalated in a matter of minutes, and nopony had ever had any chance to stop it. Now it was too late.

She had failed them all.

'Please, Your Highness!' General Charger said urgently. 'Do it now. We don't have time to wait!' Two staff officers stood nearby, one of them with a metal case cuffed to his foreleg. They glanced nervously at each other as their Princess delayed and dithered.

'I-if I do this, millions will die!' she said, her voice rising. Shining Armour's was remarkably calm.

'Millions are already going to die. Millions of your citizens. There's nothing you can do about that now. But if you don't give this order, then the ponies responsible for their deaths will go unpunished. You can't stop here. Think of all the work we've done over the last 15 years, building this deterrent.'

'But the deterrent has failed!' she shouted.

'I know, but it always came with a caveat, and that was that if it failed both sides would suffer. Both sides. Don't let Equestria be the only one that suffers, Your Highness. The USR started all this, and they deserve to pay for their crimes.'

'But...the lives of millions, Shining!' she shouted. 'If I give this order, then I would be no better than them.' Her voice wavered as if her mind was being pulled in two directions at once. Shining Armour glanced at the digital clock on the wall, the seconds ticking away, closer and closer to the end of days.

'Please, Your Highness,' he said, glancing at the digital clock on the wall of the war room. 'We have sixteen minutes until the first detonations. If you don't give the order...' he looked at the other chiefs of staff. 'If you don't give the order, then everything you have worked for in the last thousand years will be for nothing. We will all be gone, and the USR will simply trot right in and take it all. Equestria will be theirs, and they won't have suffered a scratch.' She continued to hesitate.

'At least you can stop some of it,' Shining said. 'If we retaliate we can knock out some of their missiles, some of their bombers, before they can launch...' She nodded slowly.

'Very well,' she said in a low, emotionless voice. 'Do it.'

The staff officer with the metal case placed it on one of the consoles and entered one half of the combination lock. The other staff officer completed the code and the case popped open. The first officer took out its contents- a red folder and two plastic cards. He passed one to the Princess and the other to General Charger. Shining Armour took the red folder and opened it while the staff officer fiddled with a radio that was embedded within the case.

'Your Highness, you now have your code card. Are we in contact yet?' he asked the staff officer, who nodded. The radio crackled into life.

'General Storm, Strategic Command.' The stentorian voice of the commanding officer of the Equestrian strategic nuclear forces was broadcast into the room from the radio in the case. A moment later, the voice of his deputy, Major-General Nimbus, came through on the radio's other channel, from the Strategic Command's backup headquarters not far from Las Pegasus. Shining Armour flipped through several pages in the folder.

'Ok, Your Highness. You have a choice of attack options. At this stage, we would recommend the major attack option. Then you have to choose between a counterforce or counter-value strike.' She looked bewildered, though they had practiced and read up on the procedure numerous times.

'Which one are the USR using?' she asked. General Storm's booming voice answered her.

'It appears they are enacting a counterforce operation at this stage, Your Highness,' he said. 'But once we launch against them, we believe they will fire their remaining weapons in a counter-value strike.'

The Princess swallowed hard. Counterforce meant that the USR missiles, or at least the first wave, were targeted on Equestrian military forces, primarily their nuclear forces- missile silos, airbases, command centres. Counter-value, on the other hoof, was exactly what the media and the public immediately brought to mind whenever anypony mentioned nuclear war. Counter-value meant missiles targeted at weakening the economic and industrial potential of the nation; missiles targeted at cities, at infrastructure- at ponies.

'I would recommend,' General Storm continued, 'that we initiate a full-scale retaliatory strike, hitting everything we can, both counterforce and counter-value, while we still have the missiles and bombers to do it with.'

'Then...then I suppose...' The chiefs of staff looked at her expectantly. 'I agree with General Storm.' Shining Armour nodded, flipping a few more pages in the folder.

How can they all act so calm? she thought. Their families are all probably going to die in the next hour...Twilight is probably going to die in the next hour, and yet Shining Armour isn't even raising his voice...Luna...

'Did you get that, General?' Shining Armour was saying.

'Affirmative, Plan 6,' Storm replied. 'Your codes, Your Highness.'

Celestia glanced down at the code card she held in her hoof. It was the key to the deaths of millions, but the USR had already signed their own death warrants.

'Your codes, Your Highness,' General Storm repeated firmly. Celestia turned over the card and read the code printed on the back. Then she spoke the second code that she had memorised, to confirm it was really her giving the order.

'Authenticated,' said Storm and his deputy at almost the same time.

'Under the two-pony rule, the order to launch must now be confirmed by the Chairpony of the Chiefs of Staff,' General Storm said, his voice crackly with a sudden burst of static. General Charger spoke his own codes, and again the two Strategic Command officers confirmed them as authentic.

'Clearance has now been granted under the two-pony rule,' General Storm said, his voice as authoritative as ever. 'Release authorisation has been given. Your Highness, please confirm the launch order.'

She looked around at her chiefs-of-staff and the two staff officers, nervous anticipation now evident on all of their faces. Despite her earlier thoughts, Shining Armour now seemed to have aged 20 years in a matter of minutes as he glanced at the clock on the wall, inexorably ticking away the seconds until the end of days. With a dry mouth and a heavy heart, she spoke.

'I confirm the launch order.'

Sandy Oak stood by the fence at Hoofstead again, as he had done every day during his school lunch break. As the son of a serving officer, he attended a school built just outside the base for the children of the aircrew. Today, since it was a Saturday, he had been there all morning. There was always something coming and going, heading over to Saddle Arabia; bulky transports, sleek fighters, hulking, ugly ground attack jets and even a few helicopters fitted with bulbous long range fuel tanks.

Now, though, he was surprised to see that the bombers of his fathers squadron were taxiing out, their white anti-flash paint gleaming in the sun. They seemed to be in a hurry, too, rolling along the tarmac faster than he had ever seen them go before.

Dad never mentioned anything last night...it must be another one of those surprise exercises he says they like to run so much.

He watched the string of jets rumble along the taxiways, heading for the far end of the runway. He counted all twelve aircraft- it was a full squadron scramble, the dozen delta-winged bombers rolling out together, the combined throb of the four jets on each aircraft clearly audible even from his distant location nearly two miles away at the other end of the airfield. Intermingled with them were bulky refueling tankers, which would be used to top up the tanks of the bombers on their way to their destination. He watched as the lead jet came to the first of the two parallel runways and continued to taxi past it, heading for its nearby counterpart. It reached it at the same time as the second bomber reached the first runway, and the two aircraft swung onto the twin strips of concrete together.

Almost immediately, Sandy Oak could hear the engines come to full power as the bombers began their takeoff roll, nosewheels squirming from side to side slightly as they accelerated at a rate belying their great size. He had never seen them take off so quickly; normally they sat at the end of the runway for a minute or more, waiting for takeoff clearance and doing final checks. Not today. Nor had he ever seen them take off using both runways at the same time- he had been under the impression that was not allowed for safety reasons.

The two bulky bombers peeled away from the ground and started to climb, a thunderous roar emerging from their engines, which used water injection to give extra power during takeoff that resulted in unburnt fuel pouring from them as streams of dirty brown smoke.
Though all of the jets looked alike, apart from a meaningless serial number on the tail, Sandy Oak jumped and waved his hooves madly, hoping his father was on board and could see him down below. The two jets roared overhead, banking away to the northwest, climbing rapidly.

Before the first two jets had even left the ground, the next two were turning onto the runways and opening the throttles. Forty seconds later they were thundering overhead, and Sandy waved again, the howl of their engines almost deafening. He stared at the awesome spectacle, his favourite sight in the world, the smoke and the fury setting his heart racing. After every four bombers, a pair of tri-engined tankers took to the sky, racing aloft and following their charges. Two by two, the delta-winged bombers raced into the air, the string of aircraft receding into the northwestern skies. Sandy watched them go, waving as they flew into the distance, waving his father goodbye.

The klaxon blared suddenly. Captain Ice Wind looked across at Fireblade. He could read the same emotions on his partner's face that were running through his own mind.

Not another bucking test...

Ice Wind picked up the red phone on his console, pen in hoof, ready to write down the authentication code.

'South Fork, Overture. South Fork, Overture.'

Overture? But the test codeword for the week is Trapdoor. Overture means...means...

He looked over at Fireblade. His expression had rapidly changed from one of mild irritation at yet another test, to one of abject horror.

'Apple, Niner, Six, Unicorn, Two, Castle, Seven, Phoenix.' He rapidly copied down the code and passed his notepad to Fireblade, receiving his own in return. They both copied the code down a second time as it was repeated.

'I-I have a valid alert code. Confirm,' Fireblade said, his voice cracking. Ice Wind glanced down at the notepad.

'I confirm...valid alert code,' he said, standing unsteadily. The two officer crossed the cramped room to the red wall safe, inserting their keys with shaky hooves. The buzzing as the safe opened startled Ice Wind, though he knew it would happen. They withdrew the two envelopes and returned to their stations. Ice Wind ripped open his envelope and tipped the contents out, scrambling to turn read from the code card and compare it to what was written on his pad.

'Apple!'

'Apple!' Fireblade replied with a wavering voice.

'Niner!'

'Niner!' I don't believe it...

'Six!

'Six!' Maybe this could still all be a test...

'Unicorn!'

'Unicorn!' Ice Wind glanced up at the clock on the wall.

'Two!'

'Two!' Fireblade's voice quivered as he spoke.

'Castle!'

'Castle!' There was no doubting it now.

'Seven!'

'Seven!' This was it.

'Phoenix!'

'Phoenix!' This was the real thing.

'I have a valid launch order,' Fireblade said.

'I concur...' Ice Wind began, before his voice failed him. He swallowed hard, seeing Fireblade's expectant face at the corner of his vision. 'Valid launch order.' He looked over at his fellow officer and they shared a long, nervous glance. The collar and front of Fireblade's light blue uniform shirt were darkened with sweat. He imagined his own was in a similar state.

'L-launch checklist,' Ice Wind said, turning back to his console and opening the red folder. They ran rapidly through the procedures, readying the missiles for launch. As they did so, the teleprinter at the side of the room began to chatter, spewing out a sheet of paper. Fireblade reached across and tore it off.

'It's confirmed,' he said quietly. 'An attack is underway...'

'Checklist!' Ice Wind said firmly, surprising himself.

'Launch Profile 6,' he read off, tapping in the appropriate code on his keypad.

'Launch Profile 6,' Fireblade repeated. 'Confirmed.' Launch Profile 6...that meant cities. St. Petershoof, maybe, or Maremansk. I don't remember...

They returned to the list, flicking switches and pressing buttons. An orange light above them on the front wall next to the clock lit up, another strident alarm tone filling the room.

The other launch control centre has already confirmed the launch. They beat us to it. Now it's all on us.

'Enter launch codes,' he said, tapping his personal code into the keypad. Fireblade entered his own, different code. Ice Wind reached for the key.

'Launch Enable on my command,' he said slowly. Shakily he inserted his key into the slot. His hoof seemed to be rebelling against him, and it took him three tries to get the key in.

This is it, he thought. I turn my hoof a couple of inches to the right, and a million ponies die.

'A-are you ready?' Fireblade called.

'On my command,' he replied. 'Three, two, one...execute.' He turned the key.

At first, nothing appeared to happen except a small icon lighting up on his console that said 'Launch Enable.' Forty seconds later, another light came on. This one said 'Ignition.'

Slowly, Ice Wind began to detect a faint rumbling, a vibration in the floor plating, that began to build rapidly. He slumped back in his chair, exhausted as if he had just run a marathon. One by one, eight red lights on the console flashed to green as the rumbling grew and the missiles hauled themselves free of their launch cradles.

That's it, then, he thought. My job is done. Probably the last job I'll ever be called upon to perform. He could not remember which cities the launch profile called for their missiles to hit. Maybe one, maybe three. Maybe Stalliongrad, maybe Maremansk. It didn't matter. The end result would be the same.

A million dead, maybe more. Celestia forgive me.

The silo doors shot open, rolling clear of the launch tubes on rails and propelled by explosive bolts, opening at the last possible moment so as to minimise the amount of time the silos and their contents were open to the skies and to any incoming attack. The Minutemares roared clear of their silos, eight missiles, lancing into the sky riding atop pillars of fire. Three seconds after launch, each missile pivoted in the sky, pitching northwest, towards the USR. Twenty seconds after launch, they punched through the sound barrier, rising rapidly. Forty seconds after liftoff they were travelling at three times the speed of sound and approaching 40,000ft in altitude, visible for a hundred miles or more in every direction.

To the launch crew, all of this was invisible. Ice Wind looked up, as if at the sky, though he could see nothing beyond the steel roof.

We're going to get hit. They're going to hit our silos. That'll probably be the end of us...

He looked at Fireblade. His eyes were closed.

'Launch confirmed,' Ice Wind said unnecessarily. 'We're done.' Fireblade nodded, his eyes still closed.

'Yeah...and so is everypony else...'

'Nine minutes, Your Highness.'

The nuclear war machine was grinding rapidly into action. Shining Armour glanced at the clock again as the chiefs of staff and the two officers in charge of the nuclear codes gathered around Princess Celestia. He nodded to her.

'Do it, Your Highness.' The Princess closed her eyes and lowered her horn. With a sudden flash of blinding white light, the circle of ponies disappeared from the war room.

They rematerialised outside of the city, the sudden sunlight dazzling them after the dim interior of the war room. They had appeared at a military airstrip maintained for the sole use of governmental aircraft. Though Princess Celestia could teleport herself and those around her, she could only do so over a relatively limited distance, and though she could fly, there were much faster means of escape available.

Permanently stationed at the airstrip was what the newspapers loved to refer to as Celestia's 'Doomsday Plane,' an Air Force jet outfitted as a duplicate of the war room and communications centre she and her chiefs had just vacated. The large aircraft was officially referred to as the TG-21 Dawnguard, the designation standing for Transport, Governmental, a militarised version of the same type of civilian airliner as the one the USR had shot down a week earlier. The four-engined jet was large enough to carry all the communications equipment necessary to run the country from the skies above it, and to house the Princess, her staff, military and civilian advisers, guardsponies and the crew necessary to operate all the equipment.

They had materialised not far from the Dawnguard, which sat idling on the tarmac, ready to depart as soon as they got aboard. Ground crew swarmed around the front of the jet, making sure to stay well clear of its inner engines, which were running, ready to get the bulky jet moving along the tarmac in a hurry. A pair of guardsponies stood either side of the mobile steps in place at the front door of the jet, and one of the aircraft's crew in his dark blue Air Force uniform stood at the foot of the stairs, beckoning furiously at them. They hurried over to the stairs. The senior guard spoke rapidly into a radio as they approached.

'Your Highness!' he said, saluting. 'We have to move quickly. Everypony else is already on board.' The late arrivals trotted quickly up the steps and into the jet. The guardspony spoke into his radio again as he and the two guards followed them up the steps.

'Sunrise is aboard, repeat, Sunrise is aboard. Get us out of here.' The group of ponies filed into the cabin and the crewpony swung the cabin door shut and locked it. The ground crew rolled away the stairs and the pilot gave a quick signal to the crew chief. He signalled back with crossed hooves, and the big aircraft began to move, almost hesitantly at first, rolling slowly towards the runway. The flight crew increased the power as they moved away and started up the outer engines. With all four jets roaring, the Dawnguard swung round onto the runway, and the flight crew opened the throttles fully. It raced down the runway and heaved itself into the air, heading south, away from Canterlot. Its flight plan would take it east, but first it had to gain height to get over the Foal mountains that Canterlot was nestled against.

In the cabin, Shining Armour glanced at the clock mounted on the wall that showed the time in Equestrian Standard. It was 11:40. Five minutes until the first predicted detonations.

Five minutes warning...

Five Minute Warning

Twilight sat on the balcony of the library, reading. The late morning sun looked down upon Ponyville through scattered, wispy clouds, casting dappled patterns on the balcony and on Twilight's lavender coat as it shone through the leaves of the hollowed-out tree. Though it was a weekend, she was busy, as usual, with her studies, the ancient, yellowed tome she was reading from the latest in a long line of such books. Spike was downstairs, tidying up the mess Twilight had made looking for it. She turned the page with her magic, listening to the sounds of the bustling Saturday market, situated in the town square in front of the library. She could hear children laughing happily, stallholders calling out to customers, music playing from somewhere. She started to tap her hoof to the beat.

As she read, she started to hear a low, distant moan, something that had not been there a moment before. Her ears pricked up, twitching.

What's that?

The moan became a braying warble and increased in volume. She raised her eyes from the book and looked out across the rooftops. She could see nothing but a couple of plumes of smoke from the factory chimneys north of Ponyville, drifting gently away from town. The ululating warble rose steadily in volume.

Is that...

She jumped slightly as the same moaning sound seemed to spring up again, much closer this time. Twilight gasped as recognition hit her like a hammer.

It is!

The air-raid sirens were sounding, all across town.

Applejack grunted and bucked the gnarled apple tree as hard as she could. It was a stubborn one; some of its fruit refused to drop, no matter how hard she tried.

'Ah, nuts...' she said, wiping sweat from her brow and glancing at her watch.

'Eh...maybe ah'll have an early lunch...' She stretched her tired back and picked up the baskets of apples she had stacked nearby and began trotting back to the barn. As she did so, her keen hearing picked up a distant wailing. Puzzled, she stopped walking and listened. Her eyes widened. She considered dropping the baskets, but changed her mind, and galloped back to the farmhouse as fast as her powerful legs would carry her.

'Applebloom!' she shouted. 'Granny!' She raced around the back of the house. Big Mac was there already, and he looked up as she galloped around the corner.

'Ah heard it too. Get yerself inside,' he said, his face not betraying any emotions. He heaved open the hatch to the bomb shelter. 'Ah'll get them.'

'Gotta get some stuff! We gotta get the radio, and batteries, a-and...ah, shit, why didn't we do all this earlier?' she shouted.

'You get the family,' Big Mac said, 'and ah'll get all that stuff. Move fast.'

Applejack dashed into the house, Big Mac following close behind. She ran into Granny Smith on the landing.

'It's the Doomsday whistle!' she shrieked. 'Ah knew it would come sooner or later. Makes one heck of a racket, don't it?'

'C'mon, Granny!' Applejack said, her voice strained. 'Get down ta the shelter! Where's Applebloom?'

'In her room, doin' her homework,' Granny Smith replied. 'Such a good little filly! She's wastin' her time, though, 'cause homework won't matter after this!'

'Go, get down ta the shelter,' Applejack repeated, then quickly moved to Applebloom's door and opened it.

'Hey, sis!' the youngest Apple said, looking up from her desk. 'What's all the noise?' She could tell immediately from her sister's face that something was wrong.

'C'mon, Applebloom. We've gotta go down ta the shelter.'

'W-what? Why?'

'There's no time ta talk about it, now c'mon!' Applejack grabbed her by the hoof and started leading her downstairs. The wailing sirens cut clearly through the air, chilling her to her core, a countdown to the end of civilization. They had five minutes- more like two and a half now. Maybe less, if the media had got their timings wrong, which was always possible. She glanced at her watch as she dragged Applebloom outside.

'Why do we have ta go into the shelter?' she asked, obviously scared. 'A-are they droppin' bombs on us?'

'Maybe...' was all Applejack could say in reply. Granny Smith was easing herself down the ladder into the shelter.

'Ah ain't as young as ah once was!' she said, seeing Applejack glancing at her watch again. Besides, it's dark down here. Ah thought ya put lights in this thing?'

'We did, but they're not turned on yet,' Applejack said. 'Now come on! Hurry!' She pushed Applebloom towards the ladder.

'Ow! Why ya bein' so rough, sis?' she asked, pouting.

'Because we don't have much time!' Applejack replied, glancing up at the sky, unsure of what she expected to see.

'Ya don't have ta push me...' Applebloom muttered.

'Just get in the damn shelter!' Applejack shouted, startling her sister, who hurriedly climbed onto the ladder and descended into the hole in the ground. Big Mac emerged from the house, a box full of household items on his back. Applejack beckoned to him.

'Alright, they're in, now come on!' she said, picking up the baskets of apples she had retrieved from the orchard and dropping them down the hole. Big Mac hurried over and pushed the box through the hole, then stood aside to let Applejack down. She quickly swung onto the ladder and lowered herself into the shelter. Her brother followed, slamming the hatch shut and locking it.

Somepony had found the light switch, and the shelter was bathed in a harsh white glow. Applejack looked round, carefully avoiding the apple baskets as she stepped off the ladder. They were probably safe, at least for now, but...what would they find when they opened the hatch again?

'That was really wonderful, Rarity. I think that mud bath was amazing!'

Fluttershy trotted along beside her unicorn friend, on their way back from the spa, their coats shiny and their hooves newly groomed.

'You're absolutely right, darling. It's the only time I will ever voluntarily let mud touch me!' Rarity giggled. 'I feel like a brand new pony. Rainbow Dash would have loved it, I'm sure, despite her protests the other day.' Fluttershy smiled.

'I know she enjoyed that face mask. She told me...oops, she made me promise not to tell you that she liked it...' Rarity chuckled.

'Don't worry, darling. I won't let on.'

'H-hey, what's that?' Fluttershy pointed with a hoof.

In the skies ahead of them, south of town, a trail of fire and smoke was climbing into the clouds.

'I-is that...' Rarity squinted. 'Is that a rocket?'

'I...I think so,' Fluttershy replied, craning her neck as the object climbed higher. Seconds later, it was joined in the sky by two more, emerging over the rooftops of the town, obviously a considerable distance away but still clearly visible. As the two mares watched, more appeared, one by one, until there were a whole constellation of them climbing into the sky, arcing northwards. Ponies in the street were staring and pointing.

