Iron Hearts: Book 2 - Ferrous Dominus

Chapters

Uncomfortable Truths
Mont'ka
The Iron Within
Hunt's End
Burning Dreams
Business Sense
Diplomacy Check
Conference and Confetti

Uncomfortable Truths

Iron Hearts

Book 2

Ferrous Dominus

Disclaimer: I still have no idea what I'm doing.

Legal disclaimer: My Little Pony is the property of Hasbro. Warhammer 40K is the property of Games Workshop. I am but a helpless pawn, dancing to the tune of these mighty corporate behemoths.

Punctuation key: "Speech in Gothic" *Speech in Tau language* +Speech in binary+ Non-aural communication, such as telepathy

Dramatis Personae

Iron Warriors 38th Company:

Solon - Warsmith (high commander) dedicated to Nurgle

Sliver - vice-commander dedicated to Nurgle

Tellis - Raptor Lord dedicated to Khorne

Serith - Sorcerer

Dest - Rhino driver

Wyatt Daniels - human mercenary

Cyrus Gnoss - human mercenary General

Norris Delgan - human Trademaster

The Great and Powerful Trixie - entertainer

Suuna - assistant(?) to the Great and Powerful Trixie

Dark Mechanicus:

Kaelith - Dark Magos and Executor

Gaela - Dark Acolyte

Lenna - pilot

Geth - Scavurel Core

Tau Lamman Sept:

Commander Wraithstar - Shas'el

Jerriha - Shas'vre Fireblade

Field Report: Sector 7-3, after-action. File designation PV-311

The Tau field base has been searched, and the Techpriests have made their initial assessments.

Rather than being particularly bad or good, they're mostly ironic. Undetonated munitions found at the site of the field base indicate that the Tau were in the process of destroying their base to prevent the capture of any useful data and materials. Lord Tellis, acting without orders or reinforcement, stopped them. He then called in an artillery strike right onto the camp, accomplishing what the Tau wanted in the first place. Salvage of the enemy base will be sparse, although the Dark Mechanicus is settling in to study the remains of the jamming array. Apparently there is considerable interest in an emitter that can jam standard vox transmissions and deep scans so effectively over an entire continent with a single building-sized unit.

The ultimate purpose of the strike was to find a clue as to where the central array was; now that it's been destroyed - possibly by accident - Lord Kessler isn't particularly upset at losing the rest of the base. The mission has been declared a success, and the Company is deploying its reserves to clean up the area.

The cleanup itself is proving challenging, however; this region of the planet is absolutely infested with strange beasts that border on the daemonic. It is believed that many of the xeno mercenaries, the Kroot, regrouped into the forest rather than following the lines of retreat that were later intercepted. Hunting for them has been slow, and has required progressively larger recon deployments as our scouts and kill teams are ambushed and harassed by the local fauna. It would seem many of the beasts are quickly learning to avoid the Iron Warriors, though. Attacks on our mercenary squads are dropping slowly as more of the monsters are driven off and learn not to approach. Attacks on the Iron Warrior squads have dropped much faster as the local animals have come to associate them with bolter fire and heaped piles of their dead. I'm sure the highly visible armor style and chevron markings are helpful as well.

The prisoners and wounded have already been given transport back to Ferrous Dominus for treatment. Lord Kessler estimates that the main force will return to the fortress-factory within two days.

Additional notes: this is in no way relevant to our mission, but the animals that congregate around the small cottage near the muster point have an almost disturbing sense of friendly fearlessness. There is a bird sitting on my rifle right now singing at me, and several of the men have taught some wild pigs to hunt down truffles in the forest. Aside from the snakes that keep trying to make nests inside the drop-bunkers, this place is like some kind of fairy-tale land, and that's not even taking into account the colorful talking ponies.

Colonel Harlin, signing off.

Iron Hearts Book 2

Chapter 1

Uncomfortable Truths

****

Equestria - en route to Ferrous Dominus

"I still want an explanation for this. I know this is your fault, Donner."

"Uhm, excuse me, but isn't his name Daniels?"

Within the confines of the Rhino APC, Gaela turned her head sharply toward Fluttershy, and the yellow pegasus yelped in fright at the image of Gaela's emerald-green bionic eye glaring at her.

"And while we're at it, why is there ANOTHER pony with us now? We don't even know this one!" the Dark Acolyte snapped as Fluttershy whimpered.

"Good point, Acolyte," Daniels said. He leaned down and smiled at the cringing yellow pony. "So I didn't catch your name, love. Introduce yourself for the mean lady, would you?"

Fluttershy gulped, practically backed into the very furthest corner of the Rhino as she answered. "I'm F-F-Fluttershy. N-Nice to meet you?"

Daniels leaned back again. "There. Now we know her. Problem solved."

"Where the hell did you learn security protocol?!" Gaela complained, her grip on her power axe tightening hard enough that the passengers could hear the screeching grind of metal coming from her bionic hand.

"From the Rough Riders 61st, who've never considered horses a security threat," Daniels snapped, getting increasingly irritated, "what do you want me to do, frisk them for secret weapons?"

Hidden behind Rarity, Spike winced and hugged a backpack tightly to his chest.

"Miss Gaela, is it really a problem if we come along?" Twilight asked, looking increasingly worried.

The rest of the ponies kept their mouths shut, not wanting or willing to endanger their free, safe ride into the heart of enemy territory.

Besides, Gaela was absolutely right, and every one of them knew it.

The Dark Acolyte pursed her lips for several seconds.

"... No. No, it poses no problems, really," Gaela admitted, letting her temper cool down to return her mood to her usual icy apathy, "Warsmith Solon has already met with other ponies, evidently, and has decided not to initiate conflict. It is entirely reasonable to allow some of them access with a security escort if they have some business at the base."

Then she again turned the glaring green light of her bionic eye on the six ponies and baby dragon. "But that inevitably begs the question of why, exactly, you would want to go to the base in the first place."

Rainbow Dash promptly slapped a hoof over Applejack's mouth, much to the earth pony's annoyance.

"Are you being serious?" Rarity asked, taking up the reigns of the conversation. "Perhaps you think nothing of meeting completely new alien species and tromping around their villages, but for us planet-bound sorts the opportunity to meet extraterrestrials and see more of their lifestyle is the opportunity of ten lifetimes!"

Twilight nodded rapidly, eagerly picking up on Rarity's lead. "I really want to see what your main facilities look like! And if possible, I want to see one of your space craft, too! Oh, and is there any way I can have one of those 'dataslate' things? I heard that you can organize a great deal of information on them, and I brought a few things to trade for them if I need to!"

The other ponies looked slightly exasperated as Twilight rambled on, each of them getting the feeling that the alicorn's enthusiasm was a little too genuine.

Gaela, on the other hand, seemed completely soothed by the answer, and finally cut Twilight off with a wave of her hand.

"Enough. I understand. If you wish to come with us to view the wonders of the machine, very well." Her eyes narrowed. "I simply wish you had brought such an issue to me rather than bumming a ride off a rankless hired thug."

"Can't see why they'd do that when you make yourself so friendly and approachable," said Daniels, shrugging his shoulders.

Gaela ignored him, as always completely unashamed of her icy, hostile attitude. "So it's settled, then. Although I hope you don't think you're going to be treated like tourists. You're headed toward a military base on combat alert."

"Oh, I'm sure we'll make do, darling," Rarity said before tapping a hoof on the wall of the Rhino, "although... are all of your vehicles so... rough?"

The unicorn didn't want to complain, given that they had just finished convincing Gaela to let them into the base, but the Rhino interior, like everything else she had seen of the Iron Warriors, was an ugly beast of hard-edged gunmetal that stank of motor oil. It shook constantly from the power of its engine such that she didn't even bother laying down on the benches, themselves looking barely more comfortable than the floor.

"Comfort is a rare luxury in the 38th Company, and we're quick to sacrifice it in the name of efficiency and power," Gaela explained, "besides, these particular transports are primarily designed for the Space Marines. Trying to accommodate ten Astartes in full power armor doesn't call for seat cushions."

Daniels knocked on the access door to the APC's cab. "Lord Dest, about how long do you think it'll take until we get to base?"

The door to the cab hissed as it slid open, and the vox-distorted voice of the Chaos Space Marine came from the driver's compartment.

"We'll arrive within the hour. Entry clearance might take another hour, since we're behind the prisoner transports."

Dest didn't close the door again, figuring he might as well listen to his passengers converse. Visible to him but hidden from the others, a long train of silver and gold armor wound through the grassy fields and sparse woodlands ahead of them, dark plumes of oily smoke leaking into the sky.

"What're you going to do with all the captured Tau?" Rainbow Dash asked.

"Whatever we want," Gaela said, "although most of them will be imprisoned and eventually used for barter. We are perpetually at war, and prisoners are a universal currency. Laborers, test subjects, sacrificial materials... they can even serve as food for those warbands that use daemonic beasts instead of war machines."

This elicited wincing expressions from the ponies. Even if none of them especially empathized with the Tau, and Applejack and Rainbow Dash actively despised them, none of them wanted to hear further details of the Iron Warriors' malevolence and cruelty.

Well, actually, there was one among them who did want to hear further details, but it was in the name of science, so it was okay.

"When you say that they're used for barter, you mean you actually trade them? To who? Other alien species?" Twilight was, as usual, trying to paint a picture in her mind of the galactic scene, imagining vast marketplaces teeming with creatures of every possible shape and size.

"Very rarely," Gaela answered, her expression twisting into one of distaste, "trade with xenos is done sparingly, and usually under extremely volatile circumstances. We normally trade to other armies of Chaos Space Marines and the Dark Mechanicus."

"I thought you WERE the Dark Mechanicus." To the ponies' surprise, this question came from Daniels rather than Twilight.

Gaela glanced at the mercenary, clearly irritated that she was having to explain this to him. "Our relationship with the Iron Warriors is... complex. I, Dark Magos Kaelith, and all the others here serve as part of the 38th Company. That is why we wear the Legion Iron Skull. Our loyalties lie here, with the fleet, but that loyalty is purchased from the Dark Mechanicus with oceans of metal and munitions. The 38th Company fuels numerous other Legions as well with our predations and piracy, in addition to the numerous Iron Warrior strongholds constantly thirsting for ammunition and material."

"It is no exaggeration to say that the campaigns waged by our brothers on the other side of the galaxy depend as much on our efforts as those of the soldiers fighting," Dest said from the cab, his voice amplified by the internal speakers, "in addition, the Dark Mechanicus is only able to continue production and support for the other Chaos Legions thanks to the 38th and similar warbands like us that act as raiders rather than conquerors."

"Is that a good thing?" Applejack mumbled under her breath.

Rainbow Dash quickly pushed forward her own question in case the others heard her. "So if you've got this super-important job of capturing stuff for your army, then you guys must be the best of the best, huh? That explains why you're all so strong!"

The reaction from Daniels was immediate as he clapped a hand over his mouth, threatening to break into giggles. A moment later a deep chuckle, heavy with vox distortion, came from the cab.

Gaela's non-reaction was just as telling; she fixed her eyes on an empty point on the ceiling of the rhino and waited for her companions to finish.

"I... I don't get it," Rainbow said, an eyebrow quirked, "did I say something funny?"

Daniels ran a hand through his hair. "Well, I wouldn't want to say anything in front of an Iron Warrior-"

Said Iron Warrior promptly cut him off. "So I'll say it instead: the 38th Company is not composed of the finest Chaos Space Marines of the Iron Warriors Legion. It is composed of the worst."

"Say what?" Applejack asked. "How's that work?"

"Working for the Company is a great honor," Gaela quickly offered, hesitating before she added, "for us humans. The Dark Mechanicus forces are well-supplied with new technologies and ample resources, and mercenaries and ship crews can look forward to relatively good treatment since their services are highly valued."

Then the Dark Acolyte sat down on one of the benches before she continued speaking. "The Astartes take a much dimmer view."

"Iron Warriors are siege masters by nature," Dest explained, his voice sounding surprisingly amused, "their specialty involves cracking open fortifications and taking down the most heavily defended installations. Our job involves boarding merchant vessels and robbing factories. It's inglorious, almost insulting work, and very, very few of them would be here if they had a choice."

"You don't have a choice?" Twilight asked.

"All of us have a choice," Gaela said, "and some of those choices are very easy. 'Fight for the 38th Company or die' is one of them."

"In any case, because the objectives of the Company are beneath any Iron Warrior of talent and prestige, assignment to this fleet is used as a punishment detail. We're assigned the failures and incompetents of the Legion; for every decent Master of Artillery, there is another that is barely proficient, and he likely ends up in our barracks," Dest went on, "at times the Company is lucky, however, and receives an Astartes reassigned for political reasons. Many brothers have ambition or talent that threaten their superiors, and we have our share of otherwise flawless warriors sent to this fleet to keep them out of the way."

Gaela couldn't help but notice that this was easily the most talkative Dest had ever been, and that he spoke about this subject with an improbable amusement rather than the wounded bitterness that she would expect.

"At times, our Legion takes on Chaos Space Marines from other Legions or warbands as well. The reasons for a Space Marine joining a new Legion vary widely from case to case, but the Iron Warriors are a suspicious breed. Most of the outsiders are sent to the Company, effectively treated as liabilities by default."

Gaela blinked uncertainly. She had not been aware of that.

"... I still don't get it," Rainbow Dash admitted, "you're telling me that the guys like Tellis are actually weaklings compared to the other, better Iron Warriors?"

Dest chuckled heavily as Gaela shook her head.

"No, Dash. Tellis is not a weakling by any standard. He's easily one of the Legion's most skilled and capable fighters. He's also one of the Legion's worst soldiers."

The other ponies seemed to pick up on her meaning right away, but the blue pegasus was still obviously confused.

"Being a soldier requires more than strength and skill at arms. You have to take orders, prioritize objectives, analyze your enemy, manage attrition, and protect your fellow soldiers. A good soldier must always be aware of their tactical situation so that they might be able to turn it to their advantage."

"In other words, know when to run away," Daniels explained.

Gaela shot him a look, but then shrugged. "Even that sort of outlook is useful on a battlefield. Tellis understands none of that. He flies headlong into the enemy, butchers them all, and then moves on to the next distraction. He has no tactical awareness beyond the next body to shove his claws into. He's ruined entire battle plans on his own by flying into artillery strike zones, destroying key objectives, or going after the wrong target because he thought it would be more fun. Tellis is a monster guided by whimsy and blood lust, and the Legion doesn't need such unruly idiots among its ranks. So we get him instead."

"So what about this 'Warsmith' I heard you mention earlier? Is he also some kind of cast-off?"

Gaela's expression soured instantly, and she glared hard at Twilight.

"I can't say for sure; I've never met him," Daniels offered, disregarding Gaela's hostile expression, "but you get very different opinions from different people. The Dark Mechanicus love the guy, I can tell you that. And the Space Marines don't."

Rainbow called out to the driver, apparently wanting a negative opinion. "Hey, Dest! What do you think of the Warsmith?"

"Warsmith Solon is a weakling whose skills at leadership extend to keeping his soldiers well-supplied," the driver answered, his voice a growl thick with distortion, "we tolerate his inane whims and asinine lectures out of duty. He is not worthy of command. Yet he is also best suited to managing a glorified supply convoy such as this. No one else would so happily take to the duties of organizing cargo manifests and negotiating with pirate tradesmen."

"I don't suppose he has any glaring, crippling weaknesses you'd like to divulge?" Rarity asked, trying her best to be casual. "You know, while we're on the topic?"

As the humans stared at the white unicorn in confusion, Twilight coughed loudly to regain their attention.

"Well, that's enough about Mister Solon! I'm sure we all have a lot of questions about where we're going!" the alicorn said awkwardly.

"Hey, I got another one," Rainbow Dash volunteered, "are there any girl Space Marines?"

"Yes, actually. There's an entire Legion of them," Dest answered immediately, surprising Daniels and Gaela, "we call them the Emperor's Children!"

Daniels immediately started chuckling as Dest's own rumbling laughter boomed over the speakers. Gaela even cracked an almost-smirk.

None of the ponies laughed, and most of them looked confused.

"I don't... what? Is that funny?" Twilight asked.

"It's an inside joke," Pinkie Pie explained. At some point the pink pony had crawled over onto Gaela's leg, stretched out over the Dark Acolyte's lap like a pet seeking attention. She didn't look depressed anymore, but she wasn't back to her bubbly, smiling self either, so it was still quite easy to tell that something was wrong.

Daniels chose that moment to pick up on her mood as his chuckling died down. "Hey Pinkie, you all right? You've been really quiet since we set out."

"And that's just the way I like it," Gaela said before Pinkie could even speak, "so whatever's muzzled her, don't ruin it."

Daniels snorted as he leaned back again. "See this? THIS is why I don't believe you when you say that you don't want to offend the ponies."

"She said what now?" Applejack asked, her ears perking up.

"It's nothing," Gaela snapped, "just the merc running his mouth."

The Dark Acolyte's glare was as fierce as ever, but Daniels showed no fear in pointing to the Tau disruptor drone bundled in the corner. "So did you take the dress because you just liked the style or what?"

Rarity almost jumped in surprise. In her rush to prepare for the trip, she hadn't realized that Gaela had taken her outfit with her rather than simply discarding the clothes in a corner or something. Hearing that the human woman had kept her gift honestly thrilled her.

And that feeling of pride and happiness quickly soured as she remembered what she and her friends were doing traveling to the Iron Warriors' home base. Really, she almost wished they had used Twilight's plan of finding and entering the fortress on their own rather than holding together this wretched deception that everything was still fine.

Almost.

"I don't have to explain anything to you," Gaela said finally to Daniels, "you can take what I said at face value or not. Do not bring it up again."

Daniels rolled his eyes, but let the matter drop. The Dark Acolyte's voice was getting pretty heated despite her protest of apathy, and he didn't want the ponies to feel any more awkward than they already did. For some reason.

"Oh! I know! Gaela, can you teach me to use those dataslate devices?" Twilight asked, still trying to distract everyone of the tension of their mission. "I saw some of the soldiers using them earlier, and they were just fascinating!"

As Gaela found a dataslate in the Rhino's supply closet and went about the curious task of figuring out how one could use it without fingers, Rainbow Dash turned to Fluttershy, who was still huddled into the furthest corner of the Rhino as if she were trying to disappear.

"So I know that the rest of us can ask for time off from our jobs to handle business given to us from the Princess, but did you ever find someone to take care of your animals while we're gone?" she asked quietly, keeping her voice low enough to be hidden under the rumble of the engine.

Fluttershy nodded. "Yes, I did. Discord still comes over almost every day, so I can leave him a note and he'll help."

"Oh. Right. Discord," Rainbow mumbled, frowning, "I kind of forgot about him. Where has he been during all of this?"

"Oh, he has a day job," Fluttershy explained, "I'm not sure exactly what it is, though. He said it was office work, but it's hard to imagine him doing something like that, isn't it?"

****

The Warp - ????

Within an office floating at the edge of reality and humming a distinctly out-of-tune song to himself, a single serpentine figure stood behind a large wooden desk piled high with papers.

The office itself defied optical perception, with constantly shifting dimensions and angles that somehow didn't unsettle the arrangement of furniture and worker. Filing cabinets lined one almost-wall, each drawer boasting a label written in a runic text that existed before the concept of language itself had emerged from the protean minds of the galaxy's denizens. Paintings of influential thinkers and heroes from across the galaxy decorated each wall, and every time the eye left a painting and then returned to it, the image would feature a different individual, often of an entirely different species.

In the center of this extraordinarily managed chaos, Discord read over a lengthy memo paper, a pair of reading glasses perched on his snout.

The paper had come from a pile of them that dominated one side of the desk. At the base of the mountain was a small wooden tray labeled "Prayers to Tzeentch", and the papers that filled it had become so numerous that they had spilled over into a slope of documents that covered one half of the desk and still rose high enough to tower over the draconequus. The box on the other side, simply labeled "Done", was completely empty.

Discord finished reading the paper with an annoyed snort, and then reached for one of the three hand stamps sitting next to him in a line, seizing the nearest one in his lion-like paw.

He smacked the stamp down onto the middle of the paper, leaving a large, emphatic NO in thick, red print, and then dropped the document into the "Done" box. The paper vanished immediately in a puff of coruscating fire.

Then he placed the stamp back down on its ink pad, right next to the one marked MAYBE.

The last stamp featured the word YES, followed by a prominent asterisk.

Stretching out his mismatched limbs, Discord glanced behind him at the clock mounted above a picture of Commander Farsight. It had featured Leonardo da Vinci the last time he had looked.

The seconds hand of the clock swung back and forth along the bottom of the disk like a pendulum, while the hours hand stuck out at an odd angle while quivering back and forth constantly, like the point of a compass. The minute hand was the worst, speeding up at irregular intervals and then stopping suddenly at random.

"Ah ha! Break time!" Discord said cheerfully, darting over his desk and toward the hallway like an eel swimming through the water.

Discord slithered past a door made of bleached bone and strings of muscle tendon, and finally landed on his feet as he moved past another door that was a white steel bulkhead with a biohazard symbol stamped on the surface.

Soon Discord reached a wide open space with a large water cooler and several couches. Or at least, it resembled a water cooler; the fluid inside the tank was saturated with little twinkling spots of light, as if glitter had been dumped inside.

"Nothing so refreshing as a cold cup of souls," the draconequus said to himself as he took a tiny paper cup in his taloned, avian hand and started filling it from the spigot. A faint screaming noise could be heard from the small stream of Warp-fluid, but he paid it no mind as he tilted his head back and swallowed the cup's contents in a single gulp.

"Discord? Seriously? Ha! It is you, isn't it?"

He twisted his lengthy neck about to see who had walked in on him, and witnessed a claw-handed Daemonette stepping into the room, smiling behind eyes of the darkest pitch. She had barbed spines all over her back and legs, a long tongue that writhed like a snake independent of her speaking, and was of course completely naked aside from a dark spotted tie that clashed horribly with her pink skin color.

"It's me, Balleen! Damn, man! It's been... well, you know, time doesn't really work here, but I haven't seen you in a while! What happened to you?"

"Oh, don't get me started," Discord said, rolling his eyes as he stepped back, allowing the daemon of Slaanesh access to the soul dispenser, "I've kind of been on a sabbatical for a few millennia."

"Oh? Doing what?" Balleen asked as she got herself a cup of the distilled damned.

"Oh, a little of this, a little of that. Got involved with a magic princess, took over a kingdom, got turned to stone, learned the meaning of friendship, all sorts of stuff."

The Daemonette slurped down her drink, her tongue lashing about in wild ecstasy. "Well, that seems like a nice little break from the routine, eh?"

Discord snorted. "Sure. But lemme tell you: standard perception of time or no, the paperwork piles up all the same. How's your gig?"

"Oh, the usual: violent orgies, drug-fueled raves, and constant BSDM," Balleen grumbled, her shoulders slumping in exhaustion, "it kind of starts to wear thin after a while. But you know; work is work."

"Mm, true. How's Eliphas the Inheritor?"

"Dead."

"Still?"

"No. Again."

"Ugh!"

****

Centaur III - 0.6 kilometers outside of Ferrous Dominus

"Okay, how are those settings? I've decreased the tactile sensitivity and increased the panel size. Does it respond to your hoof?" Gaela held out the dataslate, and it was swiftly encompassed in magical energy.

Twilight licked her lips briefly as she tapped the point of her hoof on one of the tiles, calling up a window that started displaying Rhino engine maintenance procedures.

"Okay, I think I have it," Twilight said as her friends crowded in behind her to stare over her shoulders, "although it would be much easier if the display could be activated by magic."

"And what about the rest of us?" Applejack asked dryly as Twilight scrolled down with her hoof.

The purple alicorn flushed. "Oh! Right! Of course! I, uh, meant to change the settings to make it easier for hooves!"

The Rhino's shaking suddenly decreased as it came to a stop, although Dest gave no indication that they had arrived at their destination.

Daniels stood up and hit a prominent black button on the side of the transport bay. "I think we should be close enough now."

Magnetic locks above the transport bay disengaged, and the double-doors that covered the bay started to open. A platform in the center of the transport interior, marked out with a square of yellow and black warning stripes, started to rise up to give the Rhino's passengers a vantage point for their weapons.

Daniels stepped up onto the platform, resting his arms over the lip of the opening as the topside doors fell flat against the roof of the vehicle.

"Now that's a sight to still the heart, one way or the other," the mercenary breathed, "no matter how many times I see them."

He soon felt a weight on his back as Pinkie clambered up onto his shoulders, her head falling flat on top of his. Rainbow Dash followed seconds later, darting out of the Rhino and into the air above it.

"By Celestia..." Rainbow mumbled, hovering in place as she stared.

"Oi! Lemme see!" Applejack demanded, bumping her hoof against the mercenary's leg. The platform meant for Space Marines was barely high enough for a tall human like Daniels, but the ponies couldn't even reach the hatch on their hind legs.

"All right, all right, everybody who wants to see the view climb on up. Pink, step up onto the roof, would ya?"

With Daniels' help, soon Applejack, Twilight, Spike, and Rarity had all been lifted up onto the roof of the Rhino to take in the sight of the fortress ahead of them. Fluttershy didn't ask to join them, and it was generally agreed by her friends that she wouldn't have appreciated the view.

A line of gleaming armor was lined up in a long avenue of razor wire, engines idling as they waited for inspection and clearance. In the fields between the razor wire barriers, ball-bodied automata stepped among the minefields on stilt-like legs, burying new explosive traps like an insect digging a burrow for its eggs.

Beyond the minefields came the security cordon. Considerably diminished from assembling the assault force, there was nonetheless more than a hundred Chaos Space Marines assembled at the gates to see to the safe transfer of prisoners back into the base and search for any signs of infiltrators. Numerous heavy weapons tracked the movements of the convoy, and several Leman Russ battle tanks were dug into earthworks in front of reinforced barricades buzzing with activity. Bunkers stood sentinel at the foot of the fortress walls, quad guns and lascannons constantly sweeping the skies.

And then came the walls themselves. The shell of Ferrous Dominus had been carved from the armored bulkheads of an alien cruiser and then reinforced with battlements between enormous towers rooted into the ground like trees of hard-edged black iron. Heavy bolter gun mounts and firing points dotted the towers, and macrocannon turrets sat atop each one next to clusters of anti-air interceptor guns. Massive spikes extended from the towers and the sheer walls as if they had been pushed through the armored façade from behind like a nail, and from these thorns hung long loops of chains and hooks. Braziers and torches were hung all over the edifice, and crows had already taken to roosting on the macabre decorations.

From behind the towering walls, the true "fortress" of Ferrous Dominus stretched above the mighty barrier that thought to encircle and contain it. Black towers of iron and squat blocks of riveted metal, all glowing with numberless lumens and boasting huge arrays of smokestacks, were visible from over the barrier. A huge skull had been engraved in the central manufactorum tower, half of its grinning face given over to a cybernetic mirror image of the other half. The Star of Chaos had been cut all around the symbol to deface the emblem, informing all those who looked upon it of the darker persuasion of its new owners.

All over the complex, great steam pistons and pumps rose and fell as smoke and fire puffed from a hundred dark pipes. Lasers seemed to sweep the sky at random, guiding a thousand different instruments.

Huge landers and cargo ships could be seen on one side of the fortress-city, swooping down on cushions of flame to unload supplies from orbit and take on supplies from the ground.

On the other side rose half a dozen anti-ship cannons, their barrels angled toward the sky in an uneven row and each one the size of a building. Mechanicus workers swarmed over the massive guns like ants, crawling across great nets of power cabling or scaffolding welded to the sides of the weapons that had once menaced the Iron Warriors' ships. The guns were large to the point of absurdity, such that they were completely useless against anything smaller than a starship, and simply the least subtle of the many reminders that the fortification was a place of death as well as creation.

The fortress was dark industry stripped bare of all its pretenses of commerce and prosperity. Even as far from the fortress gates as they were, the heavy tang of poisonous metals tainted the air and the nearby foliage that had been too far away from the manufactorum to warrant demolishing was either dead or dying. A quite perceptible blight stretched from that bastion of metal seething with energy, as if the very dirt was sickened by its existence.

It was at once the most beautiful and the most revolting thing Twilight had ever seen. Technology driven to absolute dominance over nature, for the ultimate purpose of pure destruction.

"Yer tellin' me..." Applejack began, her throat going dry for reasons that had nothing to do with the polluted air, "that y'all put that up in... in a couple DAYS?"

"The Warsmith does good work," Gaela said simply, finally joining Daniels at the firing hatch, "and he has some of the finest Dark Techpriests at his beck and call. Were we operating under more hostile conditions, I'm sure we could have even completed the palisade by now."

"It's not even FINISHED?" Rainbow Dash asked, slack-jawed. It was already so big, she didn't know where else they would build, much less why they would need to.

"The southern facing is not yet complete, no," Gaela explained, "and there are several non-critical structures within that are only beginning construction. As the Company is not operating under very threatening conditions, we need not strain ourselves."

Rarity tracked a lander floating down through the haze of smoke, the vessel's form silhouetted against the setting sun. "I suppose I didn't give your kind enough credit. You humans don't do anything half-way, do you? If you want the Tau, you send up an army. If you want a base, you lay down a city." She coughed lightly before adding under her breath, "I wonder what you'd do if you wanted a kingdom."

Gaela glanced over at Twilight, wondering if the brainy alicorn had anything to add.

Twilight didn't seem to be paying attention, however. She was writing furiously with a quill over a sheet of parchment, her face a mask of intense concentration. Spike stood behind her, holding an ink well and staring nervously at the imposing sight of their destination.

Gaela nodded in satisfaction.

Up ahead of the Rhino, several of the other transports started shifting their engines into gear.

The main gate, an enormous double-door with the Iron Skull engraved on the front and an even bigger array of cannons mounting its two adjoining towers, started to open to admit the transports. Chains with links the size of men were slowly drawn onto motorized spools, pulling the doors back along heavy rails.

Once the gate was barely open wide enough for a Rhino to fit through, the first of the transports rolled in through the crack, allowing the whole line to started rolling through the security cordon.

"We'd better get our heads down, girls," Daniels said as their Rhino's engine started to rumble more loudly, "you're going to attract plenty of attention as it is, so it would be best if we didn't have you all piled on top of the transport like a big, colorful sign that we've got unusual cargo. The Iron Warriors take their security very seriously."

Gaela nodded reluctantly as the ponies started dropping back into the firing hatch one by one. "Excellent point. You have some good sense on occasion, Dennis."

"His name is Daniels," Spike pointed out as he squatted near the edge of the hatch, trying to judge if it was too high for him to jump down.

"Be silent, lizard," Gaela said as her servo arm reached forward.

Spike yelped as the vise clamped none-too-gently around his arm and then lowered him down into the transport bay.

Twilight was the last to descend back into the bay, rolling up the first of what she could only imagine were going to be many, many notes she would be writing about the Iron Warriors' home base.

"I think I might need more parchment..."

As the firing hatch started to close over them and the Rhino trundled forward, a brief burst of static came from the vox caster.

"We've been cleared for entry, but we're being re-directed to a security station. It doesn't matter much to me to spend a few extra minutes behind the wheel, but the Dark Acolyte may wish to give our xeno passengers a brief lesson on Legion etiquette before we have my brothers aiming boltguns down their muzzles."

The door to the cab slid shut as Dest's voice cut out, and the ponies became considerably more nervous.

Gaela glanced over at Daniels. "I deal with the Astartes on much more formal terms, and they have a vested interest in not shooting me on a whim. I'm sure your advice on not offending our Legion masters is more useful and extensive than mine."

Daniels nodded solemnly as Applejack gulped. "Are they really that bad?"

"Nah, the Acolyte exaggerates," the mercenary assured her, sitting down next to the farmer, "the thing is, they COULD be that bad, and nobody's going to stop them or punish them for it. So there are a few things to remember to stay under the radar. The Space Marines, generally speaking, are never really on your side; rather, you're either in their way or beneath their notice."

"Tellis isn't like that," Rainbow scoffed.

"None of this applies to Lord Tellis," Daniels admitted, "you probably know him better already than the poor sods from his unit if you can actually stand him, so feel free to treat him however you want. For the rest of them there are some ground rules."

Daniels reached over and flicked Twilight's horn, causing the alicorn to yelp and jump slightly in surprise. "First of all, keep all magic or psychic powers or whatever in the OFF position while around the Astartes. I know you use your magic just to manipulate objects in basic ways, Miss Sparkle, but the Iron Warriors don't know that's what you're doing or if that's ALL you're doing, and nobody is going to blame them for blowing your head off just to be safe."

Twilight looked quite discouraged to hear this, but offered no argument as she took out another sheet of parchment and started writing down these new rules.

"Second, if you have to talk to an Astartes, you refer to them as 'Lord' and end with 'my lord'. That's just an etiquette thing, and I honestly have no idea how much they'd care if you dropped it. But I don't think any of you want to be the one to find out."

The mercenary leaned back against the wall as the rhino made a turn. "Other than that, the rule of thumb is to speak to them as little as possible. They'll answer questions, but don't usually care for conversation. Just remember that speaking to you is a complete waste of their time, and that they don't care whether you live or die."

"That's awful," Rarity pointed out.

"Exactly! You've got this!" Daniels said cheerfully.

A loud clanking noise came from the rear of the Rhino as its forward motion stopped, and Twilight quickly cut the levitation of her quill as the rear ramp slowly yawned open. Fluttershy "eeped" and bolted away from the rear corner, and Daniels was honestly surprised and a little proud when she chose to hide behind his legs. Granted he was the furthest one from the rear ramp, but still.

Two Iron Warriors waited at the bottom of the ramp, spaced to block any possible flight from the transport. One held a short-range auspex scanner, while the other one had a flamer at the ready.

Daniels held his breath as the ramp lowered and didn't breathe again until the Chaos Marine with the auspex stepped up first.

The Iron Warriors didn't speak right away, and the one with the auspex scanned the ponies one by one, the red lights all around the device eventually blinking green for explosives and contaminants over each pony.

The girls remained admirably silent throughout the procedure, although Twilight sucked in a breath when the Astartes moved the auspex over Spike. A few seconds later the scanner registered nothing but a few unusual sulfuric compounds within the creature's saliva glands, and the Iron Warrior moved up to Daniels.

"Move. All xenos are to be subjected to deep scans prior to base entry," the Marine barked through his vox grille, obviously irritated that he had to explain such a thing.

Daniels slowly moved to the side, speaking down to the quivering pegasus. "Just stay still, Miss Fluttershy. It won't take a second."

The Chaos Space Marine snorted in annoyance as he moved the hand auspex over the yellow pony, distantly curious as to why this one was shaking like a leaf while the others had endured him without a problem. In a few seconds the scanner beeped, and the readout indicated that all was well.

"All clear. You two," the Iron Warrior indicated Gaela and Daniels, "are free to go whenever you wish. The xenos will be attended to."

"That's unusual," Gaela noted, standing up, "I was under the impression that they'd be the responsibility of whoever brought them along. May I inquire as to who will be attending to them, my lord?"

The Marine with the flamer decided to answer as his partner walked down the ramp. "The Warsmith has designated an officer to see to the accommodations of all the equines that find their way into Ferrous Dominus: Lord Serith."

Without further explanation, the two Chaos Marines turned and walked away.

"Lord Serith... Lord Serith..." Daniels scratched the back of his head. "That's a new one on me. I don't remember a Space Marine by that name. Acolyte, you know him?"

Gaela's expression twisted into one of distaste, and she nodded reluctantly. "Yes. I've met him. He works with Warsmith Solon on his daemon engines sometimes."

"Oh. So he's a Warpsmith?" Daniels asked.

Gaela shook her head. "No. A sorcerer."

Applejack recoiled in surprise as Daniels vaulted from the seat next to her, bolting for the ramp and then sprinting away out of sight. He didn't shout any warning or wish the ponies goodbye, leaving the equines staring in shock at the abrupt exit.

"Yes, that's about right," Gaela mumbled, "anyway, I should be leaving as well."

"Wh-What? Why? Why do you have to go?" Rarity asked, her voice just on the edge of hysterical. They'd been carried into a military facility, were surrounded by heavily armed and generally disagreeable super-soldiers, and had even been warned not to use magic, and their human friends were just going to abandon them to this "Serith" person?

"I have been gone longer than projected and must attend a debriefing to inform my superiors as to what I've uncovered." Gaela explained.

"What? You sent them that letter, right? You shouldn't have to leave right away!" Twilight insisted, sweat beading on her coat.

Gaela hesitated. "Good point. In that case, I should see to getting the agri-facility deployed for the Apple family, as per our agreement."

"Well then, hurry up and git to it!" Applejack said, standing up on her bench. "Go on! Don't wait up fer us!"

"As you say. I'm sure I'll see you all later," the Dark Acolyte said as she began descending the exit ramp with her "souvenirs" from the field, "I don't seem to be able to avoid you."

The heavy steps of the Dark Acolyte were soon lost in the numerous sounds and noises from outside the transport, leaving the six ponies and baby dragon alone in the transport bay.

"Well, I'm... I'm sure this 'Lord Serith' isn't that bad," Rarity insisted, her voice only wavering a bit, "I mean, magic makes these humans nervous, right? And apparently this fellow is a Sorcerer! That's probably why they seem so skittish!"

Twilight hummed to herself as she nodded. "Right, good point... of course, it's a real possibility that the reason magic makes them nervous is because their magic-users are generally twisted and destructive individuals. I mean, they were never that scared of US." Rarity winced at Twilight's logic, finding her theory quite plausible.

"Can't we just, you know, head on out of here?" Rainbow Dash asked, glancing at the open expanse of road behind the Rhino. She could see several other transports heading down the main avenue and a few squadrons of Iron Warriors patrolling the area around them.

"The big scary men with the flamethrower said to stay here," Rarity pointed out, "and I don't like our chances of sneaking off with this many human soldiers around."

Applejack trotted over to the door that accessed the cab and banged a hoof against it. "Hey, Dest? Er, Lord Dest? Ya there? How long do we hafta wait fer this Serith guy?"

The apple farmer fell silent, waiting for a response. She didn't get one.

"Wh-What's going to happen to us?" Fluttershy squeaked.

"Calm down, Fluttershy. The big guys said we were clear, right? So, you know..." Rainbow Dash's voice tapered off considerably and her expression wilted as she continued, "they're not on to us. Yet."

"So we have to wait. I suggest you all take in the sights as much as possible," Twilight said, parking herself down at the top of the exit ramp and then taking more notes, "look at those gate rails! That drilling platform! Those humans with even more augmetics than Gaela! I could spend all day studying what little I can see from the Rhino alone!"

"Are you SURE you're okay with getting rid of the humans?" Pinkie asked suspiciously, leaning in on the alicorn.

"Are YOU okay with just ignoring Celestia's orders?" Twilight countered.

Neither of the ponies had a good answer to the question posed to them, so they each snorted and broke eye contact as the group descended into silence.

It would be almost twenty more minutes of tense waiting before a voice came from next to the Rhino, close enough that it was not muffled into incoherence by the vehicle's hull and the general background noise.

"Explain it again, please. What is this?"

Twilight's ears perked up immediately, and her eyes widened.

"This is a Rhino armored personnel carrier. The passengers are all xenos, it would seem. Or ponies, rather," mumbled a voice in response. The second voice had the unmistakable background-static noise of a vox grille, so Twilight assumed correctly that it was coming from an Iron Warrior.

"Wasn't Serith supposed to deal with this?"

Rarity and Applejack glanced at each other. "Is that-"

"No," Twilight cut them off, "there is no way. There must be thousands of humans here; one of them just happens to sound like her, I'm sure of it!"

The response from the Astartes had been missed due to Twilight's protest, but the first voice, unmistakably female and irritated, was loud and clear.

"So if you can't contact Serith, why would you contact Trixie instead? Dealing with pony visitors isn't among Trixie's duties!"

Rainbow Dash and Pinkie Pie couldn't help but giggle as Twilight made a strangling noise from the back of her throat and stood up.

"It isn't among any of our duties. So it falls to you because you have the misfortune to be the same species. Is that a problem, oh Great and Powerful One?"

Twilight stepped down the ramp, turning around the rear of the Rhino to confirm what her ears were telling her.

Sure enough, standing next to their transport was a very familiar blue unicorn in a star-patterned cape and wizard's hat.

"Trixie? What in Celestia's name are YOU doing here?!" Twilight demanded.

Trixie and the Iron Warrior looming over her turned to stare at the alicorn for several seconds. Then Trixie looked back up at the Chaos Space Marine.

"So, Trixie is thinking that we should just weld this transport shut and then toss it over the wall. Maybe into one of the minefields? Can we do that?"

"Yes, we can," the Iron Warrior said with complete seriousness, "you may have to answer for the loss of a Rhino, though."

"TRIXIE!!"

The blue unicorn rolled her eyes. "Trixie was just joking. Relax," she grumbled.

The other ponies and Spike joined Twilight outside, each one fairly surprised and a little worried to see Twilight's sort-of-rival standing next to one of the Iron Warriors.

Trixie sighed. "All right, fine. Trixie will handle this."

"You know these creatures?" the Astartes asked.

"Oh, yes. Trixie could do an entire show talking about our history. But Trixie would probably rather go back to dueling death robots."

"Trixie. Explanation, please," Twilight said through clenched teeth.

"Just follow Trixie," the unicorn sighed as she stepped forward, her voice carrying an air of patient authority that made Twilight want to grind her teeth, "and do be careful not to get stepped on or run over by anything. We're a bit smaller than the natives, as you've surely noticed."

As the Chaos Marine walked off, apparently content that the matter was in hand (or hoof, as it were), Rarity cleared her throat and pointed a dainty hoof toward the Rhino. "I have a few bags with me, and a friend of ours warned against using magic around here."

Trixie halted and grimaced at the numerous suitcases piled atop the armored vehicle, secured with heavy chains and hooks. "Are you planning to move here or something? A lesser vehicle probably would have collapsed under that much luggage!"

"Yes, well, is there any chance we could get a driver to follow us out? Or he could just drive us to our destination, if possible!" Rarity was undaunted by the other unicorn's criticism, and utterly unwilling to leave her things behind in the midst of the constant trains of soldiers and workers.

Trixie started to look around, and her gaze settled on a single figure standing sentinel by the security station. "You there! Servitor! Come here!"

The figure's head rose to attention, and it stepped forward before turning to walk toward the ponies, its gait lumbering and deliberate.

"So what's this guy? One o' those 'Dark Mechanicus' fellas?" Applejack asked, looking up at the new arrival.

The servitor was a human male base, with half its skull replaced by a metal cap that blinked with diagnostic lights and data ports. Its forearms were replaced with huge lifting claws, and numerous tubes and cables fed from the bicep and shoulders to the machine parts.

"This is a servitor. It's like a robot or something," Trixie half-explained, "servitor, take the containers from this transport and follow us."

"Order registered," the servitor mumbled in halting, unstable Gothic, "total container volume exceeds unit carrying capacity. Enlisting additional units."

"Yes, fine, you take care of that," Trixie said flippantly, trotting away through the lot surrounding the Rhino, "you all follow Trixie."

The other ponies did so, if reluctantly.

"Wait, that was a robot? It looked like a human, just with a bunch of metal parts. Like those Mechanicus people," Rainbow Dash asked as she hovered above the blue unicorn.

"Trixie will be honest: it's hard to tell the difference at first, since they're both humans covered over in metal parts and replacement limbs," Trixie dipped her head briefly in a shrug, "but as Trixie understands it, the main difference is that the servitors are humans made into cold, emotionless machines, while the Dark Mechanicus are the humans made into cold, emotionless machines who wear black robes."

"Oh, okay. That's pretty simple, then," Rainbow Dash said.

"Trixie. You still haven't explained why you're here," Twilight growled.

"Calm down, Sparkle. Trixie will get to that," the unicorn said, holding her head high as she approached a building on the edge of the security station.

When she got within a meter of the door, a light on a nearby console flashed and the door to the security station slid open on its own.

"Did you see that?" Trixie asked, looking back as she led the other ponies into the building.

"Yeah, fine, ya can do magic. We know," Applejack sighed.

"That's not it," the unicorn said condescendingly, pointing her hoof at the gunmetal card pinned to her hat. It had "The Great and Powerful Trixie" etched into it, courtesy of the first Mechanicus Acolyte she could track down that didn't ignore her completely. "This card represents Trixie's 'security clearance', and opens the doors around Ferrous Dominus. Without one, the machines around here pretend you don't exist."

It was about at that point that Trixie stepped too far away from the doors, and Fluttershy yelped as the heavy iron barriers slammed shut on the end of her tail.

Trixie sighed and backed up a few steps, and the doors slid open again to free the lengthy pink wisp of hair. "As you can see, having to rely on somepony else's card is a pain in the flank. Trixie is going to get you your own cards, since Trixie is too busy to lead you around the fortress-factory any time you want to go anywhere."

"Too busy doing WHAT? What do you do here?" Twilight asked again.

Trixie ignored her and stepped up to the counter inside the security office. It was built like a barricade, but loaded with cogitators and manned by a hooded figure in carapace armor.

"And what is this, now?" the security officer asked, looking over the array of brightly colored aliens.

"Just a few guests checking in," Trixie said, as if the matter was of no consequence, "they need security badges so that Trixie doesn't have to lead them about like a bunch of fillies on a field trip."

The other ponies glanced over the interior of the security office. It was built up more like a half-bunker, with high walls for cover and several gun servitors standing at the far end with the officer. The rest of the room was open space with metal benches too short to provide good protection to anything forcing its way into the office.

"We just got here, but I'm definitely starting to detect a trend in the architecture," Rarity mumbled.

"I'm not sure why I should give security clearance of any level to these things," the human officer said finally. He had been checking Trixie's personnel profile to figure out why a small blue horse was allowed to roam free inside the fortress and bark orders at him in the first place.

"Why not?" Trixie countered.

"That's not how this works," the man snorted, "I'm supposed to let in any xeno couriers, and that's as far as my orders go. I'm not even sure why they were let into the gates."

"We came here with Dark Acolyte Gaela," Twilight mentioned.

"I don't care," the officer snapped through his mask, "the Acolyte has not submitted a security request to have you cleared, so as far as I'm concerned you should all just stick to your little blue friend as long as you're here."

"Look, Trixie isn't asking for much, here," the unicorn continued stubbornly, "all Trixie wants is a few temporary cards so they can open the doors."

"While we're talking about what you want, I find myself wondering why an entertainer is trying to clear xeno visitors in the first place. Are these other ponies part of your show?"

"What? Never!" Rarity barked, clearly offended. Rainbow Dash and Applejack looked similarly annoyed by the suggestion.

Trixie's brow furrowed, her annoyance building as she suffered bureaucratic stonewalling in front of her and indignant insults behind her.

"Trixie is only here doing this because the Iron Warrior assigned to this job was unavailable!" the unicorn insisted, placing a hoof to her chest. "So either you can work with Trixie, or you can wait for Trixie to leave and find Serith to deal with this instead."

The security officer hesitated, and then tried inputting that name into the cogitator databank.

"Oh. Well... shit," the man said simply, staring down at the screen only he could see.

Then he beckoned the ponies forward. "All right xenos, step right up. One at a time. There you go." His voice was far more agreeable now, the ponies noticed. "Just place your arm... ah, your... forelimb up on this scanner, and then tell me your name."

One by one the ponies and dragon did so, although it took both Applejack and Rainbow Dash together to hold Fluttershy in place over the scanner to have her gene-stamp registered under the crimson electronic glare of the gun servitors and the rather imposing security officer.

Within minutes the group was leaving the security building, Trixie in the lead with her head held high.

"I th-think it's the masks," Fluttershy said, shivering as she stepped out of the doorway, "all the humans have those awful masks that cover their eyes and mouth, you know? You can't even see their faces most of the time!" She now had a blank gunmetal card pinned to her saddlebag, as did all the others save Applejack. She pinned hers to the front of her hat.

"Trixie thinks it's just a habit of theirs to wear those things all the time. The pollution isn't THAT bad," Trixie reasoned as she approached the numerous lifter servitors dealing with Rarity's luggage, "all right everypony, now we head over to the train, which will take us to wherever Trixie decides to dump you all off."

"Are you ready to explain what you're doing here?" Twilight asked irritably.

"Let's save it for the train ride, Sparkle," Trixie said as she led the way, the servitors stomping after her, "for now just take in the sights of Ferrous Dominus, the only human city on the entire planet!"

She beckoned to the left side with a foreleg. "To your left you'll see the drilling blocks. Each one the size of a castle tower, these machines burrow deep into the ground to suck up ground water, gas, oil, and anything else it can find. You can see that only two of them are actually deployed here, while the others are waiting to be relocated to more fertile sites. They can each move on their own to find a deployment point and have been known to cause deadly earthquakes when deployed near fault lines!"

As Rarity withdrew a camera from her bags to snap a few shots, Trixie beckoned to the right side. "To the right, just past the construction lots, you'll see the ground batteries! Trixie doesn't have all the details on these machines, but was informed that these ridiculously huge guns are for shooting down space ships. Most of them were stripped from the Tau cruiser being taken apart at the rear of the fortress, and as such they apparently required the personal attention and unique specifications of the Company Warsmith to set them up."

As Rarity took a few more pictures, Twilight reluctantly decided to drop the most obvious question of the hour to ask more interesting and important questions.

"Why is that? The Warsmith is the leader of the Iron Warriors, right?"

Trixie continued leading them down the street, and a convoy of Rhinos rumbled past them. "Well, yes, but as Trixie understands it Warsmith Solon spends most of his time tinkering with alien machines, so he's the only one who really knows how they work. Which makes sense to Trixie; he seemed like kind of an egghead."

Trixie made a turn around a building as Twilight's jaw unhinged. "Now, to the left up ahead-"

"Wait, wait, WAIT! You mean you've MET him? The Warsmith?" Twilight demanded, galloping up in front of the blue unicorn.

Trixie raised an eyebrow. "Yes. So?"

"So, we need to speak with him right away!" Twilight said, blocking the path as her friends all shared pensive glances.

"Uh huh. And why would that be?" Trixie asked, smirking behind a hoof. "Trixie knows that you're quite used to getting chummy with the mare in charge, but this isn't Canterlot, you know. You need a good reason to draw the Astartes away from their jobs."

"So what was yours?" Applejack asked.

Trixie's smug expression melted away. "Never mind that. The point is that if you want an audience with Warsmith Solon, it has to be worth his time. Much like how any random pony off the sidewalk can't just request an audience with Princess Celestia."

Trixie stepped around Twilight and beckoned ahead of them. "And here we are! Just ahead is the train station. You may have noticed that several blocks down are lots of buildings that seem to link into other buildings and all more or less feed into that central complex that takes up the entire middle of the city. That's the manufactorum, which is human speak for 'stupidly oversized factory'. There's some kind of system inside for getting around, but the rest of the fortress makes do with the train, which runs a wide circuit around the complex."

Trixie stepped up onto the main raised platform, which was of course shielded from the avenue with thick, reinforced barricades. Several Iron Warriors were on top of the platform ahead of them - either waiting for the train or serving as security - and every one of the Chaos Space Marines turned to stare at the group of brightly colored ponies stepping up to join them.

Strange as the sight was, every scan showed perfectly valid security clearance, and none of the Marines could really fathom the ponies being a threat worth stopping. The super-soldiers said nothing, eventually returning to their individual duties or distractions.

"Hey, is this really a train track?" Pinkie Pie asked, leaning over the edge of the platform and staring critically at the ground below. There was only one rail, for one thing, and it flared a bright blue as electric arcs crackled along its length and hummed with energy.

The pink pony yelped as something hard grabbed her by the mane and hauled her up, and then Pinkie blinked as she stared into the glowering crimson visor of one of the Space Marine guards.

"Keep your head and legs on the platform at all times," the Iron Warrior growled from behind a horned mask, "if you end up splattered all over the transport, it could lead to transit delays."

He placed a perplexed Pinkie back down onto the platform, and it was hardly two seconds later that the train arrived.

Like everything else in the base, the train was bare gunmetal, prominently decorated with emblems, festooned with armor and guns, and much bigger than it really needed to be. What impressed the ponies the most, however, was probably the way it had swung out past a building at high speed and with so little noise that they didn't notice it until it was slowing down right in front of them. A pony with her limbs or head unwisely sticking out in front of it would have barely half a second to move before having said extremity sheared off.

Pinkie turned toward the Iron Warrior again. "Thank you!"

As the Chaos Marine grunted a reply, Trixie cleared her throat. "While Trixie realizes that the Iron Warriors make way too much use of the yellow and black warning stripe motif, many of the areas are so marked because they're actually dangerous," she pointed a hoof at the strip of yellow and black that lined the edge of the platform.

As the train slowed to a complete stop, Rainbow Dash moved to get a better vantage point on the vehicle. "Is that thing floating over the ground? How does it do that?"

"A wizard didn't do it. So Trixie wouldn't know," the unicorn shrugged.

The train's doors slid open as screens above the train platform lit up with route information. A pair of Dark Techpriests stepped out in front of the ponies. They halted for a moment to glower at the equines briefly with their glimmering optics before turning away and moving on.

+I don't care if the Warsmith thinks they're harmless,+ buzzed one of the robed cyborgs, +allowing xeno psykers base access is inexcusable. He could at least see to it that they're leashed or have a kill-switch installed.+

+Are you going to be the one to make such a proposition? I would think that the Astartes are simply loathe to consider those things a threat in any context.+

The ponies entered the train as they left, letting the servitors pile in first with their armloads of baggage.

"Those two... people... were Dark Techpriests, since they were wearing those black robes. Trixie personally dislikes the way those Dark Mechanicus types keep rambling on in their own language," the unicorn grumbled, stepping inside, "Trixie always feels like they're talking about her."

"You would," Twilight said with a roll of her eyes. The interior of the train was painfully similar to the interior of the Rhino, except much larger and with armorglass windows. Nonetheless, the ponies all settled on the hard iron benches and waited until the doors slid shut.

The train's acceleration was smooth and almost noiseless, and they honestly wouldn't have been totally sure whether they were moving or not if it weren't for the sight of the fortress buildings flying by through the windows.

"So now that we're on the train, do you want to explain what you're doing here, or keep playing tour guide?" Twilight grumbled. The others seemed rather ambivalent about the decision, their eyes locked on the windows and the numberless technological wonders blurring past.

Trixie sighed, acting as if Twilight's question were a meaningless distraction. "Fine, since you insist: do you remember what Trixie does for a living?"

"Lying to ponies and then humiliating them?" Twilight deadpanned.

Trixie's expression fell, and then she sighed again, turning her head away. "Fine. Trixie deserved that. But the real answer is that Trixie runs a magic show. To put it simply, Trixie has been hired as an entertainer."

"An entertainer. For a fortress city full of alien soldiers," Twilight clarified, disbelief clear in her voice.

"Is there a problem with that?" the unicorn demanded. "Trixie has talents that the humans happen to appreciate. The humans have many things that Trixie can make use of. It's a fine little arrangement."

Then she lowered her voice and her eyes narrowed. "Also, the humans can give AMAZING tummy rubs with those hands of theirs. Trixie's just putting that out there."

"Ah'm just surprised they letcha in here at all," Applejack admitted, "ya saw all the trouble we had, and we came in with a couple human friends and everything."

"Yes, well, Trixie was lucky in some respects," the blue unicorn admitted, "Serith is a troublesome person, but Trixie rather likes him. And Trixie also appreciates how all the other humans and Astartes practically flee at hearing his name."

She smiled again as the train slid to a stop, staring out at an enormous pump next to the station. "Trixie hasn't been here for very long, but this place is quite agreeable. The Iron Warriors are mostly dry and humorless, and those Mechanicus cyborgs even more so, but Trixie kind of likes their all-business-all-the-time attitude. And the 'normal' humans are usually quite nice once you get to know them." Of course there was the whole slavery thing, but Trixie decided to save the Company's most blatant atrocities for a later leg of the tour.

Twilight let that thought settle before she responded in a perfect deadpan, "So you find this dark, waste-spewing death factory 'agreeable', you put on a show for the hardened killers whose attitudes you 'like', and your best friend is a Sorcerer who's so terrible that the humans are afraid of you just for associating with him."

Silence dominated the train interior as the doors shut and the train started moving again.

"Is there a reason why you're here?" Trixie asked bitterly, her ears flattening against her head.

"Well, the thing about that is-" Applejack started to speak, but Twilight cut her off.

"Wait a minute. Trixie, you actually work for the 38th Company, right?"

"Yes. Trixie has a contract and everything," the unicorn confirmed, "so?"

"So if, hypothetically, somepony was to get rid of all the humans suddenly, that would be bad for you, right?" Rainbow Dash asked.

Twilight would have slapped her hoof into her face, but didn't want to make it even more obvious that the blue pegasus had just completely given their objective away.

"... And how would somepony 'get rid' of the humans?" Trixie asked with a raised eyebrow.

"Hypothetically, we're still working that out," Rainbow admitted, "but it's still very hypothetical."

The train car was silent for a few seconds as Trixie held a bemused expression and everybody but Rainbow fought to avoid eye contact.

"What? I used that word correctly, didn't I?" the pegasus asked, wondering why everypony was looking around nervously.

"Yes, darling. You did," Rarity mumbled. Then after a few seconds, she added, "Good job."

"You know what? It's not really any of Trixie's business why you're here," the unicorn said with a wave of her hoof, "Trixie is sure you have your reasons."

Twilight was surprised that Trixie would let the matter go so easily after she had ridiculed the unicorn so much, and she was pretty sure it showed on her face.

"All right, our stop is next," Trixie said as she stood up, "follow Trixie just a bit further, and then Trixie can drop you off and be rid of you."

The train slowed to a stop within a few seconds of the end of her sentence, and Twilight glanced outside as she stepped down from her seat. "Where in the fortress is this?"

"The secondary data center is on the other side of Ferrous from the gate," Trixie explained, "that's the structure that has Trixie's room. Trixie hopes they have enough space for you all too, but just so you know, Trixie isn't sharing."

"We crossed the entire fortress already?" Twilight asked, surprised. "It felt like just a few minutes!"

"It was just a few minutes," Trixie confirmed as the doors slid open, "since the humans keep building everything five times bigger than necessary, they've developed very clever ways of getting around in a hurry, it would seem."

Trixie stepped out onto the train platform, and then turned toward the structure that housed her.

She hesitated for a moment, however, sensing that something was wrong. Glancing back and scanning the platform briefly, she figured out what it was as the other ponies and their servitors exited one by one.

The platform was abandoned. This stop was the nearest one to a data center, the dormitories, a main cafeteria and all sorts of structures that tended to attract humans right after their shift was over, and yet the platform didn't even have any guards around. Nobody got off the train except them, and the throngs of menials, adepts, and human soldiers walking along the avenues below were giving the transit center a wide berth.

The others apparently noticed something seemed wrong as well, as they all slowed to a halt while looking around nervously some more.

"You know Serith, Trixie is convinced that you make yourself seem creepy and mysterious on purpose," Trixie said, speaking into the air, "you give all us 'psykers' a bad name."

The other ponies and Spike looked alarmed now, understandably concerned about meeting this "Serith" who seemed to terrify men who had faced deadly alien tanks without hesitation.

"Oh, so you're using our word for you now, are you? I must be a terrible influence."

When Trixie finally found Serith, she was quite annoyed to realize that he was standing out in the open, almost right in front of them. She could only assume that the Sorcerer had somehow cloaked himself with his magic, although she supposed the man could have used some sort of human technology and she wouldn't have known any better.

"WHOA NELLY!" Applejack barked, rearing up backward when her brain had finally come to terms with the nine-foot giant suddenly appearing right in front of her. The others didn't take it much better, although they weren't as loud about it.

"Girls, Trixie would like to introduce Serith... but before Trixie does that, could someone pull Fluttershy back out of the train before it leaves with her?"

Rainbow Dash and Pinkie Pie bolted into the train to comply, and Trixie continued after a tired sigh.

"Serith, these are some... ponies Trixie knows from Ponyville," Trixie mumbled, trying and failing to keep a neutral expression, "the white one is Rarity, orange is Applejack, the two dragging Fluttershy out of the train are Pinkie Pie and Rainbow Dash, and the one currently challenging your knowledge of ponykind with her wing/horn deal is Twilight Sparkle. The lizard is her assistant, Spike."

"N-Nice ta meetcha," Applejack said with a strained smile to the armored psyker.

Serith ignored her completely, stepping toward Trixie with his eyes on Twilight and Rarity. "Such an expression, Lady Trixie! Are these not friends of yours?"

Trixie's eyebrow twitched. "Trixie's history with these ones is... rather unfortunate. But that aside, Trixie isn't even supposed to be leading them through Ferrous Dominus and talking down the security officers! That's supposed to be your job!"

Serith nodded, circling around the new unicorn and alicorn as they stared back at him cautiously. "Ah, yes. Lady Sparkle, Lady Rarity, I must apologize for my tardiness. Immediately prior to your arrival I was informed of a new batch of prisoners arriving. I simply had to arrange for a share of them before I could attend to lesser duties," then he shook his helmeted head, "although none had told me that we had new unicorn arrivals! It was a grievous miscalculation on my part, and I am deeply sorry."

Serith fell to one knee, placing one arm over his chest and bowing his head.

Rarity seemed impressed by the gesture, gasping slightly at seeing a Chaos Space Marine actually practicing some form of social conduct. Twilight was more focused on what was wrong with his apology: particularly the fact that he had made it to her and Rarity specifically.

"You arranged for a 'share' of prisoners? Why would you do that? What do you do with them?" Twilight asked.

"Such matters are not fit for polite conversation, I'm afraid," Serith admitted, rising up again, "and impolite conversation will have to wait, as there are more formal matters to see to. I will have you roomed immediately; how do you wish to house your thralls?"

"Our what?" Rarity asked. "You mean the servitors?"

Serith tilted his helmet slightly. "Not at all. We are well aware of how to care for them. I meant your... how do you put it... ah! Your assistants!"

Twilight jerked back, and then her eyes narrowed. "What? Spike isn't a thrall!" The young dragon nodded vigorously, although he continued keeping silent. He was more than keen on keeping to Daniels' advice, even if this Astartes was quite talkative.

"I see," Serith said simply, nodding, "so the rest of them are?"

"Hey!" Rainbow Dash and Applejack looked quite offended by the assumption. Which Trixie could completely understand, even if she was very much enjoying this encounter.

"We're not thralls!"

"We ain't even assistants!"

Serith stared down at the angry ponies silently for a few seconds. "Then why are you even here?"

"We all came with Dark Acolyte Gaela," Twilight explained patiently, although she was already plenty annoyed and creeped out by this Sorcerer, "she left after she was told you would be dealing with us. I think I'm starting to see why."

"Ah. And Lady Trixie acquired security clearance for you all, is that it?" Serith asked, scratching at the chin of his helmet. "She's too kind. I would have left this rabble at the gate," he said, gesturing dismissively to the pegasi and earth ponies behind him.

"They are NOT 'rabble'!" Rarity said firmly, her expression sharpening. "Though we may possess different skills, their lack of magic makes them no less important or capable than us unicorns!"

Rarity glared defiantly at the Chaos Space Marine as Applejack, Rainbow, and Pinkie all nodded emphatically (Fluttershy was still huddled behind them, peeking out at the Sorcerer from over Rainbow Dash).

Serith paused, and then pointed toward Twilight. "What about Lady Sparkle, then?" he asked, causing the alicorn to cringe.

"We try not to bring that up," Pinkie Pie said dryly.

"Ya know, I'm really startin' ta miss all yer goofy antics," Applejack groused.

"Hey, Twilight wanted to be serious about this, so you get serious Pinkie," she groused back.

Serith sighed, his exasperation curiously amplified by his unusual vox unit. "Enough. Very well. If you insist that these... others accompany you here, I will allow it. They will be housed in the menial dormitories nearby. Lady Sparkle, Lady Rarity, you two will be housed together in the psyker dormitories, in the room next to Lady Trixie."

"Wait, why do we have to be in separate buildings?" Rainbow Dash demanded, hovering up to the Sorcerer and glaring into his visor.

"Yes, she's right. We should stay together," Twilight agreed.

"No," Serith replied curtly, gently pushing Rainbow out of his field of vision so that he was again speaking to Twilight and Rarity alone. "The psyker dormitories are specially protected from the rest of the base. It's a basic security measure. Your powers can be a danger to others, and certain... energies in the base can be uniquely harmful to you, particularly while sleeping."

Twilight frowned. "Certain energies? Like what?"

"Oh, I think you have an inkling," Serith replied with a deep chuckle, "so I may not budge on this matter. The psykers and non-psykers will room separately. If this is not acceptable, I'm afraid you will have to make do with a nearby pasture somewhere outside our walls."

Twilight turned to her friends silently, and Applejack shrugged. Rainbow Dash nodded reluctantly along with Rarity, while Fluttershy nodded more rapidly, no doubt considering that she'd probably be further away from the Sorcerer in the non-psyker lodging.

"Okay, fine. We'll manage," Twilight grumbled up at the Iron Warrior.

"Question!" Spike said suddenly, speaking for the first time since Serith appeared. "Can thralls room with their owners? And any non-owner psykers that happen to be roomed with them?"

Serith tilted his helmet to the side. "I thought you were an 'assistant'."

"I'm whatever means I get to stay with Ra-er, Twilight," Spike said eagerly as Twilight's expression fell.

Serith shrugged his heavy shoulders. "So long as you are considered more property than individual, then your safety is of less concern. In that case your mistress may do with you what she wishes."

"YES!" Spike pumped his elbow, and then cheerfully moved behind an increasingly bemused Twilight. "Ready to go!"

"Yes, quite. Lady Rarity, may I assume by the gem motif that the bags are yours?"

The white unicorn nodded hesitantly.

Serith raised a hand, palm up, while facing one of the servitors. "I'll take those, servitor."