'Oh my Celestia...' Rarity breathed. She knew what they were. 'Fluttershy, w-we...we need to go. Now.'

'Hmm? Go where?' the Pegasus looked questioningly at her friend.

'To the shelters,' Rarity answered, starting to breathe faster.

'Why?' Fluttershy asked nervously. 'W-What's wrong? I-is it the rockets?'

'Not rockets...missiles,' Rarity said.

'Oh my...' Fluttershy said, her voice trembling.

'Come on, darling, quickly!' Rarity said, taking Fluttershy's hoof. As she did so, the air raid sirens began to wail.

'R-rarity!' Fluttershy moaned. 'What's happening?'

'It's an attack! Come on, we have to go!' She started to drag Fluttershy along, her mind racing, trying to remember where to go. Ponyville's municipal buildings housed communal fallout shelters in their basements, some purpose-built, some merely converted from storage rooms or cellars. They varied in size and capacity, the largest being the one under the new hospital, which could hold several hundred ponies. Various privately owned buildings maintained their own shelters, including most of the factories in the industrial district and Ponyville college. There were also a number of large public shelters built under vacant lots that could each hold nearly 300 ponies, in considerable discomfort, for a theoretical maximum of two weeks.

The nearest public shelter to them was on the edge of the municipal park that had been built to try and retain some of the quaint charm of the old quarter of town. During its construction, the contractors had sunk a concrete bunker underground, big enough for 300 ponies. The shelter entrance was three blocks away, and Rarity dragged Fluttershy faster than the yellow mare could run, using her wings to flap just above the ground instead. The cacophonous moan of the sirens filled their ears. Ponies in the streets were panicking, running and screaming. Some stood and stared in shock at the fiery trails rising swiftly into the sky to the south. Some picked up their foals and ran. Some stood still, rooted to the spot with fear.

The shelter entrance was not as crowded as Rarity had been expecting. A steady stream of ponies of all shapes, sizes and ages were hurrying down the concrete steps, but there was no pushing or panic. Two uniformed police officers stood at the entrance, their guns strapped to their hips, peaked caps on their heads, urging ponies forward and into the subterranean shelter. One of them kept glancing at his watch, the other to the sky.

'Quickly, darling! Quickly!' Rarity urged as they joined the queue of terrified ponies. Fluttershy looked on the verge of tears- the wailing sirens, bawling foals and screaming mares were upsetting her far more than any thoughts of an impending attack.

'Keep moving! Come on, keep moving, no pushing! Just keep moving forward. There's room for everypony,' one of the police officers was exhorting the crowd, trying to keep them calm. It seemed to be working, and within a minute Rarity and Fluttershy were making their way down the cool concrete staircase to the slightly damp shelter. Already it was crowded, a small sea of ponies spreading out from the entrance and moving fearfully into the dimly lit interior. The walls, floor and ceiling were basic- bare concrete, with bare lightbulbs glowing behind wire mesh. Doors on either side of the main room branched off to bathrooms, storerooms and bunkrooms where the shelter's inhabitants could sleep.

Even from below ground, the siren's song rang out as clear as day. Rarity and Fluttershy followed the line of ponies shuffling forward into the shelter. Rarity could see the fear in their eyes, and in the eyes of her friend; she was sure her eyes betrayed a similar emotion.

'This isn't happening...' somepony moaned.

'Maybe it's just a test?' somepony else replied. 'Maybe they're testing the sirens, a-and they forgot to tell us about it...'

'Are you nuts? Didn't you see the missiles going up?'

'Oh Celestia, we're all going to die...'

Fluttershy whimpered beside her. Rarity grasped her hoof tightly.

'Don't worry, darling,' she said. 'We'll be fine...we'll be safe here...'

The queue at Sugarcube Corner was out the door now. Pinkie and Rainbow were busier than ever, with cupcakes and pastries flying off the shelves. Anxious ponies eyed the diminishing stock and jostled with each other.

'Good morning, Pinkie!' Cheerilee said as she reached the head of the queue. 'I'll take half a dozen cherry cupcakes, please!' Pinkie smiled as she collected the cakes and put them into a box for her. As she looked up again from the counter, she could see that several of the queuing ponies who were still outside were looking up and pointing at something.

'Here you go, Miss Cheerilee!' she grinned. 'That'll be 6 bits, please!' Cheerilee passed over six golden coins, as a strange new sound began to drift in through the open door.

'Here you are, Pinkie...what's that noise?' Cheerilee turned to look outside as the sound grew louder. Behind the counter, Rainbow Dash pricked up her ears.

'Uh oh...' she said, flapping into the air and flying over the heads of the customers to the door and hurrying outside. She followed the gaze of the customers on the street, looking up at the forenoon sky. She knew immediately what she was looking at.

'Oh, shit...' she breathed. For a moment, she hesitated, frozen to the spot. Then, she shouted,

'Everypony, get out of here! Go to the shelters, now!'

'A-are they coming here?' one of the ponies standing near her asked.

'No, those are our missiles,' Rainbow replied. 'We won't see theirs coming. Now move!' She dashed back inside and repeated her shouted instructions. The dozen or so customers broke into panicked gallops, shoving and pushing as they tried to fit through the door of the shop all at once. The wailing sirens lent a sinister air to the panicking crowd.

'Come on, Pinkie!' Rainbow shouted. 'Quickly!'

'What, Dashie? What?' Pinkie asked, bouncing excitedly.

'We have to act! There's a basement here, right?' she asked the pastel pink pony. Pinkie nodded enthusiastically, evidently not entirely clear on what was happening.

'Is it strong? Is it well built?' Rainbow asked urgently. 'Could it withstand a nuclear explosion?'

'Umm...' Pinkie scratched her head. 'I have no idea!' she said brightly.

'Ugh! Is it strong?' she asked again. Pinkie nodded.

'It looks strong! It's built with big bricks and stuff!'

'Alright, you go turn the electricity and the gas off at the mains, then get down into the cellar!' Rainbow said, hurrying over to the front door and slamming it shut.

'Why, Dashie?' Pinkie asked, confused.

'Because it will help stop fire breaking out!' the Pegasus replied, drawing the heavy blinds across the shop windows.

'Oh, right! Uh, why would there be fire?'

'Because there's going to be an attack!' Rainbow yelled. 'Now come on, move!'

'An attack?' Pinkie gasped. 'Who would do such a thing! Attacking a poor, defenceless bakery...'

'For buck's sake, Pinkie, just shut the hell up and do it! Now!' Rainbow screamed. 'Move your plot!'

Pinkie sprang into action as if she had been scalded by hot water, sprinting down into the basement.

'Wait!' Rainbow shouted. 'You gotta shut down the power first!' Pinkie's head appeared in the basement doorway.

'The breakers are downstairs,' she said, 'and so is the main gas valve, silly!'

'Alright, turn them off and stay down there!' Rainbow replied. Pinkie disappeared downstairs again, and Rainbow quickly moved into the kitchen and turned off the ovens. She cursed as she realised she hadn't been counting; she had no idea how long it had been since the sirens started. She was working on the assumption that they would have five minutes warning, though she knew that could well be an exaggeration. The USR was not that far from Equestria- missile flight time would probably be less than fifteen minutes. By the time the orders had been given and passed down to the Strategic Command launch sites, that was probably down to well under ten. Add another three or four for the launch procedures, that left about five minutes, and the missiles had already been in the air for maybe another minute before the sirens went off...

I don't have long.

She hurriedly closed the kitchen window and drew the thick curtain across it. She knew the windows and curtains upstairs were already closed- that would reduce the risk of fire. She grabbed whatever tinned food she could carry, along with the small kitchen radio, and dashed down to the basement. Pinkie was sitting in the middle of the floor.

'Hi!' she said. 'I turned off the gas and electricity!' Rainbow put down the food and the radio before replying.

'Good,' she said. Taking a quick look around, she could see that the basement was sturdily built, with thick stone walls and an equally thick ceiling. A pile of various stores sat stacked up in the far corner; that would serve as a makeshift fallout shelter.

'Pinkie,' she said. 'Get over there. Clear it out so we can crawl in under those sacks and barrels.'

'Aye aye, Captain!' Pinkie replied, as if she were building a toy fort. She trotted over and began to rearrange the stores so that the two of them would be able to just squeeze in and be shielded by the thick stone walls on two sides, and by a wide layer of sacks and crates on another, as well as above them. Rainbow dashed back upstairs. She grabbed an empty, industrial sized plastic tub that had been used to store butter and forced it into the deep sink, turning on the water and letting it fill up the tub as fast as it could.

'Come on, damn it! Come on!' she breathed, glancing nervously at the curtained window. The tub was filling agonisingly slowly. Finally it was full. She left the water running and lifted the tub out of the sink, with some considerable effort- it was heavy. She put the lid on it as quickly as she could She put the plug in the sink, allowed that to fill as well, then turned off the water and ran back down into the cellar. She slammed and bolted the door, then hurried over to Pinkie, who had been busily stacking the stores and creating a crawlspace.

'There's room for one more!' she said cheerfully, as though she were in a dream world. Rainbow hurried over and worked her way in, lying almost snout to snout with Pinkie, the space beneath the stacks of barrels and boxes claustrophobically small.

'Just stay down, Pinkie,' Rainbow said, 'and open your mouth.'

'Why? Are you gonna examine my tonsils?' Pinkie replied, opening her mouth and sticking out her tongue.

'No! Celestia, don't you even know what's happening?' Pinkie shrugged.

'We're hiding in the basement because somepony is going to attack the bakery! Right?' Rainbow sighed in frustration.

'We're at war, Pinkie! There's going to be a nuclear attack! You know what that means, right?' Pinkie nodded.

'And...they're going to attack Ponyville?' she asked curiously.

'Yes! Of course they will! It's a big town, plenty of ponies here, and plenty of industry...plus there's the dam not far away, and Cloudsdale, and the missile silos to the south...we're going to get clobbered, Pinkie. We're going to get it. We're going to get it hard.'

'Spike! Spike! Quickly! For Celestia's sake!'

Twilight was near panic. Her mind was racing, her breaths coming fast and shallow. The library had a small basement, in which she usually practiced her experiments. In the last few days since the outbreak of war in Saddle Arabia, Twilight had surreptitiously bought and stored tinned food, bottled water and other emergency supplies down there, trying to avoid alarming Spike. She didn't really expect they would actually have to use them, but, she had thought, better to be safe than sorry and then use it all for camping some time after the tension had blown over.

Now she was scared, more scared than she had been when she faced down Nightmare Moon alone.

And what about Shining and my parents? And Princess Celestia? And all my friends...

Her first thought after hearing the sirens had been to run out into town and find her friends, but she had been thinking with her heart, not her brain. She knew she had to take cover, and she knew that her friends knew that too. She and Spike might be relatively safe in the basement; on the other hand, they might not, but it was easier to run down to the basement than to run through town to a public shelter.

Spike appeared at the basement door, tottering under a stack of books that Twilight had decided might be useful, including Elemental First Aid, Edible Plants & How To Identify Them, and a tome the library had been given by the hospital, The Effects Of Ionising Radiation On Pony Physiology.

'Ohh, hurry, Spike!' she said, pacing nervously.

'I'm tryin!' These things weigh a tonne, you know...' the diminutive dragon replied, tottering down the stairs. Twilight moved to shut the basement door. The wailing of the sirens faded a little as she did so. Spike dumped the books on the floor.

'Quickly, get under the table!' Twilight said. Spike crossed the room and ducked under the sturdy oak table that Twilight used for writing and experiments. She followed and huddled under the table, her body rather more cramped than Spike's. There was room for them both, just.

'Twilight, are...are we gonna die?' Spike asked, in a voice that brought a lump to Twilight's throat.

'Not if I can help it,' she replied, with more confidence in her voice than she felt inside. She quickly cast a protection spell, enveloping the two of them, and the table, in a magical forcefield of purple energy. She had no idea what kind of protection such a spell would have against a nuclear explosion. Unsurprisingly, there had been few willing volunteers for any experiments into the effects of nuclear blasts on unicorn magic. The military and the government obviously had similar doubts- though Canterlot's magic shield would be raised as soon as the strike warning was received, they still planned to evacuate the Princesses and their staff in such an event, suggesting the military planners doubted the abilities of even the city-sized shield to withstand atomic weaponry. The forces unleashed by even a single nuclear detonation were so far beyond any magic she had ever seen or even read about, that the idea of a nuclear war terrified her more than anything else. A single warhead could destroy a town, a pair could destroy a city. A dozen could destroy a smaller nation. The USR possessed hundreds of missiles, enough to utterly annihilate Equestria, kill millions and cause untold damage to the environment and to the very structure of Equestrian civilization.

I hope the Princess got away safely, she thought. And my family...

The Dawnguard climbed rapidly, much faster than any commercial jet would ever be authorised to. In the cockpit, anti-flash shades were drawn across the windscreen. The pilot and copilot each wore eyepatches over one eye, so that, if they were blinded by the flash of a nuclear detonation, they could remove the patch and still be able to see. Once they were above the peaks of the Northern Foals, the aircraft turned east, still climbing. Ahead of them lay the eastern plains and some of Equestria's largest cities; Fillydelphia, Detrot and Manehattan.

In the cabin, Princess Celestia sat in her chair at the head of a conference table in one of the many rooms aboard the aircraft. She had been relieved beyond words to discover that Princess Luna had made it safely aboard as well. Though some in the government and the military, with the line of succession in mind, questioned the wisdom of both Princesses travelling on the same aircraft in times of crisis, Celestia herself had overruled them. Luna was her sister and co-regent, and as such she was not technically 'next' in the line of succession, since she already shared the throne equally with Celestia. Princess Cadence, upon whose shoulders the throne would fall, had been whisked away from her post in the Crystal Empire to an underground facility not far from the city, from where she would take on the responsibilities of both Celestia and Luna should the worst come to pass.

The chiefs of staff sat around the table, as well as Princess Luna and several governmental advisers, while crewponies and military liason officers stood around the edge of the room.

'First impacts expected in less than a minute, Your Highness,' Shining Armour said, looking up at the clock on the wall.

'Do we have the target predictions yet?' General Charger asked. A crewpony passed him a sheet of paper. He looked at Celestia, who nodded.

'Alright...trajectory analysis indicates the following targets,' Charger said, reading from the sheet. 'The first strikes are going to fall on our missile fields. Looks like at least 30 missiles targeted on each field. Our bomber bases are all on the target list...Hoofstead, Bucksdale, Manestrom and Marechild airbases. Five missiles apiece. ESC Command at Omareha, at least 10 missiles.' Celestia's face remained emotionless. All the missile silos and most of the airbases were located a fair distance from any sizeable towns or cities, in sparsely populated areas.

'Canterlot,' Charger said next, drawing glances from everypony at the table. 'At least 10 missiles.' Celestia closed her eyes for several seconds. 10 missiles for a city as relatively small as Canterlot was considerable overkill.

'Manehattan, 25 missiles,' the General continued. 'Fillydelphia and Baltimare, 20 missiles each. Detrot, 15 missiles. Las Pegasus...looks like 12 missiles.' He worked his way through the targets, listing every city and large town in Equestria, as well as military and civilian installations.

'Cloudsdale, one missile. Hoofer Dam, one missile. Trottingham, one missile. Ponyville, one missile...' Again, Celestia closed her eyes.

'Your Highness, we have confirmed detonations,' one of the staff officers said, holding a hoof to his earpiece. 'Three detonations so far, all on the Vanhoofer missile fields.'

'Damn it, it's really happening...' Air Marshal Typhoon said under his breath.

'Did all our missiles from there get away?' Charger asked. The staff officer nodded.

'Yes sir. They're just hitting empty silos now.'

And ponies, Celestia thought.

'The board is lighting up,' the officer said. 'Detonations all across the grid.'

'Our silos and bomber bases will be the first to get hit, Your Highness,' Charger explained. 'The initial USR attack was counterforce. After that it will be Canterlot and our command and control centres, then large cities, then...'

'I think I can follow the pattern, General,' Celestia said, closing her eyes again.

'Northern targets will be the first,' Charger said. 'They're closer to the USR so their missiles will arrive faster.'

'Are we clear of Canterlot?' Princess Luna spoke up for the first time. 'How far have we travelled?' The staff officer spoke into his mouthpiece and received a reply. The Dawnguard was banking again, turning to starboard, to the southeast.

'We are now 26 miles southeast of Canterlot, Your Highness,' he said. 'Well clear of any blast.' Luna nodded.

'Will the city shield hold, General?' Celestia asked. Charger glanced at Shining Armour, who, as head of the Royal Guard, oversaw the defence of the city.

'We...we don't know, Your Highness,' Shining said cautiously. 'There has never been a suitable test to determine the...resistance of magic to nuclear weapons.'

'Your personal opinion?' Celestia looked at him with her commanding magenta eyes.

'I...I think it can probably withstand one hit, Your Highness...but not ten.'

'I see...' Celestia sighed. So 400,000 ponies will die.

A sudden flash filled the starboard windows of the jet.

'What the buck!' Charger growled, leaping to his hooves along with the other officers and crowding round the oval windows to get a better look.

'Must be the southern missile fields,' Typhoon said. Even as they watched, another flash lit the southern horizon, half blinding those foolish enough to be staring at the location of the first blast.

'Son of a bitch!' Charger muttered, rubbing his eyes. 'We're really gettin' hit now...'

Second Sun

To those residents of Ponyville who were still in the streets, the strike on the missile fields forty miles to the south lit up the sky like a fireworks display. Despite the distance, the flash of each detonation was bright enough to blind anypony who looked at it. The sirens continued to wail and were joined by the screams of terrified ponies as the southern horizon erupted with fiery orange mushroom clouds. The detonations were silent- the sound would take a little over three minutes to travel the distance. Those who were in shelters had no idea that anything had happened, as yet blissfully unaware of the violence and fury developing to the south.

The first rumbling began to shake Ice Wind's seat. The chair was mounted on shock absorbers, as was the entire launch control centre, to cushion the blows from detonating warheads. A warning light began to flash brightly on the console.

This is it...

An alarm began to sound, an insistent beeping, alerting him to what he already knew.

This is the end...

A sudden jolt shook his chair, and he found himself reflexively gripping the armrests. He knew the launch control centre was built to withstand shock and overpressure from anything less than a very near miss. Theoretically it could even take a direct hit if the warhead was small enough. The warheads that were targeting the silo complex would be detonating in groundburst- striking on contact with, or just a few feet above, the earth, the best way to try and crack a heavily fortified or buried target like a missile silo. Ice Wind couldn't help but think of the futility of such an exercise-. Their missiles were already in the air and racing towards the USR; pounding the silos into dust would not achieve anything except to raise huge plumes of radioactive fallout as the explosions sucked up dirt from the ground.

Maybe that's the whole point...

Another jolt, more intense than the first, rocked the submerged metal cylinder. The lights fused and they were plunged into temporary darkness, before the blood red emergency lighting kicked in. The launch centre shook again. Thoughts of his family flashed through his mind.

Just like in all the stories...how cliched.

'Celestia preserve us, have mercy on your loyal subjects...' Fireblade was mumbling prayers in a terrified voice. Another violent jolt rattled the cylinder. Ice Wind could hear disturbing pinging and creaking sounds from somewhere. It sounded like they were in a submarine approaching its crush depth The deep, bass rumbling was all around them now, as though they were at the epicentre of an earthquake. He gripped the armrests for dear life, shutting his eyes tight. The most powerful jolt yet almost shook him free of his seat, despite the lap restraint that he had fastened. The sound of rending metal filled his ears, and sparks burst from a short-circuiting socket somewhere behind his left shoulder.

'Oh, sweet Celestia!' Fireblade moaned as the launch centre creaked and shuddered. Ice Wind was sure this would it, that the blast would punch through the hatch cover and the fireball would roast them where they sat. The blood ran from his hooves as he gripped the armrests, the rattling soundtrack filling his ears, the smell of burning plastic in his nostrils, the face of death in his eyes.

Slowly, the shaking began to fade, punctuated by several more sudden jolts. But they felt weaker, more distant. The launch centre rocked gently on its shock absorbers, steadily returning to equilibrium. He opened his eyes.

'I-is...is that it?' he asked nervously.

'I...guess so...' Fireblade replied, still breathing heavily. Apart from the failed lights and some smoke curling up from the short-circuited socket, the capsule seemed to have survived the attack, and, more importantly, so had they.

The horizon was awash with fire. Brown-white mushroom clouds lined the southern end of the valley, like the forest floor after a spring rain. Officer Surehoof of the Ponyville Police Department counted at least fifteen of them, towering into the sky like ponymade mountains. He stood on a slight rise half a mile northwest of town beside his police cruiser, its driver's door open and the radio grasped in his hoof. The airwaves were alive with panicked radio traffic from other officers.

'The No. 4 shelter is full but ponies are still trying to get in. Should we close it up?'

'I see them! South, must be the missile silos...sweet Celestia, there's a dozen or more!'

Surehoof had been running a traffic stop on the main road into the hills west of town when the radio had suddenly come alive with the sound of the emergency system. A digitised voice had announced Air Attack Warning Red, alerting the emergency services of an attack in progress. A few seconds later he had heard the wail of the sirens in town. He had driven as quickly as he could back towards Ponyville, until with half a mile to go he had been temporarily blinded by the first of the flashes to the south and had to pull over. In doing so he had managed to smash the front of his cruiser into a boulder, and now he couldn't get it started again.

The radio crackled with static, interference from the ionising radiation put out by the nuclear blasts. The sirens continued to moan, a mournful, final sound that chilled him to the bone. He turned away from the plumes of dust on the southern horizon and looked north. He could see Cloudsdale clearly. A string of small black dots were moving rapidly away from the floating city to the northwest- fighters from the interceptor base there, no doubt. He turned his gaze upward, to the sky above. He doubted he would see anything, but his parents had always taught him to face his fears head on.