The pieces of luggage carried by the cyborg slave slowly floated upward out of its hands, and the servitor lowered its hydraulic-clamp arms as it detected no more weight to carry.

The baggage swam slowly through the air to float around Serith in a lazy orbit, and then he continued speaking to the cybernetic slave. "Lead these four to the menial dormitories in sector 21. They may be given full access to cells 384-387."

"Order acknowledged," the servitor droned, stomping toward the edge of the train platform, "complying."

Serith nodded, his finger twirling slowly in front of him as the luggage continued to float all around him. "Well then, ponies, if that will be all..."

"Why're they called 'cells' rather than 'rooms'?" Applejack asked humorlessly, glaring up at the Sorcerer.

Serith's gaze tilted to meet hers. "I'm sorry, what was that, orange one?"

"Ah said," Applejack puffed her chest up, "thank you fer yer patience and generosity Lord Serith! That will be all, mi'lord!"

Applejack's eyes snapped open in shock as she realized what had just come out of her mouth, and the other ponies - save Trixie - recoiled.

"That's what I thought. You may depart when ready."

The Sorcerer turned away and walked off, a portion of Rarity's luggage still twirling about behind him. The servitors with baggage loads soon moved to follow, and Trixie joined them while giggling under her breath.

Twilight and Rarity hesitated, neither of them eager to follow after the Chaos psyker.

"What was... Ah didn't... how...?" Applejack was still struggling to figure out what had just happened, while Fluttershy looked even more terrified than before, somehow.

"All right, well, I don't think we're going to make much more progress finding the Warsmith tonight," Twilight allowed, "I'm not sure about following this 'Serith' character, but it looks like we'll have to meet up again tomorrow."

"All right. You guys be careful," Rainbow Dash said as Pinkie nodded firmly.

"Let's get outta here before anything else happens," Applejack grumbled.

Rarity, Twilight, and Spike soon rushed to catch up to Serith and Trixie, who had been waiting on the street below.

The sun had fallen completely behind the distant mountains now, and lumen globes decorated the freshly paved streets in orderly rows while strip lighting flickered on one by one within the numerous structures.

This sector was much less impressive than the gates, both in terms of technological prowess and military strength on display. Gangs of soldiers roamed the exterior with their masks stripped and their rifles missing and mixed with menials trying to stretch their rest hours to accomplish something more than sleeping and eating. Many of the men were still working to haul more furniture and personal items to their rooms or looking to contact friends that had been deployed, while others were playing card games or cooking meals out in the open while surrounded by their colleagues. It was by far the most natural and grounded image of humanity that Twilight had seen so far, and probably the closest that anyone in the Company ever came to matching the simple, peaceful atmosphere of Ponyville. For just this moment, at least, none of these humans were soldiers, cultists, or laborers in service to the first two sorts. They were simply people.

Those people were very quick to abandon their activities as Serith walked down the path toward them, clearing the way and sometimes outright bolting into the nearest building. It was rather disconcerting to see such a reaction from the people who were, theoretically, part of the same military group as the Chaos Sorcerer; certainly Twilight had never inspired such fear in other ponies despite her own formidable magic or her reputation as Celestia's student and go-to heroine. She felt her ire toward the Iron Warrior grow even further as she glared at his power backpack.

"Whatever you did to Applejack back there, don't do it again," Twilight warned, her wings ruffling as she sped up to walk alongside him and Trixie.

"Oh, calm down Sparkle. It was just a harmless little trick," Trixie insisted.

"Mind control is 'harmless' to you?" Rarity asked with narrowed eyes.

Serith chuckled. "It was hardly mind control, my lady. To possess a rational, sentient mind and suppress its will is a difficult thing. My preferred method is more subtle. A few words that a target didn't mean to say, a twitch of the finger or push of a button before they realize what they're doing... it can make all the difference in a few heated seconds."

The Sorcerer clasped his hands behind his back as luggage continued flowing behind him in a slow, bobbing stream. "That said, your friends are too brave... excepting the yellow one, of course. Ferrous Dominus may lie within the borders of your country, but it is still alien territory, and its 'citizens' hardened killers. They would do well to remember that."

"But not us?" Rarity asked with a glare.

"You are of a different class, and may be indulged more easily. I see no issue with recognizing your superiority over those less gifted," Serith turned to look briefly at Twilight, who bristled under his gaze, "however, if this... displeases you, I shall restrain myself in the future."

"Doesn't that attitude make it hard to make non-psyker friends?" Twilight asked.

"Yes. I have no non-psyker friends," Serith confirmed.

Twilight blinked at that. "I was under the impression that very, very few humans had magic powers."

"You are again correct. There are but eight other psykers besides me in all the 38th Company fleets." Serith returned his gaze to the path ahead. "They're not very fond of me either."

"Aw, why not?" Trixie asked, sounding genuinely sorry for the armored giant.

"Iron Warrior Sorcerers are a cold, unfriendly lot to begin with, and that attitude trickles down to the human psykers as well. Overdisciplined and rigid, they limit themselves to the proven rituals and rarely experiment with their gifts. They are ever the tools of the Legion rather than their own man."

"It seems to me that all of you Iron Warriors are either grim and competent, or else reckless and whimsical," Rarity pointed out.

Serith laughed at that, and Rarity and Twilight shivered at the strange, chilling sound. Neither of them thought they would ever miss the grating, static-laced feedback of the Space Marine's normal vox emitter, but Serith's smooth, serpentine voice had proven them wrong.

"Oh, you two are quite a catch! I'm enormously pleased to have three of your kind find your way to Ferrous Dominus!" Serith said as he entered the secondary data center. "Come. Let me show you to your room."

Twilight didn't know what he meant by the word "catch", but she was fairly certain he wasn't referring to their romantic prospects.

As she followed the Sorcerer into the building, however, her gait slowed considerably while she took in the interior.

The architecture was purely functional, since this structure hadn't been laid down with the manufactorum and had been fabricated quickly after planetfall to serve the workers and soldiers, as well as members of the Dark Mechanicus of lower rank.

Adepts, soldiers, and Acolytes were scattered sparsely throughout the room, all of them either browsing consoles built into the cogitator columns or reading dataslates. Some of them looked up as they entered, and then quickly went back to minding their own business once they caught a glimpse of the Sorcerer.

"Twilight, what's wrong? You're falling behind," Rarity noted. It was all the more obvious since the servitors were following behind the group, and had almost ground to a halt right in the entrance.

"What did you say this place was, again?" Twilight asked, her eyes roaming over the piles of dataslates stacked in corners and on shelves. She had already come to recognize dataslates as the human equivalent of books, even though she knew the comparison wasn't perfect. Seeing so many of them in one place had caused her to think back on what kind of place she was being led into.

"This is the secondary data center," Serith repeated, walking back up to the alicorn and closely observing her slightly dazed expression, "in this place, base personnel can upload information onto dataslates for perusal or search our archives for topics of interest."

"Oh, no," Spike sighed, slapping his claws over his face.

Twilight had to swallow a mouthful of saliva before she could speak again. She was in a library. A futuristic human library. "What kind of information is available?"

"Twilight, darling, can't this wait?" Rarity asked, but to no avail.

Serith chuckled. "These building columns are Amexus-pattern standard Mechanicus cogitator cores. They're front-loaded with data gathered from hundreds of infiltrated noosphere networks and re-compiled annually with updated formulas and communications intercepts. It would take less time to specify what information is NOT available."

"You guys go on without me," Twilight said, her eyes looking distant and haunted, "Spike, after Rarity unpacks, can you bring me one of her suitcases? Or maybe, like, four of them?"

"Oh, for pity's sake," Rarity groaned, "If I immobilize her, could someone carry her to our room?"

"Oh, let's leave her be," Serith said with a wave of his hand, "I'm sure she'll be along. Servitors, follow."

Rarity was reluctant to do anything the Chaos Sorcerer said, but as Twilight stood up with her front legs on a cogitator terminal and a feverish look in her eyes, the white unicorn had to consider that it might not be worth the struggle.

Shaking her head, Rarity followed Serith into the hallway that separated the data center from the dormitories with Spike following dutifully behind her.

Nobody seemed to notice that Trixie hadn't joined them.

"So, Mister Serith, I can't help but wonder why you seem so hard up for space when this structure is built so large like all the others," Rarity asked, her eyes scanning the surroundings, "could you really not manage to find separate rooms for me and Twilight?"

Spike furtively shook his head at the Sorcerer, but Serith ignored him completely as expected.

"That's my fault, I'm afraid. There were other rooms available up until this evening, but I've prepared them all for those prisoners I mentioned earlier."

Serith approached a door and placed a hand against a flat red screen next to it. The screen beeped and read his armor's ID tag, and then the doors slid open.

Then Serith stepped backward, beckoning the unicorn to enter. "Here you are, my lady. It's nothing special, but I do hope it meets your needs."

Rarity stepped into the room, and then started slowly scanning the interior from wall to wall.

"'Nothing special' is right," Spike mumbled. The room was almost bare, with nothing but a metal table, a locker, and a pair of cots with thin pillows. It was spacious, though. Almost cavernously so. There were no windows, and a few dim lumen strips along the ceiling filled the room with light.

Rarity seemed unperturbed, however. "It will do. Spikey, could you direct the servitors to put my things down in the corner? We can start unpacking immediately."

The young dragon saluted, and then he started beckoning the cyborgs inside.

Rarity turned back toward Serith, who had been fiddling with the console on the wall.

"Your access card has been registered to this room," the Sorcerer said, deactivating the console, "aside from a few other... key personnel, only you and Lady Sparkle will have access to this dwelling. Simply place the card against the red scanner to get in. Getting out requires no key except in cases of lockdown."

"What about Spike?" Rarity asked.

Serith dismissed her question with a negligent wave of his hand. "I know little of what your people eat, but if you're hungry you may acquire rations at the cafeteria. They may be... reluctant to give you anything more. I don't really know how that place works. I don't actually eat food."

That was quite possibly the weirdest thing Rarity had heard since she set hoof on the base, but she didn't really want to learn much more about the Iron Warrior Sorcerer at this point.

"Fine. Then I only have one more question for you."

"I am at your disposal, my lady," Serith said with a deep and generous bow.

"You said you were keeping prisoners in this place?" Rarity asked uncomfortably. "I would have thought you'd have a proper prison for such things. Is that safe?"

"No," Serith said simply, "nothing about it is safe. As such, I advise you ignore any screaming you may or may not hear throughout the night, and if you hear banging, yelling, or desperate begging at your door, do not open it under any circumstances."

Rarity couldn't really go pale, given her fur color, but her expression spoke volumes.

"Pleasant dreams, my dear," Serith said, waving to the disturbed unicorn as he stepped backward out of the room.

****

Ferrous Dominus - Secondary data center

Twilight growled as she swept her blank access card over the cogitator input board, only to have the screen once again flash red while buzzing irritably at her.

"I don't understand! Why won't this work? Is there something wrong with the card? There must be something wrong with the card!"

Twilight looked left and right angrily, only to find that the humans in the data center were all quite aggressively avoiding eye contact or leaving altogether, their dataslates tucked under their arms.

"If Trixie had to guess, Trixie would say that the machine probably doesn't find your security clearance good enough to let you start gleaning information from the archives."

Twilight frowned and turned to look behind her. "Trixie, what are you still doing here? I told everypony to go on ahead of me."

"Trixie needs to talk with you," the blue unicorn mumbled quietly, "in private."

Twilight snorted and once again levitated her card over the scanner. The result was, unsurprisingly, the same as before. "I'm not going anywhere until I fill up at LEAST one dataslate here. This is too important!"

Trixie rolled her eyes and then stepped forward next to the alicorn. "Move aside before you break a blood vessel," she said as she swiped her hat and the attached card over the scanner.

The screen blinked out for a second, and then a search menu appeared.

"Here. Plug the dataslate into that big slot on the front. You can do ONE topic. Then Trixie wants to talk to you."

Twilight made an angry strangling noise in the back of her throat. Not just because Trixie had been granted access to innumerable secrets to the galaxy that she didn't seem to even care about, but mostly because she couldn't seriously pare down her list of immediate questions and topics of interest to only one item.

"And hurry it up. Trixie's had a long day, and wishes to sleep," the unicorn added, unmoved by Twilight's conundrum.

Taking a deep breath, and reassuring herself that there must be someone else willing to let her use their card for the data center later, Twilight took up a stylus next to the input board with her magic.

But where to go first? Levitating trains? Space craft? Automated, artificial life forms? History of psykers? Equine contact with humans across the galaxy?

Trixie watched with feigned detachment as the alicorn steeled herself and inserted a dataslate from her saddlebag into the output slot, setting it inside with a satisfying click.

Then, with great reluctance and unease, Twilight entered "Chaos" into the cogitator.

The results were expansive and impressive, and Twilight's eyes gleamed as search results slid into place one by one in a long list. Chaos cults. Chaos daemons. Chaos gods. Chaos heresy. Chaos power. Chaos Space Marines. Chaos and the Warp.

The list went on, and small glyphs started appearing on the side of the screen.

Twilight saw a "download all" command appear and poked it with the stylus. An empty bar appeared and began to fill up rapidly.

"Good. Now follow Trixie," Trixie said, turning away.

"One more?" Twilight asked, raising a hoof slightly and making puppy-dog eyes.

"Follow Trixie before she breaks the dataslate over your egg head," the unicorn snapped, "this is serious."

Twilight grunted irritably before she seized the dataslate and slipped it back into her saddlebag for later perusal. Then she followed Trixie into the psyker dorms.

"This is Trixie's room," the blue unicorn explained, tilting her head so that the card attached to her hat was held over the scanner.

Trixie entered after the doors slid open. "Ah, Suuna! You look much better already after a shower and good meal!"

Twilight followed hesitantly, and then glanced around at the room interior. It was sparsely decorated and very roomy, with a pair of small beds at the end in front of a restroom stall.

What interested her most, however, was that there was a young female human seated next to the wall.

Suuna stood up as Trixie approached, bowing awkwardly to the unicorn. "Yes, Mistress Trixie. Thank you for your generosity," she said. Her hair was lighter and her skin was clean, and she was dressed in a long tunic that matched Trixie's coat.

"Not at all! The Great and Powerful Trixie cares for her friends!" the unicorn turned toward Twilight. "Twilight, this is Suuna, Trixie's assistant. Suuna, this is Twilight Sparkle, some busybody from Ponyville."

Twilight glared at Trixie, but Suuna promptly bowed to the new pony.

"It is an honor, Miss Sparkle. I am at your service."

"Whoa, hey, don't go putting yourself at the service of every weirdo who walks into town! You're a free woman now!" Trixie said, walking up to the human woman.

Twilight wanted very much to learn why Suuna wasn't a free woman before, and why a human would be assistant to a pony, but decided not to pursue the matter. There were important things to discuss, evidently, and after that she had a lot of juicy knowledge to absorb.

"So what is this all about, Trixie?"

Suuna sat down on a pile of pillow cushions, and Trixie stepped up onto her to lay across her assistant's lap.

"Trixie wished to speak about your little plan to 'get rid of' the humans," the unicorn said bluntly, "or did you really think Trixie just let that detail slip by her?"

Twilight recoiled, and her eyes snapped to Suuna, who looked slightly alarmed.

"Trixie! Not in front of-"

"We can trust Suuna, of course," Trixie declared with a curt nod, "she owes much to the Great and Powerful Trixie. She's different from the other humans that serve the 38th Company."

Suuna raised an eyebrow as she glanced down at the unicorn on her lap, apparently as unconvinced as Twilight.

"Anyway, would you like to tell Trixie about your little plan, seeing how Trixie helped get you this far?"

Twilight grimaced. "Okay, Trixie, I know that you like it here, and apparently the blatantly horrible people around the base don't bother you very much, but-"

"Don't misunderstand," Trixie interrupted, "Trixie has no intention of stopping you, warning the humans, or talking you out of it."

Twilight looked shocked to hear that. "You... don't? But aren't the humans key to your livelihood right now?"

"Yes, and believe Trixie when she says Trixie is most discouraged to have you, of all ponies, randomly show up and ruin it," the unicorn muttered, looking away, "but Trixie has put aside her past grudges and come to terms with her mistakes. Trixie knows that you wouldn't be here without a good reason. If you're here to deal with the humans, then Trixie must assume that the humans pose a grave threat to Equestria. Is Trixie correct?"

Twilight nodded dumbly.

Trixie sighed. "Very well. The Great and Powerful Trixie will not put her own wishes and well-being above the safety of Equestria."

"Again, you mean," Twilight responded before she could stop herself.

"Yes, again. Also, shut up," Trixie levitated her sack of oats up off the table to rest next to her, "but Trixie would at least like to know what to expect, and whether Trixie's new caravan wagon might be finished first."

Twilight took a deep breath, feeling a bit ashamed of herself. Seeing Trixie in the employ of the Iron Warriors, she had been quick to think of the unicorn as another enemy. Even if Trixie's past actions were mostly to blame for that assumption, it now seemed very obvious that she really had reflected upon her actions and reformed herself.

"Okay, well, it's not so much a plan at the moment, just..." Twilight trailed off, staring up at the ceiling. "Trixie, you're good with magic. Surely you've felt the energy that surrounds this fortress. It's like a poison, or a sickness or something."

Trixie frowned around a mouthful of oats, and then swallowed before she replied. "Yes. Trixie has. Trixie doesn't understand it, since so few humans are magical themselves, though; how would they generate such a large magical effect?" She shook her head. "Serith knows a lot about it, Trixie thinks; he said that our horns protect us from it, somehow. Trixie didn't inquire further."

"That makes some sense," Twilight admitted, casting a glance at her saddlebag and the dataslate within. "When I would look at those Chaos Star symbols, I would start to feel something in my horn. That was outside the base. Ever since I arrived, though, my horn feels... hot. And there's something else. Like something is following or watching me. Every time I use magic just to pick something up, I can almost hear it speaking..."

The alicorn frowned as she stared up again. "That feeling pretty much vanished when I came in here, though. I thought I had just gotten used to ignoring it, but I guess these rooms really are protected somehow." Then she shook her head. "I'm not sure about this... I'm not sure about anything where the Iron Warriors are concerned, but I think that energy is what the Princess wants me to stop. And to do that, she believes the humans need to go."

Trixie grimaced. "That sounds really vague and reactionary to Trixie, but great and powerful as she is, Trixie isn't in the business of second-guessing the Princess." Trixie craned her neck around to look at Suuna, who had remained respectfully silent throughout the conversation. "Do you know anything about this, Suuna?"

The human woman looked away uncomfortably. "It's hard to say... laborers like me are told nothing, and pulled along with the Company while given scraps and expended like bullets or fuel. Rumors are everywhere, but you're the first one I've ever spoken to who's ever really known an Astartes personally, Mistress. And I can barely fathom matters that concern psykers in particular." She pursed her lips, looking about the room as if it might hold someone other than the two equines. "What I do know about the Space Marines and the humans that serve Chaos - not all of them, but the ones who have joined the cults themselves - is that they're just... DIFFERENT. They speak to voices that aren't there and heed the whims of insane spirits. Some of them start to mutate or gain strange powers without being a psyker. Many of the Space Marines become bloated and filthy in ways that no competent warrior should, and others are kept far away from the humans out of fear that they'll simply start killing soldiers or laborers for fun. That's not something the Iron Warriors are known for."

The woman shuddered, rubbing her arms. "I don't know what Chaos is; whether it's a disease, a religion, or just an awful curse spread by sorcerers and witches... but it's real, and the Iron Warriors carry it with them wherever they go."

"Well, that was dark," Trixie mumbled around another mouthful of oats.

Twilight nodded grimly. "So you understand why you humans have to leave."

"Not really," Suuna said, frowning, "what about those of us that have hardly anything to do with the Company? Will I have to leave Mistress Trixie and go back to the fleet?" Serving an alien psyker was hardly the sort of life Suuna had imagined taking up if she ever escaped enslavement, but as far as she was concerned it was still a big step up.

"We... Well, we haven't really figured that part out yet," Twilight said awkwardly.

"It doesn't really sound like you've thought this whole thing through," Trixie remarked.

"Everything's just been happening so FAST!" the alicorn complained. "I was literally just given this quest several hours ago, and here I am in the middle of the fortress-city already! There's been no time to plan, and I've been separated from the others, too! I'll think of something!"

Then Twilight sighed. "I just need a chance to confront this Warsmith Solon. Trixie, with your help, I can-"

"Whoa whoa whoa WHOA. Let's back the hay up," Trixie interrupted, "Trixie isn't going to turn you in or anything, but that doesn't mean Trixie is throwing her hat into this suicide mission of yours."

Twilight looked surprised for reasons that Trixie really couldn't fathom. "But... Equestria is in danger, remember?" the alicorn stressed.

"Yes. And taking care of that is Princess Celestia's job, which she handed down to YOU, Miss New Princess. Oh, and since Trixie's on the topic: congratulations on the coronation and stuff, by the way." Trixie cleared her throat. "Trixie's MET the Warsmith, all right? And you're out of your magic-addled mind if you think you can challenge that guy."

Twilight frowned. "Is he strong? Does he know magic or something?"

"He's HUGE. And apparently his mastery of technology is such that he might as well have magic. AND he's kind of surrounded by an army," Trixie pointed out blithely, "Trixie respects you, Twilight Sparkle, and knows that you've faced several powerful villains to save Equestria, but there's a line between brave and stupid, and you're on the wrong side of it."

Twilight's cheeks puffed up. "We have the Elements of Harmony."

"Can the Elements of Harmony stop a human tank?" Trixie asked flatly.

"Sure!"

"Nifty. Can they stop a dozen human tanks? At once?"

Twilight pursed her lips. "... Maybe."

"Yes, well, if you find out and survive the experiment, tell Trixie all about it. She'll tell your amazing tale far and wide as a preamble to her magic show," the blue unicorn mumbled sarcastically, looking away, "however, Trixie fully expects you all to die or run away before you get the chance. Trixie only hopes that the Iron Warriors don't decide to punish Trixie for not warning them about you."

Twilight looked annoyed. "Thanks for the vote of confidence."

"Thanks for letting Trixie know that she needs a plan to get out of the fortress in a hurry," Trixie said, suddenly rolling over on Suuna's lap so that she was on her back, "Trixie believes we're done here."

Twilight nodded curtly, but she hesitated as she turned to leave. "Trixie?"

"Hm?" Suuna was now rubbing her hands along Trixie's chest and belly, and the unicorn was clearly fighting to keep a goofy smile off of her face until Twilight left.

"Thank you," Twilight said sincerely, her head tilted downward, "you've seen what these humans are capable of. You never had to help us get around in the first place, and you know what you're risking by keeping quiet about us. So whether this works out or not... thank you. Really."

Trixie snorted, arcing her back as Suuna started scratching below her neck. "It's quite literally the least Trixie can do. Good night, Sparkle. Suuna, go lower. Lower. Yeeessss..."

Twilight didn't leave, staring with a mix of fascination and discomfort as Trixie started panting and kicking her leg.

"Trixie can feel you judging her with your eyes!" the blue unicorn declared. "And Trixie doesn't care!"

"It's just... isn't that kind of... undignified?" Twilight asked awkwardly.

"Dignity can go soak itself; this feels AMAZING," Trixie insisted, "now go away. Trixie might start moaning any second, and she doesn't want you around to make things all weird."

Twilight winced and made her exit quickly, the door sliding shut behind her and locking as per the security settings.

"Well, Trixie may be underestimating us, but she has a point," Twilight mumbled to herself as she walked down the hall, "I'm going to need more than confidence and magic trinkets if we're going to succeed here."

Halting next to another door, she then realized that she didn't know which room she shared with Rarity.

A banging noise from further down the hall startled her, and Twilight saw that the next room over had some sort of arrangement of sigils drawn on it in green paint that glowed faintly in the dim light of the hallway. The Star of Chaos featured prominently in the markings, and Twilight decided then and there that she wasn't going to be staying in that room, regardless of whether her friends were inside.

"Rarity? Spike? Are you in here?" Twilight asked, knocking a hoof on the unmarked door next to her.

"Come in!" Rarity sang, sounding curiously pleased with herself.

Twilight levitated her card over the security scanner, and the door promptly slid open. She stepped inside, and then halted immediately.

"You like?" Rarity asked, smiling as she placed a lacy pillow on one of the two beds.

She wasn't referring to just the pillow, of course, but rather to the room in general. What had been a stagnant arrangement of hardened metal that was more suited to prison arrangements than anything called a "dormitory" was now fully furnished and lavishly decorated. The table had a cloth and doilies, the beds were overflowing with down comforters and lacy pillows, and even the walls were mostly concealed by hanging banners and art pieces.

The only part of the room that was askew, in fact, was the corner next to the room terminal, where Spike was breathing heavily next to a small mountain of empty bags and open luggage cases.

"This may be the first time I've actually unpacked EVERYTHING I brought," Rarity admitted as she stepped back from the beds, "it really does pay to be prepared."

"That's, ah... it's... nice," Twilight said, a little overwhelmed.

"Do you still want a suitcase for all those dataslate things?" Spike asked.

Twilight shook her head, levitating her saddlebag onto the floor. "No, it didn't work out that way. But I should have more than enough reading material for the night." The dataslate that Gaela had modified for pony use slipped out of her saddlebag.

"Okay, then!" Spike said cheerfully, planting his hands on his hips. "Then the only thing left is to discuss sleeping arrangements! Now, I was thinking-"

"Spike," Twilight deadpanned.

The young dragon wilted instantly. "Yeah, yeah, fine. I'll be on the floor," Spike grumbled, picking up a blanket.

****

Ferrous Dominus - Serith's quarters

A rasping noise filled the cavernous interior of Serith's room as a Kroot mercenary fell to its knees, clawing at its throat painfully.

Surrounding the dying alien was a ring of glyphs drawn in its own blood on the metal floor, and these symbols flared with sickening non-light as the Kroot felt its lungs stop working.

Several more of the aliens sat in the room, each one sitting within its own circle of arcane symbols. These Kroot looked almost comatose, their tongues lolling out of their beaks and their eyes staring blankly forward. They were, however, sitting up, and their eyebrows twitched every once in a while as their blood dried on their skin.

Serith wasn't paying any attention to the sorcerous atrocities he had set into motion, however. The Sorcerer stood silently in the middle of the room, unflinching.

With the way he was staring directly forward at nothing, an observer might have concluded that the Iron Warrior had fallen prey to the same effect that had befallen the alien test subjects around him.

However, they would not be able to see or hear within Serith's helmet. It was currently playing a vid-capture feed coming from Trixie's room.

The Sorcerer had many devious means to spy on individuals and delve into their secrets, but in this case he had decided that simple would be best. A scrying or a spy might have been detected, and who knows when he might get the chance to corner Suuna alone and strip her thoughts for information.

On the other hand, the ponies' awareness of technology was nascent at best, and the human slave's wasn't much better. He hadn't even bothered to hide the recorder, which was just a big red lens set in one wall. They probably thought it was a decorative gem or something.

In the meantime it had fed pict and audio directly to Serith's personal encrypted channel, and he had been skimming it for interesting tidbits.

Seeing Twilight Sparkle enter Trixie's quarters had definitely qualified, and the conversation that he had just seen and heard was more than just "interesting".

Serith shut off the feed after Twilight left, not particularly interested in watching Trixie squirm about in pleasure while being fondled by her servant.

"Fascinating. What a brave little pony you are, Lady Sparkle," he said to himself with a deep chuckle, "oh, I'm VERY interested in seeing how this plays out."

He scratched his armored fingers against his equally armored chin. "Methinks the pieces in play could use a little... rearranging, however. Mm hm hm hm mmm!"

Author's Note

I've had to make occasional adjustments to the character listing since I started this; over the course of several chapters I created characters I didn't expect to and didn't end up introducing some of the Tau characters that I was planning on using originally.

Mont'ka

Iron Hearts: Book 2

Chapter 2

Mont'ka

****

Sweet Apple Acres

They had come in the middle of the night.

The roar of jet engines had introduced them long before crimson floodlights poured over the ground, casting an eerie red glow over the rubble pile that used to make up the Apple family household.

Stopping into a hover, the first transport descended to the ground, kicking up dirt, leaves, and scraps of debris all around it. Laser sights swept back and forth along the trees as gun turrets searched for targets, and hydraulics hissed noisily before the ramp on the rear of the vehicle yawned open.

Out came the soldiers, their optics glaring green in the night. Their armor suits were of different model patterns and decorative schemes, varying in durability and ease of mobility, but they were all far superior to the scavenged and cheaply purchased fare of the cultists and mercenaries of the 38th Company. These suits of pressurized carapace armor were merely a step below power armor in durability and protection, each one customized - and in some cases built directly into - the wearer. Many boasted in-built ammo hoppers and weaponized servo arms, and few of them were significantly alike. The only thing truly uniform about the unit, in fact, was the black rubber robes they wore bearing the Iron Skull.

These were the Scavurel, the 38th Company's cyborg soldiers that served as the primary combat arm of the Dark Mechanicus. Nicknamed "scavengers" or "vultures" by the other soldiers of the Company, and referred to mainly with expletives by the Company's foes, these heavily modified humans formed the operational core of the Iron Warriors' looting and resource harvesting. Every soldier was a human remade into a weapon and equipped to serve as the Dark Techpriests' personal corp of combat engineers.

These men and women now turned their augmented gazes on Sweet Apple Acres, weapons at the ready. Two more airborne transports swept in behind them, even bigger than the first.

+Life signs detected. Registering bio-signatures,+ blurted one of the Scavurel soldiers in Binaric Cant as she turned several laser designators onto a treehouse nearby.

The transport practically jumped into the air again, its floodlights and weapon sights converging on the small wooden dwelling sitting in the high branches.

One of the lights halted over a machine that was settled at the bottom of the tree.

+Dark Mechanicus units identified. Alert level 4 imposed,+ Crabapple buzzed, +please state your intended purpose.+

+The corrupted probe automata,+ said the squad leader, shaking his head as his optics returned floods of data on the compromised machine, +Dark Acolyte Gaela informed us of your affliction. A tragic waste of a machine.+

+Unit Crabapple does not comprehend your negative sentiment. Once again requesting stated objective.+ The probe stomped up to the squad, trying its best to seem intimidating, but it would have been hard-pressed to frighten a group of normal soldiers, much less the Dark Mechanicus guardians.

The door to the treehouse opened, and the Scavurel looked up as a large red pony hesitantly stepped into the light cast by the transport gunship.

"Hello?" Big Mac mumbled, looking down at the robed maybe-humans. What with the darkness combining with the Scavurel's black robes to obscure their appearance, Big Macintosh could only make a hopeful guess as to whether the new arrivals were human, Tau, or some OTHER bipedal alien race that had decided to land on their farm and menace them. All he knew was that the creatures were clearly armed, and that they hadn't shot anything yet.

The lead Scavurel, the Core of the unit, stepped forward, and the sheathing panels on his servo-mounted laser stripped away to reveal the glowing red core of the weapon.

"Greetings, xeno scum," he barked, his voice barely intelligible among the crackling static of his mouthpiece, "we hail from the Dark Mechanicus of the mighty Iron Warriors 38th Company. Are you a member of the so-designated 'Apple family'?"

Big Mac bobbed his head. "Eeyup."

The sheathing panels slid back into place as the cargo transports slowly lowered themselves next to the pile of debris. The other Scavurel lowered their weapons and turned around. Then they headed for the transports, their servo arms and mechatendrils unfolding and ready to work.

"Good. We're here to rebuild your home."

****

Sweet Apple Acres - six hours later

Apple Bloom, Scootaloo, and Sweetie Bell all stared in slack-jawed awe as they watched the Dark Mechanicus workers clustered around the massive grain silos that now towered over their barn.

It wasn't the buildings themselves that amazed them, although they were certainly impressive on their own. It was more the way that the teams of servitors, Scavurel, and the two Dark Acolytes assigned to the task had put the things together.

First had come the substructures after the rubble of the previous home and barn had been cleared away by a servitor team equipped with a bulldozer shield. Wiring, piping, and the buildings' skeletons had gone up within hours as ferrocrete was mixed and heated and a reactor core was built by the Acolytes. After that the Scavurel had practically swarmed over the structures with welders and torches, leaving shining metal and angled ferrocrete behind them as the huge supply crates attached to the transports were emptied.

The barn and farmhouse were already complete, and Apple Bloom had expected them to stop after simply replacing what had been lost in the Gnarloc attack. But they hadn't stopped.

The Apple family was now the proud owner of its own plasma reactor power station, a water extractor and purifier, a septic cycler, an automata service bay, and a bombardment shelter. Atop the shelter and the reactor hall, which had been dug into the ground behind the barn, the Dark Mechanicus had started on the refrigerated preservatories - which Apple Bloom had identified as silos - and if any of them understood Crabapple's Binary they would have been informed that the work crew was now reinforcing the vessels to protect against subterranean shocks and explosive blasts.

"Are they almost finished? The sun just came up a few hours ago!" Sweetie Bell asked.

The three fillies were all sitting on top of Crabapple, who was standing sentinel next to Granny Smith as the green mare snored away in her rocking chair.

"Ah dunno," Apple Bloom admitted, "they finished the barn hours ago. They just keep buildin' new stuff."

"If your brother doesn't say something, they might just keep going until they build a whole town here," Scootaloo joked.

Sweetie Bell didn't look sure whether the pegasus was joking. Big Macintosh had served them all a late-night snack after they had been woken up by all the commotion, and by the time they'd finished their food someone had outfitted the clubhouse with ablative armor paneling, a vox station, and a roof-mounted quad gun.

Big Macintosh, meanwhile, was touring the new farmhouse while trying not to get in the way of the Acolytes and servitors that kept rushing through it.

The house was big and sturdy. Not nice, by any stretch, but Macintosh could see that Mechanicus architecture played its two strengths to the hilt. The farmhouse was made mostly of ferrocrete, arranged in a multi-story bunker-shaped complex. Each room was lit by lumen strips set in the ceiling, and separated by sliding durasteel doors that would open when he pressed his hoof against a large black button installed near the floor. It seemed an odd place to put a fancy electric doorknob, but after trying it a few times Big Mac had to admit it was easy to adjust to and actually felt more natural to him than using knobs or levers placed at head level. If anything it seemed the humans were the ones having trouble with them, stepping aside to give the buttons an awkward kick to open the doors.

All in all, the place would take a lot of work to turn into a proper home. Furnishing and painting the place up so that it didn't look like the pillboxes currently in front of Fluttershy's cottage was going to take several days, even if all the serious work had been done in a single night.

Of course, that was also assuming that the Dark Mechanicus wasn't going to go ahead and do that themselves, too. None of the humans had spoken to him or any other pony since they had arrived, and they had kept working and building things long after they had finished the barn. Which was now twice its previous size and had segregated, climate-controlled animal cells. Big Macintosh was honestly getting worried that Applejack had swindled the humans somehow, or that he would be expected to pay for the extra structures.

He was on the second story staring at the armorglass window panes and wondering if there was some way to open them during the summer when he was interrupted from his thoughts. Big Mac heard the door behind him open, but didn't react immediately since he probably wasn't in anyone's way.

"You there. Xeno." The red stallion looked back as a Dark Acolyte approached him, surprised that the humans were actually speaking to him again.

"My associate is conducting the final prayers of activation on the preservatory cryo-engine. Our task is almost complete, and absent further delays, will end within point-zero-two cycles of projected completion time."

Big Macintosh rolled the wheat stalk in his mouth from one side to the other. "Thank ya kindly," he said simply.

"We are performing our duties as outlined by Dark Acolyte Gaela, nothing more," the Dark Acolyte said, producing a dataslate from within his robes and presenting it to Big Mac, "similarly, she instructed me on the proper modifications to the dataslates such that you can manipulate them properly with your poorly evolved, useless equine limbs. This contains all the information a human would need on use and maintenance of your facilities, although judging by your hesitancy in basic communications it may be a false presumption on my part that you're even literate. Even if you can read the information, considering the deplorable tech level around this agri-facility prior to construction, you still may not be able to make use of it. But orders are orders."

Big Macintosh took the dataslate, ignoring the rude commentary. "Thank ya again."

"We depart within the cycle, if you have no other concerns that are worth my attention."

Big Mac tapped the surface of the dataslate, watching as it blinked on and presented him with a menu of topics. "Nnope."

"Good. Care well for the machines here, xeno." Without further commentary the Dark Acolyte turned on his armored heel and walked out of the room.

****

About 1 kilometer outside of Sweet Apple Acres

+I still cannot comprehend the Acolyte's logic. Constructing an agri-facility for xenos?+ the Scavurel Core made a discordant whine through his vox grille, emphasizing his displeasure with the idea.

The Dark Acolyte shook his head. His servo arm was clamped onto an overhead rail to protect against turbulence as their transport made a bee-line to Ferrous Dominus, allowing him to stand free of the safety restraints of the gunship. +As she explained it, it was part of a trade.+

+A trade? With militarily inferior xenos? Why would we not simply take what we need rather than expending our own resources here?+

+The science of negotiation is full of arbitrary nuances and codes of behavior,+ the Dark Acolyte surmised, +it is little different from when we engage in trade with human pirates despite possessing far superior arms. The Dark Acolyte Gaela seems to want to preserve a non-hostile relationship to the equine xenos.+

The Scavurel Core turned away. +Human pirates are at least human. Constructing things for aliens disgusts me.+

+You cannot simply-+

Their conversation was interrupted by an alert transmitted from the cockpit, and the Scavurel all snapped to attention as their systems automatically went to combat status.

+Warning! Sensors detect incoming targets at intercept speed! Tau Empire aircraft detected!+ blasted a string of Binary from the transport bay casters.

+What? Impossible! Where did those come from?+ the Dark Acolyte demanded, walking up to the cockpit door and opening it.

The pilot of the aircraft was a withered husk of a woman with her upper torso implanted in a life-support core and numerous cables plugged into her arms and back. She turned to address the Acolyte as he entered, looking at him through a thick metal visor implanted over her eyes. +It was almost by chance that they were detected this early. They're hiding their drive emissions somehow.+

The pilot's cockpit was fully enclosed, with no windows. Instead, pict screens surrounded the pilot and fed images of her surroundings constantly to aid her. Her link with the more sophisticated sensor systems rendered even these largely redundant, although they helped the Acolyte spot the incoming aircraft and verify that there was no sensory malfunction.

+Initiate vox link with Ferrous Dominus immediately! The transports are to take evasive action!+ the Dark Acolyte barked.

+We cannot establish a vox connection. We are being jammed,+ the pilot replied.

+I was informed the jamming field had been destroyed!+

+It was. This effect is targeting us, specifically.+

The transport on the right screen suddenly flared brightly as a lash of blue sliced through its port engine, and the pilot quickly nosed the gunship up as the other aircraft spun under them while vomiting smoke into the air.

+Turn us around and engage the enemy! Get the other transport out of here!+ the Dark Acolyte commanded.

+We are outnumbered and ill-equipped for aerial combat,+ the pilot warned even as she began to turn the vessel around and cycled power to weapons, +estimated chance of successful combat engagement is eight-point-one-seven percent.+

+So, what is the estimated chance of successful retreat against the interceptor wing right on top of us?+ the Dark Acolyte asked.

+... Target locked. Beginning attack run.+

****

Ferrous Dominus - psyker dorms

The relationship between Chaos and the Warp has always been disputed, debated, tested, and revised. Those who look upon Chaos as the primordial truth, the alpha and the omega, insist that the Warp IS Chaos. That the ability to bend reality is the sole purview of the Gods, and that the Immaterium is their realm, their foodstuffs, and their substance.

This theory excites zealotry and imagination, but is unsatisfactory in logic. It is clear upon objective analysis that the entities identified as the Chaos Gods do not possess true omniscience, even within the realm of the Empyrean. Events occur constantly within the Warp that seem to proceed untouched by the Gods and do not excite their attention. Psykers dip their minds into the Warp frequently without suffering any great corruption, and ships with Warp drives travel through that nightmare universe without being struck down by its inhabitants, even when it would be in the Gods' best interest to do so. Proponents of the religious theory insist that not all events are worth the Gods' time and power, or that their motivations are simply unfathomable to us. While perfectly reasonable in itself, such assumptions rest on the illogical presumption that Chaos is infinite in power and awareness yet prone to petty fits of boredom and whimsy. It is more reasonable to assume from the outset that the power of Chaos is limited, even within the realm they call home.

The most scientific-minded hypothesis rests on the mirror theorem of the Warp. The mirror theorem posits that the material universe exists to impose rules of physical interaction on sentient consciousness and imagination; any creature with the ability for abstract thought can dream of flying in defiance of gravity, but the universe imposes very strict requirements on our ability to succeed in these efforts. The Warp, on the other hand, seeks to undo and challenge the rules imposed by sentient thought. Any creature of intellect will seek to organize and analyze data and find patterns, but the Warp vigorously fights such understanding; even the most basic of physical bonds can come undone for no perceptible reason, and mere thought can perform feats as powerful as the most coveted technologies. This theory posits that this relationship is evident in the technologies that we use to interact with them: in the Materium, technology is used primarily to circumvent or overcome physical laws that impede our goals. In the Immaterium, technology is employed to enforce those same troublesome laws against unreality.

As such, the theory goes on to suggest that Chaos fulfills the same sort of role in the Warp as order does in the Materium. Order, when given meaningful form and deployed with serious force, has an unmistakable, tangible impact. Intelligent and even many non-sentient beings recognize the role of authority and the function of hierarchy almost instinctively, from the monstrous Tyranids to the "enigmatic" Eldar witches. Societal structure is prized and used to build complex economies even in races as barbaric and violent as the Orks. With the concept of order in place to mobilize any group of organisms, whether that order manifests as a religion, a government, a tribe, or a set of worthless, esoteric rituals - seriously, to Hell with the Eldar - the goal is always essentially the same: the mobilization of organisms in groups to enhance their productivity and accomplish that which no individual could manage in the face of the basic challenges of the material universe.

It would seem, then, that Chaos accomplishes the exact same function for the Immaterium. Most see it as a religion, and that description is not incorrect, merely limited. But regardless of how it is treated and approached, Chaos serves to bring the denizens of the Warp together and bring structure to what is otherwise a rudderless and senseless ocean of limitless, uncontrolled power. Daemons that would otherwise be mindless predators lashing about at each other are arranged into allied pantheons. Eddies of power are given names and consistent personalities and associated with certain concepts and elemental forces. Rituals are formed and cause and effect is reinforced as coherent needs and appropriate rewards are determined. It gives shape to that which struggles against the very concept of form. And, most importantly, it allows mortal minds some shred of comprehension of the Empyrean, a universe that specifically defies conceivable structure.

Many Astartes, and nearly all Iron Warriors, did not turn to Chaos because they were corrupted by daemonic artifacts or tempted by whispered promises of power and immortality. When driven into the Warp and forced to survive within that realm of insanity, Chaos stood out as the only means of comprehension and structure available to seize control of their new environment. It offered intelligent, coherent Gods with specific goals and temperaments. It offered tangible rewards for particular deeds. It offered protection from many of the horrific beasts that otherwise troubled them hourly. It had symbols, and languages, and rules.

Chaos is perhaps a misnomer, for it is in fact an island of order and sanity in an otherwise unfathomable storm of energy and madness. A single glimmer of hope to those minds plunged into the darkness and stripped of everything but their senses and their souls. Chaos, like order, is a way of survival and mobilization; terrible and twisted, no doubt, but sufficient for the mortal mind to withstand the insanities of the Immaterium.

Or so the theory goes.

"Twi? Twilight? How long have you been reading that?"

Twilight's head snapped up sharply as something prodded her back leg, her heart leaping into her throat. Her horn lit up with magic immediately, casting her surroundings in a ghostly purple light.

"Whoa! Calm down! It's me!" Spike said, shielding his face with his arms and flinching away.

Twilight breathed heavily and her eyes refocused, taking in her surroundings. The glow around her horn slowly faded, and the alicorn let her body relax as the room turned dark again.

"S-Sorry about that. I..." Twilight shook her head, and then looked down at the dataslate in front of her, "I kind of lost track of where I was."

"You mean in the boo-er, slate?" Spike asked.

"No, Spike," Twilight mumbled, looking around the room.

She was laying on her bed in the dorm that she shared with Rarity and Spike, which was no huge revelation since she remembered being here when she had started reading. Given that the room had no windows, however, she couldn't easily tell what time it was, and aside from the helpfully back-lit dataslate screen the room was completely dark.

"Urrrgh..." a groaning noise came from the other bed in the room, and Twilight heard Rarity grumble. "Whatever time it is, and whatever's wrong, it's way too early for it."

Twilight's horn lit up again so that she could get a good look at Rarity's antique clock perched on the wall. "It's past six o'clock."

"I rest my case," the unicorn mumbled, shifting in her bed.

"You don't look so good, Twi. How are you feeling?" Spike asked in concern.

"Like I spent all night reading about space monsters from another dimension that want to eat my brain," Twilight said humorlessly, rubbing at her muzzle.

"A real page-turner, huh?" Spike said with a wry smile.

"Don't get me wrong, Spike; this compilation is incredible. The topic is just... difficult." Twilight sighed, feeling her eyes droop. "I've already found several fascinating parallels with my magic studies, especially my experiences with the Alicorn Amulet and Sombra's dark magic. And personal relevance aside, it's just... well, it's really interesting! The humans that wrote these articles are outstanding!"

Spike stood at the edge of the bed and tried to get a good look at the dataslate display. "Oh? Who wrote them?"

"A few different people, I think," Twilight said, tapping a box with the tip of her hoof to bring up a list of citations, "it cites a lot of different materials, mostly from some human called 'Perturabo'. But the essays and thesis are written by... let's see... 'Solon'."

Twilight's muzzle wrinkled. "Huh. Awkward."

"You two aren't going back to sleep, are you?" Rarity grumbled from her bed. "Twilight, aren't you at ALL tired?"

"Pft, please. You think this is the first time I've stayed up all night reading?" Twilight scoffed.

"It isn't even the first time this WEEK," Spike agreed.

Rarity groaned again.

"Come on Rarity, we can't spend all day sleeping, anyway," the purple alicorn said, standing up on her bed, "we've still got most of the fortress to explore!"

"Can't you just go back to reading?" Rarity asked, shifting in her bed again.

"No, the dumb cogitator cores won't give me access to their systems with a guest pass," Twilight growled, having obviously considered the option, "so our first exploration is going to be finding someone who will let me use theirs."

Rarity made more displeased noises, while Spike looked confused. "Wait, so where did that one come from, then?"

"I had to use Trixie's security card," Twilight grumbled.

"Well, then it's off to Trixie's room we go," Rarity said suddenly, raising her head off her pillow. She was wearing a clay mask and had curlers in her mane, Twilight saw, and the alicorn wondered just what, if anything, Rarity had actually left behind in her home.

"Just give me a little while to get ready and do my mane. Then we can get Trixie to load you up with new reading material and I can go back to bed."

Twilight raised an eyebrow as the snow-colored unicorn trudged toward the bathroom. "Why would you bother primping when you're planning to go back to sleep?"

Rarity didn't answer, and the door slid shut behind her.

"Isn't she magnificent?" Spike sighed, his claws clasped together.

"Yeah, sure," Twilight rolled her eyes as she stepped down from her bed, "I wonder how the others are doing. I wish we didn't have to get separated like this. I find this entire place fascinating, if not objectively awful, but it must be pretty scary for the others..."

****

Ferrous Dominus - menial dormitory showers

"We're Apples forever, Apples together, we're family and so much more! No matter what comes, we will face the weather! 'Cuz we're aaaaaapples to the core!"

Applejack's voice echoed within the vast open spaces of the shower rooms, bouncing off the bald steel walls and ceiling as steaming hot water streamed down her head and mane.

A moment later the room was filled with loud clanging as Rainbow Dash and Pinkie Pie started banging their hooves on the metal floor in pony applause. Fluttershy was joining in as well, but her tepid hoof-taps were completely lost in the din.

"And that's mah encore, ladies! Thank ya'll and goodnight!" Applejack twisted the metal wheel under the shower head, and the water streaming down from the shower head turned to a dribbling trickle.

She and Rainbow Dash exited first, retrieving the towels hanging from hooks outside the rows of shower stalls.

"Well, Ah was pretty worried about havin' to stay in this place, but Ah gotta admit that this isn't half bad," Applejack admitted as she dried herself.

"I'd say it's exactly half bad. But the other half is pretty good," Rainbow Dash admitted as she shook out her wings, "the rooms are more like closets, and I don't think there's a single window in this whole building, but everything works, at least."

She tilted her head to the side. "Hey, I wonder what the Space Marines' rooms are like! When Tellis gets back we should totally have him give us a tour!"

"Oh, no, I don't think we should bother Mister Tellis for that," Fluttershy said with a cringe as she emerged from her stall and started to dry off, "in fact, we should probably not bother him about anything anymore... ever."

"Well, fer now Ah'd settle fer a tour of the mess hall," Applejack said before stepping up to Pinkie's stall and banging a hoof on the door, "yo, Pinkie, ya wrappin' up in there?"

"Yeah, I was just reading the wall graffiti," the pink pony explained as she emerged from the stall, chuckling, "heh. Metal boxes."

Applejack's happy expression dimmed a bit. "Ya feelin' better today? Ya were a pretty sour apple after we set out fer this place."

Pinkie sighed, lowering her head. "I guess. I'm still sad that we have to leave all our human friends, though."

"I'm more worried about having to get rid of them," Fluttershy admitted, shuddering.

"Yeah, well, we'll see what Twi has to say about that when we see her," Applejack noted as she found the pair of hair ties she had left on a metal counter. She had just started doing her mane and tail up in their usual style when Rainbow Dash snorted.

"I'd love to hear what her big plan is. If we take out this 'Warsmith', then what? Do the rest of the humans give up and leave? Is that how it works?"

"Ah dunno Dash. Maybe this 'Chaos' or whatever will go with him?" Applejack finished tying her mane and then started moving toward the entrance. "If not, Ah really don't like our chances. And we haven't even met the head honcho yet. Ah'd wager half a season's harvest he ain't any softer than the Space Marines we've met so far."

As the farmer was reaching for the exit button the doors suddenly slid open on their own, courtesy of the two menials on the other side.

The two male, naked menials, with towels over their shoulders.

The two groups stopped and stared at each other for several seconds in confused silence, and Fluttershy's eyes widened as her cheeks started to burn.

"Huh," Applejack said suddenly, "so that's what a human one looks like." She didn't mean to stare, but the humans' bipedal stature kind of put their groin right at pony face level. And given that the humans always seemed to wear clothes, this was also her first time getting a good look at homo sapien anatomy.

"I thought they'd be bigger," Rainbow mused, tilting her head to one side, "no offense, guys."

This seemed to jar the men out of their stupor, and one of them turned right around and left while the other quickly pulled his towel down and wrapped it around his waist.

"What the blazes is this? Who are you?"

"Ah think introducin' ourselves in the shower room is a mite strange, sugarcube," Applejack said while waving a hoof at the man, "mind if we get by?"

The man stumbled backward out of the door and into the locker rooms, still completely out of his depth as the ponies walked out calmly (save Fluttershy, who was hiding behind Rainbow Dash again).

"So is that the guy's shower room? That would explain things," Pinkie noted.

"Y-Yes! It is!" the menial confirmed. That wasn't really the most obvious thing wrong with this encounter, but he seized onto the topic nonetheless.

"Well, sorry! How were we supposed to know?" Rainbow Dash asked.

"Didn't you see a symbol mounted next to the locker room entrance?" the menial demanded.

"Ya mean the blue one that's a stick figure of a human?" Applejack asked. "What about it?"

"That symbol is supposed to be a human male," the man groused.

"Then that other one that had those weird fins on its legs was supposed to be a female?" Rainbow Dash asked. "How does that make sense?"

"It's... It's supposed to be a dress," sighed the menial.

"Do any humans wear dresses? The only one I've seen was the one Rarity made for Gaela, so that doesn't count."

"Ah think it's supposed to be a robe, not a dress. Ah could see that. Lotsa humans 'round here wear those."

"But don't the men wear those too?"

"This is really confusing."

The menial finally gave up, stepping past the ponies into the shower room. "You know what? It doesn't matter. You're a different species, and you're naked anyway. I'm gonna go wash."

Rainbow Dash watched the random human leave, and then shrugged her shoulders. "Dude's got a point. Wearing clothes all the time seems to make things really complicated for them."

"Fluttershy, what're ya scared of NOW? That one didn't have a mask on," Applejack pointed out as she retrieved her hat from a locker.

"Why don't humans have fur anywhere but on their heads?" the yellow pegasus mumbled quietly.

"What are you talking about? You saw them, they had fur all around their-"

"BESIDES there, Rainbow!"

The others likewise had stashed their saddlebags in the lockers, since the bags held their security access cards which allowed them into the room.

"So, what're we doing today in the big human fortress of doom?" Rainbow Dash asked once she'd secured her saddlebag and checked the card pinned to it. "'Cause if we have time, I want to find someone to put my name into my card, like Trixie did."

"Well, Ah suppose we should find Twi and see about that..." Applejack trailed off. "But if we're bein' honest, and ya know Ah always am, Ah'd like to find Gaela first and check on mah house gettin' rebuilt."

Pinkie leaned over to Rainbow Dash. "You know, Daniels implied that human liquor is way, WAY stronger than our cider..."

The racer's eyebrows climbed, and she shared a silent smirk with the pink pony.

"Uhm, aren't we on a super-important mission to save Equestria from evil?" Fluttershy asked meekly, looking around to make sure that there were no more humans within earshot.

"Yeah, fine, we'll get to that eventually," Rainbow Dash said, "but until then we should probably enjoy having the humans around while we still can, right?"

"Ah hear that," Applejack grinned, raising up a hoof.

As Rainbow smacked the earth pony's hoof with her own, Fluttershy made a desperate noise in the back of her throat.

"Isn't that going to make it harder to eventually turn against them, though?" Fluttershy asked.

"No, it won't be any harder, just more dramatic and emotionally devastating," Pinkie pointed out.

Applejack led the way out into the hall with the other three mares trailing close behind her and two of them inappropriately excited. "Then let's go get..."

A red light started flashing above the ponies, cutting the farmer off and casting the steel walls in a deep crimson. Within moments, each of them could hear air raid sirens going off around the building; a deep, mournful horn that sent chills down their spines.

"That's not good," Pinkie said with a wince.

"Wh-What does it mean? What's happening?" Fluttershy asked.

"Ah don't know. Maybe we should ask-"

Again the farmer was cut off before she could complete her thoughts: first by the locker room door slamming shut behind Fluttershy - despite her still being close enough to open it by proximity - and then by a vox transmission cast over the entire fortress.

"Warning! Warning! All personnel to battle stations! This is not a drill! Siege lockdown is now in effect! All non-combat personnel's building access is now restricted until lockdown release! I repeat! Siege lockdown is now in effect!"

"Well. There go our plans for the day," Rainbow muttered, glaring at a vox caster near the ceiling as if it was the device's fault.

"Are we under attack? Who'd be dumb enough to try that on a place like this?" Applejack asked, peeking out from her hat to stare at the emergency lights.

"You mean besides us?" Rainbow asked with a snicker.

"Don't gimme that sass, RD. Ya know what Ah meant."

"Enemy sensor intercepts identified!" blared the vox caster again. "All personnel, prepare for assault! Tau armor is incoming!"

A trio of groans came from the three ponies that weren't whimpering in fear.

"Ah knew it! Damn grayskin freaks!" Applejack growled.

"Those guys ruin EVERYTHING," Rainbow agreed bitterly.

"All personnel, to battle stations!" the vox again announced, a note of increased desperation and fear in the voice on the other end. "The palisade has been breached!"

****

Ferrous Dominus - sector 30 (rear quadrant)

It was said that when the Iron Warriors struck, they struck like a hammer upon an anvil: slowly, perhaps, but precise, purposeful, and with unstoppable force. This had been evident in the assault upon the Tau encampment: even when the foe saw the 38th Company poised to strike, they could do little but plot lingering resistance before they were swept away.

The Tau, it was said, struck more like a lightning bolt: hard, fast, and out of nowhere, leaving nothing but confusion and smoking ruin in their wake.

The incoming aircraft had been detected first via ghost readings on the individual sensors of the anti-aircraft guns, and were confirmed by physical sightings moments before a pair of Rhino transports on the perimeter were blasted into smoking hulks.

Ordinarily there would have been a sensorium established by this phase of the base's construction that could have pierced the stealth fields of the Tau aircraft. Alas, given that they had only restored basic vox function the previous evening, the sensorium's establishment had been delayed since it would have been of limited use under the previously imposed jamming conditions.

As aircraft had begun peeling away from a tardy but furious anti-air response, the first dozen Hammerhead gunships had reached firing range of the perimeter bunkers. Their engines screamed as the hover tanks maintained pursuit speed, flying full tilt toward the fortress-city.

The land they were traveling over was on queue to be mined; special anti-gravity trigger explosives would have sensed the approach of the hover tanks, unleashing magnetic charges into the sensitive underbelly of the vehicles. Such was the setup around most of the fortress. Alas, this quadrant was where the Company had been scavenging the Tau command cruiser, and as such had been left untrapped thus far to minimize any accidents and maximize efficiency. Besides losing no vehicles to mines, the starship carcass provided a convenient shield from some of the fortress guns. It was a glaring weak point in the fortress's defenses, and one that had been considered.

The security cordon would have indeed posed an intimidating gauntlet normally, covering the obvious point of approach with a devastating array of heavy weapons. Alas, with the bulk of the 38th Company deployed to the Everfree Forest and searching for more Tau, the defenses were diminished to the point of a few dug-in tanks and lightly manned bunkers for each sector.

These defenses, already struggling against the element of surprise and stunned at the number of enemy units, put down but one of the enemy tanks before the armored spearhead pushed past the first and second lines of defense. Those tanks then slowed to combat speed before unleashing their weapons into the rear of the perimeter strongpoints. Tanks and bunkers were carved apart by heavy railguns and had their internals cooked by ion cannons as slaves and Dark Techpriests started taking flight from the starship's grave. The palisade guns - what few could find a targeting solution in the close-quarters fight below - fired desperately at the invaders, but in this one assault scenario the firing angles were stacked against them. What few kills they managed was no cause for celebration, for within minutes the security cordon had been reduced to smoking wreckage while groups of human soldiers and Chaos Space Marines sprinted for new cover.

Following behind the Hammerheads came the true bulk of the invasion force, and soon dozens of Devilfish transports were dodging through the smoking gap cut into the Iron Warriors' defenses with Piranha light attack skimmers running escort alongside them. Behind them came the battlesuits, jet packs straining to keep up with the assault.

Even with the outer perimeter smashed, the palisade wall would have stopped the attack dead until it was breached; the walls had been specifically designed to foil the Tau's anti-gravity technology that would normally see them bound over such obstacles. Explosive charges in the wall spikes would have cut down ascending vehicles trying to navigate past them, while more traps triggered by the unique anti-gravity drives awaited those who reached the top. Alas, this sector was the only part of the base that had not yet had its wall erected; again a consequence of the ongoing disassembly of the starship. It would have slowed construction intolerably to have a wall erected between the fortress and the primary source of its walls. So it had been saved for last.

Each conceit was a calculated risk; every Iron Warrior and even the mundane human soldiers could see the glaring blind spot in their base's defenses, but it didn't matter. The Tau, having been driven from orbit, hunted like animals, and having lost their base, were not supposed to have the resources available to launch an assault.

Alas, they did.

The first of the Piranhas zipped past the gunnery towers and started skirting around the crowds of fleeing slaves flooding into the base. Its squadron spread out, picking out groups of armed Scavurel soldiers and heavy Mechanicus walkers that served as security for the construction site. Burst cannons and fusion blasters unleashed streams of destructive energies into the barricades as the heavier, slower vehicles started pouring in through the gap, and they were soon joined by ranked fusillades from Fire Warrior teams as the vanguard unloaded the first of the infantry.

A few of the devilfish APCs broke off from the veritable river pouring into the base, passing over the crowds of fleeing slaves and slowing in front of them to box in the crowd. Those transports started to unload their soldiers as the tide of forced laborers started to slow; the Tau among the slaves were already whooping and cheering even as they sought cover from the attack, and they tried their best to keep the humans calm as they were surrounded.

One Fire Warrior unloading from the transports boasted unique rank markings on her helmet and carried a rail rifle over her shoulder as she watched the skimmers branch out and chase the remaining Dark Mechanicus overseers with volleys of burst cannon fire.

"Attention, humans!" the Fireblade barked in Gothic. "Calm yourselves at once and rejoice! You who are oppressed and forced into labor by your cruel Imperial overlords have been granted reprieve! We are not here to harm you!"

As Crisis Suits and Stealth Suits landed in the fortress interior and started linking up with their mission teams, numerous other Devilfish APCs started landing by the crowd and opening up, although no soldiers exited from them. Other Fire Warriors began organizing a line of the frantic laborers into the APCs, prioritizing the eager Tau prisoners.

"Your day has come, gue'la brothers and sisters! We offer you freedom! All you need do is take it!" The Fireblade raised her rifle in the air, and many of the humans roared their approval, lifting their fists to the sky. The Tau and Kroot prisoners gladly joined them, not having understood the speech but easily being swept up in the energy as their army's armored vehicles rushed by.

The Fireblade turned away from the cheering crowd, and one of the unit veterans nodded to her.

*Shas'vre Jerriha, these numbers exceed our estimates. We won't have enough room to transport all these humans back to base.*

Jerriha nodded before she stared out at the avenues of the Iron Warrior base. The sounds of war were spreading fast as her units carried out their missions, and the guns on the towers behind them were still thundering away at the vehicles streaming in.

*Triple-load every transport. Pack them in as tight as possible. Prioritize our own, obviously, and then the young and healthy humans. Those will be of the most use to the Greater Good.*

*Aye, Shas'vre.*

*Every Devilfish transport that loses its squad is to take on prisoners before departing for base.* Then her head whipped about to stare at the macro-cannon turrets mounted on the towers. *And somebody find the power transmissions for those blasted turrets! I want our escape corridor as safe as possible!*

*We have Riptide battlesuits coming in. Should they target the cannons?*

*No,* Jerriha said reluctantly, *have them save their ordnance. It's better spent on the gue'la infrastructure rather than their defenses.*

As the Fire Warrior saluted smartly, Jerriha stepped back into her waiting Devilfish. *Prepare for killing, Shas'la. We walk into the very maw of the enemy.*

****

Ferrous Dominus - psyker dormitories (ten minutes before perimeter breach)

"Triiiixiiiiie! Get up! I need your help!"

Twilight banged her hoof on Trixie's door as Rarity and Spike watched from behind with considerable sympathy.

"Trixie!" Twilight barked after several seconds passed without a response. "Don't make me teleport in there! Mister Serith said that this place affects our magic powers and I'm not sure if it would be safe! But I will TOTALLY do it if I have to!"

After a few more seconds a voice finally came from the other side of the door.

"Good morning, Lady Sparkle," said Suuna, her voice muffled by the metal barrier, "Mistress Trixie wished for me to greet you and kindly request that you... uhm, I believe she said 'get bent'."

"Oh, good morning Suuna! Please tell Miss Trixie that I require her Great and Powerful assistance in order to get more reading material!" Twilight said brightly, quite pleased that Trixie had confirmed that she could hear her.

"Ah. Right. Hold on."

There was more muffled grumbling from behind the door, and after a minute it finally slid open.

Trixie stood before the opening, her usual hat and cape absent. Her mane was also a ragged mess, and Rarity winced at the crude display.

"You have PRECISELY two minutes to convince the Great and Sleepy Trixie not to embrace the dark, hateful magic that blankets this place and go all magic duel on your flank, Sparkle," Trixie mumbled, her eyes squeezed shut, "go."

Twilight rolled her eyes. "Oh, get a grip. It's almost seven o'clock, Trixie."

"What do you think Trixie is, an earth pony?" the blue unicorn growled, her eyes cracking open. "Trixie's day doesn't start until 8 AM, the earliest!"

"Right? This girl just doesn't listen," Rarity sighed, for once finding a rapport with the other unicorn.

"Yeah, yeah, whatever. Just give me your stupid card so I can get into the cogitator core," Twilight snapped impatiently.

"They don't work that way! Some machines actually check to make sure you're the same pony who the card was given to!" Trixie barked back as she stepped out into the hall. "Besides, Trixie already gave you all that reading material yesterday!"

"I need to get back into the archive to cross-reference several things I read about but didn't understand," Twilight explained impatiently, "in particular, I want to look at information about the 'Imperium', 'Nikea', 'the Book of Lorgar', and maybe-"

"If you want to park your fat butt in the space library all day, go find the human you rode in with and ask her to help you!" Trixie interrupted hotly. "Besides, aren't you on a super-important mission to vanquish these Iron Warriors? Trixie would have thought you might want to get started on that!"

Rarity and Spike recoiled, and Twilight's fur stood on end. "SSSH! Don't go shouting that out in the open here!"

"Oh, calm down," the blue unicorn said with a huff, "there's nopony around to hear."

"It's not PONIES I'm worried about," Twilight growled, "besides, we don't know this place! The humans have communication devices everywhere, and I don't know how they work! What if they're listening in and we can't even tell?"

Trixie snorted. "Trixie thinks you'd know very quickly if the Iron Warriors ever caught on to your plan. You don't have to worry."

It was just about at that point that the air sirens started blaring and the emergency lighting switched on.

Trixie stared as she watched Twilight turn several shades paler without the aid of magic, as if her fur had suddenly been bleached.

"That... That alarm could be about anything!" Trixie said, although there were droplets of sweat collecting around her horn.

"Nononononono, this is not happening, this is not happening," Rarity chanted like a mantra, her head snapping from side to side to watch for any incoming soldiers.

"So, uh, Rarity?" Spike asked, poking the white unicorn on the leg. "We probably only have a few minutes left to live, so I was wondering if maybe you would-"

"Enemy sensor intercepts identified! All personnel, prepare for assault! Tau armor is incoming!"