The sky was a rich blue, scattered, puffy clouds dotted here and there. High above he could see half a dozen contrails criss-crossing the sky; probably Equestrian strategic bombers heading north on their final missions. Most of them would not be coming back; those that did would find nothing to return to and, most likely, no intact runways long enough for them to land on. As he watched, the sound from the strikes to the south finally arrived, a deep, distant rumble, like a summer storm.

A sudden, double-pulsed actinic flash blazed into life below his vision. Something much further down, near the horizon...he blinked several times and looked to the north. Another distant fireball was rising into the sky. He knew immediately where the explosion had occured. He raised the car radio to his mouth.

'Dispatch, car 23. They just hit Canterlot.'

His call was lost among the jumble of other messages. He turned back to return the radio to its cradle. As he did so, a flash backlit him. He whipped round, bumping his head on the car roof as he did so, yet another flash filling his vision. Two more fireballs, in the same location. These explosions were airbursts, the warheads detonating several thousand feet above the target to maximise the effectiveness of the blast wave against a large target like a city- the explosions to the south, by contrast, had been groundbursts. Even as he watched with shielded eyes another explosion lit the skies over Canterlot. He could see great plumes of dirt and snow tumbling down the sides of the mountains in the northern valley, avalanches dislodged by the violent groundshake and the blast waves.

Canterlot is on the side of a mountain...the whole damn city will probably come away...whatever's left of it.

Out of nowhere, his vision flashed to white. He stumbled back against the side of his car, the veins in his eyelids made clearly visible by the intense burst of light. He felt a sudden wash of heat, like stepping inside out of a cold winter's night.

'Son of a bitch!' he swore. His skin felt like it was burning. He swatted at himself with his hooves, trying to put out imaginary flames. He could hear the radio squealing and crackling with static. He blinked his eyes again and again, trying to regain his vision. Slowly the world faded back in, and he could see the source of the latest flash.

Cloudsdale was shattered and ablaze, tumbling slowly to earth like a deflating balloon. A roiling sphere of fire and smoke hung above the falling city like some kind of malignant growth. The clouds in the sky for a considerable distance around the fireball had evaporated in the heat. Unlike those clouds, however, the clouds that the city was constructed from were considerably more resilient, imbued with Pegasi magics, and most of the structure was intact, with the exception of a sizable chunk nearest to the blast that had been vapourised. He could see something moving rapidly towards him, like a brown wave. The right side of his body and his right foreleg were red, as if he had been sunbathing at the beach all day. He turned back to his car and grabbed the radio to alert dispatch, but it had gone dead. Though the emergency radio net was hardened against EMP, his car was not. He could see fires burning in Ponyville, black smoke rising above the rooftops. Fifty seconds after the flash, the blast wave reached him.

He threw up a hoof to protect his face as a blizzard of dust and stones peppered him, the blast forcing him to the ground. Though the detonation had occurred ten miles away, it felt as though he were standing out in a gale. He heard the sharp sound of breaking glass over the howling of the blast wave as the windows on his car shattered. The wind pelted him for a few seconds, then seemed to reverse direction, then gradually faded away, leaving him stunned and shaking on the ground. His ears were ringing, and his reddened skin throbbed. He rose unsteadily to his hooves, using the side of the car to pull himself up. The side windows were broken and the windscreen was cracked and covered in dust.

He looked around at Ponyville. Fires seemed to still be burning in and around the town, flammable materials ignited by the thermal pulse from the warhead that destroyed Cloudsdale. He looked up at the sky. Not expecting to see anything, he was surprised to spot something moving, something small and distant. A thin, fiery orange trail marked the passage of whatever it was.

Another warhead?

He watched it fall. It seemed to be heading straight for him, and he knew this was the end. It plummeted from the sky, He realised after a few seconds that it was not heading for the town. Instead it was falling to the west of him- the dam...?

The Hoofer Dam was visible from his current position a couple of miles away, nestled in the rocky hills. It was bound to be targeted by the USR, since it supplied hydroelectric power to the entire valley, including Canterlot. The warhead streaked towards earth and disappeared behind the hilltops.

His world erupted in an incandescent blaze that lasted a mere fraction of a second as the flash seared his retina and blinded him. After that, everything was black. He could feel himself burning, the door to a colossal nuclear furnace opening and swallowing him whole. His coat smouldered, his skin blackening, the buttons of his uniformed shirt melting into his skin. He stumbled aimlessly, in agony, bumping into the side of his car. Fifteen seconds after the flash, the blast wave reached him, and the world went silent as his eardrums burst under the overpressure. He was lifted bodily from his hooves, slamming into something, probably his car, and tumbling, end over end, rolling along the uneven ground. He felt the blast wave whip over him, projectiles being carried by the wind ripping into him and gouging deep cuts in his flesh. He felt like he was being torn apart, and he prayed for it to all be over. A few seconds later his head smashed into something, and his wish was granted.

The Hoofer Dam was solidly built, its concrete many feet thick. The warhead landed about 500 feet off target, striking a hillside above the southern edge of the dam's reservoir. The heat from the blast vitrified the sandy dirt around the point of impact and vaporised a large quantity of the water in the reservoir, flashing it to steam in a heartbeat. The surface of the dam's concrete structure melted, and the vegetation on the hills around it burst into flame. The explosion shook the ground like an earthquake, and, combined with the blast wave and the sudden hydrodynamic stress caused by the evaporation of so much water, the dam began to crack and shudder, the intakes and sluice gates buckling and bending under the pressure. The cars in the staff parking lot were hurled through the air like foal's toys, their owners buried, crushed and burned as the powerhouse and support buildings at the base of the dam collapsed, cutting the power to the valley below. High-voltage transmission lines tumbled like tinsel falling from a Hearth Warming tree, their pylons twisting and disintegrating. The thick concrete of the dam did not give way, though water began to pour through several cracks, and the top few feet of the structure were smashed to pieces. Within a second or two after the blast wave passed, the vacuum caused by the explosion began to suck air back towards the fireball, needing oxygen to fuel the burn. The afterwinds swept back towards the point of detonation, causing further destruction to whatever remained. The explosion raised a vast plume of radioactive dust that quickly formed the characteristic mushroom shape, towering above the hills and rising rapidly into the sky. Though the dam was charred, blackened and cracked, its staff dead and its generating equipment pulverised, the venerable structure itself remained standing, a wall of water held back by a wall of concrete.

The blast wave from the dam rolled over Ponyville, following close on the heels of the blast front from the warhead that destroyed Cloudsdale. Since the town was much closer to the dam than to the Pegasi city, the blast was correspondingly more powerful, although some of its strength had been attenuated by the hills that surrounded the dam. It swept across the town, ripping tiles from rooftops and branches from trees. The siren network had gone silent, knocked out by the EMP from the Cloudsdale explosion, and most of the sirens were ripped from their mountings by the blast. The few ponies still in the streets were caught by the wind and thrown to the ground. Windows shattered, and the fires that had been started by the heat of the flash were snuffed out like candles. Thousands of roof tiles were ripped from their homes and thrown across the town like confetti at a wedding. The blast, weakened by the hills around the point of detonation, was not strong enough to cause any major damage to the town, but to the residents in their shelters, it sounded like the strongest hurricane on record.

In the public shelter beneath the park, ponies huddled together in fear. Fluttershy gripped Rarity's hoof tightly as the blast shook the bunker and the wind howled above them. The shelter was overcapacity; the police officers at the entrance had been loathe to turn anypony away, and had only done so when the skies lit up over Cloudsdale, slamming the heavy steel doorway closed and ushering everypony as far back into the shelter as they could get. Ponies of all kinds filled the shelter, sitting on the floor or standing near the walls, exchanging nervous glances. Somepony sobbed loudly.

'W-was that it?' asked Lyra, who, along with Bon Bon, had managed to make it safely inside the overcrowded shelter. 'Is it over?' Nopony knew, though they all hoped fervently that it was. Trickles of dust ran from the ceiling as the vibrations began to subside. Rarity looked at Fluttershy; she had never seen the yellow mare look so frightened. She was sure her own face reflected similar emotions.

'It's alright, darling...' she stammered quietly. 'Whatever happens out there...we're safe in here.'

'Wow! The wind is really getting up! And that thunder, too! Sounds like a real bad storm coming! I love storms, the lightning always looks so cool!' Pinkie said, her face still spread in a broad smile. Rainbow rubbed her own face angrily with a hoof.

'Pinkie! It's not a storm, it's a war! Weren't you listening to me?' she said, exasperation in her voice.

'Yeah, of course I was listening!' Pinkie replied. 'Somepony was going to attack the bakery, so we had to come down here and play with this fort!'

'Celestia...no! Damn it, Pinkie, can't you take anything seriously? What the hell could be more serious than a nuclear war?' Rainbow shouted. 'We might all be dead in five minutes!' This made Pinkie's ears twitch, and her smile faded slightly.

'Oh Dashie...you worry too much!' she said, a hint of apprehension creeping into her voice. 'Besides, we're safe in this fort, right? That's why you told me to build it!'

'Yeah...we're safe...probably...'

High above Ponyville, about a hundred miles north, a sleek metal cylinder reached the peak of its trajectory. As it did so, it split in two, the rear half tumbling away through the vacuum. The front half began to rotate, reaction jets firing small puffs of gas to orient the object. It was a missile, one of the second wave fired by the USR. Unlike the first wave, these were targeting cities; similar missiles had already struck Manehattan, Canterlot and Cloudsdale, among other targets.

This missile had its target pre-programmed into its navigation software. After hurling itself from its silo it had turned rapidly away to the east, climbing high and fast through the atmosphere. The final stage of its journey was about to start. With a spray of propellent, the final stage of the missile rotated, aiming its pointed nose at the planet below. The nosecone peeled away like the petals of a flower, revealing the deadly payload beneath. A mere hoofful of the USR's missile fleet had been fitted with multiple re-entry vehicles, and they had been assigned to larger targets. Ponyville was not important enough to warrant multiple strikes, and not spread out enough to require multiple warheads, and so this missile mounted but a single, relatively high-yield thermonuclear warhead, and more than enough to destroy a town the size of Ponyville by itself.

With a silent shudder, the warhead detached itself from the missile's second stage and began to fall to earth. Though Equestria possessed no anti-ballistic missile weaponry, a spray of metallic chaff erupted from the tip of the second stage, its purpose to obscure the incoming warhead from enemy radar and spread confusion. As it fell into the atmosphere, it began to heat up, the friction of re-entry casting a fierce orange glow around it and leaving a fiery trail in the sky. It plunged down at terminal velocity, towards the green fields and forests far below.

Though it had travelled three thousand miles, the warhead was but three thousand feet off its target; the factories north of the Coltorado river. It streaked down, half a mile north of the edge of town. Barometric sensors in the warhead registered its pressure altitude; at 7,000ft, they sent an electrical impulse to the detonators, a signal for them to do their work. A fraction of a second later, they fired, igniting the high-explosive lenses that surrounded the primary stage of the warhead like the shell of an egg.

The detonation of the small explosive charges compressed the primary stage, which was made of fissionable material with a boosted fusion core. In turn, the primary released neutrons and x-rays as it was crushed and compressed. The x-rays traveled through the warhead's insides until they reached the second stage- a column of fusion fuel with a hollow fissile plug inside it. A similar situation then developed to the initial reaction; the radiation pressure from the x-rays compressed the second stage, sparking off fusion. The fissile material inside, undergoing compression, began to give off neutrons of its own, which acted to increase the yield of the device. The temperature in the second stage reached immense levels, and as the pressure wave reached the outer shell of the warhead and burst forth, at 11:52AM, a second sun blazed into existence above Ponyville.

The flash from the detonation drowned out the sky. For a second, it was if Celestia's sun ceased to exist, the flash so incredibly intense it made the valley appear to be in darkness with a single immense floodlight illuminating Ponyville. The shock front roared through the air, rapidly joined by a second, faster-moving wave that reflected off the ground beneath the detonation. The two waves merged, forming a single, powerful wall of pressure racing across the ground at near-supersonic speeds. The ground beneath the fireball liquified for a few seconds under the intense shockwave, the soil melting and fusing together, vitrifying into glass in the impossible heat.

The fireball expanded rapidly, its temperature reaching several tens of millions of degrees. The thermal radiation it gave off ignited anything flammable it came into contact with; dry grass, trees, wooden fences, and the clothing and hair of those few ponies unlucky enough to still be in the streets or standing inside near windows. Paint on the walls of houses blackened and charred; inside buildings ten miles from ground zero, curtains, books, and bedding burst into sudden flame. The metal roofs and walls of the factories beneath the fireball deformed and melted, dripping and running across the concrete floors like rivers. The workers inside the buildings, those who had not made it to the shelters, were turned to ash as their bodies combusted, exposed to the searing gaze of the fireball.

The blast wave swept across Ponyville, pulverising the factories in the north of town, smashing them into fragments and scouring the structures from their concrete bases. Though the factories had shelters constructed beneath them, the overpressure proved far too much for them to handle, and they imploded, crushing and burying the workers huddling inside. Storage tanks in the factory district burst like balloons, their contents igniting and adding to the inferno. Trucks and railcars were blasted into swirling fragments of metal. Tall brick chimneys toppled like wheat under the scythe.

The three bridges across the Coltorado river that lay nearest to the town were wiped from existence, chunks of concrete, stone and steel tumbling into the water. The shock front raced across the river, sending the water rippling and sloshing about as if somepony had just climbed out of a bathtub.

On the other side of the river sat a line of four and five-storey apartment buildings, recently constructed from brick. The blast wave knocked them down like they were made from cardboard, the overpressure caving in the walls and the following winds ripping off the roofs and spraying debris out over the gardens to the rear of the buildings.

The blast rolled across town, smashing buildings to rubble, uprooting trees, ripping streetlights from the ground like matchsticks. At the northernmost public shelter in town, the doors bowed in and gave way under the overpressure, superheated air swirling through the shelter and cooking the lungs of those inside. The blast approached the town centre and the old quarter, three miles from ground zero. The old town hall, a flimsy, six-storey circular wooden monstrosity in the town's central square, simply came apart and collapsed, trapping the mayor and her staff in their emergency command centre buried underneath.

Though the blast wave had weakened slightly by the time it reached the old quarter, the buildings there were generally weaker than those in the newer parts of town, which had been completely flattened. Here, the result was much the same. Wooden framed houses simply ceased to exist, erased from their foundations and turned into millions of lethal splinters. Those structures that were built of stone or brick fared little better, simply collapsing in on themselves instead of being ripped to pieces. The ground shock ruptured subsurface water and sewage pipes, cracked open gas lines and shattered tarmac roads like glass. At Ponyville's main rail station, a train, heavy diesel locomotive included, was hurled from the tracks, riding the shock front like a surfer as it smashed through the station building and leveled it. The old hospital building, though sturdily built from thick wooden beams and stone, crumbled like a house of cards.

The blast swept onward, passing over the municipal park and splintering all the trees contained within. In the bunker beneath, ponies screamed and sobbed in abject terror as the ground shook and the roof vibrated violently, sounding for all the world as though it was about to collapse and bury them all. The floor bucked as though it were the deck of a ship being tossed by heavy seas. The lights flickered, faded, pulsed back to brightness and then flashed out altogether, drawing a fresh round of screams from the throats of the occupants. Fluttershy shuddered and flattened herself on the ground, tears streaming down her face, sobbing. Rarity lay next to her, her eyes firmly closed, her ears filled with screams and the sounds of destruction. Dust cascaded from the ceiling in rivers, and from somewhere there came a painful grating sound, like hooves on a chalkboard.

'Oh Celestia no, please, buck no...' somepony whimpered as the roof gave an especially violent heave. Rarity squeezed her eyes closed tighter and did the same to her grip on Fluttershy's hoof.

An almighty bang rocked the shelter, and Rarity felt a wash of air pass over her. A piercing scream, sounding almost as loud as the explosion, followed almost immediately. The floor shuddered. She flinched, burying her head into the hard concrete floor, waiting for the inevitable.

The blast wave rolled on, striking Sugarcube Corner with its unrelenting fury. In the cellar Pinkie had finally stopped smiling, her customary expression replaced with one of fear that Rainbow Dash had never seen her wear before. They lay beneath the boxes, their faces almost touching in the confined space, listening to the thunderous roar as the blast wave swept over the building. Rainbow could hear the distinctive sound of splintering wood, and the equally unmistakable cacophony of the building coming down above them. Rainbow closed her eyes, then felt the unexpected feeling of Pinkie's hoof clutching at her own. She had never been so glad to feel the touch of another pony in her life.

Their world erupted into a jumble of confused snapshots as the building collapsed on top of them, shaking the cellar so violently Rainbow could imagine she was inside a washing machine. The cellar was sturdy, and so was its ceiling, but not sturdy enough to prevent the weight of the falling building from smashing through it. A sudden, ear-splitting crack and a deep rumble shook them to their bones. Rainbow felt a sudden change in pressure, and then an even louder bang made her heart nearly stop beating. Something smashed into the crates they were sheltering behind. The air was full of dust all of a sudden- thick, cloying. Rainbow coughed violently, the harsh dust biting into her lungs. She lay there, hardly daring to move and hardly able to breathe, as the crashing and rumbling began to die down. Her mouth was full of dust, her head was ringing, but for the time being, they were alive.

The blast smashed the flimsy wooden stalls in the town market into shrapnel and washed over the library. The foliage on the outside and some of the books inside had burst into flames when the warhead detonated, but these fires were snuffed out by the intense winds as the blast reached them. Though branches snapped clean off, bark fragmented and the internal construction of most of the library collapsed, the ancient, massive tree itself stood firm, assisted by whatever protection spells Twilight and the previous librarians had cast on it over the years. In the basement, Twilight hugged her assistant tightly as they cowered under the table. The banging and crashing from above them as internal walls and floors collapsed made them shiver in fearful anticipation. She had no idea exactly what was happening above ground, but the basement seemed to be withstanding the blast, although it shuddered madly and books and lab equipment tumbled from their shelves.

'We're ok, Spike, we're ok...' Twilight repeated every few seconds, as much for her own benefit as Spike's. Fighting magic-wielding ponies and fearsome dragons was one thing, but this was an attack on an entirely different level, and an attack she could do nothing about.

Having swept across Ponyville and reduced much of the town to rubble, the blast wave reached Sweet Apple Acres, five miles from the point of detonation. The barn and farmhouse, relatively flimsy constructions of wood, were annihilated, torn from their foundations and shredded. Most of the trees in the orchard were smashed to the ground, but some of the older and larger ones remained in place, stripped of their branches and bark. The Apple family huddled in their bomb shelter, listening to the sharp roar of the blast as it worked its howling path through the orchard like a timberwolf. The shelter had been built well, but it shook like a leaf nonetheless.

'Make it stop!' Applebloom moaned as dust cascaded from the ceiling. The hatch rattled unnervingly.

'It's alright, sugarcube...' Applejack said, making her voice as calm as she could under the circumstances. Big Mac sat opposite her, grim-faced, glancing up at the hatch and then down at his family.

'Ah knew this would happen someday...' Granny Smith muttered. 'Them fools up in Canterlot never did know when ta leave well alone!'

'It's the USR that started all this!' Applejack said angrily. 'They've just been waitin' fer an excuse ta do this fer years!'

'Well why did they have ta invent the damn things in the first place?' Granny Smith ranted. 'What's the point a' nuclear bombs if it ain't fer blowin' up other ponies?' Applebloom whimpered.

'They invented it ta defend Equestria,' Big Mac said in an even tone. Granny Smith laughed, throwing a hoof up and gesturing at the shelter's ceiling.

'Well that worked, didn't it?' she said sarcastically.

'It did,' replied Big Mac, 'until the other side invented the same thing.'

The blast wave finally petered out to negligible levels after travelling nearly nine miles outward from ground zero. It took less than a minute to reduce Ponyville to rubble. The roughly spherical orange-red fireball still hung in the sky like a balloon, rising and dispersing slowly. The detonation had been high enough that the dirt sucked up by the afterwinds had not made contact with the fireball and therefore not become irradiated; it was a 'clean' explosion, and there would be no fallout from it. The same could not be said of the blast that targeted the Hoofer Dam, or those that struck at the southern missile silos which, being groundbursts, had sucked up vast quantities of dirt and debris.

Ponyville lay in ruins. Fires burned in a thousand places, from small electrical fires to a raging inferno at the tank farm on the northeastern edge of the town. A dozen subterranean oil storage tanks had been ruptured by the groundshock, and their contents were blazing like torches, a filthy black cloud rising over the site.

Not a single building remained undamaged. The majority of buildings in the town were built from brick or stone; those in the old quarter were mostly wood. None of them had fared well. The only structures that had stood up to the blast reasonably well were those constructed from concrete- the new hospital, a hoofful of modern office buildings, the college and several others. Many buildings nearer ground zero had simply ceased to exist, ripped from their foundations and scattered to the winds. A pall of dust and smoke hung over the town like a brown fog. On the surface, not a living thing moved. Once the echoes of the blast had faded away, the only sounds in the ruined town were the crackling of the flames.

Ground Zero

The Dawnguard was at cruising altitude, 40,000ft above the eastern plains of Equestria. It was noon, and Celestia's sun was at its zenith, shining down on the silver wings of the jet with a wholly inappropriate cheerfulness. The Dawnguard had been joined by two Mustang escort fighters which bracketed it off each wing. The southern sky was shaded a whitish brown by a cluster of mushroom clouds, rising sharply into the upper atmosphere like tall trees towering above a meadow. Though a quarter of an hour had passed since the explosions that had caused them, the clouds still retained their characteristic shape as they continued to rise, drawing radioactive dirt into the sky.