The relief that came from the three ponies was palpable, although Spike's reaction was more mixed.

"There! See? We'll be fine! ... For now." Trixie turned around to re-enter her room. "These 'Tau' clowns are going to get themselves crushed, and then everything will be-"

This time Trixie was interrupted by the sound of her dorm room doors slamming shut right in front of her, followed by another vox message.

"All personnel, to battle stations! The palisade has been breached!"

"Well, that's discouraging," Trixie mumbled, placing a hoof against the door.

"Mistress? Are you all right?" Suuna asked from behind the door.

"Yes, yes. Trixie is fine. Suuna, could you open the door, please?" Trixie asked.

"I can't! The door is locked!"

Trixie frowned. "Trixie thought the doors didn't lock from that side. Well, in any case, Trixie's key is on her Great and Fabulous hat. If you could-"

"No, Mistress, you don't understand," Suuna interrupted, "the lockdown prevents any of us from opening the doors. Only the Iron Warriors and the Dark Mechanicus can open them until the lockdown ends!"

"What? Why would they do that?" Trixie demanded.

"I believe it's for your safety, Mistress Trixie."

"The irony of this is just sickening," Twilight mumbled, turning around to face Spike, "Spike, you still have the Elements?"

The young dragon nodded, slapping the backpack he was carrying. He had been instructed not to let the pack out of his sight, and as such he had brought it along even for their (theoretically) brief trip to try to coerce Trixie.

Twilight chewed her lip as possibilities rolled through her head. "Okay. We need to go find the others."

"Twilight," Rarity gasped, "you can't be serious! You want to-"

"Yes," Twilight said with a nod.

"NOW? While the fortress is under attack?" Spike asked incredulously.

"Yes," Twilight said with another nod.

"Are you out of your egg-shaped little mind?" Trixie asked.

"No," Twilight said with an annoyed glance at the unicorn, "the base is probably in a panic right now, and every one of the 38th Company has more important things to do than deal with us. I don't know what it looks like out there, but if there's any chance we might be able to get to the Warsmith now, I want to take it, even just to get a look at him."

"How are we supposed to get around with all the doors locked?" Rarity asked, quite distressed by this whole plan. Already the sounds of heavy weapon fire was ringing through the halls, distant echoes of the carnage taking place outside.

"That's the easy part. I'll just teleport us through any locked doors," Twilight said, her horn flashing with magic.

"And you don't think that the Warsmith guy might be better defended and harder to get to with the fortress under attack?" Spike questioned.

"Maybe. That part I don't know about. But I'd rather risk finding out than sitting around in the hallway waiting for things to sort themselves out on their own. We can still back down if confronting him looks impossible," Twilight reasoned, "we got this far only because we got help. It's time we took our own initiative."

Trixie's eyes narrowed. "Are you doing this just because you don't have any more reading material readily available and you have nothing else to do?"

"Trixie, you don't have to come," Twilight deadpanned, her wings spreading as she pointed her hoof down the hallway.

"W-Wait! Don't leave Trixie behind!" the blue unicorn said, casting a regretful glance at her room. "Suuna, you stay here and out of trouble! Trixie will be back soon!"

"Gladly, Mistress," came the tired reply from beyond the doors.

"Wait up! Trixie's coming with you!"

Twilight put on aggravated face as she led the others down the hall, but she was inwardly relieved that she had another pony - not to mention another magic-user - to help her. Bravery was all well and good, but Twilight was quite aware she had no idea what she was getting into.

"Twilight, I have plenty of reservations about this plan of yours, but I think one point needs to be addressed right away, before anything bad happens," Rarity said, creeping nervously behind Spike.

"If this is about the way the red emergency lighting looks against your coat, it'll clear up when we're outside," Twilight murmured.

"... In that case, the SECOND most pressing matter would be how we're going to handle being in a battlefield," Rarity said. She was hardly mollified by Twilight's reassurance about her coat, but at least the alicorn had her priorities straight. "Specifically, if we happen upon Tau fighting humans, do we stop to help the humans?"

"No," Twilight said immediately, "we should keep out of this fight and stay neutral."

"What if it's a human we know?" Rarity asked.

Twilight hesitated. "Well... I guess it would be pretty heartless to abandon a friend like that..."

"What if the human is clearly an innocent non-combatant? Not all the humans here are soldiers, you know," Trixie pointed out.

Twilight grimaced. "Well, I suppose that's an extenuating circumstance..."

"What if the human is a soldier we don't know, but they seem like they'd be pretty cool once we got to know them and it's easily within our power to save their lives?" asked Spike, scratching his chin.

Twilight's expression shifted to one of annoyance as her wings drooped. "You know what? You can all just use your best judgment."

"So once again, we're basically on the humans' side," Rarity clarified.

"Sure, why not," Twilight grumbled, coming up to the door that led to the secondary data center.

The sound of gunfire was much closer now, and despite Twilight's limited exposure to human weapons so far she could already recognize the sound of Tau pulse weapons dueling with Astartes boltguns nearby.

Twilight was working out in her head how best to avoid the nearby firefight when the doors in front of her slid open, taking the matter right out of her hooves.

Two Chaos Space Marines ducked into the hall, and they used the hallway wall as cover as their bolters spat mass-reactive rounds in furious bursts back into the data repository.

Twilight backed up immediately, and she very nearly slipped on the brass shell casings that were rolling down the hall in a haphazard stream. Had she stayed still she might have been stepped on as one of the Iron Warriors took another step back and began to reload.

"We should probably find a different way!" Rarity said, her ears pinned in an attempt to block out the noise of the boltguns.

"There IS no other way!" Trixie shouted back.

It was about at that moment that a Tau photon grenade landed in the hall, blanketing everybody's vision in blinding white.

"AHHH! Trixie can't see!"

"I take it back! The red lights weren't that bad! Bring them back, please!"

Twilight blocked out the complaining unicorns behind her as she tried to focus on her hearing, having been blinded like everyone else.

She was rewarded for her vigilance by the sound of a volley of pulse shots, followed by the sound of two vox-garbled screams of pain.

The sound of two heavy armor suits hitting the ground right in front of her left a cold feeling in the pit of her stomach, and as her vision started to turn from solid white to shimmering grayscale blobs she decided to put up her magic shield.

That decision saved her life, and likely that of her friends. There was no shout of "psyker", demand for surrender, or any other warning. One moment Twilight saw a dark blob moving into her field of vision, and the next she felt a surge of hot pain running through her horn as energy bolts exploded against her magic barrier.

"Wh-What? What's going on?!" Trixie demanded, blinking rapidly while her vision started to return to normal.

"The Tau! They're shooting at us!" Twilight shouted, squeezing her eyes shut against the building pain.

"Why would they do that?! We're not their enemies!" Trixie cried. She could now see clearly enough to make out the smoking hulks of armor lying in front of them, as well as the crackling impacts of the pulse volleys against Twilight's magic shield.

"This is all Applejack and Rainbow Dash's fault!" Rarity cried out, rubbing her foreleg over her eyes.

Twilight cracked an eye open against the pain in her horn, and she clenched her teeth when she saw two more Fire Warriors in blue and black armor moving into a firing position next to their compatriot.

"Somepony do something! I can't hold them off forever!"

Trixie gulped as her sight recovered entirely, bringing the image of alien soldiers aiming their pulse carbines into sharp relief. Twilight's body trembled in front of her, the alicorn's horn pulsing with a corona of brilliant purple.

Her gaze dropped to the gunmetal and gold heaps on the floor off to the side, and the unicorn's jaw set.

"How dare you kill the Great and Powerful Trixie's audience, wretched invaders?!" Trixie barked, suddenly holding her head high before her horn lit up with magic. "Experience the wrath of Equestria's second mightiest magician!"

The Fire Warriors didn't understand a word she said - all the soldiers that could speak Gothic were helping rescue the slaves - but they surely understood that they had overreached in their assault when a pair of boltguns floated up off the ground of their own accord, pointing toward the doorway with a pink field of magic swirling around them.

"REVENGE IS TRIXIE'S, ALIEN SCUM!!"

Rarity and Spike gaped as the bolters started firing on full automatic, promptly swallowing the three Fire Warriors in mass-reactive fire before they could hope to escape.

Trixie kept firing the battle rifles as sweat trickled down her forehead, and soon the weapons clicked empty.

"... Well," Twilight said uncomfortably after an awkward silence descended upon the Equestrians, "it seems we've kind of crossed an ugly line here."

"You didn't warn Trixie that these 'Tau' people shoot ponies on sight!" Trixie snapped. The boltguns released their empty magazines onto the floor, dropping them among the scattered casings.

"Last we saw, they didn't!" Twilight protested. "I warned everypony this was going to happen! Every time we ran into the Tau, Applejack and Rainbow Dash knocked them silly! Now they're out for us, too!"

The Marines' bodies shifted slightly as fresh ammunition magazines broke free of their belts and floated up into the bolters.

Trixie levitated the slides back as she glared at Twilight. "Well then, that settles any lingering moral qualms about attacking the Tau for the benefit of the humans, doesn't it?"

"Hey, yeah, it does!" Spike agreed, apparently surprised by the revelation. "That's convenient!"

"There's nothing 'convenient' about being targeted by one group of alien warriors while skulking about in order to defeat another!" Rarity protested, turning her head away from the bloody bits of alien splattered all over the hall. "Twilight, this idea was bad before, but we can't proceed if we're going to be actually attacked out there!"

Twilight grimaced. "Rarity, we can make it! Whether we aid the humans or just avoid the individual battles, we need to make sure the others are safe! Besides, we're probably not any better off here, given that we already have firefights right outside our front door!"

Rarity frowned, considering that argument. Before she could come to any decisive conclusion, the whistling noise of rockets came from outside.

The explosions that rocked the building didn't even come close to harming the ponies directly, and in fact it was only Spike with his two-legged gait who even lost his footing when the metal floors trembled.

Twilight watched a burst of flame wash through the secondary data center, and winced. Then she ducked to the floor as the squeal of stressed metal came from the numerous pipes that ran over the ceilings throughout the halls. Lumen strips flickered and started leaking sparks as the power supply started to fluctuate uncontrollably, and an ominous creak came from directly above them.

A loud banging noise had all the ponies ducking along with Twilight when a pipe valve burst directly over Rarity, having been bent by the tremors and then blasted open by a sudden, uncontrolled influx of gas. It was sudden and loud enough that Twilight would have put her shield up again under normal conditions, but she was still quite tired from fending off so much pulse weapon fire.

Spike heard the hiss of escaping gas and the crackling of a sparking lumen strip, and his eyes widened.

"Everypony get down!" the dragon cried, diving at a surprised and confused Rarity.

The gas explosion was, in all honesty, much less severe than he had feared; automatic failsafes had kicked in once a breach had been detected to cut off the supply of fuel and flood the line with reactant-inhibitors. The pipe did spit out an impressive tongue of fire with what it had left though, vomiting a fireball downward that would have surely left the glamorous unicorn badly scorched had she stayed still.

"Rarity! Spike! Are you okay?" Twilight asked, trying to focus on her friends so that she could stop thinking about the explosions that had just torn through the data center. The cogitator cores! The dataslates! How much knowledge had just been turned into burnt rubble?

"Y-Yes. I'm fine, darling," Rarity said somewhat dizzily, standing up next to Spike, "but as I was saying, this... is..."

Trixie winced. Rarity was looking at her tail. Or rather, what was left of it. Half of the shining purple curl had been burnt clean off, and there was a thin trail of smoke winding up from what was left.

"And here it comes," Trixie groaned, lowering her head. Twilight didn't say anything, but was similarly braced for an overdramatic outpour.

"I'm sorry, Rarity! I t-tried to... I mean-" Spike started blubbering, but fell silent when Rarity suddenly shushed him.

"That's quite all right, Spike. Thank you. You were very brave," Rarity said calmly, surprising all of them. She smiled pleasantly at the young dragon while her horn lit up.

Trixie quirked an eyebrow as one of the bolters started quivering in the air, and a moment later the magic field around it turned from pink to blue.

"Sorry for the hold-up, everypony. We can continue now," the white unicorn said pleasantly. The boltgun she was now controlling floated over next to her. "Lead the way, Twilight."

Twilight was a bit concerned about the way Rarity's serene smile didn't reach her eyes and the way she stared at the Astartes battle rifle with newfound admiration, but she decided it was enough that they could move on without any further complaints. She could already hear new volleys of pulse rifle fire and shouting in an alien language from the next room.

Six Tau Fire Warriors were holed up in the remains of the secondary data center, taking cover behind the shattered armorglass windows to trade fire with the building across the street.

Their Devilfish floated nearby, sawing across a cluster of humans huddled behind a barricade with its burst cannon to keep the squad down and out of the firefight. Thin lances of red light and solid-slug ammunition splashed uselessly against its hull, but most of the human fire sought out the Tau infantry that had disembarked here.

*I told you, the demo team is down! This building has been crippled but is not secure!* a unit leader barked into his communicator. *Is there another demolitions team available, or do you want us to move on?*

*Many unusual power readings coming from that structure. But definitely not a generator,* decided the voice on the other end, *all right, embark on your transport and join the-*

*Behind us!* the Fire Warrior on rearguard shouted a warning as he raised his pulse rifle to fire.

The alien warrior promptly had his weapon magically wrenched from his hand before a single bolt shell slammed into his helmet, taking his head off.

The rest of the squad ducked away from the windows and turned around just in time to see three horned ponies gallop into the room, each of them flaring with magic. Then a puff of smoke exploded around them from nowhere, and the ponies vanished from sight before any of the soldiers could so much as fire a shot in panic.

*Where'd they go?*

*Behind the burnt-out columns! Flank them!*

*Wait! On the sides!*

That last Fire Warrior had noted that there were a pair of boltguns floating through the smoke and hot ash that now flooded the room, one on each side of the unit.

The floating bolters opened fire as Trixie and Rarity peeked out from behind a scorched cogitator core, trapping the aliens between their gunshots. Trixie's gun once again slammed its trigger back and shook wildly to spray ammunition into the soldiers, while Rarity's gun snapped off single shots into the aliens, picking them off precisely and efficiently.

The unit leader sprinted for the cores, but an errant bolter round exploded near his leg and he stumbled. His pulse rifle tumbled out of his grip as he fell and bounced across the floor, spinning through the shattered bits of dataslates that practically carpeted the data center before coming to rest next to the devastated core that his enemies were covering behind.

The Fire Warrior grunted and crawled forward, seizing the stock of his rifle.

A moment later, a dainty white hoof slammed down on top of it.

"Crimes against fabulosity will NOT go unpunished!" Rarity snarled, the boltgun levitating into place with its muzzle next to the alien's head. "Perish, alien thug!"

*Farewell, Aun'va. I hope I have been of service,* the soldier murmured as the bolter's hammer clicked back into place.

The sound of Rarity's boltgun obliterating another helmet marked the end of the skirmish, and Twilight cautiously stepped out from behind a collapsed data core.

"Yeah, I definitely think we're setting a troubling precedent, here," the alicorn noted, staring at the dead bodies lying on the floor. There were several humans in Mechanicus robes and another Iron Warrior, but her eyes were inevitably drawn back to the aliens killed at the hooves of ponies. All the same, she couldn't really complain too much; venturing out into battle had been her idea in the first place, even if Twilight had envisioned a lot less fighting and more sneaking and running.

A few seconds later they heard the whine of a Devilfish engine kicking up outside, and the ponies ducked out of sight as the empty APC sped away down the street.

"Twilight, be a dear and search for any more Tau garbage nearby, would you?" Rarity said as she looked over the unmoving Astartes for more bolter ammunition. "Spikey, could you wipe these off for me, please? There's blood and dust EVERYWHERE in here!"

Trixie frowned as she levitated one of the scavenged ammunition magazines into her scavenged bolter. "Trixie would like to know how you're so accurate firing a boltgun with levitation when this is your first time trying." It was easy to tell which kills had been made by which unicorn: the ones killed by Trixie's desperate barrage had been utterly torn apart by the wild bursts that had completely exhausted the magazine, while the bodies on the other side had a single gaping bolter wound each. Rarity wasn't even bothering to reload yet.

"Oh, you know, I've always been good at putting sharp bits of metal through pieces of clothing," the other unicorn said, stepping daintily over the corpses of the fallen, "Twilight, darling, do you have our next destination in mind?"

Twilight looked very uncomfortable dismissing the combat they had just completed, but she stepped up to the window to look at the carnage outside.

And "carnage" was the only word to describe it. Wrecked lifters and other non-armored transports were lying in heaps in front of the data center, and several dead bodies were visible in the streets, smoke still wafting from their wounds. Most were humans, but Twilight saw a few Fire Warriors and Chaos Space Marines lying around the barricades that stood in front of every building, and there was even a scorched hulk of a Crisis Suit in the middle of the street.

Twilight ducked back down before a Leman Russ battle tank rumbled down the street, its sponson turrets spitting an angry storm of heavy bolter fire ahead of it at some target the alicorn couldn't see.

"Okay, we need to find those 'menial dormitories' Serith mentioned," Twilight said to her companions, turning around, "Trixie, do you know where those are?"

"Sure!" the blue unicorn answered. "I mean, probably."

"Can't we just ask those humans there? Or even go with them?" Spike asked, pointing at the battle tank passing by.

Said battle tank promptly took a pair of fusion blasts to its side, and Twilight was briefly back-lit by the exploding tank before a squadron of Piranha light skimmers flew by in the opposite direction.

"That would be a 'no'," Trixie noted as Spike cringed.

"Yeah, we should avoid getting too close to the humans even if we're fighting the Tau explicitly now," Twilight agreed with a definite note of bitterness in her voice. Behind her, two more Devilfish APCs sped down the street after the Piranhas. "Even if we're a target to the Tau, we're still a small target, and I'd like to keep it that way."

"Good point, Twilight. But keep that shield handy for us, would you? Trixie, lead on. I'll cover you," Rarity said, her boltgun hovering at the window sill.

"Fine, but Trixie still says you adapted to this far too quickly."

As Spike sighed in admiration of the white unicorn, Twilight winced. "Please be safe, everypony..."

****

Ferrous Dominus - menial dormitories unit 3

"What's going on out there?"

"I can't get into my room!"

"Does anybody know why there's a group of talking horses in the showers?"

A small crowd of menials milled about the main lobby of the dormitory building, looking worried as the sounds of combat intensified outside.

Aside from the noise, there was practically no way for the lowest-ranking non-slaves to get any idea what was happening outdoors. The lobby had no windows, and their paltry security clearance couldn't glean anything from the few consoles located in the dormitories. Information-wise, they were at the mercy of the base-wide emergency vox-caster, and that had gone ominously silent after the announcement that the perimeter wall had been penetrated.

"What if the Tau break in here? What should we do?"

"Why would they break in here? We're no one important."

"Shouldn't there be an emergency armory around here or something? We should get guns!"

"Yeah, right. Those xeno bastards just plowed right through an Astartes battle line. You want to try your luck against them?"

"He's right. This place is crawling with soldiers. Just sit tight and let them do their job."

On that note the blast doors at the front of the lobby suddenly blinked green, and the menials all started backing up as the doors creaked open.

The noise of lasblasts and pulse volleys got louder, and an armed man in the red overcoat typical of 38th Company human soldiery slipped into the gap while the doors were still opening.

"Hurry! Get in! Faster, faster!" the mercenary barked.

A few more soldiers started rushing through the doorway, but before any of the frightened menials could ask what was happening a stream of pulse energy poured out from behind them, carving into the warriors' backs and cutting most of them down in a neat line.

"Dammit! Close!" the first soldier growled before he hit the door control with his security card, forcing the blast door mechanism to suddenly kick into reverse. Of the other men only one had survived the volley, and that one struggled to push off the smoking corpses of his squadmates while the thick metal barriers slowly ground shut behind him.

The grinding noise turned to a shrill squeal when a pair of large, poly-ceramic hands grabbed the edge of the doors, forcing them open. The hulking body of a Crisis battlesuit stepped into the doorway as the mechanism strained, glowering at the people inside the building.

The menials watched helplessly as a Fire Warrior stepped in front of the battlesuit. He calmly blasted the soldier on the ground with his pulse carbine, and then turned toward the one that had led the retreat.

A few desperate lasbolts escaped the mercenary's rifle and crackled against the Fire Warrior's torso armor before a second carbine shot cut the man down, cooking his chest cavity before he keeled backward onto the floor.

The menials gaped as another Fire Warrior ducked in under the Crisis Suit, which forced the doors all the way open in brutal defiance of the door mechanism. Said mechanism eventually exceeded its permissible stress tolerances and gave up trying to close the blast doors, finally allowing the battlesuit to lower its arms and follow the two alien soldiers inside.

Some of the menials started fleeing back into the halls and upstairs, but most of the human workers remained surprisingly calm. Having worked more or less willingly for the Iron Warriors for many years and having seen a great number of monstrous things while in the employ of Chaos, they were not so easily spooked, and the menials also couldn't help but notice that the aliens hadn't started shooting at them after finishing off the soldiers.

"Do not fear, human laborers! We are not your enemy!" shouted the first Fire Warrior in Gothic, aiming his pulse carbine toward the ceiling.

"Could've fooled me; you just killed a bunch of our guys," one woman near the back muttered before she caught sight of something bright pink moving behind her.

"We are the Tau, a race of mighty-"

"We know who you are," interrupted a man near the front, crossing his arms over his chest, "what do you want?"

The alien soldier hesitated, surprised at getting a response that was neither explicitly hostile nor fearful.

"We have come to liberate you from the cruel tyranny of the Imperium and the vengeful gaze of its Space Marines!" he tried again, holding out a four-fingered hand. "Come with me! To freedom and the beneficent glory of the Greater Good!"

Once again, the Tau was surprised to see a complete lack of interest in the humans.

"Putting aside the 'Imperium' thing, do you blokes think we're slaves?" the man at the front asked. "We're not. Every man and woman here is here working for the Company by choice."

"For a given definition of 'choice'," another man piped up, "not all of us had many options other than working or dying."

The Fire Warrior hesitated again. "So you are... loyal to this fleet?"

"No, but we're actually paid something for our work and are a lot more afraid of the Iron Warriors than you lot," spat a short, hardened woman as she glared at the Tau, "how much does service to your 'Greater Good' pull in? Going with you is probably suicide in the long run, but I'd consider it if it pays well."

The Fire Warrior was now completely confused, and he stopped briefly to converse with his squadmates in his own language. The Crisis Suit grumbled something from its communicator, and the first Fire Warrior nodded reluctantly before turning back to the waiting humans.

"Service to the Greater Good does not work that way, I'm afraid. And you said you were workers, correct?"

"Yeah. Workers as in 'folks who work for money'. We just man the cranes, drive the lifts, clean the place, and take care of whatever else takes half a brain or that we don't have enough servitors to do. So we're not your targets."

"In that, you are mistaken. You represent a significant aspect of the base's infrastructure and construction capacity," the Fire Warrior said with deceptive pleasantness before snapping his pulse carbine down into a firing position, "so I'm afraid the Greater Good will benefit most from your elimination."

The Fire Warrior squeezed the trigger just as a length of rope lashed around the barrel of his weapon and went taught, causing the shot to veer off to the side.

The Fire Warrior shouted in shock as his pulse carbine was yanked out of his grip, and his partner made a similar yelp as something fast and blue shot out of the crowd of humans at him, crashing into his chest.

The second Fire Warrior staggered backward, and then promptly fell over after his legs bumped into a pink body strategically positioned behind him.

"GET THEM!" bellowed the menials, surging forward and jumping on the aliens in an angry mob.

The Crisis Suit reacted slowly but vengefully as the other warriors were dogpiled, and soon it started swinging its massive fists into the melee to try to dig out its comrades.

The battlesuit shattered bones like twigs and smashed menials aside with each slow, sweeping blow, but so long as the suit refrained from unleashing its weapons it was a losing battle as the workers kicked and beat at the Fire Warriors ferociously.

"Hey, big guy! Down here!" Applejack barked as she positioned herself with the Crisis Suit behind her.

The armored warrior ignored her, which was to its detriment when the orange pony slammed both hooves into its leg with a crushing force usually reserved for those trees on her farm that she had decided to uproot rather than harvest. The shock of the impact was carried through the outermost ablative armor and nearly split the leg joint, and the Crisis Suit was thrown across the room.

"Wow, that varmint's a lot lighter than he looks," Applejack noted, impressed by the distance she had gotten with her kick.

"The big one's down! Get a gun and shoot it!"

The menials scrambled for the Tau pulse weapons first, and the two men that managed to secure those guns grinned viciously before they aimed them at the struggling battlesuit and pulled the triggers. Absolutely nothing happened when they did so, which Pinkie would find pretty funny in retrospect.

Many other menials had managed to seize a lasgun from the small collection of rifles that had belonged to the mercenaries, and these weapons were far more cooperative. A hail of low-intensity laser bursts peppered the battlesuit as it rolled onto its belly, staggering back into the fight.

Armor plating cracked and servos fused from the spears of heat stabbing into the bulk of the battlesuit, and the armored Tau warrior struggled to raise its burst cannon to defend itself.

The suit staggered again after a lucky lasblast struck it in the neck joint with a noisy crack, and the burst cannon arm fell limp as the suit's systems started to go dark.

"Looks like somepony rolled a 1!" Pinkie taunted. The smoldering mass of armor slumped onto the floor, inactive.

"We did it. We actually did it!" one man gasped, holding his scavenged lasgun to his chest. "It's dead!"

"Yeah, that's, uh, great," mumbled another menial as he stared at Applejack.

"Somethin' on mah face, sugarcube?"

Another man shook his head, choosing to ignore the presence of ponies that had proven way more useful in taking down the Tau than they had. "That's only going to last until another handful of xenos decide they want to take this building. Someone get that door closed! Someone else help me get everybody who's injured upstairs!"

"I got a soldier's access card! We'll be able to open the locked rooms with this!" shouted another menial.

"Don't kill those two grayskin whelps, either! The Iron Warriors will want them alive!"

While the workers recovered from the encounter and moved into action, the ponies took their leave of the crowd, slipping out of the front blast doors before one of the humans managed to close them again.

"Uh, girls? Wouldn't it be safer to stay inside?" Fluttershy asked meekly as she followed Rainbow Dash past the heavy metal barriers. The only reason that she was following them under her own power was because she was even more terrified of being abandoned alone in a building full of unfamiliar humans.

"I doubt that. I can barely get aloft in there, it's so cramped," the other pegasus reasoned, "and it sure doesn't seem safer when we have Tau creeps beating down the door trying to kill everything inside."

Applejack walked up to the barricade wall that was built on the edge of the sidewalk, stepping gingerly around the dead bodies in her way before peeking up over the top of the reinforced ferrocrete.

The sight that greeted her was ugly, and it was ugly in the Tau's favor. Given that this sector had a lot of human foot traffic and housed most of the non-soldiers that accompanied the 38th Company, there had been plenty of people caught out on the streets when the Tau had sped in, and targets of opportunity had been everywhere.

Most of those targets were now wrecks and corpses on the streets.

In the distance, the hovering blue and black Devilfish transports of the Lamman Sept steadily advanced on the few barricades that were still mounting resistance, their burst cannons running hot to force the human soldiers down and shred what few heavy weapon mounts challenged them.

Most of the barricades were now manned by Fire Warriors instead, who traded fire with humans shooting from windows and out of doorways. The buildings seemed to be the only places left where the human soldiers could stay relatively safe from the Tau heavy weapons, and the Tau themselves were reluctant to enter into such close quarters when they dominated the base exterior. Notably absent from the firefights were any human vehicles to match the Devilfish APCs and any Iron Warriors.

"This's lookin' bad," Applejack murmured as the door clanked shut behind them, sealing them outside, "we gotta get a move-on, girls."

"Where to?" Rainbow Dash asked, ruffling her feathers in preparation to jump into a hover again.

She thought better of it and ducked her head down instead after a Hammerhead gunship rounded the corner ahead of them, its heavy railgun sweeping back and forth for targets.

"To wherever Twi is, Ah guess. Ah'd feel a lot better about our chances if we weren't all split up."

Rainbow Dash peeked up over the barricade while the Hammerhead floated past. Below her, Fluttershy squeezed as tightly as possible against the barricade, shivering.

"Man, we're getting our flanks kicked out here! Where are all the Company troops?"

"Mostly hangin' out at Shy's cottage, Ah reckon," Applejack mused as the tank passed by without firing or targeting them, "as fer the rest, well, this is a mighty big fort, Dash."

The Hammerhead suddenly fired its cannon, and the ponies flinched as they heard the deceptively gentle hum of its magnetic accelerators followed by the shriek of tearing metal.

Pinkie poked her head up just in time to see the fortress transit train careen off its rail and plow into one of the dormitories, courtesy of the hole that had been carved into its magnetic engine. The impact crushed the front car of the vehicle entirely, and soon the entire train had collapsed onto the ground into a shredded and mangled heap.

"Really? You guys had to get the train, too?!" Pinkie shouted angrily, jumping up with her forelegs against the barricade. "Now it's going to take us hours to get ANYWHERE around here!"

Rainbow and Fluttershy tackled the pink pony down as the Hammerhead swung about, its smart missile launchers swiveling about and searching for target locks.

After several seconds the hover tank turned and moved on, not wanting to waste heavy ordnance on the handful of tiny bio-signatures huddled behind the barrier.

"This's bad. Real bad," Applejack groaned, hugging the barricade as she walked to the end and glanced out into the streets again, "does anypony even know where that data place is, anyway?"

Rainbow Dash growled, her wings ruffling in irritation. "Well, if we can't find Twilight, then forget it! Let's just find some Iron Warriors and help them beat up these sorry mules!"

"Rainbow, you can't seriously want to get involved in this!" Fluttershy gasped.

"Well, Ah don't know about runnin' off to find a bunch of random Space Marines, but Ah suppose hookin' up with Daniels or Gaela would be as good a plan as any," Applejack mumbled, "problem is, we don't really know where they are, neither."

A light bulb suddenly winked into being over Pinkie's head. "Hey, wait! I have an idea!"

****

Ferrous Dominus - sector 4

"This is armory control. Submitting control codes... complete. Clearance granted."

"Plasma guns. Four of them. NOW."

"Request confirmed. Receiving."

In the enormous structure that served as the main Astartes armory on-base, servos whirled rapidly as machinery in the bulk of the building shifted containers about and plucked the requested weapons from their resting place using automated servo arms. Within seconds the doors to the weapons receptacles opened in front of the impatient Iron Warriors, four new plasma guns revealing themselves. Energy cells fell into another receiving cell nearby in a neat stack, offering ammunition reserves to the waiting soldiers.

"Weapons registered and cleared for deployment," said the Dark Techpriest while the Chaos Space Marines gathered their weapons, "please be advised that plasma weap-"

"Shut up," snapped the squad champion before the unit broke into a run for the Rhino idling nearby.

"Request confirmed," the Techpriest said in his normal, emotionless monotone. The next group of Space Marines in line rushed up to him. "Hello, this is armory control. Submitting-"

"Stop your prattling and give us a lascannon already! We're under attack!"

Long lines of Rhino transports were parked haphazardly in front of the armories as troops loaded up heavy and special weapons, and small groups of them would rumble out into the avenues every once in awhile as their squads decided on where to go.

Under normal circumstances, which is to say, in any other part of the Iron Warriors Legion, every squad would know exactly what to do in case of enemy attack, and would anyway probably have orders from above.

This was the 38th Company, however, and their drills consisted of boarding actions and artillery spotting, not fortress security. To make matters worse, the Tau had evidently deployed more of their vox-jamming drones in the air, and although they didn't cause nearly as much disruption as the array in the forest, it had been enough to delay mission orders and convince many impatient units of Iron Warriors to deploy on their own initiative.

Such a disorganized response had its drawbacks, obviously. Already, another line of transports was moving into the sector from the direction that the others were heading out, and these APCs bore heavy damage on their armor and usually carried wounded soldiers in their bellies.

+Replace axle R-seven-one, and then cut into the braking unit to remove the slag. I'll repair the combi-bolter system,+ Dark Acolyte Gaela commanded once her optics finished their initial scans of the smoldering Rhino before her. It had been hammered hard by pulse gun and missile fire, but had still survived to carry its squad out of danger.

Two more Dark Acolytes nodded silently, their servo pincers clanging shut to denote their eagerness. One immediately began issuing orders to the servitors waiting in the makeshift repair bay, and Gaela stepped onto the roof of the vehicle and kneeled next to the combi-bolter.

Of course, this wasn't the real repair bay; those facilities were in a completely different sector next to the vehicle lots, and that area had been abandoned as the Piranha light skimmers had headed there in force and released their gun drone squadrons. Gaela didn't know if there was any Company resistance trying to take the area back, but last she had heard the Piranhas had been playing executioner with the parked vehicles, demolishing the unmanned armor one after another with their fusion blasters. Whether there was someone still fighting the drones or not, the skimmers were sure to cause tremendous damage before they were ousted.

Gaela sighed as she finished clearing the firing chamber of obstruction, and then repaired the hammer that had fused with the rest of the weapon.

Within minutes she was reloading the gun and chanting a prayer in Binary, imploring the weapon to annihilate the hated xeno.

+Acolyte Gaela, the Rhino repair is complete and Helim is performing the last of the necessary rites,+ blurted one of the other Acolytes, +however, we are quickly running out of parts. The only materials we have available are from the emergency supply caches. They will not be enough to care for all the vehicles that are still in pain.+

+Very well. Continue working here. I will get the Scavurel to begin salvaging the Rhinos that would require excessive materials,+ Gaela explained, jumping onto the ground with a heavy thud.

The Scavurel in question had arrayed themselves around the barricades in a multi-layered defense web in front of the armories. They waited silently behind numerous heavy weapon emplacements and manned auspex stations, ready to annihilate anything that so much as got within sight of the armory. Already, there was a Devilfish APC lying against the wall of the manufactorum, its side armor cracked wide open. A pair of Black Praetors - hulking cyborgs larger than Space Marines that writhed with daemonic energy and bristled with heavy lasers - stomped among the transport's cargo, crushing the hapless and mostly wounded Fire Warriors underfoot as the Dark Mechanicus warriors looked on in grim silence.

Gaela approached the barricades and walked straight for the commander - referred to as a Network Leader in their unique ranking terminology - her power axe resting against her shoulder.

+Dark Acolyte Gaela,+ buzzed the Network Leader, not turning to look at her, +did you have something to report?+

+I have orders for you. Designate some of your units with scavenger prioritus and have them cannibalize the most badly damaged Rhinos. We're running out of supplies for vehicle parts.+

The Network Leader still didn't turn around as he worked out the likely impact on combat efficiency and the readiness of his defensive formation.

+Acknowledged. I will set a squad to the task.+

Gaela turned to walk away, but the Scavurel spoke again, stopping her.

+Acolyte Gaela, you were deployed against the Tau recently. Was there any indication that they possessed this level of troop strength? These numbers far exceed all estimates,+ the Network Leader growled in Binaric Cant.

Gaela's mask was up, but her scowl was evident in her words. +The xeno filth has consistently shown a deeper and more extensive presence on this world than expected,+ she said as she turned back to the Scavurel, +but even I am surprised they managed to stuff enough troops for an assault of this scale on that lander.+

+If this attack represents the strength of their presence on this world, then it's surprising you or any of the field teams came back alive,+ the Network Leader noted, finally turning his optics visor toward the Dark Acolyte.

Gaela snorted behind her mask. +Well, I had some help with that. Although I much prefer serving in a combat zone without pink ponies clambering about underfoot.+

The Scavurel jerked his head back, as if surprised. After a few seconds Gaela realized that it wasn't her comment that had surprised him, and she turned around wearily.

"Seriously? I wasn't even speaking Gothic this time," she said to Pinkie Pie.

The pink pony was sitting on her haunches next to the barricade wall, ahead of Rainbow Dash and Applejack. Amusingly, the ponies behind her were looking around wildly in bouts of fear and confusion that had nothing to do with being in a battle zone.

"Ah don't... how did... where are we?" Applejack asked, her head snapping to one side and then the other. She was clutching her hat to her chest as if it were some kind of lifeline. Rainbow Dash wasn't much better, although she quickly dropped her confusion in favor of staring at all the new kinds of weapons and soldiers on display.

"I'm so glad we found you! It's really scary out there!" Pinkie said, clamping onto Gaela's armored leg with a hug. "We were taking a shower and then these guys came in but it was okay because we're usually naked and then the doors locked and there was that siren going off and the guy from the vox caster said that we couldn't get around and then..."

As Pinkie rambled on, the Network Leader finally dredged up enough sense to speak again. +Acolyte... these-+

"Thank you for your efforts, Network Leader," Gaela interrupted sharply in Gothic, "that will be all. Hold this area for the Company, and for the Warsmith. And kindly ignore whatever else you see here that isn't related to killing Tau."

The Scavurel hesitated, but eventually did as asked.

"-and then the guy said to the other guy 'we're not slaves!' And the first guy didn't like that I guess, because he was about to shoot the second guy, but then Applejack saved him with her lasso, it was so cool, and then..."

Gaela walked past Applejack and Rainbow Dash with Pinkie Pie still attached to her leg. "Come on, try to stay out of the way. We could have enemies sighted at any moment."

"Ah hear ya, Miss Gaela," Applejack mumbled, still visibly confused about how they had gotten here, "we're just lookin' fer a safe place to ride this out."

"Very well. I'm not sure how safe this area really is, but given that the Tau have effectively flooded the sector you were staying in, I'm sure it's an improvement."

Rainbow Dash finally took to the air again, satisfied that it was safe enough to hover with all the "friendly" firepower around. That was when she noticed something important about the pony headcount.

"Hey! Pinkie! Where'd Fluttershy go?"

"-and then I said 'oatmeal?! Are you crazy?!'" Pinkie's ramblings suddenly ended, and she turned her head to look at Rainbow Dash. "Fluttershy? I don't know. I guess she wandered off somewhere."

"What? How did that happen?" Applejack gasped.

"Plot contrivance, probably."

Gaela watched as the other ponies gaped in confusion. "Am I to understand that you don't comprehend what she's talking about either?"

"Not a clue, but it means that poor Flutters is all by her lonesome out there," Applejack said, looking out over a barricade and searching the avenues for any sign of pink and yellow.

"Oh, she'll be fine," Pinkie scoffed, leaning away from Gaela's leg to wave her hoof dismissively, "this place is huge! As long as she finds a good, safe corner to cower in, she won't have a problem with the Tau!"

****

"H-How did this happen to me? Wh-Where am I? Rainbow Dash? Applejack? Pinkie?"

Fluttershy shivered as she walked gingerly down an alley, her head lashing back and forth to search for any signs of her friends. Overhead was a winding, twisted network of pipes of various sizes that fed from the wall of the manufactorum into a different building on the other side of the alley. Below was hardened ferrocrete. And at either end of the alley stood fire and lasers.

The sounds of heavy weapons fire had been ever present since the Tau attacked, but Fluttershy could definitely hear it coming louder and stronger now as she crawled down the alley. In either direction it seemed that the 38th Company were fighting the Tau in force, and the booming of battle cannons and thunder-crack of autocannons dominated the hum of Tau anti-gravity drives as the invaders were slowly beaten back.

"Twilight? Rarity? Mister Terrifying Murderer? Anypony?"

The sound of an explosion overhead pinned Fluttershy to the ground immediately, and thus she missed the sight of a Tau Hammerhead tumbling end over end after it tried - and failed - to make a risky run over the rooftops.

Pieces of smoldering poly-ceramic armor rained down onto the pipes, and one of the larger pieces smashed into a thick water drain, tearing it free of the building it had been attached to.

Fluttershy peeked out from under her hooves as the noises of battle started to grow more distant, and then she unsteadily stood up, looking over the wreckage that now littered the alley.

Her face practically lit up when she saw that one of the pipes had torn free, uncovering an opening in the wall that was easily large enough for a pony. There wasn't anything coming out of the damaged end of the pipe, either, so she reasoned that whatever it normally carried into the building, there wasn't any in her way right now.

"Iron within! Iron without!" came a battle cry from one end of the alley, spurring her into action.

Fluttershy bolted into the air, her wings flapping desperately before she landed with her front half in the opening. She spent a few more seconds clambering inside, and then vanished completely into the piping, all too eager to get indoors again where it was safe.

Whether because she had been too scared, too distracted, or perhaps just unused to running around industrial areas, she had completely missed the large warning sign printed on every side of the structure she had decided to enter, even in the alleyway. It was surrounded by a frame of yellow and black stripes and boasted a leering, horned silhouette of a monstrous face at the top.

Under the face was the explanatory text: "Warning! Daemon engines!"

****

Ferrous Dominus - psyker dormitories

Suuna sighed as she placed down the empty can of nutrient gruel, placing her tin spoon aside for cleaning later.

It seemed odd to her to be eating breakfast in the middle of an enemy attack, especially when she could hear stray weapons fire hitting the other side of the building wall behind her, but she had decided there was very little else she could do. She was locked inside the room with no one to talk to, she had no ability to work the control console on the wall, and all the belongings in the room were the property of her maybe-owner except for the clothes on her back.

Perhaps them too. Suuna really had no idea where she stood now on the spectrum between slave and free woman.

She considered praying, but to whom? The Emperor was probably a bad choice, given her location in a Chaos stronghold, and it's not like that had ever helped her before in her many nights doing forced labor for the Iron Warriors. The Dark Gods? Well, that was an awful choice from the get-go, and besides that she didn't know anything about them.

"I wonder if they shut off the water. If not, I could draw a bath," Suuna mused to herself. Without useful work to do or spiritual exercise to give her hope, all she could really do was seek petty comfort.

And then the hall door beeped and slid open.

Suuna didn't really have time to think about who might be entering before she saw who was at the door, but surely Serith the High Sorcerer wouldn't have been one of her guesses. Not because the Astartes was unlikely to appear under these circumstances, necessarily, but more because she tried hard not to think of the Chaos psyker at all, ever.

"Lord Serith," Suuna said, her voice rising considerably in pitch to suppress a terrified squeal, "welcome. How can I help you?"

Serith stepped into the room without any indication of haste, his helmet's gaze sweeping from side to side.

Finally, after several silent seconds, he sighed in frustration and finally acknowledged the human servant.

"It would seem that Lady Trixie is not here after all. Unless she is using the facilities?" the Sorcerer asked, honestly embarrassed at having to ask such a question. The vox signal disruption and emergency protocols had prevented him from checking up on the room via his spy recorder, however, while the psycomantic shielding around the rooms here foiled his ability to sense other minds.

Suuna shook her head. "No, my lord. She is not here. I'm afraid she got caught out in the hall when siege lockdown engaged."

Serith thought that over briefly, tilting his helmet downward before it rose again to glare into Suuna's eyes. "I see. Pardon me, slave, but I'll be needing your thoughts for a moment." The Sorcerer raised an armored gauntlet, fingers spread, toward the young woman.

"Mistress Trixie has departed with Twilight Sparkle and her 'groupies', as she puts it," Suuna explained calmly, "they ultimately decided to try to seek out the Warsmith, to see if they could get to him using the confusion of the xeno attack."

She paused briefly. "I'm fairly certain they intend to murder him, although they're always very vague about that part of their plan. I suspect they're trying not to think about it. Mistress Trixie did not want to be so directly involved, but was dragged along due to the circumstances. I believe their first step was going to be finding the other ponies."

Serith was silent for several seconds after Suuna finished speaking, and then he lowered his hand. "I didn't do anything yet."

"Yes, my lord. I'm trying to keep it that way," Suuna admitted nervously.

"Such loyalty," the Sorcerer drawled, crossing his arms over his chest.

"I have nothing but gratitude for Mistress Trixie's kind treatment of me," Suuna said meekly, "but I've known her for less than two days. I'm not going to oppose a Sorcerer for her sake."

"Hmph," said Sorcerer did not sound impressed, "you're taking all the fun out of this, you know."

An explosion from outside shook the floor briefly, and both of them glanced upward as the ceiling lumens flickered.

"Such an inconvenience, these aliens," Serith tsked, still staring up at the ceiling, "a needless complication in an already chaotic galactic stage. And not a single psyker among the entire race. Worthless beasts."

Suuna remained silent, not having much to say on the topic of aliens. The Tau she had met during her recent slave days seemed decent enough, but again, she wasn't going to start arguing with the Astartes.

"Well, I suppose I'm wasting my time here, and you bore me. Were you not Lady Trixie's property I might use you as a shield, but as things stand that would be quite impolite," Serith admitted, turning on his metal heel, "stay alive, worm. Your Mistress may yet have need of you. I shall see to her safe return."

"You are too gracious, my lord," Suuna said, enormously relieved that the psyker was leaving.

Serith ignored her on his way out and then passed his hand over the door control panel.

The scanner recognized his ID signal from his armor, and the door slammed shut before the lock indicators turned red again.

He walked over to a long, silvery polearm that laid on the floor outside the door; it had been resting upright before, but had apparently fallen over due to the building tremors.

Serith gestured sharply with his hand, and the weapon jumped off the floor and into his grip. The weapon was shaped in a form that was technically that of a halberd, although the spear point and chopping edge were formed into one angled blade that gave the weapon the look of a massive scalpel. Cables ran down from the weapon head in thick tangles, feeding power from the energy cells in the haft to the disruption field generators in the blade. Thick golden bands were spaced over the length of the pole to serve as grips, reinforce the haft structure, and catch blade edges during parries.

The force halberd was the only weapon that Serith ever carried on his person; the Sorcerer's belt held no pistol or grenades, but contained only his book, small tools, and assorted symbols and focii. Even the halberd he would only carry when he was specifically joining a combat, and with a certain amount of reluctance. To Serith, the psyker mind was the most potent weapon that the Legions or any other galactic power had available, and he found the technologies of war a pale shadow of what he was capable of with sheer will.

Which made it particularly galling to have his day interrupted by the Tau, of all species.

"Filthy, soulless mongrels," the Sorcerer spat as he stepped over a pair of Chaos Space Marines lying in a heap in the hall, "there will be a reckoning for such insolence. I will unmake you and your pathetic toys with but a thought!"

Author's Note

So I have concluded that restroom sign technology has not advanced at all in 40,000 years. The old tech is best, you know.
About the Scavurel: I wanted to establish a soldiery that was uniquely dedicated to the Dark Mechanicus like the Skitarii, but I didn't want another military faction that was the same as the Imperial one but with "Dark" or "Chaos" tagged on before everything. And unfortunately, there is very little canon material on the Dark Mechanicus in general. So I made up the Scavurel as the name of the force, and covered myself by saying they're unique to the 38th Company's detachment! Yay~
The Scavurel ranks go as follows:
Dreg (private), Core (sergeant/champion), Network Leader (platoon commander/captain)
They take orders from the Dark Techpriests, who are ranked as follows:
Dark Acolyte (Enginseer), Dark Techpriest (Techpriest), Dark Magos, (Magos), Hierophant (Archmagos)
There is no Hierophant in the Company, though...

The Iron Within

Iron Hearts: Book 2

Chapter 3

The Iron Within

***

4 kilometers outside of Sweet Apple Acres

"Hey! Ah think Ah see smoke!"

Scootaloo glanced up at Apple Bloom, who was standing unsteadily on top of Crabapple as the daemonic machine advanced through the trees and brush.

"Are you sure? I don't see anything." She was on her scooter with Sweetie Bell riding along with her, although the rough terrain made it difficult. Her lower vantage point also made it hard to see, with much of the surrounding foliage at pony head-level.

+Surface scans indicate downed units within reach. Advise caution. No enemy units have been detected within attack range.+

The three fillies waited patiently for Crabapple to finish its discordant blurt of Binary, and Apple Bloom lowered her head toward her friends. "Don't worry, we're almost there! Crabapple knows what she's doin'!"

Scootaloo shrugged, pushing her scooter through another patch of overgrown vines that Crabapple had simply stepped over.

It had been almost an hour since the probe automata had started wailing at them in machine-code, trying to gesture as best it could that it sensed something and wanted them to follow it.

Apple Bloom had wanted to go right away, while Sweetie Bell was more reluctant, and she had mentioned that they should probably get Big Macintosh to come with them. The stallion was quite busy with their new farm, however: taking stock of the different areas, moving their animals back where they belonged, and making a list of where he'd need to paint and how much. Apple Bloom had convinced Sweetie that he wouldn't mind if they took a little hike to get out of his way.

As the three fillies and corrupted machine stepped up to a patch of uprooted and shredded trees, the fillies had to admit that this trip no longer qualified as a "little hike".

Beyond the devastated woodland was one of the container transports, or at least the wreck that used to be a container transport. It had tumbled end over end after coming to a stop, and the empty container it had carried had been utterly crushed from the impact.

The three young ponies stared silently at the scene for several seconds before Apple Bloom glanced down at her friends again.

"Girls, ya know what this means?" They nodded solemnly in response.

+No life signs detected. The crew did not survive the crash. Advise unit Apple Bloom-+

"CUTIE MARK CRUSADER RESCUE WORKERS! YAAAAY!!"

With that, Crabapple ended up spending the better part of half an hour trying to keep the three young ponies from skewering themselves on pieces of smoldering metal. Chunks of debris were hastily kicked away and at times the automata had to physically plant its leg in their paths to warn them away, but eventually the fillies gave up after finding nothing around the wreck but fire and ruin.

As soon at it had their attention again, the automata waited for Apple Bloom to climb on top and then headed out for the next crash.

"Well, that was useless," Scootaloo grumbled as she pushed off after Crabapple again.

"I hope there wasn't anyone still in there after all," Sweetie Bell mumbled, "we couldn't open the front part."

"Sweetie, the front part was on fire. If there was anyone still in there, I don't think we could help them," Scootaloo pointed out.

"Hey, there's another one! Boy, these things are just lyin' all over the place. Whaddya think happened?" Apple Bloom asked, pointing a hoof toward a glimmer of gunmetal that she could see between the tree branches.

"Well, either something got them, or they're REALLY lousy fliers," Scootaloo opined.

"They made it all the way to the farm without crashing into anything, and while carrying those huge crates, so this probably isn't an accident," Sweetie Belle chimed in, "do you think it's those 'Tau' people that hurt Crabapple?"

Apple Bloom's expression soured, and Crabapple released an irritated burst of Binary detailing exactly what he thought of the alien creatures. It was not a glowing review, and each of the girls giggled as they imagined all the heated things that the automata was trying to say to them.

A minute later, however, their expressions turned serious again as the wreckage of the Scavurel gunship came into view.

Unlike the last one, this craft wasn't lying at the end of a long strip of devastation, and it looked as if it had simply dropped down from the sky with its engines burning and its crew compartment caved in. There was smoke coming from the interior, but altogether there was less flame around the cockpit, too.

+Scanning... functional system ID's confirmed. Bio-signs suggest immediate assistance is necessary.+

"What's that girl? Ya say there's somepony alive in there?" Apple Bloom asked.

"Oh, don't act like you can understand her." Scootaloo and Sweetie Bell dismounted the scooter as Apple Bloom dropped down from on top of Crabapple.

"Hello? Is somepony in there?" Apple Bloom shouted, trotting up to the main body of the aircraft while stepping around the scattered bits of flaming debris.

She didn't get a response from the vehicle wreck, but Crabapple released an urgent Binaric wail and stabbed a leg into the main access ramp. It started levering the ramp free, and the shriek of metal filled the air as the locks refused to give.

Apple Bloom stared at the smoldering hulk for several seconds, and then turned to the others. "Scootaloo, can ya head back to the farm without us?"

The pegasus blinked. "What? Why?"

"To get mah brother," Apple Bloom explained, pointing a hoof at the wreck. "Crabapple seems pretty sure there's somethin' in there, and even if we get to it, we can't really do much about it on our own. Tell Big Mac to bring the wagon. It's an emergency."

Scootaloo saluted sharply and then hopped back on her scooter, taking off at a much greater speed without Sweetie Bell.

****

Ferrous Dominus - fortress command center

"Bring the units on the West side around the mining facilities. Move slowly! Clean them out but don't overextend yourselves!"

"Squad Delta Nine has reported that they could not prevent enemy action in the area. The power relays and dropship beacon have been destroyed, and the enemy has moved on."

"We've lost the pumps too? Why would they even target those?"

"Dammit! Fight harder, you cowards! Throw everything you've got at them!"

The strategium of a military base was always buzzing with activity in a sudden crisis, and that of Ferrous Dominus was no different. While the cult leaders rounded up their men and led from the front, the rest of the 38th Company's substantial human soldiery were part of a strict military hierarchy quite similar to that of a loyalist Imperial regiment. The primary difference being, of course, that loyalist Imperial Guard regiments didn't take orders from Space Marines.

Then again, at the moment, neither did the mercenary and rebel commanders poring over hololiths and barking instructions at the vox officer. There were only two Iron Warriors in the room, and they were only there to serve as guards. No Chaos Space Marine had come to take his place in the command balcony above the strategium in this time of disaster. Not because the Iron Warriors lacked officers of rank, but rather because those same Chaos Space Marines had all been caught away from the command center when the Tau had struck. Unlike the humans, whose careers and, indeed, lives hinged on the keeping of protocol and the flawless execution of their duties, the Iron Warriors had little incentive to keep to the command centers when there was no immediate need.

That did mean, unfortunately, that sometimes they were not there when such a need arose unexpectedly.

"General Gnoss, the Tau units in sector 2 and 11 have moved out of engagement range. Our men just can't keep up with them."

The ranking human officer was an unimpressive man at a glance, not tall or intimidating and largely unaugmented. He boasted a number of tattoos across his weathered face that spoke of long years as a pirate before turning to Chaos and the armies of the Iron Warriors, and an Iron Skull on the back of his black overcoat that spoke of talent enough to impress his dour masters.

"Keep them back. Move the Russes over here to support, and have them join the barricade at the artillery yards. I don't want a single grayskin in the yards!" growled the General, his hands drawing lines over the shimmering hololith that described the fortress interior.

"Sir, the artillery corp are in their tanks and awaiting orders. Shall we give them firing coordinates?"

Gnoss glared at the man who had asked. "Fire artillery? In our own base? Do you think the xeno filth aren't causing enough damage?"

"N-No, Sir, I just thought-"

"The crews are to keep ready to deploy smoke and fall back if the grayskins advance on the yards. They may fire secondary weapons ONLY, until such time that the enemy falls outside the base perimeter again. I will not gamble on heavy ordnance so close to my own men and structures!"

The General turned back to the hololith, silently making a mental queue of which units needed orders immediately.

Then he noticed that nearly everyone else in the strategium had gone silent as well.

Looking up, he saw his officers rushing to put on their respirator masks, and he realized what was happening. His hand pulled up the mask hanging from his belt and he fixed it in place as heavy footfalls echoed through the room, coming from behind him.

As soon as they were masked, most of the officers went back to what they were doing, albeit more quietly and with their speech muffled by their masks. General Gnoss, on the other hand, turned to greet the new arrival in the strategium, forcing the bile down his throat as he so often had to do when conversing with the 38th Company's Vice-Commander.

"Lord Sliver, welcome," the General said with a bow, "do you desire a situation report?"

The hulking, rusted figure stomped up to the hololith slowly, although every man in that room knew of the devastating and effortless speed the Astartes was capable of. The Nurglite was also armed for combat; on his left hand was a high-pressure liquid chemical nozzle, the Viral Scourge, which was fed by numerous hoses that were connected to a pair of large tanks on his back and a few that fed into the Chaos Lord directly. His right hand gripped a scorched and pitted hammer that was nearly the size of the General himself, its haft decorated in a faded and worn motif of yellow and black warning stripes.

"Sspeak," slurred the Iron Warrior, as if through a mouthful of phlegm.

"Our damage reports are merely prelim-"

"Not the damage, General," Sliver interrupted, "we deal with that after combat. The enemy. Sspeak."

Gnoss adjusted his priorities instantly. "The Tau have taken the quadrant of the base near the salvage site, my lord. They're using that area as a muster point and launching strike missions throughout the entire fortress, prioritizing infrastructure and construction equipment. They've left the mining and trainings sectors practically untouched, while we had to head off an attack on the manufactorum."

Sliver did not interrupt this time, which Gnoss took as an indication that he was saying the right thing. He pointed to several clusters of blue icons on the hololith.

"You can see that I've established a number of defensive hardpoints, and it's keeping the xenos away from the manufactorum entrances, the armories, and the Astartes barracks. The problem is that the Tau move so quickly that they simply avoid the hardpoints and run rampant over the rest of the base, killing anything they can. When teams are sent in to flush them out, they're either destroyed by the xenos suddenly converging on them in ambush, or the blasted grayskins just fly off before we can cause any damage."

Gnoss pointed to the part of the hololith with a disturbing number of speedy red blips. "The only sectors that they seem absolutely determined to take are 2 and 15. We've managed to keep them away from the ground batteries so far, but they keep reinforcing and coming back. The vehicle lots, on the other hand, are taking more damage the longer the fighting goes on, regardless of who's winning. We can't get our crews to their vehicles, which is starving the rest of our forces of armored support."

"Our men. The human resservess. Where are they?" Sliver asked.

"Keeping their head down, mostly. They're banding together and putting up resistance wherever they can, but they have few heavy weapons to deal with all the xeno armor. They're keeping the grayskins out of some of the buildings, though."

General Gnoss then pointed toward a few friendly units that were massing on the exterior of the palisade wall, just short of the breach. "I've asked our security cordon to mass here and then create another hard point to block off enemy retreat. With that in-"

"Recall them. Now. Have the cordon file in through the front gate and then form combat teamss to ssweep the basse," Sliver ordered, his enormous cyclopic eye snapping toward the human officer.

Gnoss hesitated, well aware that the phrasing of his next question could mean the difference between life and death. "We are to leave the enemy a route of retreat, then?"

"The xenoss are not here to take Ferrouss Dominuss... they are here to cripple it. If we trap them here they will drag uss down with them..." a slow, painful-sounding breath came from the heavy-duty mask filter built into Sliver's helmet. "I care not if the graysskinss die today or tomorrow; their defeat is asssured. But I want them OUT of my basse. Iss that clear, General?"

"Yes, Lord Sliver, of course." General Gnoss took another look at the hololith. "If these armor groups head to sector 9 and branch out, they can link up with the soldiers barricaded in the buildings. They could lend enough manpower to allow them to split into larger fire teams too big to ambush."

"Do it," Sliver commanded, turning on his heel, "I am alsso placing the Iron Warriorss under your direct command, ssince the Warpssmithss sseem to have better thingss to do than lead their troopss."

This surprised General Gnoss, but he recovered quickly and snapped a salute at the Vice-Commander's back. "You won't be taking command then, Lord?"

"No," Sliver confirmed as he stomped out the strategium's main doorway, leaving steps of gooey ichor behind him, "I'm going to go introduce Grandfather to ssome new friendss."

A minute later saw the hulking terminator-armored Nurglite stomping into the a separate room of the command center where his men awaited.

There were but four of them, but the four together made up a force as deadly as several squads of more mundane Iron Warriors. One wouldn't know it by looking; although clad in terminator armor like their leader, the Iron Warriors of the Rusted Brotherhood, Sliver's personal retinue, kept their gear in the same state of apparent disrepair and constant decay as he did. Armor was pitted and cracked, hoses bore holes that oozed poisonous slime, and flies constantly crept over the foul plate to the complete indifference of the men who wore it.

"Do we deploy, Lord?" rasped the first of the brothers, his power fist crackling eagerly.

"We do. To ssector 15. There are pilotss that need a path to their vehicless." Sliver paused as he set the coordinates using his heads-up display, locking on to the teleport beacon placed to aid an emergency coordination just like this.

The advanced teleporters in the suits of tactical dreadnaught armor, each one forged by Warsmith Solon himself for Sliver's use, kicked into gear and locked on to their target.

"Iron within," Sliver intoned.

"Iron without," his retinue snarled back.

"Kill the alien," the Nurglite Lord said simply as the teleporter engaged.

****

Ferrous Dominus - sector 15

A combat teleport was always disconcerting for those teleported, but if used properly, was still far more unnerving to the enemy.

Such it was that while it took Sliver a good two seconds to shake off the effects of being vomited through space and time, it took a few fatal seconds longer for the Pathfinders to recover from having five grotesque terminator-armored Iron Warriors flash into being right next to them.

The Rusted Brotherhood ignored them and turned away, deeming the aliens already dead. Sliver was closest.

A low-pressure spurt from the Viral Scourge loosed clammy green ichor all over the nearby scouts, and each one promptly collapsed screaming as the chemical slurry slipped through their armor plating and began turning their flesh to jelly.

One Pathfinder managed to dodge out of the way as the burst ended, and Sliver finished him off by walking briskly into and over the alien. He didn't bother to swing his hammer or make any sort of martial maneuver; he simply bowled the alien over and then crushed its helpless body underfoot with sheer mass.

The Rusted Brotherhood was already moving on a unit of Fire Warriors with drone support, their armor cracking and shuddering as the Tau poured a desperate fusillade into their diseased bulk. The return fire was sparse, due simply to the small size of the squad, but the unit's combi-meltas left their mark as gun drones broke apart and Fire Warriors were blown asunder, all while the Rusted Brothers closed to melee range.

Sliver had another target. A Hammerhead gunship was peeling off from an attack run nearby, having just executed a Vindicator siege tank.

Its burst cannons swung into the appropriate firing arcs and unleashed a spray of searing energy into Sliver, the crackling blue sparks washing over the ruined plate and leaving angry trails of electric arcs behind.

Sliver grunted and adjusted the Viral Scourge for range.

The spray of filth that spewed forth shot directly into the turbine vents of the hammerhead's engine, making a mockery of its disruption pod as the Nurglite Lord trailed the jet spray across the turret mount.

The Hammerhead strafed to the side, apparently unaffected by the toxins. It tried to line up its heavy railgun against the single small target, but the current range was far from ideal.

The hover tank shuddered, its engines squealing suddenly. Within the vents of its engine block, the chemical sludge of the Viral Scourge hardened around the assembly's moving parts and spilled into sensitive reactant chambers where the voracious and largely unnatural viruses started consuming fuel.

The Hammerhead gunship trembled in the air as it swung to the side, one of its engines having lost power entirely. Its railgun turret likewise froze in place as chemicals hardened in the turret servos, robbing it of its arc of fire as one side of the vehicle started dragging across the ground.

Sliver was lining up a shot into the other engine block when a bolt of searing plasma cut into his back, striking one of the chemical tanks.

Fire bloomed from the rupture as the chemical mix ignited, and within seconds a thick, foul smoke was vomited into the air from the breach, completely obscuring the terminator suit within the oily cloud.

The Crisis Suit that had fired stepped back behind a smoldering wreck of a Rhino APC, its fusion blaster cycling to fire as it plotted a path to the other Iron Warriors.

That plan was stymied as the shattered hull of the Rhino was smashed aside, sending a chunk of hull plating scraping across its arm. The Crisis Suit turned with weapons charged, but Sliver was already on top of it, trailing smoke behind him.

The hammer struck the battlesuit's torso plating head-on in a burst of sickly green energy, and the hefty armor cracked and splintered as the suit structure fought to protect the pilot compartment from the catastrophic shock of the weapon. The Crisis Suit was knocked clean off its feet from the impact, scraping across the ferrocrete ground and slamming into another Rhino.

Sliver advanced in step with the impact, already winding up another blow.

This time the hammer fell on the suit's head, grinding the sensor assembly to so many splinters. Impact shocks traveled down the battlesuit, pulping the pilot's skull and body within.

Sliver turned away without a word, searching for a new target.

His retinue was carving the enemy apart as the Company forces trying to push into the lots took advantage of the break, and crews made mad dashes for their tanks while Chaos Space Marines broke cover and started laying down hails of fire with their bolters at the drone gun squadrons.

"Vehicle crewss, to your armor," Sliver growled into the vox as he stomped toward another unit of Fire Warriors trying to outmaneuver his men, "prioritize the main battle tankss and then contact command for deployment orderss."

His suit's internal generators hummed noisily as the teleporter locked on to new coordinates.

"May Nurgle... hnnn... protect you and cripple the weakling foe," Sliver intoned.

Then his teleporter activated again, dropping him in front of the sprinting Tau warriors. They quickly stumbled to a stop, almost tripping over the massive Chaos Lord.

"Ssuffer for me, xeno. Let Nurgle hear your pleass sso that he may grant you deliverance," he said as he loosed the Viral Scourge once again.

And suffer they did.

****

Ferrous Dominus - sector 6

*New orders, Shas'la! We're to join Shas'vre Jerriha for an assault on the main facility!*

The Fire Warriors in the unit were quite occupied at the time, deployed behind a barricade and trading fire with a great number of human soldiers garrisoned inside a barracks complex.

Unlike the dormitories, these buildings were made for the residents to occupy during a siege and fire out of, and as such they were proving quite an annoyance to the Tau forces that were tasked with keeping the soldiers locked down where they can do minimal harm. Lasers poured from the tiny windows, deliberately constructed like firing slits, onto any exposed infantry below. Although the Fire Warriors' weapons were far more lethal, and there was little the embattled humans could do about the Devilfish APCs spewing burst cannon fire across the structure, it had still become an ugly stalemate.

*We're going to abandon the barracks?* one soldier asked, ducking his head after a lasblast cracked against his shoulder plate.

*The Shas'vre has the reserves pushing up to assist the general retreat, but yes; if this area cannot be taken, then we're going to pull out. We'll do it one unit at a time, and then...*

The squad leader paused, watching the smoking hulk of a nearby Chimera. There were birds flying out of the wreck in a steady stream, the pure white of their feathers creating a startling contrast to the dark smoke spilling out of it.

The sight was absurd, spontaneous, and, if he was being honest, quite pretty.

And then a bolter round took the head off of the squad leader, which completely ruined the unexpected tranquility of the scene.