Aboard the command aircraft, the communications room was abuzz with urgent voices. Reports were flooding in from civil defence posts and surviving military installations. Predictive computer software was already plotting the expected fallout patterns using data obtained from military and emergency ground observers on detonation type and yield. Intensities, spread, radius of contamination, everything was being estimated; if there was fallout expected in a particular area, no rescue or firefighting operations could be safely conducted there.

'Your Highness, we're starting to get confirmations through,' General Charger said, glancing down at a printout a staff officer had just passed to him. 'They've hit all of our silo fields, bomber bases, and every city with more than a hundred thousand inhabitants.'

Princess Celestia hung her head in despair as Charger read off the list of targets that had been hit, a shortened obituary for millions of ponies. Manehattan, Fillydelphia, Baltimare, Detrot, Hoofston, San Franciscolt. Canterlot. Ponyville.

'Casualty estimates?' she asked with a reluctant, almost timid voice.

'Only very sketchy predictions at the moment, Your Highness,' Shining Armour said, reading from another copy of the same printout. 'Preliminary estimates based on warhead numbers and yields...' he hesitated for a moment. 'Anywhere between twenty four and twenty eight million dead, maybe another thirty five million wounded...'

Celestia gasped involuntarily. The population of Equestria had been about to reach 80 million- now she was hearing that a third of the entire nation could be dead. The majority of Equestrians lived in cities and towns, most of which had been hit in the exchange, contributing to the high casualty projections. Shining Armour continued reading.

'Probably half of the wounded will die without immediate medical care. That's not counting fallout casualties...' Celestia cut him off.

'I don't want any more casualty reports until you have something more accurate,' she said, though she knew the eventual truth could well be far worse.

'What about our own missiles?' she asked. Charger picked up another printout.

'Four hundred sixty eight confirmed launches,' he said. 'The other twelve missiles were out of service for maintenance. Unfortunately our long-range tracking radars were among the first targets hit, so we have no information on how many of them got through at this stage.'

'Most likely they all did,' Air Marshal Typhoon said. 'The USR operate no anti-ballistic missile systems so far as we know. Apart from a few mechanical problems, they probably all hit their targets.'

Celestia didn't know whether to be grateful for that or not.

A beam of light, blinding in the darkness, stabbed into her eyes. Rarity closed them and twisted her head away reflexively. A deathly silence had descended in the shelter, broken only by the occasional sob or cough. The light moved away and Rarity opened her eyes again. Somepony had a flashlight and was waving it around.

'Is everypony ok?' he called. 'Anyone hurt?' She recognised the voice as that of one of the police officers who had been marshaling the streaming mass of civilians at the shelter entrance. He directed his torch beam into the corners of the room, illuminating terrified faces and huddled bodies. The dust that had cascaded from the ceiling hung heavy in the air. Some got into her throat and she coughed, a hacking, entirely unladylike struggle for breath.

'Help!' a strangely distant-sounding voice came from the darkness behind her. The torch beam immediately swung towards it, joined by another as the second police pony switched on his own flashlight.

'Help, please! We need...a-a medic, or a doctor, or something...' The police officers probed their way through the sea of ponies towards the voice. One of them stepped almost over Rarity, and she felt strangely comforted at seeing his badge and uniform, though she knew he was essentially as helpless as she was. At some point she had relaxed her grip on Fluttershy's hoof a little. She did not know exactly how long had passed since the shelter had stopped shaking, but it could not have been more than a couple of minutes.

'Fluttershy...?' she asked questioningly. 'A-are you alright, darling...?' She felt the hoof in her grasp stir a little.

'I...' she heard the tremulous, whispering voice of her friend. 'I think I wet myself...'

Not entirely unexpected in the circumstances...

'Never mind, darling...I'm sure you're not the only one,' she whispered back, gripping her hoof tighter again. 'And you're alive, and that's all that matters.'

The backup batteries kicked in and the dim red emergency lighting switched on, bathing the shelter in a sickly, devilish glow. Rarity could see Fluttershy's tear-streaked face, and she gave her Pegasus friend what she thought was a comforting smile. Ponies lay on either side of them; friends, families, complete strangers holding hooves with each other. Rarity turned to look behind her as she heard raised voices.

'Where are the first aid kits?' one of the police officers asked. 'Are there any doctors in here?' He got no reply. 'First aid kits!' he shouted again.

'I think I can see a store room, at the back,' another voice replied from somewhere in the hot, heaving mass of bodies. Rarity could see the two officers and two other ponies gathered around a prostrate form in one of the side rooms that had been filled with bunk beds. A length of heavy metal piping had been dislodged from the ceiling and had fallen on the unlucky pony. In the red emergency lighting, the blood on his scalp appeared black.

'First aid kits!' the cry made its way across the shelter like the baton in a relay race. Several ponies near the store room at the back of the shelter got to their hooves and began to scrabble through the shelves and boxes.

'Where the hell's the first aid kit!' the police officer cried again.

'Forget the first aid kit,' his partner said in a commanding but somber tone, 'and bring me something to cover him up with.'

The two police officers stood up and removed their caps. Rarity stared in a mixture of horror and fascination. She had never seen a dead body before. One of the other ponies took a blanket from one of the bunks and laid it gently over the body as if he were putting his infant foal to bed. Rarity thought of her family, and a terror suddenly gripped her- her parents lived in Manehattan, and her sister Sweetie was staying with them...and here she was, hundreds of miles away, unable to do anything to help them. What had happened to Manehattan? If Ponyville had been attacked, then surely Manehattan would have been...annihilated. She shuddered at the thought, fervently praying that it was not true, or that her family had somehow escaped the certain destruction.

'Anypony else hurt?' one of the cops asked. Nopony answered, so he picked his way back through the crowd towards the front of the shelter, putting his hoof on the door. He turned to address the room.

'Alright. My name is officer Hawk. I want anypony who is able bodied and feels up to it to step forward. We have a short window before the fallout arrives, and I want anyone who thinks they might be able to help with rescuing others to come with me.' He waited for a response, but nopony moved.

'Anypony who is able bodied. If you're strong, come with me. If you're a Unicorn, come with me. If you want to help, come with me.' This time a dozen ponies, mostly stallions, stood up and moved to the door.

'Anypony else?' Hawk asked. 'Any Unicorns? We will need magic.' Rarity looked at Fluttershy. She could see in her friends' eyes that she shouldn't go.

'Anypony! We need as many of you as we can get.' The other police officer was moving through the crowd towards the door too, a cluster of other ponies in his wake. Rarity looked at them, then back at Fluttershy. If she couldn't help her family, maybe she could help somepony else.

'No...' the yellow Pegasus whispered. 'Please...'

'I...I can help,' Rarity whispered to her. 'I have to help...' Fluttershy squeaked.

'B-but what if there a-are...more bombs...?'

'Then they probably would have hit us by now,' Rarity replied, with far more confidence in her tone than she felt inside. 'You heard what he said...we don't have much time.'

'Please don't leave me, Rarity...' Fluttershy whimpered. The expression on her face was almost enough to change Rarity's mind, but she knew she wouldn't be able to live with herself if she sat idly by when she could have helped save lives.

'I'll be back soon, darling...' she said, giving Fluttershy's hoof a final comforting squeeze before standing up. 'I promise.' Fluttershy swallowed hard, on the verge of tears, but she nodded. Rarity stepped gingerly through the bodies, glancing back at Fluttershy and giving her a quick smile, moving to the door, where there were now about 40 ponies gathered. She joined them nervously. She felt a little out of place among the gang- most of them were burly Earth pony and Pegasus stallions- but there were several unicorn mares, including Lyra.

'Alright. Everypony ready?' Hawk asked. Some of the assembled group nodded. He turned the heavy metal handle and swung the door open. The shelter entrance was fitted with two doors; an inner one at the bottom of the stairs, and an outer one at the top. The ponies filed through and up the stairs. Once they were all through the inner door, the other police officer swung it closed. He nodded to his partner who stood at the top of the stairs.

'Ok. Here we go. I want you all to listen up,' he said, glancing at his watch. 'We don't have much time, so we need to move fast. When you hear three blasts on this,' he held up his whistle, 'get your plots back here right away. Don't mess around, don't stop. Doesn't matter what you're doing, if you hear three blasts on this whistle, get back to the shelter.' Rarity glanced nervously at Lyra, the only other pony in the group she actually knew personally. The aquamarine mare looked back at her and tried to smile.

'We're splitting up. Half of you are with me, half of you are with officer Arrowhead. We're looking for survivors. Anypony we can round up, direct them to this shelter. Anypony you find trapped, get them out if you can. But remember, we have an hour at most.'

Hawk grasped the door handle, lifted, and turned it. The door swung open and bright, painful light flooded in.

'Alright,' he said. 'Let's go.'

'Pinkie? Pinkie, are you ok?'

Rainbow Dash coughed as she spoke. The air was thick with brick dust, so thick that she could barely see. Her friend was not visible, though she was still gripping Rainbow's hoof. The Pegasus heard a subdued spluttering.

'I-I'm alright, Dashie...' Rainbow sighed in relief. They both coughed again, the dust irritating their throats and reddening their eyes.

'Is...is it over?' Pinkie asked quietly. As much as Rainbow wanted to reassure her friend, she could not lie to her.

'I don't know, Pinkie,' she replied. 'It probably is...but I don't know.'

They wouldn't hit Ponyville more than once- it's a waste of missiles.

'Are we safe down here, then?' Pinkie asked. 'Because it sounded like the whole building just fell down...' Rainbow had an uncomfortable feeling that she was right. Certainly some part of the bakery had collapsed, and it most likely had not been able to withstand the blast. They could be trapped under tons of wood and stone. Luckily, they had shut down the gas and electrical supplies to the building before the attack, so there was little risk of fire in the wreckage. Rainbow shuffled her body backwards in the confined space, probing with her rear hooves. After a foot or so, they made contact with something. She pushed against it with her hooves. It felt like wood, firm and unyielding. Rainbow grimaced, coughed, and spoke.

'We're safe...but we're stuck...'

Ten miles south of Ponyville, a column of bright red vehicles rolled purposefully along the road towards town, strung out along the tarmac like a ruby necklace, a halo of flickering blue lights lining the front and sides of each one. As part of Equestria's emergency preparations in the days before the strike, large numbers of emergency vehicles and their crews had been dispersed from their stations, like jets at an airbase, leaving skeleton crews to act as first responders to everyday emergencies. They had been moved to outlying towns, suburbs or government storage sites, outside of potential blast and fire zones.

The Ponyville Fire Department was no exception. Battalion Chief Firebrand sat in the passenger seat of his car, at the head of the column. There were thirty one vehicles in total, the majority of the Department's fleet. The red Pegasus rechecked the manifest taped to his dashboard. Fourteen engines, the primary firefighting tool with an efficient pumping system and over fifteen hundred feet of hose. Six ladder trucks, which included one brand new tower ladder that had only been delivered a week earlier. There were two heavy rescue vehicles, giant toolboxes on wheels, loaded with equipment for every conceivable type of rescue operation. Then there were a collection of miscellaneous support vehicles- a foam tender, the Department's sole HAZMAT response unit, an all-but-useless water rescue unit towing an equally useless rigid-hulled boat, a collapse rescue unit, a truck capable of refilling spent oxygen cylinders the firefighters used in their breathing apparatus, a high-volume pumping unit and its attendant hoselayer vehicle following close behind, a mobile command vehicle, and his chief's car.

The mobile column had been evacuated to safety in the village of Clopham Junction, fourteen miles south of Ponyville where the rail lines from Canterlot to Baltimare met with those from the western cities as they emerged from the pass in the hills. The village had a large empty lot where they had parked up in anticipation of an attack, well clear of any potential target. They were billeted in the school which had closed for the summer holidays. The village's solitary raid siren had alerted the firefighters mere moments before the southern horizon had flashed white as the missile silos were hit, and they had rushed to their vehicles as the northern horizon did the same. Firebrand had grabbed the radio in his car to get in touch with the frantic voices of the dispatchers in Ponyville. The emergency radio network had been hardened against EMP, so when the Cloudsdale strike knocked out electrical systems in Ponyville the dispatchers continued to transmit orders and information, the only interruption being a loud squealing as the warhead detonated. The warhead that hit the dam produced a similar effect, as did the one that hit the town. A loud squeal of static nearly deafened Firebrand, but the dispatch centre kept transmitting until the end. He heard the rumble, the screams, the hurried final goodbyes and the shattering crash as the building came down before the radio went dead.

Now they were driving into town, into the fire and the smoke to do what they could. Even from their current distance, as they crested a rise in the road the chief could see half a dozen entirely separate conflagrations within the town that, under normal circumstances, each looked like they would have required the attentions of the entire Department. One in particular caught his attention. It seemed to be on the north side of town, probably the oil terminal. There was no way in Tartarus they would be able to do anything about that, even if they could make it there. The terminal, and several of the larger factories, possessed their own works fire brigades, but they would all have been immolated, along with the rest of his own Department who had remained behind. What they had in this convoy was all they would have to fight the fires and rescue survivors, if there were any.

Firebrand glanced around over his shoulder out of the car's rear window. His driver, Cogs, had his hoof to the floor, and they were pulling too far ahead of the leading pumper that was now several hundred yards behind them, unable to keep up.

'Slow it down, Cogs,' he urged, as the flashing blue lights of the engine faded still further in the rear view mirror. The smokey grey pony eased up on the accelerator, and the car slowed enough for the rest of the convoy to close the gap.

'I can't believe this shit...' Cogs muttered to himself. 'This is unreal...tell me it ain't happening, Chief.'

'Wish I could, Cogs,' Firebrand replied, reaching for the radio. 'Task Force One to any units on this channel. Please respond, over.' He had tried futilely half a dozen times to contact any other surviving firefighting or police units on the emergency net, but all he had received were bursts of static, interference from the ionising effects of so many nuclear blasts. This time was no different, and he returned the radio to its cradle and glanced back over his shoulder. The lead engine was right behind them now, its sirens wailing mournfully and its airhorn blaring like a train entering a tunnel. The noise was unnecessary- there was no traffic on the road. They had not passed a single moving vehicle since setting out from Clopham Junction.

Around the next bend, in a shallow depression in the ground, lay the small village of Fillymore, and the convoy of fire trucks came screaming through, making as much noise as the attack had. Anxious faces peered out from behind curtains at the procession. Ponies stood on their doorsteps, urging them on. Foals waved, seeing only the eternally exciting red engines and not wondering or knowing exactly why there were so many of them or where they were going. A couple of older ponies saluted, as if they were a column of soldiers marching off to war. They roared through the village and out the other side, climbing the shallow rise and cresting it, now just five miles from Ponyville.Seeing the town again, Firebrand felt a terrible fire in the pit of his stomach that matched the intensity of any of the flames he could see. It was his home he could see burning.

They passed a service station at the side of the road. The windows of the building were shattered, and a fire smouldered in some bushes at the edge of the lot. A little further on, they passed a small farm. The side of the farmhouse had been stove in. Telephone lines were down at the side of the road. The radio crackled.

'Engine 54 to Battalion 1.' Firebrand picked up the radio.

'Go ahead, 54,' he said. The radio crackled like a popcorn maker. In the mirror he could see Engine 54, the lead engine, rocking from side to side as it rattled over potholes in the road.

'Engine 54, should we send a unit to check that farmhouse?' Firebrand hesitated for a moment. They would need every vehicle they had once they reached the town, but five minutes to clear a farmhouse would probably not hurt them. They would almost certainly run into obstacles before they reached Ponyville, anyway.

'54, 10-4.' He glanced back at the manifest, checking which vehicle was at the rear of the column.

'Ladder 15, search that farmhouse to the left of the road,' he said. The radio grumbled and hissed before he heard the reply.

'Ladder 15, 10-4.'

As the damaged building receded in the mirror, he saw the ladder truck peel off from the rear of the convoy and swing into the farmhouse's driveway. Firebrand returned his attention to the road ahead. Trees were down in places; others were on fire. It would be a simple matter to extinguish most of them; the Department got half a dozen calls every week to burning trees, from lightning strikes or carelessly discarded cigarettes, but today it would just be a waste of water. The convoy rumbled on, closer and closer to the town. Damage was starting to become more evident now; trees were blasted bare of their leaves or smashed to the ground. A tractor in a field lay overturned and abandoned. An entire stretch of wooden fencing alongside a cottage burned with a surprising fury. Three times they had to weave their way around downed power lines that had fallen partly across the road. The radio crackled into life again.

'Ladder 15 to Battalion 1.' He picked it up.

'Go ahead, 15.'

'Chief, we cleared the farmhouse. Nopony inside. We're back on the road.'

'10-4, Ladder 15. Watch for the downed power lines,' he cautioned. The air around them was starting to become tinged a noxious brownish-yellow, smoke and gases from countless fires in and around the town. Ahead, a blanket of smoke was drifting listlessly across the road from a burning house. Cogs slowed down and they probed through. Firebrand peered out of his side window at the building. It was fully involved in fire, bright orange flames leaking through the roof tiles and out of shattered windows. There was no point in stopping; any ponies inside would be dead, and the building itself was a total loss already. They drove on, the flashing lights on the roof and grille of his car flickering inside the smoky envelope like a hellish kaleidoscope. They emerged into clear air, the road ahead littered with leaves from downed trees. Half a mile further on, the road disappeared again behind a banner of thick grey smoke, and Cogs ploughed through it like a ship smashing through a wave. On the other side, he slammed on the brakes and pulled to a stop mere feet from a frantic stallion who had appeared in the roadway as if from nowhere. Firebrand braced for the impact of Engine 54 slamming into their tailgate as it burst through the smoke, but the driver of the heavy pumper somehow reacted in time and it slewed to a noisy halt to the left of the car, its airhorn winding down slowly like a dying donkey. Firebrand grabbed for the radio.

'Task Force One, stop stop stop!' he shouted. The convoy halted, narrowly avoiding any collisions, the ladder truck following behind Engine 54 pulling up just inches from its rear bumper. He breathed a sigh of relief and opened his door. The stallion that had caused the problem was standing in the middle of the road. His coat was a light blue and his mane orange, but both were stained with soot. The right side of his face and his forelegs were a sickly reddish-black. He had been badly burned. He turned to Firebrand, agony etched on his face.

'Thank Celestia! You have to help, please! My wife is in there!' He pointed with a singed hoof at the source of the coiling smoke; another house, flames licking at the rafters. The ground floor was an inferno.

'I-I was working...in the shed, and...' the stallion waved aimlessly around him, at the sky and at Ponyville. He had been burned by the flash, not by the fire. 'W-we never heard any sirens...I-I didn't even notice the first few bombs...please, help her!'

Firebrand knew they could do nothing- the fire had taken hold of the house completely. Even if by some miracle the mare was still alive, the house was an inferno; there was no way for the firefighters to enter the house until they had doused the flames at least partly, and by the time they had done that, using up most of their water in the process, she would be dead anyway. Several of the fireponies on Engine 54 opened their doors and began to climb off their rig, but Firebrand gave them a shake of his head and a quick hoof gesture and they clambered back aboard.

'Sir, I...' the Chief began, but the stallion cut him off.

'Please! For Celestia's sake!' he cried. 'Save her!'

'Sir, we can't...' Firebrand began again, and again he was cut short.

'You're firefighters, for buck's sake! Help her, please!' he begged. Firebrand had been a firefighter for twenty years- he knew when a pony had given up hope inside, and he could tell this stallion already knew that there was no hope for his wife, despite his passionate pleas. The fires of hope had already faded from his eyes.

'Sir,' he tried again. 'Please listen to me. If your wife is in there,' he gestured at the house, 'then, I'm sorry, but she's already gone. Even if we could find her and get her out, she would be beyond help.' He looked into the stallion's eyes as he spoke, and he could see a subtle change in him. Hearing a firefighter, somepony who knew what he was talking about, confirm his own fears, seemed to trigger acceptance in him. Abruptly his shoulders drooped and his eyes welled up with tears.

'No...no...' he whispered.

'I'm sorry,' Firebrand said. His own family sprang into his mind, and he was ashamed to realise that it was the first time he had thought of his wife and daughter since the sirens had sounded. They lived in Ponyville. It was a rare occasion indeed for a firefighter to respond to an incident involving his own family, but Firebrand knew that every pony in the column had someone they cared for who lived in town- wives, marefriends, siblings or parents. This was not exactly a routine call.

'Sir,' he said. 'There's nothing we can do here. I'm sorry. We have to leave. Try and get yourself to Fillymore, you need medical attention.' The stallion sobbed, not listening, consumed by his own grief. Firebrand took him by the shoulder and led him to the side of the road, repeated his message, then returned to his car and climbed in, picking up the radio and getting the column moving again. One by one they rolled past the distraught stallion, sitting on his rump on the embankment at the side of the road opposite his ruined house.

The road wound through several bends before they came to the first obstacle. A truck had overturned, jackknifed across the road, the cab blocking one lane and the trailer the other. The driver was still in his seat, a big bloody smear on the cracked windscreen indicative of exactly what had happened to him. Cogs pulled up short of it and Engine 54 stopped behind, airbrakes hissing loudly. Firebrand climbed out of his car and the fireponies on the engine hopped down, sizing up the situation. The airbrakes of the following convoy sounded like a swarm of angry snakes as they slowed to a stop behind.

The road was completely blocked, and not even his command car could slip through until at least the cab of the truck had been moved. He trotted over to the engine crew.

'Get that cab hooked up to your winch,' he instructed the Lieutenant in charge of the engine. 'Clear the road!' Each fire engine had a heavy-duty winch mounted to the front, and the crew quickly attached it to the truck's cab. The driver keyed the winch and the heavy cable began to wind itself in, dragging the truck's cab, leaving grooves in the tarmac as it moved clear of the right-hand lane, opening up a path for the convoy to take. Once the lane was entirely clear, the crew unhooked the cab from the winch and they set off again, Firebrand's car in the lead, the other vehicles strung out behind.

Firebrand tried again to contact other units on the radio which still crackled with interference. Still he received no response. They rolled on until they came to another obstacle, now just three miles from the edge of town. Here there lay an old bridge across a small stream. Though it was a narrow, shallow brook, the road still needed a bridge to carry it over the water, but this particular span had been unable to withstand the forces exerted on it and had crumbled into the stream below.

Cogs pulled up short of the bridge and Firebrand got out to take a closer look. The bridge deck had collapsed into the water; it looked like a clean break at both ends, a pancake collapse of the entire span. The old structure had not been able to cope with the ground shake that followed the explosion. Firebrand looked up and down the riverbank, looking for somewhere shallow and smooth enough for the vehicles to ford across. The stream was but a few feet wide, but it lay in a shallow gulley. Most of the firefighting vehicles had a sufficiently long wheelbase that they would probably ground if they tried to cross. He looked to his right. Slightly upstream from the bridge was a relatively flat section of the river course; it looked free of boulders, and the slopes on either side could be smoothed out easily enough with the shovels and other tools on board their rigs. A group of hardy-looking trees on the other side of the potential crossing site had been blasted clean of most of their branches and bark. Firebrand turned back to the crew of Engine 54, who had dismounted again.

'Break out the shovels!' he ordered. Cogs climbed out of the driver's seat, and Firebrand turned to him. 'Go tell the rescue companies that we're gonna need their timbers and some of their rope.'

Applejack looked around the shelter, bathed in harsh white light from the bulb in the ceiling that had mercifully survived intact. Her family huddled in the cramped confines of the shelter, their expressions covering the full range of emotions; Applebloom was afraid, Granny Smith was angry, Big Mac was as stoic as ever. Idly she wondered what her own face looked like. It had been a good ten minutes since the shaking had stopped. She locked eyes with her brother, who gave the slightest nod. She picked up her stetson and placed it firmly on her head.

'C'mon, big brother. Ponies need our help.' The farmpony stood up. Applebloom looked on in confusion.

'Where are y'all goin?' she asked, with fearful eyes. 'Ya can't go outside!' Big Mac got to his hooves too.

'We have ta go help,' he explained. 'We'll have about an hour before the fallout arrives. Gotta do what we can.'

'You two go,' Granny Smith said. 'Ah'll look after Applebloom.' Big Mac nodded at her, and Applejack gave her sister a quick hug.

'Don't you fret, sis,' she said. 'We'll be back before ya know it. Just keep this hatch closed until we get back.' Big Mac climbed halfway up the ladder and threw open the hatch with a metallic clang. He climbed a little further, sticking his head over the hatch ring and taking a thorough look around, before continuing his climb and leaving the shelter. After a final glance back at her sister, Applejack followed him up.

'Is that it, Twi?' Spike asked nervously, huddling against the unicorn under the heavy desk. They had ridden out the storm- though the tree above them creaked loudly, it was still standing, and the basement was essentially undamaged. Books and scientific equipment were strewn across the floor, but other than that, nothing untoward seemed to have happened in the microcosmic world of the basement. Twilight peeked out nervously from under the edge of the desk.

'I...I think so...' she answered Spike's question tentatively, half expecting another shattering explosion to spring into life and prove her wrong. Nothing happened. The tree creaked, and she could hear the distant tinkling of glass, but no more explosions. She risked moving out from under the desk, and got to her hooves, looking around the disheveled basement.

'Everything seems alright down here, Spike,' she reassured the cowering dragon. 'I'll go check upstairs...'

'No!' squeaked Spike. 'Don't go up there, Twilight! I-it's dangerous!'

'I won't go outside, Spike,' she replied. 'I just want to check that the library is safe for us to stay in.' Spike swallowed nervously.

'Oh...well, alright...just be careful!' She nodded and trotted up the steps to the basement door. Using her magic, she turned the knob and the door began to swing slowly open. Dust curled in through the doorway. Twilight poked her head through and gasped.

She had been expecting damage, but the library was in ruins. Every window was shattered, and the floor was littered with books, some charred and some still smouldering. The second floor, including her bedroom and bathroom, had completely collapsed, now nothing more than a pile of matchwood. Water spewed from a broken pipe, pooling on the wooden floor. She took a few steps out into the main room. Glancing up, she could see a hole ripped in the side of the library facing the blast, where the balcony had been. Smoke wafted in through the gap in the wall, from some unknown source outside.

Her brain was running on instinct, and she was moving automatically, trying not to think of anything other than accomplishing her task of checking the rest of the library. Twilight picked her way over broken planks and smashed tables. The front door was missing, but one of the heavy bookcases had fallen across the doorway. She trod carefully and made her way to the kitchen, which was in no better condition. The wall-mounted cabinets had torn away from their mountings and their contents lay scattered across the floor and the worktops. Twilight could smell gas, and she nervously but hurriedly reached for the gas shutoff under the sink. Mercifully, there had been no fire. She peered out of the kitchen window, but black smoke was blowing across the street and she could see little.

Using her magic, she quickly gathered up a few useful items from the spilled contents of the cabinets- what little tinned food she had not already moved downstairs, a spare can opener, a roll of paper towels. She quickly trotted back to the basement and placed the items at the bottom of the stairs. Spike had emerged from under the table and was trying to keep himself busy by tidying up some of the books and equipment that lay scattered on the floor. He glanced up nervously as Twilight returned, but his face quickly flashed with relief when he saw her.

'H-how is it up there?' he asked. Twilight remained at the top of the stairs.

'It...it's pretty bad,' she said simply, unsure how to cushion the blow. 'I don't know what it's like outside, though. I haven't been to check yet.'

'Well don't!' Spike replied. 'It's dangerous outside! That's what you said!'

'I know, Spike,' she said. 'I know what I said, but there will be ponies out there who need help. Maybe...maybe our friends...' Spike swallowed.

'From what I understand, there won't be any radiation here for a while after the attack,' Twilight continued. 'I...I won't go out there for long. Just to see if I can help...or find our friends, or...' she trailed off. Spike remained unconvinced.

'But...it's dangerous, Twilight. You said so. You said we would have to stay in the basement for a week, maybe two!'

'I know, and we will, but it'll be alright if I go out for just a little while,' she said softly. 'If I can help somepony, then it's worth the risk.' Spike frowned, then nodded slowly, knowing it was hopeless to argue with Twilight once she had made her mind up about something like this.

'While I'm gone, I want you to collect as much water as you can. There's a leaking pipe upstairs. Fill anything you can use with water; bottles, saucepans, anything, and bring them down here to the basement. The water might stop flowing at any moment, so try and move fast, but be careful. The wreckage doesn't look entirely stable.' She fired the information at Spike and he looked dazed for a moment as he processed it. Then he nodded again.

'Water, right. Gotcha. Just...be careful out there, Twi.' She smiled down at him.

'I will. And you be careful up there.' She gestured behind her. 'We need that water, but we don't need you getting hurt.' Spike forced a smile back at her, and she turned to leave.

The front door of the library was blocked by a fallen bookcase. Twilight enveloped it in a magic field and heaved the heavy unit out of the way with considerable effort. The doorway clear, Twilight took a moment to gather her composure, then stepped outside.

It took less time than Firebrand had expected to get the mobile column across the stream. It had been a relatively simple matter to smooth out the crossing point and lay some of the timbers the rescue vehicles carried to prop up damaged buildings. The vehicles used them as makeshift ramps to get up the side of the gulley and back onto level ground, from where they pulled back onto the road to wait for the rest of the column. Firebrand's car had been the first vehicle across, to test the stability. Every vehicle had made it across, even the particularly lengthy tower ladders, without grounding, and with a quick radio signal Firebrand got the convoy moving again. The closer they came to Ponyville, the more damage there was- trees torn from the ground, overturned cars and shattered buildings, a remarkably intact but abandoned bus. Firebrand saw no signs of life; other than a few dead motorists in their wrecked vehicles, he saw no ponies at all.

They were barely a mile from the edge of town now. Twice Engine 54 had to use its winch to drag fallen tree trunks out of the way. The fires burned brightly ahead of them, a halo of flames turning the sky above Ponyville a rich orange. Firebrand could see that what he had at first thought were half a dozen large blazes were actually each made up of dozens of smaller fires. Though the blast wave had smothered most of the fires that had spawned from the flash of the detonation, some had remained smouldering in the wreckage and had ignited; other had been caused by candles, electrical shorts, and other secondary sources, including what were termed 'sympathetic detonations;' explosions caused by the effects of the blast, from gas leaks, propane tanks and tanker trucks bursting in the heat or ruptured by flying debris. Firebrand knew that things were not as bad as they might yet become. Though there were plenty of fires, it was not yet a firestorm, when self-sustaining winds caused by the flames sucking in oxygen would cause the fire to grow uncontrollably and consume what was left of the town. Most likely, it would not become one- most of the town was rubble, and rubble does not burn. Even in the old quarter, where most buildings were wood and many had thatched rooves, most of the fires had been blown out by the blast wave and falling buildings. There was a light but stiff breeze blowing, ideal weather conditions for a potential firestorm to develop, but Firebrand was confident it would not come to that.

They passed several cottages. None of them had rooves. Electricity pylons and telephone poles had been snapped like twigs. The rail line ran alongside the road here; the Sunrise Limited, the Canterlot-Baltimare express train, had been thrown from the tracks. Its ten carriages lay scattered like dominoes. One of them had passed completely over the road and lay upside down and crumpled in a field on the other side. The heavy diesel power car had been lifted bodily from the tracks and tossed aside, where it had smashed through a small clump of trees before coming to rest. Here, there would almost certainly be some survivors.

'Task Force One, stop stop stop!' Firebrand ordered into the radio. Cogs pulled the car into a short lay by and Firebrand climbed out. Engine 54 was close behind, swinging off the road into the lay by to allow the following ladder truck by. Behind that came Rescue Company 1, the first of the two heavy rescue vehicles. It pulled ahead and stopped near the train car that had been thrown across the road. Several other engines pulled ahead and stopped near to the crash. The rest of the convoy stopped behind, their crews dismounting. Firebrand reached into the back seat of the car and grabbed the portable radio.

'Alright, everypony check the train for survivors!' he said. 'Triage them. Forget about the red tags. Walking wounded only!' Giving the order caused him physical pain in his chest, but he knew it was the only thing that could be done. Red tagged triage patients were those with severe trauma- internal bleeding, broken necks, crush injuries. They were also the ones who would not make it without immediate medical care of the kind the firefighting column simply could not give them. To help ease their suffering would distract the fireponies from rescuing those who actually had a chance of survival; the yellow and green tags, for moderate and minor injuries respectively. It would also use up their precious, limited medical supplies. Each firepony was trained in first aid and lifesaving techniques, but they were not paramedics, and certainly not trauma surgeons. There was only so much they could do.

Firebrand picked up his helmet from the back seat of the car and placed it on his head, fastening the chinstrap as he did so. Ponies from the other engine and ladder companies were cantering past with axes and pry-bars in their hooves and heavier equipment on their backs- chainsaws, hydraulic cutters and stabilising blocks. The crew of Rescue 1 were unloading jacks and inflatable airbags, all of which would take more time to deploy and use than they realistically had. He glanced at the radiation detector taped to the outside of his car's windscreen. Each vehicle had one. Fallout was coming; not from the local explosions, but from those to the south. The winds were blowing north steadily, and looking back Firebrand could see the dust clouds still rising into the atmosphere. It was coming their way, and they would not have long.

'Forget all that stuff!' he shouted to the rescue crew. 'We won't have time for it. Just get anypony out who you can free inside ten minutes, then we're moving on.' He passed the same message over his portable radio. The firefighters got to work, climbing into the wrecked carriages. Firebrand checked his watch. They really shouldn't have stopped at all- their mission, according to the town's civil defence plan, was to get into Ponyville and rescue survivors there, not on the outskirts, especially since they were working on a tight schedule before the fallout arrived. The first hour, the so-called 'golden hour,' was vital in medical and rescue operations, and in this case, an hour was all they had.

Considerably less than an hour now, he thought. Unless those winds change.

The fireponies were swarming over the carriages now, like flies on a carcass, scything through the thin metal of their frames with their tools. Firebrand could hear the groaning creaks as they cut, snipping the metal and then spreading it with hydraulic rams. He checked his watch again. The fallout would be spreading like a blanket across the valley, unless the winds aloft were different to the wind at ground level. The crew of one of the engines bustled past him carrying first aid kits, their nervous faces peeking out from under their helmets. Another glance at his watch, though mere seconds had passed since he last looked, like a foal waiting for school to end. The radiation detector on the car showed no change.

'Medics!' somepony shouted from the wreck of one of the carriages. 'We have survivors!' The crew with the first aid kits changed tack and headed for the source of the shout. Firebrand joined them. They reached the carriage, which had rolled along the rail line and still lay on the track bed, and Firebrand clambered in over broken shards of metal.

The train car was a mess. The shatterproof windows, designed not to spray glass over the occupants in a crash, had been knocked from their frames, spiderwebbed but intact. One of the bogies had been pulled clean off the underside of the car and lay in a shallow dent in the ground some forty feet away, one of the wheels, absurdly, still spinning slowly, as it would in a newspaper cartoon. The skin of the car had buckled and been ripped open in places as it cartwheeled across the ground, and the roof was a foot lower than it should have been, but the framework had stood up to the beating and the passenger compartment had not been crushed. It had, however, been shaken to pieces. Seats had been dislodged from their mountings and luggage and its contents lay sprawled across the aisle like the inside of a young stallion's bedroom. There were not many passengers- the Saturday 11:00 service to Baltimare did not attract many customers in Canterlot, nor did many ponies climb aboard at Ponyville. In this carriage there were eight passengers. Five were obviously dead, slumped in their seats or lying limp in the aisle. The train conductor was also dead, his abdomen crushed between the rear bulkhead and a seat that had come free and pinned him there.

Remarkably, three of the passengers had survived the tumbling whirlwind of the train's derailment. There was a grey-coated stallion trapped by his hind legs where the seats in front of him had buckled and locked him down like a pair of manacles. There was another stallion who seemed to be impossibly unscathed- his green coat was stained with a few minor cuts, but that was all. Lastly, there was a young yellow mare, about the age of Firebrand's own daughter, and her image flashed into his mind again as he saw her. She was alive, though Celestia alone knew how. Four fireponies were gathered round her, squatting or standing awkwardly among the seats. The violent crash had thrown her from her seat and into the aisle, where she lay atop a layer of clothes that had spewed from a crumpled suitcase. At a glance, Firebrand could see that her forelegs were broken, the unnatural angle of the limbs making her look like an artist's poseable mannequin that somepony had been messing with. Something had opened a deep, oozing gash on her stomach, as if she had been slashed with a sword. She was breathing, though barely, and it came in ragged, bubbling gasps.

'She's in shock,' one of the fireponies said. 'Pneumothorax. Collapsed lung.' Her chest was bruised a rich red- Firebrand guessed she had smashed into something that had broken her forelegs and cracked into her chest and broken at least one rib, which had then punctured her lung. He moved closer.

'We have to relieve the pressure!' the same pony was saying. Firebrand saw the black insert on the front of his equally black helmet with a large silver '22' stenciled on it; a member of Engine Company 22. One of his colleagues, newly arrived with the first aid kit, opened the red bag and rummaged inside it, withdrawing a large-bore needle in a sterile plastic wrap.

'Wait, remember her neck is broken!' another firepony, balanced awkwardly between two rows of seats, cautioned. 'Where's that spinal board?' Firebrand picked his way over scattered luggage towards them. He could see the mare's eyes. They were dull, faded, as if her spirit were leaving her, and her face was contorted in silent agony. Her could see a distance in them; she knew she was dying. Firebrand knew it too, and he knew there was nothing the ill equipped firefighters could do about it. They could decompress her chest cavity by puncturing it with the needle, and they could stabilise her neck and spine, but there was blood on her breath; she was bleeding internally, probably in more than one place, and there was nothing they could do for that. All they could do was give her morphine, and let her die quietly.

Firebrand approached the firepony from Engine 22 and shook his head slowly. He looked up at his Chief, confused, then back down at the casualty. Again it hurt him to say what he had to say, but he said it anyway.

'Red tag,' Firebrand said. 'Nothing we can do.' He looked at the pony holding the first aid bag in one hoof and the needle in the other. 'Give her some morphine,' he said, 'and move on.' The group of fireponies looked at him in a haze of uncertainty.

'But Chief...' one of them said. Firebrand shook his head again, more firmly this time.

'Red tag,' he repeated. 'We can't help her, and even if we could we couldn't keep her alive for long. Go and help those guys.' He gestured with a hoof to three other firefighters who were trying to free the trapped stallion. They looked down at the mare, struggling for breath, blood flecking her lips. The pony with the first aid kit replaced the needle and took out a morphine syrette instead. He glanced at Firebrand, who nodded, and then he removed the plastic cover from the needle and stabbed it into the mare's thigh. The expression on her face softened slightly. The fireponies stood up and shuffled through the carriage to the trapped stallion, all except the member of Engine 22 who had been the ringleader. He remained crouching by her, holding her hoof tenderly, as though they were lovers on a moonlight stroll. Firebrand thought he knew why- he recognised the expression in his young eyes. She reminded him of somepony he knew; a sister maybe, a marefriend most likely. Emergency personnel were supposed to maintain a certain detachment from the victims they assisted, but Firebrand knew how hard that was, especially in a situation like this. After all, she reminded him of his own daughter.

He crouched there, with Firebrand standing over them, as she gave her last few wheezing breaths, and then she lay still. He closed her eyes softly with his hoof, then stood up, not looking at his Chief. No doubt he would blame Firebrand for her death; he gave the order. But soon enough, he would have a moment to think, and he would realise that there was nothing they could have done for her anyway, and that he had given her the only comfort they could provide- he had made sure she was not alone at the end. Slowly, he picked his way over to the others. Firebrand followed.

The grey-coated stallion was trapped by both hind legs, crushed beneath the metal frame of the seats in front. It didn't look like they would be able to pull him free; three firefighters had been trying to do so since Firebrand had entered the carriage. The seats wouldn't budge. Perhaps with the hydraulic spreaders they could 'lift' the seats off of him; failing that, they would have to amputate his legs. The stallion had not been trapped for that long, nor was the weight of the seats particularly high, so there was relatively little danger of so-called 'crush syndrome,' where a sudden release of pressure on a damaged extremity caused a sudden release of potassium and other toxins that could cause near instantaneous kidney failure and death in an otherwise healthy crush victim.

'How are we doing?' he questioned the group of fireponies. He recognised Lieutenant Searchlight of Ladder 4, who was attempting to shift the seats with a crowbar. He looked up, breathing heavily from his exertions.

'Not good, Chief. Can't shift the damn seats, not by hoof, anyway.' He wiped sweat from his brow. 'Can we get the spreaders in here? There's no danger of fire.' Firebrand nodded.

'Do it. We don't have much more time. Once you get him out and treat him, get back to your rigs.'

'What do we do with him?' Searchlight asked. 'We can't just leave him here. Where's the medical column?'

The column in question had been evacuated to the village of Maneston, a few miles southwest of Ponyville, and, according to the emergency plan, should have made contact with the firefighting task force and agreed on a rendezvous point to meet up with them. So far, Firebrand had heard nothing from them. The column consisted of most of Ponyville's ambulances, several logistics vehicles stocked with drugs and other medical supplies, a mobile operating theatre on the back of a truck, and a 'mobile treatment unit,' basically a bus with the seats stripped out and blue lights stuck on the roof, used for treating large numbers of walking wounded. There were a group of civil defence vehicles attached to the column too- more ambulances, decontamination vehicles and a communications unit, which should, in theory, have made contact with the firefighters via radio. The fact that they hadn't could mean there was too much interference, that their radios had been knocked out by EMP, or something far worse.

'We'll have to get all the survivors to safety,' Firebrand said, trying to think of a solution. The answer had crossed his mind moments earlier- the medical column's treatment unit. They had passed a bus that seemed mostly intact half a mile back down the road. It had been abandoned, its windows shattered and the driver missing. If they could get it going, they could load the survivors into it and take them back to Fillymore, where there was at least a small clinic that might be able to give them some care, which was better than nothing. Firebrand keyed his radio, which he had clipped on to the lapel of his jacket.

'Battalion 1 to Engine 8,' he called. 'Get back down the road to that bus we passed and bring it back here to the crash site.' A crackle of static, then a curt acknowledgement. Firebrand turned back to the trapped stallion. A set of hydraulic spreaders had been brought in, and the seats were being slowly bent out of shape, buckling their frame and lifting it off the legs of the stallion. They were horribly mangled and bloody, but when they pulled him free it almost seemed like he would be able to walk out on his own. He tried to stand up, but collapsed back into his seat, grunting.

'Whoa, whoa, what are you trying to do?' Searchlight said to him. 'Stay still, we'll get you out of here.' The grey stallion nodded listlessly, and the firefighters lifted him from his seat and carried him out of the carriage. Firebrand looked around. The body of the mare lay still in the aisle. There was nothing more to be done in this carriage. He climbed out of the same empty window that he had entered by, the gravel of the track bed crunching under his boots. The fireponies were crawling over the train cars like a swarm of bees, an image enhanced by their black turnout gear and helmets with yellow visibility stripes. His watch told him they would have to move as soon as the bus arrived.