*Where did that-*

*On the side! We've been flanked!*

*I don't see any Space-*

Another bolter round struck a Fire Warrior in his chest plate, knocking him off his feet as his squadmates scrambled for new cover.

They were understandably confused by the lack of visual contact with an Astartes; the Space Marines rarely had a great affection for stealth or camouflage, and these ones in particular had a gleaming color scheme that was hard to miss alongside their imposing stature and heavy equipment.

There were some Tau who thought they glanced a bolter hovering in the air and surrounded by blue energy, but that was just silly.

*Behind the wrecked transport! Quickly! Someone get our Devilfish to come about!*

The Fire Warriors raced to move, and one more warrior fell to a mass-reactive shell in the back, and another to the volleys of opportunistic laser fire from the building garrison.

And that was all before they turned the corner of the wrecked hull and found another boltgun floating in front of them.

Twilight grimaced as she heard the sound of more boltgun bursts, making sure to keep her head down behind the barricades. "I think Trixie's right. You've adapted to this a little too quickly."

Rarity licked her lips as her scavenged bolter hovered overhead, snapping off a shot at any patches of blue and black that she spotted over her cover. "I'll take that as a compliment. Spikey, dear, do you know how those 'grenades' work?"

"Oh, sure! Daniels explained them to me! You pull those little metal pins and then they explode!" the young dragon explained eagerly. The mercenaries had been very forthcoming on their first night on-planet, and their weaponry had been the most obvious topic of interest that night.

Rarity smiled in way that made Spike's heart melt and Twilight's heart freeze. "Splendid!"

At another barricade down the avenue, where another group of Fire Warriors were waiting for their APC, a dead grenadier lying on the ground was briefly encompassed by blue magic. Then every pin in its grenade belt spontaneously popped out.

Twilight lowered her head again, her ears pinned while she waited for the explosions to come. The wait was tortuous, and the sound of Rarity clicking her tongue once the booming did start didn't help.

"Drat. Some of them got into the vehicle already," the snow-colored unicorn sighed, dropping down once more.

Twilight winced as she watched the APCs pick up altitude and move away. "Rarity, those soldiers were leaving! You didn't have to hurt them!"

"Twilight, darling, have you considered that even after the humans leave, we're going to have to oust the Tau as well?" Rarity asked as she lowered her boltgun next to Spike. The dragon immediately took the firearm and went about reloading it, which was no quick feat considering that the battle rifle was almost as big as he was.

"Well... sure, probably," Twilight admitted.

"Then we may as well help the humans take their toll now. As far as we know, the Tau couldn't even leave the planet if they wanted," Rarity pointed out, taking a cloth from her saddlebag and using it to wipe away some of the gunsmoke from her coat and mane.

"I'm skeptical that's your actual reason," Twilight deadpanned, her eyes glancing at the scorched length of purple hair coming from Rarity's rear.

"I deplore bloodshed," the unicorn insisted, levitating the boltgun up again before she stuffed her cloth away, "but if we must fight to preserve Equestria against the alien menace, then I will do my part. And your part too, since you seem determined to cling to that 'neutrality' nonsense."

A puff of white smoke burst behind Twilight, and Trixie quickly trotted up to the other ponies with her own boltgun floating along behind her.

"Trixie needs more ammunition," the unicorn said to Spike, snapping the lever that detached the bolter magazine.

"But this is the last one!" Spike protested as Trixie's magic enveloped the clip in his hand and started tugging on it.

"Trixie, dear, you don't have to expend all the bullets every time you fire the weapon," Rarity drawled, "I'm in no hurry to find more dead Space Marines, much less dig around their bodies again."

Trixie growled and was about to argue her case further when she noticed one of the blue and black pulse rifles lying on the ground in the middle of the avenue. "In that case, Trixie will take one of these!"

She levitated the rifle up over to their barricade, and then inspected the weapon as if she had any expertise in such things. "Trixie doesn't like the length, but they seem to make much less noise and move around less than the Astartes weapons when shooting."

She aimed the rifle upward and magically pulled the trigger. Nothing happened as the trigger clicked and a soft buzzing noise came from the ionization chamber.

"... But the fact that nothing comes out of the painful end is a definite drawback," Trixie decided blandly.

"Maybe that one's out of ammunition? Or energy, or... whatever?" Spike guessed.

Trixie levitated up another rifle laying next to the wrecked chimera.

Click.

Then another one on the other side of the wreck.

Click.

Finally she tried a few more dropped weapons near the large black spot where the grenadier corpse had been.

Click. Click. Click.

"Well, Trixie is calling it now: Space Marine weapons are way better than Tau ones," she grumbled bitterly, glaring at Spike again, "now give Trixie that ammunition!"

Twilight rolled her eyes as Spike reluctantly relinquished the bolter ammo. "Actually, from a strategic perspective, creating a weapon that your enemy can't pick up and use on their own is a brilliant idea."

"From a Trixie perspective, such an idea is currently making Trixie's survival much harder, and therefore YOU'RE WRONG," the blue unicorn snapped as she reloaded the boltgun, "now where are we heading next?"

Rarity glanced at the building on the other side of the avenue. "Well, that's the menial dorms, right?"

"Right. Probably. All the signs around here shut down in siege lockdown, apparently," Trixie grumbled.

"Then we should head inside while things have calmed down around here," the other unicorn advised.

"Got it," Twilight said, her horn flaring with magic, "everypony keep close to me. I'm bringing us in!"

****

Ferrous Dominus - barracks complex gamma

"They left? Are you sure?"

Daniels raised a hand to his optics to adjust the zoom, peeking through the firing slit that doubled as a window. It was barely a foot wide and merely three times as tall, which gave them excellent protection from incoming fire but reduced their field of view terribly.

"I watched the APC leave, and I don't see anything else down there. Think they ran into some trouble; I saw some explosions."

Daniels turned to shout across the bunk room. "Howard! You got a line on anything?"

"Negative. I think that team is still on the observatorium roof, though; I didn't see any transport pick them up."

"Then we still have snipers covering us. Not fun," Daniels grumbled through his rebreather.

"Let's go for it! Push out and teach the grayskins a lesson!" barked another mercenary.

"Fight Tau barricade-to-barricade? Are you Warp-addled, soldier?" Daniels asked, smacking a hand against the wall. "They have their run of the base! We don't even have mobilization orders!"

"Well, what if they can't give us orders because of the attack?"

"Then I say holding the building against the enemy is all anyone can expect of us," Daniels said firmly, "if I'm going out there, I want armored support."

The other soldier snorted. "Yeah, and I want a unicorn."

Then there was a flash of light, and between them stood two unicorns, an alicorn, and a baby dragon.

Absolute silence dominated the room for a few seconds until the soldier looked up at the ceiling.

"Wait! I take it back! I want a starship! A working starship! With a harem deck, if possible! Hello?"

The ponies gave the man odd looks, but Daniels dismissed him. "Miss Sparkle, lovely of you to join us! How are you enjoying your stay at the fortress?"

Rarity sighed and levitated her boltgun to rest against her shoulder in imitation of some of the (mostly flabbergasted) human soldiers. "Despite the 38th Company priding itself on security, there's some very unpleasant rabble mucking about out there. It's going to take hours to get the smell of blood and gunpowder out of my coat." Then her eyebrow twitched. "To say nothing of my tail."

"Seriously, say nothing of the tail," Spike warned them.

"The Company apologizes sincerely to our honored guests," Daniels drawled as other soldiers started wandering toward the bizarre encounter, "this whole affair is extremely embarrassing. Putting aside the massive casualties and widespread destruction."

"Is that the Great and Powerful Trixie?" one of the other men mumbled, honestly a bit awed at seeing a psyker flash into the room with a floating boltgun. "You're going to help us?"

Trixie smirked and placed a hoof against her chest. "But of course! The Tau rubbish have encroached on Trixie's territory, and harmed her devoted fans! Trixie will save you all!"

"Seriously? We have psyker support?"

"Hot damn! We might have a shot to make it out of this!"

Twilight mostly ignored all of this as she searched the room. There were dozens of human soldiers, all of them armed with lasguns and their usual assortment of useless armor and masks. There was a small pile of dead in the corner, the bodies having been cooked thoroughly by the pulse rifles, and there were a few live wounded lying on the bunks. There were no signs of other ponies.

"Where are the others? Daniels, have you seen Applejack?"

"Not since we separated yesterday. I've been in here ever since."

"Why are there so many soldiers in the menial dormitories?" Rarity asked. "'Menial' means 'laborer', right?"

"Well, that would be because you're not in the menial dorms. You're in the barracks. You're a few sectors away from any menial housing."

Twilight and Rarity groaned. "Trixie!" they shouted in stereo.

"Well, SOR-EEE! Trixie has only been here for a day, you know!" the blue unicorn snapped back. "The lizard suggested asking the humans, but NOOOO..."

"You don't want to go down that way anyhow," Daniels said, "the way that the Tau movements are through the fortress, that sector is seeing heavy vehicle traffic. You won't be able to get far without a gunship strafing you, and none of us are equipped to handle something like that. We've got quite a number of boys here that were fleeing that sector."

"But the others are down that way! What if something happened to them?" Twilight asked, clearly distressed.

"I have to level with you, Miss Sparkle: I'd be devastated if anything happened to AJ or Pinks, but that isn't our top priority right now," Daniels admitted as he pointed outside.

Twilight winced as she realized how such a comment must have sounded to the mercenary, especially with a pile of dead soldiers heaped in the room. "R-Right. Sorry. We just aren't sure what to do..."

"Where is the Warsmith in all of this?" Rarity asked suddenly, glancing about at the human soldiers with an eyebrow quirked. "Isn't he your leader?" Twilight's ears perked up, and she gave silent thanks that she had gotten lost with Rarity by her side.

"That's a bit complicated, but the short answer is yes," the mercenary said, sitting down on a bunk with a sigh as cannons boomed in the distance, "but like I said, I don't know much about the bloke. I'd say he's probably in the manufactorum somewhere."

"Yeah, I've heard a lot about that guy since I work with the aspirants," another soldier said, "if the Warsmith isn't actually fighting, then he's probably slaving away at the forges, even as the aliens bring the fort down around us."

"The manufactorum..." Rarity mused, "well, that sounds like a much safer place to be than here, doesn't it?"

The mercenaries glanced at each other.

"Pretty sure it'll be much better defended than the barracks."

"It'll have weapon caches too."

Daniels shook his head. "Right. Well, problem is, we have a sniper team on the rooftops that'll pick us off down in the streets." He moved over to one of the firing slits. "Over there. We won't be able to avoid them without going around behind the barracks and then doubling back. Which means we'll have to deal with whatever ELSE is around there; the longer we spend running around trying to avoid trouble, the more likely we are to stumble into it."

Trixie stepped up to the firing slit and stood up on her hind legs to look outside. "Trixie doesn't see anything."

"No, but they're there. Took apart the poor sod that actually stashed an autocannon away down here. They're on that roof."

Rarity looked up at Daniels. "So you can't see the target from here, but you can see a spot adjacent to the target?"

"Yeah. Why?"

Rarity smiled back at Twilight, who gave a sigh of resignation.

****

Ferrous Dominus - observatorium roof

Daniels hadn't been sure what to expect when their strategy had become "teleport behind the enemy and shoot them down on the roof". He had seen plenty in the way of sorcery, but had been lucky enough not to have such power used on him in the past. He had been hesitant to allow himself to be subjected to a magic teleport, and he had hardly been the only one. Many of his fellow soldiers had outright refused, deciding that they had to stay and help the wounded or hold the barracks against the enemy. He might have joined them, but he felt somewhat responsible for the ponies after he had been so quick to abandon them to Serith the previous day.

That said, the process was surprisingly easy and painless, creating only a slight turn of his stomach that was comparable to a dropship descent.

And then he had the backs of Tau soldiers in front of him. A sniper team was on the left, the drones beeping noisily with their network operator on his big floating control console thing, and a Pathfinder team on the right, one of its men glancing back as he heard something odd.

Daniels put a lasbolt through the side of the alien's head, and the rest of the unit promptly opened fire, pouring lasers into the aliens' unprotected backs. Rarity and Trixie, who apparently used boltguns now, added their own firepower mainly to the sniper drone team, blowing apart the floating gun bots with mass-reactive rounds.

"Why the long face, Miss Sparkle?" Daniels shouted over the lasgun fire, pouring a burst onto the sniper drone operator. "You don't look like you're having fun!"

Twilight grimaced and looked away at the sight of the massacre. "I don't really enjoy watching things die. Ponies are a loving, peaceful race."

A materials crate that had been left nearby smashed one of the Pathfinders off the roof, sending him screaming toward the ground below as blue magic swirled around it.

"Die, alien scum! It's YOUR fault I look like this! DIE!!"

"Rarity's had... a tough morning," Twilight amended quietly.

"So I can see." Daniels mumbled as he lowered his weapon. "All right, this lot's dead! Stay frosty and keep to cover lads; we've still got an awful lot of armor out there!"

He turned toward Twilight. "Well, all the same, thanks for your help, Miss Sparkle. Could you take us down to street level now?"

"Sure," the alicorn mumbled awkwardly as her horn lit up again, "what are friends for?"

****

Ferrous Dominus - daemon engine kennels

Fluttershy decided that she had made a good decision by coming here after all.

She had been worried that, in a fit of terror from being separated from her friends and surrounded by heavy gunfire, she might have made a bad call in diving into the first broken pipe she had found and scrambling into a random building. But so far she liked this part of the factory-fortress much better than the few other sections she had seen so far. Sure, the air was dank and hot, it was cramped in the water pipe, she could hear some kind of distant growling noises, and the only light was the creepy red glow of the emergency lumens from up ahead. But at least there were no irritable super-soldiers or hired killers skulking about with their glowing visors and mechanical tendrils and such.

Reaching the end of the pipe, she was relieved to see that there was no grate on the end, but rather that it emptied out into a large metal container set near the wall of the room.

Spreading her wings briefly, she hovered over the container and landed unsteadily on the hard metal floor.

There was nopony - or nobody, she revised - around, and the room was otherwise full of big industrial machinery and control consoles with purposes she couldn't even begin to fathom.

Fluttershy considered calling out for anyone nearby, but thought better of it. If there were any humans in here with her, they probably weren't anyone she knew, and they might be unhappy about her sheltering here while the battle raged on all around the building.

Finding a large metal door nearby, she walked up to it cautiously, pausing briefly to check that she still had her access badge.

"Warning! Unauthorized access request detected!" barked an automated, vox-scrambled voice from nowhere, which pinned the pegasus to the floor in terror. "This is a restricted area! Redirecting..."

Fluttershy blinked as a door on the other side of the room opened up, and then she hesitantly stepped toward it.

"Uhm, th-thank you, Mister... Door?" Fluttershy shrugged off the encounter as she wandered into the next room, idly wondering why the Iron Warriors had to give voices to their mundane devices and why they couldn't choose nicer ones.

This new room was much larger than the last one, and largely uncluttered by machines. It was also much, much darker; there was minimal emergency lighting here, and rather than really illuminating the room it merely cast an ugly red pall on everything close enough for Fluttershy to see in the negligible light.

For now that was pretty much the floor and nothing else, so she stared at the floor as she walked forward.

Which was fine, since the floor was actually rather interesting. It was made of reinforced space-age metals, just like the superstructures of all the Iron Warriors' buildings, but this one was badly scuffed up, for some reason. Long gouges and deep cuts had been carved into the metal, seemingly at random, and Fluttershy had to slow her pace slightly so that she didn't step on any sharp edges and cut herself.

There were sounds reverberating through the darkness, but the meek pegasus couldn't really make any sense of them; the hum of flowing energy and the creak of passively turning gears and rotors were unfamiliar and inexplicable to her.

She was far more familiar with the sound of heavy footsteps, however, and when those started up she froze in horror appropriately.

The floor shook with every footfall, accompanied by a soft hiss of escaping steam and the grinding of servos, and Fluttershy realized even through her paralyzing fear that she wasn't being approached by a Chaos Space Marine. The Astartes were big, but what was approaching her was enormous, more on the scale of full-grown dragons.

A snort blasted hot air over her trembling wings, bringing with it the scent of burning sulfur. Another heavy footstep landed barely a meter behind her, close enough that Fluttershy bounced slightly from the impact with the floor.

Slowly turning her head around, the pink-maned pegasus saw a long metal maw staring down at her. The face was actually better illuminated by its own pair of glowing crimson eyes than the dim lights far above. Behind the toothy iron face, the hulk's body was just barely outlined by the glow of the emergency lighting, thanks mostly to the reflective qualities of its armor.

Then a hollow clunking noise came from behind her, and Fluttershy's field of vision flooded with light.

Some small, distant part of her mind marveled at the way the machine-thing's eyes dilated at the sudden influx of light, its dark pupils shrinking suddenly and its face flinching back.

Most of her thoughts were busy taking in its horrid appearance. The daemon engine was covered in segmented armor plates, and its belly held several glowing red seams of seething energy. On its back were rows of smokestacks, and a bundle of power cables and dripping hoses whipped lazily about behind its body like a tail.

Besides the curiously draconic head, the war machine had legs and arms that were rather bestial in form. The front limbs in particular were like an ape's, each one ending in a tremendous hand bigger than a human.

The Maulerfiend was done up in the traditional Legion colors of brushed steel with beaten gold trim, and had its top-most armor plating patterned with the more stylistic warning stripes. Besides being a horrifying mechanical monster, it also seemed genuinely confused by the winged pony, moving its head to and fro to take in details of the creature.

Fluttershy said nothing and didn't move a muscle for a full ten seconds, and then she finally started to wonder where the sudden light had come from. So she faced forward again.

The daemon engine standing on the other end of the kennels was an entirely different beast from the Maulerfiend, and stood even bigger than the first mammoth daemon engine. Bearing a chassis like a crab, but with only four legs covered in steel blades along with a pair of armored claws, any resemblance to the animal kingdom ended at its torso. A huge, boxy turret that held a cannon large enough for Fluttershy to crawl into dominated the upper body, with an autocannon and a heavy flamer mounted on the sides. Sitting atop the crude mash of wargear and primordial terror was the Iron Skull of the Legion painted in gold and bolted over the main sensor array, with its eyes casting the floodlights over Fluttershy's position.

More ground-shaking footsteps came from all sides as more daemon engines wandered from their quarters to investigate the intruder, their eyes gleaming in the darkness before their faces moved into the light. These all shared the form of the first machine, the Maulerfiend, although there were some that boasted enormous rotary cannons or flex-sheathed plasma emitters rather than hands.

Fluttershy looked back and forth, her head turning constantly as she was surrounded by the hulking engines of destruction. Hisses of steam and shrieking gears filled the air all around her, accompanied by the throaty, metallic growls of the disturbed war machines.

And yet, Fluttershy's trembling had ceased. Her muscles relaxed. She turned back toward the first Maulerfiend, which was still inspecting her curiously, and raised a hoof to run it against the underside of its maw.

"Hello there. My name is Fluttershy. Don't worry, I'm not here to hurt you."

The Maulerfiend tolerated the stroke of a hoof against its plating, although it was questionable if it could even feel such a thing. The other daemon engines continued to watch, interested but apparently not agitated by the intruding pegasus.

The groan of stressed metal filled the air as the Defiler in the back of the kennels raised itself on its chassis, sounding distressed. Fluttershy turned toward it immediately.

"Is something wrong? You sound upset," Fluttershy said in concern, taking to the air and approaching the massive daemon engine so that she could get close without having to walk around its enormous claws and legs.

The Defiler made a new sound, a shriek of metal twisting against metal, and it shook its weapon mounts before it turned to face the wall.

Fluttershy placed a hoof against her chin in thought. "You want to go outside?"

A pounding noise came from behind her, and she could see a pair of Maulerfiends slamming their fists against the ground as they crowed fiercely in agreement.

Numerous other growls and aggressive snarls came from the surrounding war machines, and a Forgefiend started spinning its guns irritably.

Fluttershy knew, objectively, that she should have been terrified by being surrounded by combat machines that snarled and roared like animals. But something about the war machines' behaviors instead excited her caretaker instincts; the daemon engines reminded her immediately of the bears and wolves that she would sometimes care for among her many animals. Behind their masks of ablative plating and extensive wiring lurked a distinctly bestial nature that she recognized almost instantly, and which apparently recognized her intentions as well. It was instinctive and emotional, and completely unique from the cruel intelligence of (most) dragons or the calculated malevolence of (most) humans and post-humans.

Beasts did have some unpleasant tendencies though, and right now she could tell that these ones wanted to go out and play.

"It's not a good idea to go out right now. There's a lot of fighting and it's very, very scary," Fluttershy advised the daemonic walkers.

This only excited more growls from the machines, and the Maulerfiends started clawing their fingers against the floor as the energy disruption fields in their hands sparked to life in anticipation.

Fluttershy winced. There was no doubt about it; the machines wanted to go out precisely BECAUSE of the sounds of gunfire and carnage rattling the walls around them. Something within them could sense violence, and whether a matter of programming or daemonic urges (Fluttershy didn't really know just what they were, after all) they wanted to join in rather than stay away.

Fluttershy sighed. "Well... all right, fine. I'll see if I can get you out. But you all have to stay with me, okay? I don't want anypony getting hurt. Oh, and we should probably avoid hurting the humans too. I think."

Fluttershy still wasn't clear on whether the space men were friends or enemies or when that was going to change, but she was content to leave such complex matters to her friends to figure out; and last she had seen, her friends were perfectly willing to assault the Tau to defend a bunch of humans they didn't even know.

The daemon engines made affirmative noises and started moving in preparation for deployment. The Forgefiends drooled blazing plasma from their maws as targeting arrays were shifted from passive to combat mode, and the Defiler woke the autoloaders that fed its chest-mounted battle cannon.

Fluttershy looked around for an exit, but was slightly discouraged by the general lack of light. She turned to the Defiler again.

"Excuse me, Mister Crabby?" she asked, naming the daemon engine on the spot, "could you use your light to help me find the exit, please?"

Fluttershy pointed a hoof at a random facing, and the Defiler dutifully aimed its floodlights in that direction.

"No, that's the place I came in from... and the door wouldn't listen to me," Fluttershy mused, turning slightly in the air with her hoof still pointed.

The floodlights followed her as she turned, spilling across the kennel cells and illuminating the cranes and heavy shackles that lay within each one to prepare and bind its occupant.

"By Celestia, what have they been doing to you here?" Fluttershy said disapprovingly. "I'm going to have some stern words for this 'Solon' fellow when I meet him!"

The searchlight continued to slowly sweep over the walls of the kennels, and eventually it reached a set of steps that, like everything else in Ferrous Dominus, were enormous in scale.

They didn't go up very far, and Fluttershy saw that there were a set of blast doors at the top. She repositioned her hoof upward and the Defiler moved its gaze in tandem, revealing an unlit control console next to the exit.

"There it is! Hold the light there, Mister Crabby! I'll get us out!"

Fluttershy landed on the floor and then galloped to the exit, making flight-assisted jumps to traverse the obnoxiously large steps leading upward.

Then she stepped up to the console, plucking her access card from her saddlebag with her mouth and placing it against a scanner on the side of the screen. The console flickered to life immediately, and the hum of energy filled the system cogitator.

"Uh, hello? I'd like you open the doors, please. If it's not too much trouble," Fluttershy mumbled, feeling slightly silly for talking to a piece of glass.

She didn't feel so silly when the console emitted a rude buzzing noise.

"Access denied," droned the console, "insufficient security access detected. This is a restricted area."

Fluttershy frowned. "Yes, well, can I LEAVE the restricted area, please?"

"A security alert has been issued to system command," the cogitator continued, evidently unwilling to argue the point, "all unauthorized personnel are advised to await detention."

"What? I'm just trying to get out!" Fluttershy complained, beckoning back to the daemon engines. "Come on, they want to go out too! Don't they have security access?"

Another rude buzz suggested that no, they did not. "Access denied. A security alert has been issued to system command..."

Fluttershy's cheeks puffed up and her eyes narrowed as the cogitator spat the same meaningless nonsense at her.

"Now look here Mister Machine!" she barked suddenly, her teeth gritting. "Me and my new friends don't want to be locked in this dark, awful place all day until the humans decide to let us out! Now you stop buzzing at me like that and open these doors, understand?"

She glared hard at the console, but the stare that had cowed fierce and terrible beasts to her will didn't have any effect whatsoever on a simple machine.

"Access denied," the console buzzed.

Fluttershy pursed her lips in irritation, her wings spreading behind her and a few feathers shaking loose as they trembled in fury.

Then she seemed to calm herself, and her wings folded back up again as she turned away from the console and back toward the half-dozen daemon engines waiting in an uneven line behind her.

"Fine, then," the yellow pegasus said evenly as she hopped down the massive steps, "we'll make our own way out."

****

Ferrous Dominus - sector 11

"Yes, like I said, we're fine. No, Sir. No, Sir. Yes, I can see the bloody xenos kicking up dust just a block away, but we can't hit them from here. No, Sir."

The squad Sergeant mumbled into the vox speaker at the end of the barricade, giving his report to his commander.

Next to him were four squads of mercenaries manning heavy weapons on barricade walls, a pair of Leman Russ battle tanks with engines rumbling, and a full squad of Dark Mechanicus holding the center.

Behind them was one of the many entrances to the manufactorum complex, itself armed with heavy bolter turrets and with blast doors sealed against entry.

While the Scavurel waited in stony, unflinching silence for targets to move within combat range, the human soldiers were thoroughly on edge, twitching their guns toward every distant explosion or dark shape that they could glimpse between the half-constructed buildings facing them.

That was simply a function of the tactical situation, and their Sergeant felt the same. He hated being constantly out of reach of the enemy, waiting for them to slip into the teeth of his guns by accident or fit of madness.

But he outright pitied the ones that had ventured out into the base to seek out targets, even if they had been mostly Iron Warriors. It was like a shark tank out in the streets of the fortress, and practically any soldier that wasn't protected by two inches of ferrocrete and a lascannon or three was bait waiting to be ripped apart.

"Yes, Sir. Thank you, Sir. We'll hold position. Glory to the dark gods and to the Company."

The Sergeant hit the switch on the receiver, letting out a breath. The Iron Warriors were making a counter-push, and finally driving the Tau back. All he had to do was hold his barricades until the siege lockdown ended.

Simple orders, so long as the aliens didn't get brave.

And that was when a heavy railgun round slammed into the Leman Russ next to him.

The sheer force of the shot lifted the front of the tank up off the ground slightly as sparks spewed from the frontal plating of the chassis, but miraculously the armor held and the tank fell back to the ground a full two seconds later, shaken but entirely functional.

The Hammerhead that had launched the gutsy attack was almost instantly speared by lascannons in return as nervous trigger fingers finally found release. The disruption pods caused several misses, but there were already smoking holes in the hover tank when a battle cannon shell punched into its reactor compartment, blasting the gunship apart in a spectacular explosion of smoldering polyceramic plating.

Which was a thrilling achievement, even in light of all the other Tau armor that was converging on them in a swarm of blue and black.

Autocannons thundered and multilasers flared as a wing of Piranhas descended on the barricades. Their burst cannons roared as they made a fast strafing run into the teeth of heavy weapons fire. Most of the riflemen, denied a target soft enough for small arms, dove behind the barricades, and thus missed the sight of Crisis Suits leaping down from the construction site on jet packs to seek targets.

The Sergeant practically dove for the vox again. "Command! This is Sergeant Raymes of squad C-9! We are under heavy attack! We have tanks, light skimmers, battlesuits, everything they have is being thrown at us!"

The Sergeant gaped at the downpour of armor as the vox crackled. "Roger that, squad C-9, reinforcements are en route. Hold position at all costs!"

The Sergeant cringed as he saw massive shapes stomping around the half-built structures, being flanked by several Devilfish APCs.

"RIPTIDES! They have bloody Rip-"

The Leman Russ closest to him suddenly exploded from a fusion cannon blast to the side, and the detonation swallowed his next words before the shock wave knocked him flat onto his back.

"There are too many!"

"Stay down! Down! Wait until they get closer, at least!"

"Tagith's down! Somebody pick up that goddamned plasma gun!"

Sergeant Rayme's head swam as he recovered his senses, his vision returning to the sight of the Scavurel aligning themselves for maximum protection while they filled the air with laser blasts. The Dark Techpriest with the squad was trying desperately to fix the turret on the other Leman Russ, and the Black Praetor assigned to them was roaring as heavy burst cannons turned his armor into a molten mess against his chest.

The Sergeant looked back to where the other Leman Russ had been. It probably shouldn't have been the foremost thought in his mind at the moment, but among all the enemies flying at them he had no real idea what had killed the battle tank.

The answer dawned on him as he saw the air behind the wreck shimmer, and an outline of something bulky briefly appeared in front of him before vanishing like a mirage.

"Stealth Suits, too?" were his last words before one such suit turned its burst cannon toward him, briefly flickering into full view with its optics glaring an angry red.

The Devilfish were quick to unload their squads as the heavier units took apart the barricade, and as the last of the Fire Warriors stepped onto the ferrocrete ground the APCs immediately moved into support position to add their own burst cannons to the storm that was washing against the defenses.

Snapping her rail rifle up, Jerriha fired a quick shot at one of the manufactorum turrets as her squad advanced, spearing the actuator clean through and gouging out the targeting cogitator. The turret spewed sparks and bits of metal before the heavy bolters dropped their muzzles to the ground and its sensors went dark.

The other Leman Russ fell apart as the massive Riptide battlesuits pounded it with missiles, and the first two lines of defense crumbled completely once the Stealth Suits got in position to flank them.

Not the third, though. Annoying.

The cybernetically enhanced humans - whoever they were - had erected some kind of shield and were cutting down the Piranhas with startling efficiency. In addition, the really big cyborg was somehow still alive and charging at the Crisis Suits.

With a snort underneath her helmet, Jerriha fired a burst at the Praetor's leg, cutting it wide open and causing the daemonic cyborg to stumble. The Fire Warriors added their fire to it a moment later, and the mighty guardian was practically washed away in pulse fire.

Snapping her weapon up toward the sky, Jerriha took stock of her squads while the heavy units encircled the Dark Mechanicus defenders, smashing their shield and cutting them down to the last.

*Too few. Far too few,* the Fireblade groused. The attack had gone well, very well, but losses were still heavy. She hadn't even gotten the squad of Pathfinders she wanted to help paint the barricade for the assault.

Within seconds the Crisis Suits were sweeping the heaps of human dead for survivors, and the massive Riptide battlesuits had taken up a defensive position using the battle tank wrecks as cover. The Stealth Suits had vanished, their mission complete and their energy reserves low.

Jerriha sighed. *Form up on me, Shas'la! Someone melt us a hole in those blast doors, fast! We can't expect the humans to tolerate a push like this!*

*Shas'vre, do you think this position will hold for long enough?* asked a Fire Warrior as the remaining Piranhas and Crisis Suits with fusion blasters positioned themselves to burn an entrance into the factory. *The gue'la Astartes are beginning to hit us back. It can't be long until they reach this point.*

*We've already completed our mission here, Shas'la,* Jerriha answered, *we've caused the gue'la twenty-fold the damage we've sustained. Much of their fortress is in ruins and we've gutted their work force. The final blow, as it were, would be a strike to their reactor core buried under this facility. If we can destroy that, then the enemy will not be able to recover fully.*

The Fire Warrior listened patiently, noting that his commander did not answer the question. *So escape is... unlikely.*

*The Greater Good demands that we cripple the gue'la here. That is our responsibility,* Jerriha said, resting her rail rifle against her shoulder, *survival just depends on how good we are.*

Her communicator crackled in her ear as the Crisis Suits stepped back from the door.

*The factory has been breached, Shas'vre. The hole is big enough for a battlesuit, I think. Orders?*

*Exactly as I explained earlier, hold this entrance against the enemy until we return. Or until the general retreat is called. Move out, Shas'la! Today the gue'la feel the sting of Lamman!*

****

Ferrous Dominus - sector 4

Gaela's head snapped up suddenly as new tactical data was fed into her optical display.

"They've... damn! They've entered the manufactorum!"

She was currently on top of a Rhino, cutting open doors that had been melted into their frame by a fusion blaster. The other Dark Acolytes barely glanced at her before returning to their work, disinterested in the particular tactical details of the battle.

Gaela jumped off the Rhino immediately, however, taking up her plasma pistol into her free hand.

"Whoa, are you heading out there?" Rainbow Dash said, clapping her hooves together. "Because if so, I'm going with you!"

Pinkie and Applejack, who had been lying nearby watching the Rhinos being fixed, likewise got up, eager to help.

"I doubt you want any part of this," Gaela insisted, walking past the Equestrians, "I'm going to see about joining a counter-attack. It's going to be very dangerous."

Unsurprisingly, this didn't seem to sway them.

"Dangerous? I'm Rainbow Dash! I LAUGH in the face of danger!" the pegasus said with a grin. "Those Tau losers can't touch me!"

"Ah'm not sayin' we're up to snuff with yer boys," Applejack said as she followed along next to Gaela, "but we've held our own against these varmints so far, and ya seem like ya could use all the help ya can get."