No sooner had the though crossed his mind than he heard the grinding of gears as the bus rounded the corner, followed by Engine 8. It was not a firepony at the wheel. He trotted over to the edge of the road where the bus pulled up with a hiss of airbrakes. The doors slid open with a sigh.

'Are you the Chief?' the bus driver asked. Firebrand could see he wore the uniform of the bus company- he must have abandoned his charge during the attack and hidden in a nearby ditch or behind a wall, then emerged when he heard Engine 8 pull up.

'That's me,' he replied. 'Turn it round now if you can, then just park it here and wait. When you get the signal, drive back to Fillymore, to the clinic.' The driver nodded stoically, as if this were the most normal route he had ever driven. The bus pulled forward and swung in behind his parked car to turn round. Firebrand gave instructions into his radio, and a cluster of injured ponies were helped towards the bus, which pulled back onto the road facing the other way. Firebrand counted fourteen survivors; not exactly a huge number, but many of those would not have survived without their intervention. The fireponies loaded them onto the bus. When they were all aboard Firebrand gave a signal to the driver, who threw him a quick salute and gunned the engine. The bus groaned away towards Fillymore. Firebrand turned his attention to Ponyville.

The cloud of smoke over the town had become thicker and dirtier, the fires burning out of control. Even if they could make it into the town, they would almost certainly find there was little or no water pressure in the mains, not enough to fight fires with. They would be limited to the onboard supply of the engines, which totaled a few thousand litres, an almost wholly inconsequential amount. They may as well just piss on the flames, for all the good it would do, but at the very least they had to try.

'Mount up!' Firebrand said into his radio as he climbed back into his car. 'Reform the column and follow me.' The firefighters collected their tools and clambered back aboard their rigs. A chorus of throaty roars filled his ears as the convoy started their engines. Cogs pulled the car back onto the road and they set off, the other vehicles following behind, heading towards the fires that used to be their home.

Surface Tension

Applejack poked her head through the hatch ring, looked around, then climbed warily up, pulling herself onto the earth that covered the shelter. She looked around for the comforting red lump of her brother, who stood nearby. He was just about the only thing she recognised. The farmhouse was gone. Not just flattened, but completely gone, the wooden structure scoured from its concrete foundations and sprayed across the yard and the grass behind like confetti. A similar fate appeared to have befallen the barn, for there was no sign of it, or the water tower that used to stand on a small hillock to the rear of the farm. Most of the trees in the orchard had been blown down, although there were still a few standing, and most of the trees that screened the road from the edge of the farm were still upright, minus their upper branches, protected from the full force of the blast by a slight rise in the ground in front of them. Applejack's mouth fell open. It was as though she gazed out on an alien landscape. A giant anvil of black smoke rose above the town, blotting out the sun and the northern and eastern horizons.

'Sweet Celestia...' she breathed softly. There was nothing left of the farm; their livelihood, their business and their home. Judging by the smoke and flames to the north, there was not much left of the town either. She slammed the shelter hatch closed and trotted over to stand by her brother, who was looking up at the smoke. After they stood rooted to the spot for a couple of minutes, Big Mac spoke.

'Ah don't think we'll be able ta get into tha town,' he said grimly, 'but we can help ponies around the edge.' Applejack was seized by a sudden panic.

'We have ta try! Mah friends are in there!' she shouted.

'Ah know, mine are too,' Big Mac replied. 'But ah don't think we'll be able ta get into the town centre.' Applejack looked up at the smoky plume again, then back down at her brother.

'We can try,' she said quietly. He nodded.

'We can try,' he repeated. Then he turned and started off towards the dirt driveway that led to the front gate of the farm. Applejack followed him. She could hear a distant rumbling that could have been the crackling of the flames. It made her desperately nervous. There was another sound too, a cacophony of distant moans and wails that could have been the voices of the dying, had they not been the only ponies on the farm. It sounded almost like the air raid sirens; no, not them, but sirens nonetheless.

'Do ya hear that?' she asked as they hurried across the bark-strewn farmyard. Big Mac nodded. They skirted the concrete slab that had formed the base of the farmhouse. A few mangled pipes jutted up from the smooth surface; until half an hour ago they had been connected to the farmhouse plumbing. They trotted towards the gate. The insect-like buzz of distant wails was growing louder.

The wooden sign at the gate that read 'Welcome To Sweet Apple Acres' lay flat in the mud, cracked down the middle and missing several letters. The two siblings stepped onto the dirt track that led from the farm to the main road. From here they could see down the gently sloping hill to the town below.

Ponyville lay under a sea of roiling black smoke. Flames licked at the sky from countless locations, as if they were staring at a colossal fireplace. Applejack looked for recognisable buildings; the town hall, the old hospital, the twin chimneys of the plastics factory. The only thing she recognised was the squat bulk of the library, the trunk of which seemed to be intact.

'Let's go,' her brother growled. Applejack hesitated. From what she could see, there would be nothing they could do. But she followed him anyway. They ran down the track, their hooves kicking up dirt. The moaning wails were unmistakably getting nearer, a cluster of sounds, like a swarm of angry hornets. Applejack followed Big Mac to the road. Here again she hesitated.

'Where do we go?' she asked. 'Who do we try an' help?' Big Mac looked around for an answer.

'Ah don't know,' he replied. 'Whoever we can find...'

The wailing came nearer, mournful moans punctuated by the occasional blasts of what sounded like foghorns. Applejack looked towards the source, her right, down the road, away from town.

'What in tarnation is that?' she shouted. Her question was answered a few seconds later. A car rounded the corner in the road, followed closely by a bulky red fire engine, a blizzard of lights on its roof and grille blinking like flashbulbs. Behind it came a longer fire truck, its ladder bouncing sharply as it bumped around the potholed corner. Another followed, then another, and another. Applejack watched from the roadside as they rolled closer, a string of vehicles painted red and trimmed with white.

The car sped past them, a grim-faced stallion at the wheel and an equally stalwart pony in the front passenger seat speaking into a radio and sparing them but a single glance. The fire engine roared past, a white number 54 painted on its front bumper and side door, its engine thrumming and its siren wailing. Behind it came the ladder truck, airhorn blaring like a train, a large Equestrian flag flying from its back end, fluttering in the breeze. Applejack watched with a curious mixture of pride and helplessness as the firefighting vehicles thundered past. She glanced back up at the pillar of smoke overhanging the town, and couldn't help but feel that the fireponies would be as helpless as she was once they got there.

She watched them roll by- a string of engines and ladder trucks, followed by a group of more unusual vehicles, most of which she had never seen before and the functions of which she would have been at a loss to identify had they not been written on the sides. She read the names as they passed by; 'Hazardous Materials Company 1,' 'Foam Tender Unit,' 'Mask Service Unit,' 'Mobile Command Vehicle' and several others. They all sounded impressive, but she doubted they could have much impact on what was left of the town. The very last vehicle in the convoy, a regular, familiar fire engine, slowed to a stop in front of them with a hiss of brakes. The side window was rolled down, and a helmeted head popped out.

'You folks ok?' the firepony asked. 'Need any help?'

'We're fine,' Big Mac replied. 'In fact we were lookin' ta see if we could help down in town.' The firepony looked them up and down, then nodded.

'Well I think we're gonna need all the strong hooves we can get. If you want to help, climb aboard.' The rear crew door of the engine opened. Applejack climbed up into the cab behind the driver. It smelled faintly of rubber, from the masks and tubes of the breathing apparatus that hung on the rear bulkhead. There were four fireponies in the rear cab, wearing their high-collared bunker gear, their helmets clutched in their laps. There was just enough room for Applejack and her brother to squeeze in. Big Mac shut the door behind him and the fire engine started off with a jerk.

'Welcome aboard,' one of the fireponies grunted sardonically. 'One way ticket straight into Tartarus.' Applejack could see out of the windscreen from her seat, and his comment seemed all too apt- all she could see was fire and smoke.

Rarity followed the rest of the group up the concrete steps and out through the door. Her eyes took a few seconds to adjust to the light, and when they did she wished they hadn't. Devastation, all around her. The three-storey shop that had been directly across the street from the shelter entrance had crumbled like a broken biscuit into a shattered ruin of brick and wood. Looking to her left and right, Rarity could see that the rest of the street had succumbed in a similar fashion. Fires burned in several of the collapsed houses. Not a building remained standing. The trees in the park had been smashed to the ground, the foliage blackened. The town hall was a crumpled, smouldering mess. Rarity gaped in astonishment. She covered her mouth with a hoof when she saw the bodies in the street; three of them, charred and steaming like a freshly prepared meal. One of them was quite clearly that of a young foal. She suddenly felt nauseous, partly from the sight and partly from the knowledge that the burned bodies, or any of the countless others that would be buried in the rubble, could be those of her friends. Their coats and skin were so badly burned it was difficult to even tell what colour they had been. She turned her head away, scanning the burning horizon instead. The sky was blotted out, as if they were under a giant blanket.

Rarity followed the group, stepping onto the cobbled street. Some of the stones had been cracked, others shattered. The roadway was strewn with rubble, fragments of brick, glass, metal and wood. She had to place her hooves carefully. Officer Hawk split the group of wide-eyed ponies in half. Rarity was in his group, along with Lyra.

'Remember, when you hear the whistle, get back to the shelter!' he called, then turned to address his group. 'Spread out, check the buildings.' He looked at the nervous Rarity and Lyra. 'You two, stick with me,' he gestured at them. 'You come with us too.' He nodded at a burly Earth pony stallion. They gathered round him. All Rarity could hear was the crackling of the flames and the occasional shudder as the rubble shifted. Hawk pointed at what remained of the ruined shop across the street.

'Come on, we're checking it out.' Hawk lead the hesitant trio across the street. Rarity tried to look away from the smouldering corpse that lay in their path, but found a morbid horror locked her eyes upon it. The bile rose in her throat. What had once been a pony was now little more than a hunk of meat, as if they had stood in the path of a dragon's fiery breath. Rarity froze in her tracks as she stared, unable to tear her gaze away. The sight was one thing, but the sickly smell of roasted flesh was quite another, and as she breathed deeply in panic the stench entered her nostrils, along with the acrid smoke from a dozen fires. She turned away from the group and vomited convulsively onto the pavement. Her legs began to wobble as she threw up, until Lyra put a steadying hoof around her.

'It's ok,' she said quietly. 'I think we're all gonna be throwing up at some point. Best to get it out of the way.' Rarity looked up at her with wide, panicked eyes, and Lyra forced a smile. She was wearing a leather saddlebag, and she reached into it and pulled out a tissue. Rarity took it and wiped the flecks of vomit from around her mouth.

'T-thank you...' she mumbled. The rest of their group had pulled ahead of them and were now on the other side of the road.

'Come on, we should catch up,' Lyra said, taking her by the hoof and leading her across the road around the corpses. Rarity closed her eyes as they passed and held her breath, but the cloying stench found its way inside anyway, and she could taste it on the back of her throat. The rubble creaked and groaned as it settled.

Hawk was at the edge of the collapsed shop already, peering into the rubble with his flashlight. The earth pony stallion stood next to him calling out in a deep voice.

'Anypony in there? Is there anypony trapped?' He received no reply, but they kept looking anyway. Rarity and Lyra joined the two stallions. A spiral of grey smoke was drifting lazily up from the collapsed shop. Rarity stood on the cracked pavement, looking up at the clear blue sky. Minutes earlier, death had been raining down from it. Now it looked as peaceful as ever. She wondered if that was it; if it was all over. Or was there a second wave of missiles, already on their way, streaking through the upper atmosphere? Rainbow Dash had talked about manned aircraft, too; bombers similar to the ones the Equestrian Air Force possessed, that would take several hours to arrive but which could each drop a dozen nuclear bombs. She shuddered and returned her gaze to the ruins.

Hawk shook his head.

'There's nopony alive in there. Move on to the next building!' He waved a hoof at the next structure along the road; what had once been a florist's shop. The four ponies trotted over to it and the earth stallion repeated his calls. Rarity was shocked when she heard a faint moan in reply.

'Oh good heavens...' she whispered. Hawk nodded and knelt down by the rubble, leaning over.

'Can you hear us?' Another moan answered him.

'Start digging,' he ordered. 'Be careful what you move, we don't want to cause any further collapse. Just lift bricks and wood.' Lyra sprang into action, moving some of the debris with her magic. The earth pony and Hawk used their hooves, scrabbling desperately at the mounds of rubble. Rarity copied Lyra's actions. After a few minutes of frenzied activity, a hoof could be seen sticking up from the rubble. It twitched a little. Rarity reached out and took it as the others continued to work, digging deeper into the pile. She squeezed the hoof comfortingly.

After a little more frantic digging, they uncovered the face of the trapped pony, peeping pathetically through a gap in two thick wooden support beams. Rarity gasped. It was Rose, also known as Roseluck, the florist, her face and mane caked in brick dust.

'Rose! Oh, good heavens, darling...' Rarity moaned, squeezing her hoof a little tighter. 'It's going to be alright. We'll get you out of there in a minute...' Even as she spoke she knew her tone of voice made her words sound insincere- not surprising, since she didn't believe them herself. Rose was trapped under bricks and thick wooden support beams, caught in a pocket of clear space that was altogether too small for her body. She had been crushed into the pocket, her body contorted unnaturally. She whimpered a little, barely able to speak at all thanks to the brick dust she had inhaled. She coughed weakly, and Rarity squeezed her hoof again as the others continued to try and extricate the trapped mare.

'It's alright, darling,' she whispered. 'It'll be alright.'

Rose shook her head, an almost imperceptible movement. Her breathing was weak and rapid, and the fast pulse Rarity could feel in her hoof was thready. She knows she is dying.

A lump formed in Rarity's throat. Though she knew Rose, she was more of an acquaintance than a close friend, but Rarity could not help but imagine her companions trapped in similar circumstances, or lying shriveled up and steaming in the streets. She closed her eyes for a few seconds to try and block out such thoughts, but it just made them worse. She gave another squeeze to the hoof of the trapped mare, who coughed again, a sickening, gurgling sound. Her hoof felt cold.

Hawk turned away from her and began to speak quietly to the earth stallion. Rarity could overhear them, and the news was not good.

'We can't shift all this debris,' Hawk said. 'It's too heavy, even for unicorn magic. We'd need heavy lifting gear. Even if we did get her out, she would probably die from crush syndrome. Her hind legs are completely trapped. She's probably going to die any minute anyway.'

Rarity held onto her hoof with both of her own now, giving her a reassuring, albeit false, smile. Hawk was right- Rose was completely penned in, and her breathing was getting even weaker. She was going into shock, and there was nothing they could do to help her. Her eyes began to close, then flicker open, then close again. Rarity kept holding onto her hoof tightly. Suddenly she felt a hoof on her shoulder, and looked round.

Lyra was standing beside her. She noticed the others had stopped digging, stopped trying to reach her. Lyra looked at Rarity with a grim expression.

'There's nothing we can do for her, Rarity,' she said. 'I'm sorry. Hawk says we have to move on. She's unconscious now; she won't be in any more pain.'

Rarity swallowed hard, glancing between the mint-green mare and the one turned brown by brick dust. Slowly, she began to let go, laying Rose's hoof down gently on the rubble and standing up, her legs weak. She turned away from Rose, her eyes red, both from tears and irritation from the dust and smoke. She nodded slowly at Lyra.

Hawk pointed to the next building along, which Rarity realised with a shudder of horror had once been Sugarcube Corner. The cakes were out of town, but Pinkie had been working there, and she had asked Rainbow Dash to help her...

The four ponies clambered down from the rubble and moved quickly along the street to the ruined bakery. An acrid stench was filling her nostrils; the smoke from the fires in the oil tanks were spreading across the town, bringing the raw tang of burning hydrocarbons. She followed the others up to where the front door of the shop had once been. The three story structure had protruded above the surrounding buildings, and had caught the blast; unlike the florist's shop, most of Sugarcube Corner had been spread across the street beyond it like matchwood, only the ground floor having collapsed in on itself. Still, there was very little left of the building that would be recognisable as such.

'Can anypony hear me?' Hawk shouted as loud as he could, poking his muzzle down near to the pile of wood. 'Anypony in there? Hello?'

To Rarity's surprise, he got an answer, and it was a voice she recognised.

'Hey! Hey, we're down here! I-in the basement, Sugarcube Corner basement!' The unmistakable, slightly crackly voice of Rainbow Dash.

'Rainbow! Darling, are you alright? It's me, it's Rarity!' She shouted. 'I-is Pinkie with you?'

'Rarity? Thank Celestia you're ok!' Dash replied, the relief in her voice obvious. 'We're both here, we're not hurt, but we're stuck.'

'Well don't worry, we're going to get you out! Just hold on!' She called, immediately beginning to lift shattered wood from the ruins. Lyra quickly joined in, and Hawk and the earth pony scrabbled through the debris with their hooves. After a few minutes of desperate work, an opening became visible, a gap in the ceiling of the basement where the collapsing building had punched through the stone.

'We can see into the basement, girls! It won't be long now!' Rarity called. She peered down into the hole as they worked. After a few more minutes the hole was wide enough for a pony to enter and descend into the darkness.

'Rarity!'

The unicorn looked around, surprised to hear her name being called from behind. She became even more surprised when she saw who had spoke.

'Twilight, darling! Oh, thank heavens you're alright!' She rushed over and embraced the purple mare who was walking towards them through the rubble-strewn street. She hugged back.

'Rarity...you're alright! What are you doing up here?' Twilight asked, glancing over her shoulder.

'Oh...Rainbow and Pinkie...they're trapped, in the basement,' she explained. Twilight looked aghast.

'A-are they alright? Are they hurt?' she asked.

'They said they weren't hurt, they're just trapped,' Rarity replied.

'Oh, thank goodness...well we have to get them out! Where is Fluttershy? She was with you, right?'

'Yes. She's in the shelter still. She's not hurt, just very scared. Too scared to come up here with the rescue party,' Rarity explained, as the two mares got back to work digging with their magic.

'Oh, good...we're alright, she's alright, Pinkie and Rainbow are alright, so is Spike. Have you seen Applejack?'

'No...' Rarity shook her head. 'She must still be over at the farm. I don't know what things are like over there. I'd go look for her, but...' she glanced at Hawk, 'we don't have long, in case the fallout reaches us. I don't think we could make it to the farm and back in time.'

'Well...they have a bomb shelter there. I'm sure they're fine...' Twilight continued to dig, until a minute later the hole was a little more stable. Hawk stood up.

'Somepony needs to go down there and free them. It should be a unicorn, in case they are trapped by something that is too heavy to lift by hoof.' He looked at the three unicorns, who glanced at each other.

'I'll go,' Twilight said, looking at Rarity and Lyra. 'I'm a little smaller than you two.' She made her way over to the hole. Hawk shone his flashlight down into it, and she lowered herself down, as if she was lowering herself into a bath. A few loose fragments of wood trickled down with her, and the rubble around her groaned unsettlingly.

Above the groans, Rarity could hear another, distant noise, a throbbing hum, and above that a pulsating whine, almost like a siren. She peered down into the hole as Twilight made her way to the bottom, placing her hooves gently on the stone floor of the basement.

'Where are you girls?' she called, her horn glowing with magical light, illuminating her surroundings.

'Twilight!?' both the trapped mares responded immediately, recognising her voice. 'Twi, thank Celestia you're ok!' Dash called. 'We're over here, behind the crates.' She knocked on one of them hard with a hoof to guide Twilight. The purple mare quickly made her way over to the stack of boxes, examining them. One of the thick, wooden support beams that had held up the basement's ceiling had fallen across the opening the two mares had used to crawl into shelter. Twilight studied it for a few moments.

'I can't lift it...it would probably bring down most of this rubble on us,' she shouted.

'Can you cut it?' Hawk called down to her. She shook her head.

'I don't have a saw! I could burn through it with my magic, but it would just set it on fire, and these boxes, too. Officer, is there a saw in the shelter?'

'No!' Hawk replied. 'You'd need a hardware store or something, and I don't think the nearest one is still standing, somehow.'

Rarity looked on with a worried expression. The distant sounds were getting louder and angrier. She looked up at the clear sky, fearfully, scanning for any aircraft that might be overhead.

'Look!' Lyra shouted, pointing down the road with her hoof. Rarity followed her gesture and looked to the south. She could see lights, flashing lights, dozens of them, moving along the road from what used to be Sweet Apple Acres.

'That must be the firefighting column!' cried Hawk, fumbling with his radio. 'I'd forgotten about them...' He spoke into the radio. 'Any firefighting units on this frequency, this is the Ponyville Police Department. Do you read me, over?' After a few seconds of static, he got a reply.

'Ponyville, this is Task Force 1, Chief Firebrand. We read you. What's the situation down there? Can you advise us?'

'The situation...uh...' he looked around at the ruined town. 'The situation is...unmanageable. Major structural damage, numerous buildings have suffered complete collapse. Casualties unknown, but presumed extremely heavy, over.' Rarity winced.

'10-4. What about access? We are approaching the town from the south, on the Fillymore road. Can we get into the town from this direction?' Hawk scanned the road ahead of the firefighting column. Though most of it was lined with trees and, as it made its way into town, buildings, it was aligned in such a way that the blast wave had knocked everything down parallel with it, keeping the actual roadway mostly clear of obstructions.

'Chief, you should be able to drive straight into the town square, the road looks to be clear,' Hawk said, the radio hissing and squealing and the Chief's reply coming back somewhat broken up.

'10-4, Ponyville. Do you have any priorities for us? We're keeping a close eye on radiation levels. We might not have long to operate before we need to take cover.' Hawk glanced at the ruins of Sugarcube Corner before replying.

'Uh, roger that. We have a total collapse of the town hall. The mayor and the emergency staff are presumed trapped in the operations centre in the basement. We also have two ponies trapped in the basement of the Sugarcube Corner bakery on Mane Street, we need cutting gear. Anything north of the town centre can be pretty much written off, plus I don't think you could get your trucks in there. We also have a partial collapse and major fire in the, uh...' he peered through the coiling smoke drifting across the roadway, trying to determine its source. 'In the furniture store on Mane Street.' The radio buzzed for a few more seconds.

'10-4. We'll send the collapse rig and one of the Rescue companies to the town hall. The other Rescue company will assist at the bakery. Is the lake in the park still accessible?' Hawk radioed back that he thought it was. 'Alright, good. We'll draft water from there. I assume the mains pressure will be shot to hell.' Rarity watched as the column drew closer, glancing back at the hole in the rubble every few seconds.

'It's alright, girls!' she called down. 'The fire department will be here in a minute!' Sure enough, a minute later the lead vehicles rolled by, lights flickering. Rarity watched the vehicles and the grim-faced ponies inside. Midway down the column, one of the bulky Heavy Rescue vehicles pulled out of line and came to a halt near where she was standing, the crew climbing down from the cab and out of the walk-in compartment at the rear. A few more vehicles rolled by, some pulling up near the shelter and others continuing on through the curtain of smoke towards where the town hall used to stand proud. Rarity watched in sickened horror as one of the engines, turning off to stop near the shelter entrance, ran over one of the horribly burned bodies. She quickly turned away.

Several of the pumpers stopped near the burning furniture store and their crews ran out the fast attack hose lines from their bumpers, quickly getting water onto the blaze from their onboard tanks. Once those were dry, however, there would be no more water available, unless they were lucky and the pressure in the water mains remained good, which was unlikely. The high-volume pumping vehicle had been purchased by the department for just such an occurance, and it pulled into the entrance to the park. The pumps on board could be removed from the load bed of the truck and submersed in any suitable water source, the lake within the park in this case, to provide a large and reliable source of water in the event of a problem with the mains, or an incident occurring in an area that was not on the water grid.

The last few vehicles in the column rumbled by, and Rarity turned back to the rubble. The crew of the Rescue company were clambering over the mess now; one of them had a large circular saw on his back. The Captain of the company was conversing with officer Hawk. Rarity peered down into the hole, but was startled by yet another shout from behind her. She turned around, but saw nothing except the last few fire engines driving by. The very last vehicle in the column suddenly applied its brakes and came to a hissing halt just beyond the ruined bakery. Rarity glanced idly at it, but a few seconds later her eyes widened as a familiar orange pony appeared, walking around the front of the cab and followed by an equally familiar stallion.

'Applejack!' she cried joyfully, as the two mares began to run towards each other. 'Big Mac! Oh, thank heavens!' She quickly hugged Applejack tightly. 'You're alright! I-is your family...?'

'We're all fine, sugarcube,' AJ replied. 'Ah sure am glad ta see you. H-have ya heard from the others?'

'Yes, yes, they're all alive!' Applejack sighed deeply with relief. 'Fluttershy is in the shelter still. Twilight is down there,' she gestured at the ruins, 'helping Rainbow and Pinkie. They're trapped.'

'Pinkie and...Dashie...?' Applejack asked, her expression changing instantly to one of concern. 'A-are they hurt?'

'No, no. They said they're fine, but they're stuck. The fireponies are going to cut them out,' Rarity explained to her, and her expression softened a little. The pony with the saw had descended into the hole, and a loud buzzing could be heard from below, indicating he had started his work.

Further down the street, the blowing smoke began to lighten somewhat as the fireponies applied water to the burning building. Hawk was still talking into his radio, conversing with the fire chief, having moved away from the hole and the noise of the saw.

'I've got no contact with any other police units,' he continued. 'Only my partner. We haven't been able to get out yet, we've been trying to make rescues in the area around the shelter. I've got no information on the rest of the town. We need to get some ponies over to the hospitals to check them out, and also the hoofball stadium. If it's intact we can proceed with the emergency evacuation plan.' A few minutes later the sound of the saw ceased. The fireponies clustered around the hole and began to pull Twilight out. She was followed by Pinkie, and then Rainbow. Both of them were covered in plaster dust, but were unhurt. AJ and Rarity hurried over to them. Applejack pulled Rainbow into a tight hug. Rarity was about to do the same to Pinkie when she stopped, noticing the dust, but then decided she must already be filthy from digging through the rubble, and hugged her anyway.

'Applejack...thank Celestia...' Rainbow hugged the orange mare back tightly. Pinkie did the same to Rarity.

'Where's Fluttershy?' she asked. Rarity explained. 'So we're all ok? Oh, that's great...' Pinkie sighed happily, coughing a little from all the dust.

'We are, but...' Rarity looked around, 'the rest of the town isn't...'

Ten Miles High

The Outlaw bomber, its white anti-flash paint gleaming in the sun, cruised over the sea at 54,000ft. On board were its crew of five; pilot, co-pilot, bombardier, navigator and Defensive Systems Officer, a fancy name for the pony who was responsible for operating the remote controlled, quad-barreled 20mm defensive tail gun mounted at the rear of the fuselage beneath the tall, sweeping tail fin. The heavy, delta-winged bomber was operating at its optimum altitude, maximizing the range of the aircraft; it had a long journey to make. It had already crossed almost the whole of Equestria, and now it was crossing the sea, heading for the USR coast, closing in on its target. Some distance off its starboard wing sat another aircraft, one of its sister ships from the same squadron.The rest of the squadron was strung out ahead of and behind the pair, at distances of several miles, all heading for the same target.

On board the jet, the bombardier, Golden Oak, sat in his seat behind the flight crew. As they approached the target he would descend to his station in the nose of the jet, in front of and below the pilot, where he would operate the radar bombsight and ensure the bombs were released on time and on target. Each Outlaw bomber carried six 500-kiloton bombs, each of which could devastate all but the largest cities or completely annihilate an airbase. Once they were in the air and heading towards the USR, the pilot, Sunray, had opened the sealed orders that were kept permanently in a locked safe on board each jet. It had informed them that their target would be the USR city of Maremansk. As well as being home to some three quarters of a million ponies, Maremansk was home to a large part of the USR's Grand Fleet, their main naval force in the sea that separated them from Equestria. Of course it had been targeted already, struck by missiles fired from deep within Equestria, but there was no kill like overkill, and so the bombers were on their way, as other squadrons were to a dozen other targets. Golden Oak knew that USR bombers were heading eastward in a similar mission, looking to pulverise what remained of Equestria's cities, more out of spite than anything. The missiles would have done their jobs- there would be few survivors, and the thermonuclear bombs carried in the womb of each bomber would do little but stir up the rubble. But it was their duty, and there was always a chance that the missile attack had not been as effective as it should have been. Maremansk might have survived unscathed for all they knew, however unlikely that seemed.

As the miles ticked down and the Outlaw drew closer to the USR coast, the crew prepared the aircraft. Although the USR air defences would be in disarray, that did not mean that they would not be operational. Their command centres would have been demolished, their interceptor bases consumed in nuclear fire. But their missiles would be ready. Their high-angle guns would be loaded. Their jets would be in the air, assuming some of their supporting tankers had survived. The crew had to be ready to act, to defend their aircraft as best they could and force their way through the defensive screen to reach the port city of Maremansk. Golden Oak tried hard not to think about his family too often; his wife and son lived near, very near, Hoofstead airbase. A gnawing pain in his gut told him that they were gone, and his brain agreed- Hoofstead would have been hit, probably several times, and the relatively flimsy base housing would have been wiped from existence. Perhaps they made it to a shelter- but the shelters were too close to the base. The overpressure would have caved them in. His heart disagreed- they weren't dead. They couldn't be dead. He couldn't go on without them. Part of him hoped they didn't return from their mission. There would be nothing to return to, certainly not for him. Even if they could make it back to Equestria, the chances were there would be nowhere to land. Every airbase in the country would have been hit, as would the civilian airports that possessed runways long enough for their heavy bombers to land at. The chances were they would have to circle over a spot with relatively easy terrain and simply bail out.

A loud, intermittent beeping shook him from his misery as it filled the cockpit. He looked over at the pilot. The sound was being emitted by the Radar Warning Receiver display on the instrument panel. The warning receiver was fitted in the tail of the aircraft, and detected radar emissions, classifying them according to type and displaying the results on the screen in the cockpit. Circles represented ground-based radar, and diamonds were other aircraft or missiles. Golden Oak looked at the screen; a row of circles occupied the top of the screen, representing the air defence and tracking radars that they had just entered the range of. Now the USR knew they were coming, even if they hadn't before- their long-range early warning radars had probably picked them up soon after takeoff. They would be vectoring their interceptors into position even as Golden Oak watched the display, a thicket of red circles appearing in a crescent in the top-left corner of the screen. He wondered for a few moments what they could be- Maremansk was dead ahead, which would mean any radars around the city would appear at the top centre of the screen. Perhaps they represented the radars of the Grand Fleet- if they were not in port at the time of the attack, or if they were preparing to depart, they could have escaped the detonations.

Golden Oak withdrew a small square of paper from his flight suit- it was a photograph of his wife and his son, probably the last remnant of their existence in all of Equestria. A few bitter tears stained his cheeks as he stared at them, the insistent beeping continuing as the bomber clawed its way closer to the coast.

'Airborne contacts,' Sunray growled. '11 o'clock. Right on the edge of the screen, must be 50 miles out.'

The words of his captain shook Golden Oak from his reverie, and he looked up, but not before giving the photo a quick kiss. He tucked it back in his flight suit, and looked at the warning display again. A trio of red diamonds had appeared in the top left of the display, close to where the large collection of circles were. If, as he had surmised, the circles represented the surface radars of the Grand Fleet, perhaps the airborne contacts were either carrier-based interceptors, or long-range anti air missiles launched from the cruiser escorts.

'Are they heading our way?' he asked in a quiet voice. Sunray nodded grimly.

'Yeah, straight for us. Don't know where they're coming from. Might be the fleet at sea.' His captain concluded with his analysis. 'Not getting any lock warnings. Probably not missiles, I guess they're interceptors coming for us.' He flipped down his visor. 'We are hooves dry in five...four...three...two...one...mark.' At the pilot's signal, the heavy bomber lumbered across the USR coastline, starting to transit across a 65-mile wide peninsula jutting from the USR mainland, on the far side of which lay the protected anchorage of Maremansk. The airborne contacts were 50 miles away- it was a race against time for the bombers to reach their target, and it was a race that they would almost certainly lose.

'Better get to your station.' Sunray nodded at Golden Oak, keying his radio. 'Everypony, action stations. Strap yourselves in. Looks like it's going to be a bumpy ride.'

Golden Oak stood, and made his way to the nose of the rumbling jet. He ducked his head below the floor of the flight deck and crawled forward to the bombardier's station in the half-glassed nose. The landscape of the USR, the home of the arch-enemy, passed by slowly 54,000ft below him as he stared down. The conditions below were moderate. He estimated around 3/8ths cloud cover at approximately 5,000ft; fine weather for a genocide. His headset radio crackled and Sunray's voice filled his ears.

'Be advised, we have three bogeys closing in from the northwest, range is now 38 miles. Assumption is they are hostile interceptors. Be prepared for an engagement. We are 52 miles from target. Celestia protects.'

Golden Oak removed the photograph of his family from his suit again and propped it up between the armature of the video bombsight and the support strut of the nosecone. The smiling faces of his wife and son stared back at him, and he felt the acid sting of tears on his face again. They were dead, he could feel it, and it was his fault- his wife gave nothing but her eternal support when he said he wanted to join the Royal Air Force. His young son, Sandy Oak, wanted nothing more than to fly like his father when he grew up. They moved to Hoofstead Airbase when he was commissioned as a Flight Lieutenant, and lived right beside the base. The base that would be a primary target of the USR missiles, and so they were dead. Gone. More than likely, he would be joining them in heaven, or hell, or wherever he would end up after dropping the bombs on Maremansk and killing Celestia knew how many ponies.

He closed his eyes for a few seconds, and when he opened them again he began to get back into the routine, energizing his bombsight and preparing the system for the ultimate work it had been designed for. The video screen flashed into life, showing the landscape passing below the jet. He initialized the targeting system, linking the bombsight in with the bomber's inertial navigation system, giving the device the precise location of the jet in relation to Maremansk so that it could work out the exact moment at which the bombs should be released.

While the bombsight was powering up, he glanced ahead, out of the perspex canopy that formed the lower nose of the Outlaw. Several miles ahead he could see a dark shape in the sky being trailed by a black smudge of exhaust; Cutlass 1, the lead bomber, ahead of them in the stream that had taken off from Hoofstead. Apart from them, the sky was clear of aircraft. It was not, however, clear entirely.

In the distance ahead, roughly where the city of Maremansk lay, the remains of a filthy brown mushroom cloud hung in the heavens. The cloud had risen to far above the altitude of the bomber, and was rather ragged in appearance, telling Golden Oak that the missile that had created it had been detonated maybe half an hour in the past. The dreaded mushroom, that fatal apparition that every pony had been taught to fear the sight of above all else- 'Duck and cover,' he thought derisively, as if that would make any difference. The mushroom ahead of him was rather distorted by the high-altitude winds, and barely resembled its namesake anymore. But there was no mistaking the source of such a pillar of smoke and dirt. He closed his eyes again, and images of a similar cloud filling the sky above Hoofstead airbase blanketed his mind.

More tears ran down his cheeks as his headset rang out with the sound of Sunray's voice again.

'Vampire! Vampire! Missiles inbound! Brace yourselves colts! Starting evasive maneuvers!' Golden Oak grasped on to the cold metal support struts and braced himself, staring out of the perspex at the sky outside. He saw nothing; the sky was clear, apart from the mushroom cloud and the jet ahead of them. The heavy Outlaw bomber began to bank to starboard as Sunray worked the controls. Golden Oak watched his 11 o'clock- a glint of sunlight on a canopy, a puff of smoke indicating the inbound missiles, any sign of the enemy. Nothing was visible.

The bombsight chimed softly to let him know it was ready to perform its function, but with the bomber banking there was no way it could get an accurate fix on the ground below.

'Deploying chaff!' Sunray called over the radio. Streams of metal foil strips burst from the root of the tail fin as he toggled the switch. Designed to confuse radar-guided missiles, the chaff fluttered in the high-altitude winds behind the jet. The missile, streaking in towards the aircraft, passed it by astern and exploded in amongst the chaff cloud. Sunray rolled the heavy bomber back level.

'16 miles from target! Bombardier, standby!'

Golden Oak keyed his mike.

'Bombardier standing by.'

He returned his attention to the bombsight, listening to the radio transmissions from the pilot and the other bombers.

'Cutlass 3, we still have lock on!'

'Cutlass 5, we're breaking to starboard. Bandits are at angels 58, range now 20 miles.'

Golden Oak flicked a couple of switches on the bombsight as something flashed ahead of him. He glanced out of the perspex nose.

Cutlass 1, the bomber ahead of them in the column, was falling in flames. One of the missiles from the incoming enemy interceptors had found its mark, and the big delta-winged aircraft was spiraling down, trailing black smoke, a torch of crimson fire flooding from the port side of the fuselage.

'Son of a bitch...' he mumbled. That could have been them, had their chaff distraction not worked. It could still be them. The enemy fighters were still closing in. The race between them was entering its final stage- could they reach the target before the interceptors cut them out of the sky?

Golden Oak returned his attention to the bombsight. Keying his mike again, he announced to Sunray,

'Skipper, we are at the IP. Ready to start the run.' After a second, his reply came through.

'Roger. You have control.'

'I have control,' Oak replied. While on the bomb run, the bombardier controlled the aircraft to ensure that it stayed on target. Actually, that was something of a misnomer- the plane's autopilot controlled its flight, while the bombardier merely controlled the inputs into the autopilot system- Golden Oak would adjust the height, speed and course that the autopilot would follow, until the moment the bombs were released, when control would be returned to the pilot.

They were now the lead aircraft in the squadron- Cutlass 2, leading the way, punching through the USR's defences to destroy whatever was still standing down below. At least one missile had already hit Maremansk, and, judging by their radar warning receiver, the Grand Fleet was most likely already out of port already. Even if they weren't, nuclear weapons were surprisingly ineffective against ships, as several Equestrian atomic tests had proved. The blast tended to strip away weapons, sensors and other extraneous parts on the decks and superstructures of navy ships, but the vessels themselves almost always stayed afloat. Still, Cutlass Squadron had their orders, and they would carry them out to the best of their ability, and their orders were to bomb Maremansk.

Golden Oak adjusted the autopilot's heading slightly, making sure they were dead on course for the centre of the city. They had passed the IP, the initial point, the start of the bombing run. The city centre was now just 10 miles away. The release point, the spot in space where the bombsight would trigger the payload clamps, emptying out the womb of the aircraft, was just 7 miles ahead. But the enemy fighters were closing in.

Truth be told, the Outlaw bomber didn't technically need a bombardier at all. The electronic bombsight was radar-guided and capable of linking in with the autopilot to control the aircraft, and also with the bomber's inertial and radar navigation systems. Once the pilot flipped the switch, the bombsight could guide the plane on its bombing run and drop the bombs itself. But older Equestrian bombers had manual bomb release systems and lacked the electronic guidance, requiring a pony to do most of the work in the final stretch of the mission. The Outlaw was 12 years old now, and originally it had been equipped with a manual system, but it had been retrofitted once the new radar bombsights entered service. Since the bombers had a bombardier, and the new sights were untested in actual flight conditions, it was decided by somepony with a lot of brass on their shoulders to keep the bombardier position as a manual backup. A strategic bomb wing would be of little use if the automatic systems failed to release their payload and there was no manual backup, after all. In the event of a software malfunction, it would be the responsibility of Golden Oak to kill.

That was what he had trained for, after all, but there was a big difference between flying in the training simulator at the base, and actually pressing the button that would end Celestia knows how many lives. The Air Force tried to train their bombardiers to blank out any moral objections to their actions; after all, a bombardier who refused to drop his bombs was just as useless as a broken bombsight. Their profession was death, and there was at least a certain distance between the pony pressing the button and those in the target zone on the ground. But the sheer scale of the destruction they would unleash would distinguish them from fighter pilots or those of ground-attack aircraft- they would be ending numberless lives, destroying an entire city with one press of a button. Or what was left of it, at least. A single missile, maybe more, had already struck Maremansk, and would have reduced most of it to rubble. The cloud still hung in the sky ahead of them. They were getting close to the edge of the cloud, which towered at least another ten thousand feet above them, dirty brown and ragged, the high-altitude winds slowly tearing it apart. Already it hardly resembled a mushroom at all.

Most likely, the port facilities and any other important military or industrial targets in Maremansk would already be in ruins, crushed by the blast or incinerated by the fireball. And yet, Golden Oak's orders still stood. The squadron's orders still stood. They were to drop their bombs on target. On whatever was left below. Together, the eleven surviving jets of Cutlass Squadron could drop sixty-six 500-kiloton nuclear bombs on Maremansk. One bomb was enough to destroy the city- sixty six would reduce it to nothing more than radioactive dust. Even overkill has its limits, Golden Oak thought to himself, as he glanced at the bombsight's display.

Everything was on course. The bomber was heading right for its target point. The bombs would be dead on course, their CEP, circular error probable, was a mere 600ft. Assuming nothing went wrong with the system, Golden Oak would have nothing to do but merely sit there and watch the screen. The main problem with the automatic system, a problem it shared with the manual option, was that it kept the bomber wings level, at a constant speed and altitude- exactly what was required to ensure an accurate attack, but exactly what was not required when enemy interceptors were closing in. While on the bomb run, the Outlaws were sitting ducks. They could not outmaneuver a fighter at the best of times, and they certainly could not outrun one. During these critical few minutes, they would have to rely on two things; their chaff and flare countermeasures to deal with any missile attacks, and their tail-mounted 20mm cannons to dissuade any close-in gun attacks from astern.

The trio of USR naval interceptors streaked in from the northwest, their afterburners flaring as they sought to close the gap between them and their targets, cutting through the sky as they tried to get behind the half-dozen lead bombers, those closest to Maremansk. They unleashed a second volley of missiles as they got closer; these were heat-seekers, shorter ranged than their radar-guided counterparts, but just as deadly when fired from the rear aspect, where the huge thermal signature of the bombers' engine exhausts were visible to their seeker heads. None of them were targeted at Cutlass 2, but the jet behind them, Cutlass 3, took a missile straight in the port wing. Its half-empty fuel tank detonated in a spectacular fireball, ripping the jet apart from the inside.

'Cutlass 3 is down! 3 is down! No chutes, no chutes!'

Golden Oak could see none of that, his view being restricted to the sky ahead of him. but he heard the desperate calls over the radio. Further back in the line, Cutlass 6, despite deploying a string of decoy flares, took a hit in the port engines and spiraled out of formation. 30 seconds passed before a third wave of missiles roared from under the wings of the interceptors. More white-hot magnesium flares spilled from their dispenser chutes aboard the lead bombers, the pilots of those behind shouting warnings into their headsets. One missile found the flares deployed by Cutlass 2 and exploded harmlessly astern. Cutlass 5 was not so lucky. Both missiles that were targeting it found their mark, ripping a hole in the port wing and destroying most of the tail fin. The jet immediately began to descend, bits of shredded metal streaming back from the doomed aircraft.

'Three miles from target,' Golden Oak spoke into his mike. 'Standby...bomb doors open.'

'Get a move on!' Sunray barked. 'We have a bandit on our tail!'

One of the interceptors was moving into position behind Cutlass 2. Its missiles expended, the pilot was maneuvering his jet into gun range, the 30mm cannon in its nose capable of shredding the bomber in moments. The best position for a gun attack was directly astern, which was why the Outlaw bombers had been fitted with a quad 20mm tail cannon. But the USR pilot was no fool, and he swung his plane to starboard, trying to angle in towards the wing of the bomber, knowing he would only have a few seconds in which to engage it before he overshot and passed over it to port.

'One mile to target...' Golden Oak announced. His hoof was shaking. Within ten seconds, the automatic system would condemn thousands to death. He licked his dry lips. Half a mile to go. He was glad he didn't have to press the button himself. At least his conscience could perhaps absolve himself of any involvement in their deaths- even though they had started the war, and launched their nukes first. he thought again of his family, and knew they were gone. Something throbbed in his chest, a deep sense of loss, longing, sadness and fear. His wife and son had been killed, he knew, by USR missiles. To avenge them, others had to die. But the ponies in Maremansk were just innocent civilians, like his family were...

He jolted back to reality when he heard the bombsight chiming. It didn't matter. It was out of his hooves now. The bombs were gone, dropping inexorably towards Maremansk 54,000ft below, just the slightest shudder of the airframe as its heavy load was released. They couldn't be stopped now. Half a dozen 500-kiloton bombs, each one of which could destroy most of the city. The fate of whatever lay below was sealed. He slumped away from the bombsight, his hoof still shaking. Thousands, maybe hundreds of thousands, were about to die. Those who thought they had survived when the missiles hit. Some of them might be emerging from their shelters, seeking loved ones or friends, trying to put out fires. The air raid sirens would not be functioning anymore; unless they hears the drone of the bombers or happened to glance overhead, they would have no warning of the attack.

Golden Oak had no warning either. A sudden thumping noise filled the cabin, and then a loud bang shook him. He looked round as a fierce wind began to whip around him.

'We're hit, we're hit! Decompression warning!' Sunray shouted, his voice crackling in Golden Oak's headset.

The interceptor behind them had fired, and struck home. The heavy cannon shells had stitched their way across the fuselage of the Outlaw bomber just behind the starboard wing, puncturing the thin metal and causing an explosive decompression. The interceptor had dipped away below the Outlaw, circling away to come around for another pass, leaving Silver Arrow, the tail gunner, powerless to fight back, his guns not able to traverse far enough to engage the jet.

Within a few seconds, the air inside the bomber had been sucked out of the half-dozen ragged holes that had been blown in the fuselage by the cannon fire. While approaching the target, and during the bomb run, every crewmember wore an oxygen mask and electrically heated flight suits, meaning the decompression was of no immediate consequence. The Outlaw surged onward, Sunray back in control, and quickly banking away to starboard, turning back towards distant Equestria. The tail guns swiveled, Silver Arrow scanning the skies for the interceptor.

With the bomb run completed, Golden Oak should have returned to his seat behind the cockpit. But he stayed sitting in the nose of the bomber, his eyes vacant. In another twenty seconds, the first of the bombs they had dropped would detonate. Most likely, the blast would incinerate all the others that were falling with it, but one bomb was enough. One bomb, to cleanse what remained of the city below. One explosion, like the single explosion, one among hundreds, that must have killed his family. Tears ran down his cheeks, freezing in the sub-zero temperature of the rarefied atmosphere. He ignored the stings of pain, knowing they were inconsequential compared to the suffering he had just caused to those below. The suffering his family had endured.

The first bomb detonated eight thousand feet above the centre of Maremansk with a bright burst of light and heat, shaking the rubble of the city and killing the lucky few who had survived the missile strikes. Cutlass 2 dove away to the south, descending to 48,000ft and heading for home, its engines throbbing as Sunray pushed the throttles to the firewall. The mushroom cloud began to form behind them, the fireball destroying the other bombs that had been falling. Cutlass 4, the next surviving bomber in line behind them, was approaching the release point, the cloud rising rapidly beneath them, about to add their own efforts to the ruin of Maremansk.

'He's on our ass again!' Silver Arrow shouted into his mike. The USR interceptor was swinging back into position, trying to maneuver to the side of the jet to make another pass across it, aiming for the engines. Silver Arrow squeezed off a few bursts of cannon fire, attempting to dissuade the interceptor from closing in, but to no effect.

Shells from the interceptor's cannon thumped into the starboard wing of the Outlaw. The high-explosive shells shredded the metal skin of the wing and punctured the fuel tank, igniting the jet fuel within. A funeral pyre burst from the wing, streaming backwards, quickly extinguished by the lack of oxygen in the air as it passed the tail of the bomber. In the nose, Golden Oak slumped against the bulkhead as the jet shuddered.

'Fire in numbers three and four!' Sunray shouted into the mike, as he pulled the extinguisher toggles. Golden Oak rested his head on the cold metal, closing his eyes. More cannon shells slashed through the fuel tanks. Within moments, the entire starboard wing was aflame.

'Bail out, bail out!' Sunray shouted, his voice echoing in Golden Oak's ears. The rest of the crew scrambled for the escape hatch in the floor of the fuselage, just behind the cockpit. But Golden Oak stayed where he was, seated in the nose. The Outlaw shuddered, shaking. The fire began to spread towards the fuselage.

'Get out! Everypony out!' Sunray screamed, standing by the exit as Silver Arrow removed the hatch and jumped out. 'Get out! Oak, where are you?!'

Golden Oak kept his eyes closed, whimpering a little. 'I...I love you, honey...' he whispered, opening his eyes enough to look at the photograph of his family. 'I love you, son...I-i'm sorry...so sorry...'

The bomber was ten miles from Maremansk when the fire found the intact fuel tank in the starboard wing. It exploded, ripping the wing from the fuselage and shredding it. The fuselage was peppered with shrapnel as the airframe started to spiral downwards, shaking violently. Golden Oak closed his eyes, knowing he was soon to die. He stared at the picture of his family for as long as he could, before the centripetal force ripped it from his hoof. The remains of the Outlaw bomber plunged into the open countryside south of Maremansk, exploding on impact. The funeral pyre of Golden Oak burned fiercely, drowned into insignificance by the towering cloud that hung above the city he had destroyed.

Mistaken Identity

The ambassador was back again. This time Princess Celestia had been joined by Shining Armour who, in addition to his role as commander of the Royal Guard, also acted as Celestia's primary military adviser. There was one point that he continually stressed- that there would be no winners in a nuclear war. If things went that far, both nations would die. It was as simple as that.

He also told her, however, that in a conventional war, Equestria was more than likely to come out on top. They had more jets, tanks and ships, their ponies were better trained, and their equipment was more advanced. The USR's primary advantage came from their numbers- military service was compulsory there, whereas the Equestrian forces relied on volunteers. Through numbers alone, they could potentially overwhelm any invasion force. Though Shining Armour and the other chiefs of staff were confident that Equestria could force a beachhead in the USR if they ever attempted to invade, there was no guarantee they would be able to maintain that beachhead long enough to expand it. On top of that, there was always the threat of a nuclear attack on the landing force, or on their homeland by way of retaliation.

'Your Highness.' Ambassador Silver Birch bowed deeply with a flourish, just as he had on his last visit. 'Thank you for agreeing to see me again on such short notice. I have a matter of the utmost importance I must discuss with you.' Celestia nodded.

'Of course, Ambassador. What seems to be the problem?' He glanced at Shining Armour briefly before continuing.

'Early this morning, the USR air defence network picked up an unidentified radar track at high altitude as it passed over our southern coastline. It proceeded rapidly north, passing over the cities of Marescow and Pony Novgorod, before turning east and flying over several top secret military installations. It then turned back south and exited our airspace over the sea. You, of course, would know nothing of this, I assume?'

With a smoothness born of centuries of diplomatic practice, Princess Celestia frowned as if she were deeply troubled by the news.

'You can rest assured, Ambassador, that the Equestrian government would never authorize such an incursion. I can assure you that, whatever you detected, it did not come from here.'

'Are you certain, your Highness? Because the flight profile indicated its most likely point of origin was somewhere in western Equestria or Saddle Arabia, your ally, and we have detected six other such incursions in the last month alone.' Her frown deepened.

'You have my solemn word, Ambassador. The flight of whatever it was did not originate in Equestria.'

'As you say, Your Highness. Please, forgive my impropriety,' Silver Birch said, though his expression belied his apology, suggesting he still had his doubts. 'I was merely instructed by Stalliongrad to ascertain the source of this incursion.' She nodded sagely, as if in forgiveness.

'Of course, Ambassador. I understand completely. You may tell your superiors what I have just told you. This incursion did not come from Equestria.'

'Thank you, Your Highness. If I may make my report...' She nodded again, and he bowed and trotted from the hall, the great gold-gilded doors closing firmly behind him. Celestia turned to Shining Armour.

'Impressive, Your Highness. If he wasn't such a cynic, he might just have believed you.' She smiled at his words. 'You almost had me believing that story!'

'I spoke nothing but the truth,' she said, her smile widening. 'The flight originated in Saddle Arabia, as you well know, and I had nothing to do with it.' It was Shining's turn to smile.

'Who did you get to sign off on it this time, Your Highness?'

'Air Marshal Typhoon. After all, it is an Air Force project, so I thought it was only fair he got to approve one of his own operations from time to time.'

The Air Force's reconnaissance programme had been operating for less than six months, but already it had proved itself an invaluable resource. The high-speed, high-altitude recon aircraft, taking off from an airbase in Saddle Arabia, provided a plausibly deniable source of aerial photographs of sensitive locations within the USR, including missile launch facilities, airfields, naval dockyards and air defence sites. The sleek, dark-blue aircraft were the cutting edge of Equestrian aerospace engineering; propelled by two hungry jet engines and a rocket booster for high-speed sprints, they could fly at three times the speed of sound, at an altitude of eighty thousand feet, totally outclassing the USR interceptors. They were, in the grammatically terrifying jargon of the Air Force mess halls, 'unshootdownable.'

They roamed with relative impunity over the USR, taking high-resolution photographs of whatever the USR didn't want them to see. This latest flight had explored the air interception bases around Marescow and Pony Novgorod, avoiding the capital city, Stalliongrad, and swinging east to overfly the ballistic missile silos strung out along the plains south of the Coltcasus mountains. As Shining Armour had explained to Celestia, the photographs the jet had taken were not particularly useful in assessing any developments at the missile sites- since most of the activity there was underground, not much appeared different from the last time they had devoted a mission to investigating them. There was no indication of whether the missile bases had been put on a higher state of alert due to the recent tensions. The only thing of note was that there were a few more cars and light trucks clustered around the command building, but that could have been for any number of reasons- shift change, maintenance, some kind of inspection.

Shining Armour missed the USR's older missiles- they had been liquid-fuelled, which meant when they were placed on high alert a reconnaissance flight would see groups of cryogenic tanker trucks parked around each silo as they filled the missiles with fuel. As soon as they had the technology, the USR switched, like Equestria, to solid fuel. This was safer to store, led to faster launch times because the missiles were already fuelled and ready, and meant they would travel faster in flight and reach their targets sooner.

'He knows you were not telling him the whole story,' Shining Armour continued. 'But even if you were, Stalliongrad would never believe it. If I didn't know any better, I would say they are trying to start a war.' Celestia nodded slowly.

'I fear you may be right, Commander. Perhaps we should suspend the reconnaissance flights until further notice. What effect would that have on our military capability?'

'Very little, to be honest, Your Highness. I think we have learned all we are going to learn from such flights about their launch sites and radar networks. Further flights would merely provoke them, and we would have no new information to show for it.' She nodded again.

'Very well. Tell Air Marshal Typhoon that, effective immediately, there are to be no more incursions into USR airspace without my direct authorisation.'

'Yes, Your Highness,' Shining responded.

'If they wish to lead us to war, let it be on their own heads. I will take no action that will lead us down such a path,' Celestia said. 'Let us see whether their next step will be forwards or backwards.'

Royal Air Equestria Flight 106 was running late. First, they had had to wait for a passenger's baggage to be offloaded after he neglected to turn up for his flight. This delay caused them to be stuck behind three other jets that were waiting to take off from Manehattan's Princess Celestia International airport, and now a slight headwind was slowing them down still further.

On the flight deck, Senior Captain Jetstream relaxed in his seat. The autopilot was engaged and would be flying the plane for the next three hours, as it had done for the last three. They were approaching the point in their route, from Manehattan to New Zebraland, that would take them within ten miles of USR airspace, but by now the trip was routine for Jetstream and his experienced crew. They were out over the sea now, having left Equestria behind half an hour earlier. Off the starboard wing lay the USR, the jagged coastline and bleak cliffs appearing relentlessly grim and foreboding in the dim moonlight.Their aircraft was one of the largest in the company's fleet- a four-engined, high-tailed monster capable of hauling nearly 500 ponies in air conditioned comfort over vast distances and at considerable speed. The Air Force used the same model of aircraft as electronic surveillance platforms, intercepting USR radio and other electronic emissions and analysing them. On this particular flight, the aircraft was not full; it was carrying 411 passengers and 12 crew.

Commercial air travel was not yet a truly big thing in Equestria. Pegasi could always fly wherever they wanted to go under their own power, and for shorter distances rail travel was often faster. Coupled with that, the military tended to all but monopolize certain items, such as jet engines, for their own uses, buying up the entire monthly output of certain companies in advance to ensure their own supply. The airlines consequently tended to have small fleets of aircraft, and passenger travel was generally for long distance and intercontinental travel, although freighters did ply their trade along some domestic air routes on a regular basis. On a similar basis and for similar reasons, there were not many cars in Equestria- plenty of trucks and buses, and plenty of governmental and military vehicles, but not many cars in private hooves. In some ways, Equestria was very traditional, despite its rapid industrial and military expansion over the last hundred years.

They were getting very close to the USR now. Jetstream thought idly to himself that it almost looked as though they were actually over land, not over the sea, but the autopilot was following its preprogrammed course, and unless there was an error in the navigation system, that couldn't happen. The lights of small, scattered coastal villages twinkled below them. They were flying in one of the high altitude airways- only long range airliners and military flights operated at these altitudes. Theoretically Pegasi could flap up this high using nothing but their wings, as long as they had an oxygen supply and an insulated suit. Strangely enough, nopony had been pioneering enough to try it yet.

'What the bloody hell?'

The sudden outburst from his copilot, Morning Star, startled him. A quick scan of the controls showed nothing untoward, and he was puzzled until he saw Morning Star's outstretched hoof, pointing.

Ahead of them, slightly off to the port side, another aircraft had suddenly appeared. It was obviously military, though it was a type Jetstream did not recognise. The swept-back wings, twin exhausts and the array of missiles slung under its fuselage gave it a menacing appearance. It rocked its wings gently from side to side, its navigation lights flashing.

Navigation...

'Where the hell did he come from?' Morning Star asked. 'Why didn't we pick him up on our traffic radar?'

It must be from the USR, which means we are in their airspace...

The interceptor waggled its wings again.

Is something wrong with our nav computer? Are we off course?

'We need to respond...' Jetstream said. 'Why hasn't he tried to contact us on the emergency channel?'

'Do they use different frequencies?' Morning Star asked.

'The emergency channel is universal,' Jetstream replied as the fighter waggled its wings and flashed its lights for a third time. 'They know that as well as we do. If he tried to contact us, we would have heard it.'

'So, what, his radio is out or something?' Morning Star said questioningly. 'Doesn't he know the standard procedures? Do they do things differently in the USR?' Jetstream shrugged.

'I don't know. Broadcast on the emergency channel, let him know who we are.'

'Can't he tell? Can't he read the damn name on the side?' Morning Star asked. The words Royal Air Equestria were stencilled on the side of the aircraft in large letters, as well as the illuminated company logo on both sides of the tail. 'Maybe he thinks we've been hijacked.'

The USR jet suddenly pulled up and disappeared from view.

'Where'd he go?' Morning Star asked, glancing up from the radio.

'He must have dropped back astern,' Jetstream answered, beads of sweat starting to form on his face.

'I think we're off course,' he said tensely, glancing out of the windscreen at the coastline below. 'Look at the coast. We shouldn't be this close to it...in fact, I think we're over land. Something must be wrong with our navigation system.'

'Then he probably thinks we're a spy plane or something! He probably thinks it says 'Royal Equestrian Air Force' on the side!'

'They speak the same language,' Jetstream said. 'He can read it, and they know the name of our national airline.'

They do, don't they?

Every pilot learned the correct response to an interception, but Jetstream had never been intercepted before, never expected he ever would be, and he was a little rusty. He reached forward and flicked the autopilot off with his hoof.

'I have control,' he called, grasping the control column as the autopilot warning buzzer sounded. 'Send that damn message.'

'Interceptor, interceptor, this is Royal Air Equestria 106. We believe we are suffering from technical problems and have entered your airspace accidentally.' The radio crackled with static, but there was no response.

'Interceptor, interceptor, this is Royal Air Equestria 106...' Morning Star repeated his message. Jetstream began gently rocking the airliner, dipping first the port wing, then the starboard, letting the fighter jet know they understood him.

But it was too late.

The airliner shuddered suddenly, throwing the flight crew forward in their seats as if they had flown into a brick wall. The cockpit lights flickered and several blood-red warning lights flashed on across the top of the instrument panel; Master Warning, engine fire, hydraulic failure. A harsh warning buzzer began sounding, and Jetstream could hear panicked screams from the cabin. He pulled the extinguisher tab and cut the throttle on the burning engine, then worked the fuel feed panel to cut off the fuel supply to it.

'Celestia! He's trying to shoot us down!' Morning Star shouted, his voice cracking.

No shit... A high pitched beep alerted him to another problem. The cabin depressurisation light was blinking furiously at him. The attack must have punctured the thin aluminium skin of the airliner.

'Pressure warning,' he shouted. 'Get your mask on.' He reached down beside his seat and pulled on his oxygen mask, connected directly to a tank of emergency oxygen beneath the floor of the flight deck. He saw Morning Star doing the same. First course of action was to get the airliner down to 10,000ft where the atmosphere was breathable. He throttled back the remaining engines and pushed the stick forward.

'Starting emergency descent. Get on the radio! Emergency channel!' Jetstream said, tuning the primary radio to the last Equestrian air traffic control centre he had spoken to and keying his throat mic. Out over the sea, airliners were rarely in contact with ATC for the simple reason that there were no controllers in such places. There was no civilian primary radar coverage over the sea, so controllers couldn't track aircraft directly, and though they were over the USR now it was an all but uninhabited peninsula with nothing but a few small villages.

And an interceptor base, evidently.

'Mayday, mayday, mayday, Seaddle Centre, Royal Air Equestria 106. We are under attack by USR aircraft, one engine out, cabin pressure warning...'

No reply. Jetstream didn't really expect one- he doubted anypony was picking up his transmission. He was more concerned with the fact that the airliner wasn't responding to his control inputs. The nose was stubbornly refusing to go down.

Maybe Morning Star will have more luck on the emergency channel...

'Interceptor, cease fire! Cease fire! You are attacking a civilian aircraft!' he screamed into the microphone. No reply from the jet, either. Jetstream rammed the stick forward again, but nothing happened.

Shit, the hydraulic warning...

He scanned the instruments. The primary hydraulic system was non-functional, damaged by the missile or gunfire that had hit them. The backup system should have been taking over...he tried moving the stick from side to side, and the plane responded, banking gently. But he could not move the plane up or down.

The elevators must be out... He pressed on the rudder pedals with his hind hooves.

And so is the rudder...he must have hit our tail.

'Aircraft declaring a mayday, Seaddle Centre, please repeat your message.' The faint voice in his headset...the air traffic controller!

'Mayday, mayday, mayday. Royal Air Equestria 106,' he repeated. 'We have been attacked by USR aircraft. One engine out and cabin depressurisation warning.' After a moment of static, the tinny voice of the distant controller returned.

'Seaddle Centre, copy. What is your current position?' Jetstream checked the navigation radar screen.

'Royal Air Equestria 106, we are over the southern coast of the USR, approximately 100 miles southeast of Maremansk.'

'Seaddle Centre copies. Say your souls on board and fuel remaining.' He glanced at the passenger manifest and the fuel gauges.

'Royal Air Equestria 106, four hundred twenty three souls on board, fuel remaining...'

Another explosion rattled the jet and another blazing red light appeared on the instrument panel. Both port engines were now ablaze. He pulled the extinguisher tab as he felt the nose of the jet dropping, unsettled by the explosion. Now they were in real trouble. The jet shuddered like a drunk as the fast moving winds washed over it. Without the autopilot's automatic trim corrections, the aircraft's progress through the air was much more unsteady. There was no way for Jetstream to correct the descent; the tail had been shredded by the first of what he assumed had been two missile strikes. They were going down; sooner or later they were going to hit the ground, and there was nothing he could do about it.

'Mayday, mayday, mayday, Royal Air Equestria 106...' he began, his voice wavering. 'We have no pitch control, two engines out. We...we are in uncontrolled descent...we were attacked by USR interceptors.' Alarms and buzzers were blaring at him, as if they were the voices of his passengers, begging him to do something, anything.

'Seaddle Centre copies all. Royal Air Equestria 106, can you make it back to Equestrian airspace?' Jetstream took a final look at the instrument panel that told him all he needed to know to answer that question.

'Royal Air Equestria 106, negative...this will be our final transmission.'

The crippled airliner plunged into an unrecoverable nose dive, fire streaming from its port wing and fragments of smashed metal peeling away from its ruined tail. The interceptor, and its partner that had fired the first missile, followed it down. At ten thousand feet, the port wing gave way, its damaged main spar burned through by the intense heat of the fuel-fed fire. The jet rolled almost leisurely on its axis as it plunged into the peninsular scrubland thirty miles from the nearest town and exploded.