Gaela shrugged her armored shoulders. "Suit yourselves. But you follow at your own risk."

Considering the matter closed, Gaela activated a vox link to the command center.

"This is command and... Dark Acolyte? Is something wrong?"

The voice on the other end sounded confused, probably because she was being contacted by a Dark Mechanicus unit that wasn't yet involved in a combat. They had their own hierarchy and didn't take orders from the mercenary branches of the Company unless they wanted to.

"This is Acolyte Gaela requesting assignment to the counter-attack on the manufactorum."

The line on the other end paused for several moments, doubtless going over strategic data.

"That's a negative, Acolyte," the voice on the other end returned.

Gaela frowned. "Explain. There are sufficient Mechanicus resources here to care for the damaged vehicles."

"There is no counter-attack being prepared to remove the xeno from the manufactorum. We have been instructed to treat the Tau invaders as casualties."

"What? But the Warsmith is in there!" Gaela barked.

Applejack's ears perked up, and her gaze met Rainbow's.

"Y'all thinkin' what Ah'm thinkin'?" the farmer asked, lowering her voice as she got up and moved closer to the pegasus.

Rainbow recoiled. "What? You want to go fight that guy now? Without Twilight?"

"No, Ah don't wanna jump the Warsmith or nothin'," Applejack said in a hushed whisper, "but it wouldn't hurt to scope 'im out for Twi until we can meet up with her again."

Rainbow Dash nodded slowly. "Okay, yeah... that sounds like a good idea."

Pinkie seemed less sure and remained quiet, as was usual whenever she was reminded of their mission here.

"Damnation!" Gaela shouted as she slammed the butt of her power axe into the ground, startling the ponies out of their conspiratorial circle.

"What's wrong, cowgirl? The Tau break anything important?" Applejack asked, her eyes narrowing.

"Plenty. But that's not it," the Dark Acolyte growled, "the Company isn't dispatching a counter-attack. They think the aliens over-extended themselves and will get themselves killed."

Rainbow Dash frowned. "But you said your boss is in there, right?"

"Yes. I believe that's why they're content to leave the situation alone," Gaela said darkly, "and while I fully expect Warsmith Solon can handle the xenos on his own, I think we've underestimated the grayskin whelps too often already to let them scurry about the manufactorum at will."

Rainbow nodded slowly. "Soooo... you wanna go in there with us and save him? You know, since we have nothing better to do?"

Gaela turned her optics mask toward the pony, staring for several seconds. "You won't have a screen of human soldiers between you and the enemy this time. The xenos will fire on anything that moves in there. If we run into them on our own, before the automated defenses or the Warsmith take their toll, we could be swiftly overwhelmed and destroyed. Why would you take such a risk?"

"Hey, what did I tell you?" Rainbow Dash said. "You have danger? I laugh. If you're willing to go for it that's good enough for me."

Applejack and Pinkie glanced at each other warily. Gaela's face was masked, so they couldn't see her expression, but they had to assume it was calculating and generally irritated, as usual.

"Fine. But if you're going to walk into a battle zone naked, at least follow behind me. I actually have a fair chance of surviving a pulse rifle round," the Dark Acolyte said.

Pinkie sniffled and glommed onto her leg again, much to Gaela's annoyance. "You're the best friend ever!"

Gaela started walking toward the barricades that protected the manufactorum entrance, her gait largely unaffected by the extra weight on her left leg. "Sure. Just don't complain if I punt you at the enemy as a diversion."

****

Ferrous Dominus - sector 11

"Who thought it would be a good idea to make a run for the manufactorum again?!" shouted Daniels as he crouched next to a gun barricade, his head ducked down as flares of blue energy flew by overhead.

"That would be me, darling!" Rarity shouted back, lying in a similar position. Her bolter hovered in front of her as she waited for the opportunity to fire back, but the fusillade didn't seem to be slowing. "I'm sure it's much safer once we get past all the aliens!" Spike was at her side, as expected, although the young dragon didn't seem to have any ideas on what to do.

"Well, Trixie's gun is empty already, so it looks like it's time for some magic!" the other unicorn said.

"Fine! Magic is fine! Just do it, already!"

"Twilight, you teleport over behind that wreck, okay? Trixie will create a diversion and drive them back!" Trixie barked to the purple alicorn behind her.

Twilight grimaced - partially at having to take part in another skirmish and partially at having to listen to Trixie - but nodded reluctantly before crawling over toward Daniels, Rarity, and Spike.

The roar of rockets taking off nearby caused her to pause, and the alicorn yelped in surprise as explosions pounded the defensive wall, blasting deep cracks in the ferrocrete.

On the other side of the barricade, the trio of Crisis Suits that had cornered the squad slackened their burst cannon fire slightly as a plume of dust and scattered debris bloomed from the missile impacts, obscuring the area.

*Restrain missile use. Target value negligible,* crackled one of the suits as it spewed blasts of plasma at the wall in shallow bursts. The human soldiers were putting all their efforts into defense, and the only return fire they had to deal with was the occasional fool blind-firing their rifle in useless bursts over the barricade.

In addition, they had a Hammerhead gunship moving in to flush the squad out, so it wasn't as if there was any pressure to remove the threat. Insofar as a handful of humans soldiers and a few ponies were a threat when the Tau controlled the area with heavy armor.

*Unknown energy wavelength detected. Energy surge originating at eight o'clock,* said another suit in an electronic growl, turning toward a wrecked macro-crane that laid across much of the avenue.

*Incoming!* barked another, settling into a defensive stance as bolts of light suddenly shot up from behind the barricade. Shield drones hovered forward to protect the battlesuits as the projectiles swirled about and then surged toward the alien warriors, each one flaring brightly with magic.

And then they exploded. Festively.

The Crisis Suits paused for only a moment as the magic-generated fireworks burst in front of them, causing light blooms to flash on their sensors before being dimmed and removed by their optical sensors. The effect was such that not only were the suits not blinded by the light, but they didn't even get to appreciate the colorful beauty of Trixie's pyrotechnics.

And they weren't especially diverted when the mercenaries popped up behind the barricade and fired at them.

Trixie gasped as the soldier next to her reeled backward, everything upward of his shoulders almost vaporized by a stream of burst cannon fire.

"It didn't work!" shouted another man as he ducked again along with the rest of the squad.

"I think I saw a Hammerhead coming in, too! What're we going to do about THAT?!"

Sweat trickled down Trixie's forehead, and not for the first time she wished she had her cape and hat. "One life-or-death crisis at a time! Now all of you, drop your weapons!"

The soldiers turned to look at her as screaming blue bolts flew overhead. "What?"

"All your weapons!" Trixie shouted, her horn glowing brighter. "Rifles, smaller guns, grenades, knives, whatever! Put them on the ground! Hurry!"

*Bio-signatures confirmed,* said one Crisis Suit as it started stomping off toward the macro-crane wreck, its burst cannon already spinning and ready to fire, *hold position, Shas'la. I will eliminate the-*

All the battlesuits halted as a new energy wavelength flared on their sensors, concentrated behind the barricade. They weren't especially worried after the last display, however.

They became a little more worried when numerous lasguns, stub pistols, knives, grenades, and even the odd pointy piece of debris floated up over the top of the barricade, all of them surrounded by a pink energy field.

*What in the name of the Ethereals is that?* blurted ones of the suits.

*Doesn't matter! Fire!*

*Fire at what? The guns? Can they even-*

The conversation was cut short as the weapons spontaneously opened fire on the Tau first, sending a veritable shower of lasers and metal slugs firing blindly at the heavy armor suits.

The battlesuits staggered back, unsure of what to do. The fire was quite inaccurate, naturally, but there was an obscene amount of it and they were fairly large targets. One shield drone was shuddering in the air already as its energy shield managed to catch enough lasblasts to overload it, and a few of the wild shots managed to score weak and useless hits on the battlesuits searching for a real target.

That was when a bolt shell hit one of the suits in the arm, blowing open its burst cannon and giving them their target.

*Behind the wreck! Move!*

The suits turned on the ruined macro-crane and broke into a run toward it, and Rarity quickly ducked her head back behind the wreckage.

"Now! They're distracted!"

The human soldiers that were left stood up and seized their rifles from the air, breaking the spell of telekinesis from those weapons and suddenly sending much more accurate lasfire at the enemy. The grenades hovering in the air shed their pins and then surged forward through the air along with chunks of ferrocrete, knives, and even Trixie's empty boltgun.

The battlesuits staggered briefly as a few fragmentation grenades exploded at their feet, scraping at the ablative armor paneling at about the same time as their last shield drone fell to lasgun fire.

*Let our gunship handle the barricades! Destroy the flankers!* shouted the lead suit as lasblasts started striking his armor and cracking the outer layering.

They turned around the smoldering engine compartment of the wreck, weapons ready.

A snapping noise came from above, and the suits paused unwisely right before some scorched crane scaffolding collapsed on them from above, courtesy of some quick magic work.

The first Crisis Suit jumped forward as the second became pinned beneath the debris, and the third took a step back as lasfire and hurled projectiles bounced off its rear plating.

"Surprise, bastards!" Daniels shouted as he jumped in front of the first battlesuit, spearing its neck with the bayonet of his rifle.

He had to abandon his gun as the suit punched at him, and he dodged away from the hulking alien machine as it stomped forward with a lasrifle still stuck in its neck segment.

"Shoot! I thought that's where the head was!" Daniels complained as he tried to run around the suit. "How are you supposed to kill these things?"

The roar of a jet pack was heard behind him, and the last Crisis Suit landed on top of the wreck unsteadily, promptly spotting a bright white unicorn peeking out from a behind the crane's ruined treads.

Its burst cannon took aim, and the weapon was already spinning when a bolt of black lightning speared it through the chest.

Rarity's head snapped up at the crack of armor plating above her, and the unicorn gasped when she saw a Tau battlesuit tumble forward off the wreckage, black electric arcs crawling around the hole in its torso.

"Good shot, Twilight! I didn't see that one. But what spell was that?" Rarity asked as she glanced back at the purple alicorn.

"That wasn't me," Twilight said uneasily, "but anyway, help me stop the one trying to smash Daniels!"

Said mercenary was quite literally running rings around the Tau war machine as it swung its powered fists about awkwardly, although the mercenary didn't seem to have any opportunity to attack back, much less any means of actually harming the massive thing.

As the Crisis Suit struggled to land a hit, however, it was suddenly enveloped in magical energy, halting its movements.

Daniels paused cautiously to catch his breath while the Crisis Suit twitched and squirmed, its mechanical muscles straining to move against the magic holding it back. Twilight and Rarity stepped out into the open with their horns aglow, and the latter started looking over the alien for any vulnerable points to attack.

"Thanks, girls. Thought I was a goner for a minute there!" Daniels huffed. He could still hear burst cannons firing on the other side of the wreck, however.

Seizing his lasgun, which still had its bayonet stuck in the battlesuit's "throat", he held the rifle steady and fired a burst at point-blank, cooking the bundles of wiring that fed into the suit's sensor array.

"That ought to do 'im," Daniels said before he pulled his rifle free.

"I disagree," opined a smooth, deep voice that set every hair, man and pony alike, on end.

Black lightning curled and writhed through the air like a living thing, lashing out of nowhere to stab deeply into the immobilized battlesuit.

The magical auras from the ponies broke apart as a scorching un-light came from the hole burnt into the front suit plating, and the Tau war machine shuddered mightily before it keeled over.

Rarity and Twilight turned to look at the source of the awful magic only reluctantly, already aware of who it was. Daniels was more curious, although he was already getting a cold feeling in the pit of his stomach that he felt whenever he saw an Astartes who was too dangerous to be around, even as an ally (an unfortunately common feeling).

Serith stepped through the smoke wafting through the avenues, the blood red of his optics glaring and his hand raised as if to strangle something.

"Do not stop until the alien is dead. Mercy is a blasphemy of war," the Sorcerer intoned, his heavy greaves crushing rubble underfoot as the eyes set in his shoulder pad and between his horns glowed brighter.

A loud creaking noise came from behind Daniels, and the soldier whirled around to see that the Crisis Suit that had been pinned by collapsed scaffolding was trying to get a clear shot. It had fallen such that its burst cannon was trapped under wreckage, but its shoulder-mounted missile pod was merely blocked by a few metal bars that had fallen in front of it.

The battlesuit snapped these metal rails apart with its moderately free hand to clear its line of fire, its targeting reticules centering on the Iron Warrior calmly approaching the area.

"Bloody hell! Move aside! Look out!" Daniels shouted as the hiss of miniature rocket engines heralded the barrage to come. He took his own advice, hitting the ground prone next to the dead Crisis Suit as Twilight put up her shield.

Serith didn't break stride, still holding a hand out. The missiles twisted through the air straight toward him on bright white contrails.

Then the warheads wavered in their path, curving around in wide arcs before sailing directly back to their origin.

Objectively speaking, Twilight couldn't help but be impressed by the fine control and concentration necessary to levitate four warheads of that size and moving at that velocity around and send them back to their firing point. And - again, objectively speaking - she was enormously glad that the Chaos Sorcerer was fighting in their defense.

Subjectively speaking, as the battlesuit exploded in front of her and brought down the collapsed scaffolding even further in a burst of flame, she really wished they were still on their own.

"Lady Twilight. Lady Rarity. You are unharmed?" Serith asked, halting and dropping his free hand as bits of polyceramic plating bounced across his feet.

The ponies nodded silently and reluctantly.

"Good. I sense Lady Trixie is being harassed by the xeno mongrels up ahead. Wait just a moment," the Sorcerer implored, again moving forward and raising his halberd in the air.

He chopped the weapon down, and the shattered metal of the macro-crane hull released an ear-rending squeal as it split apart and peeled away, parting before the Iron Warrior to make a rough path through the wreckage.

Serith let the halberd fall onto his shoulder again as he walked up into the breach, his free hand crackling with power.

"Well... that could have gone worse," Twilight said awkwardly.

Daniels probably would have responded with something dark said in a light-hearted tone, as he was wont to do, but the mercenary was clambering to his feet and moving to run in the opposite direction as the Sorcerer.

He didn't manage to build up speed before Rarity seized the back of his coat telekinetically, stopping him in his tracks.

"Oh, no you don't! You're not leaving us alone with that monster again!" Rarity insisted.

"You have four psykers now, you don't need me!" the mercenary shouted, struggling to shed his coat.

Twilight again felt her unease grow as Daniels argued the point, his fingers trembling as he tried to escape.

That same man had just tried to STAB a Tau Crisis Suit, a war machine thrice his size, bristling with weapons, and entirely devoted to his destruction. Even Tellis hadn't inspired this sort of wild terror in him. And judging by his reaction upon their arriving in Ferrous Dominus, he didn't even know the Sorcerer by his personal reputation. What kind of monstrous feats earned someone this kind of fear?

On the other side of the wreckage, Serith continued plodding along the avenue, barely managing a brisk walk toward the Hammerhead gunship that was spraying burst cannon fire into the barricades ahead. The soldiers on the other side kept their heads down, incapable of harming such heavy armor with their weapons, and Trixie having no spells that could stop something that size.

The Hammerhead's main turret swung around as it detected an approaching enemy, its crew having probably determined by now that the Crisis Suit team had been defeated.

Serith stretched his free hand toward the hover tank and then flexed his fingers inward, as if he were squeezing something.

The Hammerhead started shaking, and its ion cannon turret froze in place as the servos moving the gun ground to a halt.

"No matter how far the science of attaching sharp rocks to bits of wood progresses, it's still the same crude, pitiful handicraft," the Sorcerer mused as the vehicle's trembling intensified, "you are but curious savages playing with bits of dirt, xenos. Let me show you a kind of power you shall never possess."

Parts of the vehicle went dark as power relays vaporized and circuit boards began warping. The burst cannons, having long ago lost a targeting solution on the barricades, started literally disassembling themselves on the spot; seams came undone and parts rattled free and fell onto the ground. The ion cannon began leaking smoke as its power regulators dissolved, and the engines sputtered as fuel turned to water. A dozen inexplicable, entirely impossible mechanical problems befell the hover tank at the Sorcerer's will over several seconds, and the vehicle slowly collapsed onto the ground as its systems went dark.

"Okay, Trixie has to admit that was pretty cool," Trixie said, her front hooves up on top of the scorched barricades while she watched the tank slowly die in front of her.

Then she let out a tense breath, turning toward the human soldiers that were with her. "All right, it looks like we're... safe?"

All Trixie saw of the surviving mercenaries were their backsides as the men made a mad dash away from the barricades, some of them abandoning their weapons on the ground in the process.

"Wait! You're running NOW? Seriously?" Trixie asked, looking annoyed.

"Uh, I'm still here," Spike said meekly, raising a hand as he huddled next to a pile of smashed ferrocrete.

Trixie frowned down at the young dragon. "Why did Sparkle leave you behind?"

"I think she forgot. I've been keeping a pretty low profile since we got here," Spike mumbled, scratching the back of his head.

"Whatever. Follow Trixie so you don't get lost," the blue unicorn ordered, bounding through the hole that had been blasted in the defense wall and trotting out to meet Serith.

The Iron Warrior was already walking toward them, a polearm resting over his shoulder pad. "Ah, Lady Trixie. It warms the approximate spot where my hearts should be to see you unharmed."

Trixie smiled, as always quite appreciative of the Sorcerer's odd pleasantries. "And Trixie is quite happy to see you as well, Serith. Especially with these other space men running about and shooting up the place. Are you here to escort Trixie to safety?"

"That is entirely up to you, my lady," the Sorcerer answered, resting his force halberd on the ground.

"Pardon?" Trixie raised an eyebrow.

"I am here to see to your survival, nothing more," Serith explained with an amused chuckle, "if you decide that I shall guard you behind the safety of our battle lines, or if I shall slay the grayskins as we advance through the streets, is up to you. I will issue no orders."

Trixie rubbed a hoof against her chin. That sounded strange to her, but at the same time quite convenient. And it was certainly nice of the mighty Sorcerer to give her the luxury of command after she had just watched him break down a tank with a single spell.

"I do advise that you take the time to coordinate with Lady Sparkle and Lady Rarity over there, however," Serith said, pointing his weapon toward the wreck, "I am also responsible for their safety, and even my power does not allow me to be in multiple places at once."

"Ah! Of course! Just give us a minute to talk it over!" Trixie said brightly, stepping past the Iron Warrior and flashing him a nervous smile. "You just wait here! Trixie will call you when we've decided!" the blue unicorn galloped off toward the macro-crane wreck, and Spike scurried after her silently.

"Hold, lizard," Serith hissed.

Spike froze in place, and he suddenly looked dizzy as his thoughts became cloudy and indistinct.

"I wish to have a brief word with you," the Sorcerer whispered, stepping up to the dragon, "alone."

"How many times do I have to say it? I'm not sticking around with you lot if that Sorcerer is nearby! Now let me go!"

Rarity grimaced, quite put off by Daniels' sudden attitude. She could only complain about it so much, however; admittedly the mercenary had no responsibility whatsoever to help them.

"Don't be like that. We won't let Serith hurt you," the white unicorn chuckled, as if she was speaking to a young colt.

"Do you seriously think the pair of you could stop him?" Daniels snapped back. "The freak just slaughtered those battlesuits like it was nothing and then put down a tank without so much as a pistol!"

Twilight was equally annoyed, but in her case all of her ire was reserved for the Sorcerer; even if Daniels seemed to be overreacting, she perfectly understood his fear.

"Okay, look, what if we leave Serith behind?" Twilight asked. "We got past these Tau, and there can't be many more between us and the manufactorum, right? Let's just move on."

"Move on without Serith? For somepony who hasn't killed a single alien so far, you're getting pretty cocky, Sparkle!"

Twilight groaned as she turned toward Trixie. The blue unicorn was picking her way through the rough path that Serith had made in the wreckage, apparently intent on joining their brief planning session.

"I haven't harmed the aliens yet because-"

"Yes, yes, we know why not," Rarity interrupted, rolling her eyes, "but anyway, if we have to choose between the soldiers or the creepy, blatantly evil Chaos Sorcerer, then I don't mind sticking with the soldiers."

"Soldier. Singular," Trixie corrected blandly, "the others ran off the moment they saw Serith. Exactly like this other one is trying to do."

Rarity snapped her head around, and a piece of rebar rose up and stabbed through the edge of Daniels' coat to pin it to the ground.

"Why are you doing this to me?!" the gunman complained.

"Take it as a compliment," Rarity insisted, "there aren't any humans here that we trust more than you, Mister Daniels. And right now we'd rather have your companionship and experience than that Iron Warrior's powerful magic."

"Speak for yourself," Trixie scoffed, "no offense to your friend here, but Trixie will be sticking with the guy that can rip apart Trixie's enemies with his mind and has eagerly volunteered to do so. He's also agreed to escort us wherever we want while the fortress is still under attack. So Trixie believes we'd have to be foolish to turn him away when he's all but guaranteed our survival."

Twilight chewed her lip nervously. Trixie had a very good point, but they still had a whole host of reasons not to want the Sorcerer around as they sought out Warsmith Solon. Putting aside that the Iron Warrior was just plain unpleasant.

An explosion several blocks down briefly attracted her attention, and new plumes of smoke rose from behind bombed-out buildings as another skirmish broke out nearby.

"Well, it sounds to Trixie like we have got more trouble ahead. As usual," the blue unicorn grumbled, "Trixie is NOT heading into that without an Iron Warrior along."

"We can go around!" Twilight insisted. "The manufactorum is huge, right? There must be several entrances."

"Wait. Wait, hold on," Daniels said, pulling down his optics mask so that he could look the magic equines in the eyes properly, "something's off about all this. Weren't we headed to the manufactorum because it's supposed to be SAFER than the barracks?"

The ponies all shared neutral looks, their minds racing for something to say.

"First with the sniper team, then the suit team, hooking up with the Sorcerer and now getting to the entrance, you've all been way too eager to press on if this is all about NOT getting being fried by alien ray guns," Daniels glared at them suspiciously, and Rarity chewed her lip as Twilight's ears fell flat against her head.

"That... is... because..." every word out of Twilight's mouth was almost painful to say. In part because she knew she had to lie to their most "trusted" human friend, but mostly because she couldn't think of a convincing one.

As she trailed off, however, the sound of heavy boots stomping over burnt metal returned, and Twilight's hackles rose as Serith approached again.

"So sorry to intrude before being called, but this is a precarious situation," the Iron Warrior said as he approached, "have we decided on a course of action?" Spike was following behind him, keeping a wary eye (and at least a meter distance) between him and the Astartes psyker.

Daniels flinched at the Sorcerer's entrance, but kept his gaze firm on Twilight. "I want an answer, Miss Sparkle. Why do you want to get to the manufactorum so badly, and why should I risk getting vaporized to help you get there?"

Serith halted, his visor sweeping toward the mercenary. "Ah, I see you kept one of the mortals from leaving!" he crowed before Twilight could continue not answering the man's question. "Excellent. I do so dislike fighting without a company of expendables to shield me. Just give me a moment to make some modifications."

Twilight and Rarity were plenty annoyed by hearing the Sorcerer insult Daniels on the spot, but their irritation turned to alarm as Serith raised his free hand toward the human soldier.

"What are you-hrrg! Ghk!" Daniels stumbled immediately as runic circles appeared on the ground beneath his feet and started spinning. Light poured out of his eyes like they had become floodlights, and the man clutched at his chest as he cried out in pain.

"What are you doing? Stop that at once!" Rarity shouted.

Serith did not. "His current form is too feeble to offer us any great protection. I will ensure that-"

The Sorcerer's enchantment broke suddenly in a flash of magical energy, and the Iron Warrior actually took a step back in surprise.

"Knock. It. Off," Twilight growled, her horn flaring brightly as the magic circles around Daniels flickered and vanished. The man immediately collapsed onto the ground, rasping for breath.

Serith didn't respond immediately, surprised and intrigued by the defiance as Twilight and Rarity glared at him.

"Is there a problem? I only mean to assist our efforts here," Serith finally said, clasping his free hand behind his back as Daniels panted weakly.

"Of course there's a problem! You can't treat your allies like this! No wonder every human in this place is terrified to be near you!" Twilight barked, her wings spread in fury.

Serith merely tilted his helmet to one side as he considered the complaint, unconvinced. Then a hoof clanged lightly against Serith's armored leg, and he looked down to meet Trixie's gaze.

"Trixie hates to say it, but Miss Sparkle does have a point. It would have been pretty handy to have those other soldiers around, but they ran away the moment they saw you. Trixie thinks you could stand to be a LITTLE less hated and feared."

As Serith mulled that over, Rarity removed the length of metal that had pinned Daniels in place, walking up to the human soldier.

"I am SO sorry, dear. What was he doing to you?"

Daniels staggered to his feet, still shaking from his brief experience with Chaos Sorcery. "I... I don't know. My skin felt hot, like it was about to melt off, and... and then..."

"Yes, all right. You have made your point," the Iron Warrior said regretfully, "soldier, you will accompany us to the manufactorum. And thanks to the ponies, you will have the privilege of dying as a human rather than Warp-spawn."

"All I ever... asked for..." Daniels gasped, gripping his rifle tightly to his chest.

"Excellent. Shall we proceed?" Serith asked. "There are but a few blocks left to the nearest entry point, and a considerable enemy presence."

Rarity and Twilight shared an awkward glance, but they nodded silently as Serith took the lead walking down the avenue, Trixie in tow.

"Don't mind Sparkle. She's real big on self-righteousness. Oh and you have GOT to show Trixie how to do that thing with the tank," the blue unicorn said, not at all perturbed by the confrontation.

Twilight probably would have defended herself, but the alicorn was preoccupied with other thoughts.

Serith's timing had been perfect, and his interference had both silenced Daniels and gotten the mercenary to follow them. He had then pushed for them to continue onward to their goal, without voicing any of the quite reasonable concerns that Daniels had come up with.

Just what was Serith trying to do?

****

Ferrous Dominus - manufactorum smelters

The sizzling blast of a pulse rifle marked the destruction of yet another servitor, and the bio-droid keeled over as its chest cavity was cooked and its internal hydraulics melted.

*Turret around the next bend,* said a Crisis Suit, its sensors glaring brightly.

*Got it,* Jerriha said, crouching low before she moved behind a smelting pot.

Standing up, she fired a single shot at a ceiling-mounted bolter turret, spearing it through and demolishing it.

*... Is that it? We're clear already?*

Jerriha frowned under her helmet as she stared at the shower of sparks coming from the shredded turret. *It would seem so.*

Behind her were a full thirty Fire Warriors, another six demolition engineers, and six battlesuits, all with guns primed and ready for battle.

It was quite a bit of force to bring against the dozen-odd servitors and five automated gun turrets they had encountered so far. The servitors weren't even geared or programmed for battle; they merely wandered about performing their menial tasks as the Tau approached, and were destroyed at the invaders' leisure.

If it weren't for the forbidding interior of the manufactorum, Jerriha would actually be concerned about her soldiers getting bored. Thrumming machines were everywhere, and the air was thick with the scent of chemicals and fuel. There were also a few scattered shrines here and there, although Jerriha couldn't help but notice that the glyph-covered alcoves looked very different from the usual examples from the Imperial cult or the Adeptus Mechanicus.

*I don't understand, Shas'vre. Where is the enemy? Are they truly content to let us wander through their factory for as long as we wish?*

Jerriha shook her head as she pressed forward. *I don't know, Shas'la, but we've made excellent progress so far. If the gue'la concentrates on our forces outside, then it's to our benefit. Do we have a positive confirmation on our target?*

*Aye. Ahead is a power relay station. It should sit atop one of the reactors, although the core is further underground,* said a Crisis battlesuit, *it's difficult to get much more out of these readings, though. The closer we get, the less sense my instruments make.*

*Good enough. There should be a lift inside leading to the core. Let's get past these blast doors.* Jerriha stepped aside, and one of the Fire Warriors stepped up toward the control console.

In his hand was a hand. Specifically, a dismembered augmetic gauntlet from one of the Scavurel warriors that had held its access ID. It had been jury-rigged with a power supply to keep the IFF indicators active, and had allowed for their passage so far through the manufactorum so that they didn't have to demolish every door in their path.

Upon sweeping the macabre key over the console, the blast doors slowly slid open as the grind of heavy gears filled the hall.

Jerriha and all the Fire Warriors had their weapons up and ready as they stepped into the next section, but like before, they met no resistance. Not even a servitor, this time.

This part of the massive factory had numerous towers of energy relays - each one as big as a battle transport balanced on its rear facing - that fed into huge bundles of cables that spread upward into the ceiling. The entire room hummed with power, and Jerriha resisted the urge to take off her helmet as her optical display flickered from the energy distortions.

*Are we clear?* the Fireblade asked.

*Difficult to tell. Sensors are useless with all this interference. I can barely see straight,* rumbled one battlesuit.

*Well, nothing's shooting at us,* mumbled a Fire Warrior, his eyes glancing upward. *Ethereal's blood... how do the gue'la manage to build so much in such a short span of time?* He was marveling at one section of the ceiling in particular, in which a crane hung down from some sort of mechanical assembly that clung to the ceiling with spider-like legs.

*The gue'la are just as devoted to their asinine religion and hateful Imperium as we are to the Greater Good. Do not underestimate them under any circumstances,* the Shas'vre commanded as she nodded toward a lift on the far side of the room.

*The religion is quite interesting, actually. You're spot-on about the Imperium, though. We don't like those guys either.*

The statement had been spoken in perfect Tau, and honestly the vox distortion wasn't all that different from a Crisis Suit's external speakers anyway.

As a result, it took a few seconds for anyone to wonder who, exactly, had said that. By the time Jerriha had considered that the speaker's words suggested it came from an enemy, the "crane" from the ceiling was already plummeting toward the floor.

Warsmith Solon landed hard, his legs releasing bursts of steam as they slammed into the iron floor to relieve the tremendous pressure of the fall. One leg landed on a Crisis battlesuit, and that machine was gouged in two almost instantly.

The rest of the Fire Warriors were almost knocked off their feet from the impact shock, and even the battlesuits, which were stable enough to endure the shaking, were plenty stunned as a claw pincer lunged forward and seized another of their number.

*Welcome to Ferrous Dominus, xenos!* Solon said cheerfully, slicing the sensor head off another battlesuit with a power sword in his flesh-arm. Even as he did so, the rotary cannon that made up his augmetic arm started spinning as a pair of heavy bolter turrets on his chassis clicked into firing position.

*Here, let me show you some of our wares!*

****

Ferrous Dominus - sector 11

"Up ahead. It would seem the xenos have set up a defensive perimeter," Serith said as he halted at the corner of another unfinished structure.

The three ponies and human mercenary halted, each of them listening to the sounds of heavy gunfire coming from the other side of the building. The Iron Warriors were coming down hard on this area, evidently, but the Tau were holding their ground and it sounded like both sides were locked in stalemate at the moment.

Daniels would have remarked that this seemed like a very odd place for the aliens to make a stand, but had kept strictly silent around the Sorcerer except to answer questions.

"How do we proceed?" Trixie asked, deferring immediately to the combat psyker.

"That depends on how much risk you wish to take in our entry. Lady Sparkle could teleport us past the enemy, or we may launch a strike from our advantageous position to assist the Company forces in removing this little obstacle."

"Wouldn't you want to help out the other Iron Warriors? You know, to keep casualties on your side lower and help them reach their objective?" Twilight asked with a scornful look.

Serith chuckled. "That decision rests with you, Lady Sparkle. I am dedicated to YOUR defense. My brothers can fend for themselves."

Twilight had never been so unhappy to have someone volunteer themselves to her cause.

Then Serith suddenly turned his head, a groan issuing from his vox. "Feh, never mind. We have been detected. Lady Sparkle, a barrier?"

Twilight put up her shield just as a Devilfish transport rounded the corner, its burst cannon cycling to fire.

Serith made a circling motion with his hand, and the hover tank started to spin across the ground, losing its targeting solution almost immediately. It continued spinning wildly, out of control, until the APC slammed into a pair of blast doors, bouncing off.

"Bwa ha ha! That's great!" Trixie laughed, pointing a hoof at the vehicle as it smashed through a wrecked lifter.

Daniels moved out of the shield to cover behind yet another barricade, pleased as always that the Iron Warriors built as many defensive walls as sidewalks. Rarity joined him a moment later, her boltgun hovering in the direction of the Devilfish.

"What do you think, dear? Should we go join the battle?" the snow-colored unicorn asked.

Daniels gave her an uncertain look, wondering why the pony asked him when there was an Iron Warrior around.

"I don't know how we can help, honestly. Just aren't enough of us," Daniels admitted, "and while I'm obviously no expert on witchcraft, it seems to me that Lord Serith can only deal with one or two units at a time."

Rarity pressed a hoof against her chin. "I see. But perhaps we could-"

The roar of a heavy jet pack interrupted them both, and even Serith growled in annoyance as a massive figure in blue and black vaulted out in front of them, followed by several smaller ones.

"Well, I suppose we could always help by drawing away some heavy reserves," Daniels groused, "head down, Miss Rarity."

The ponies recoiled. This battlesuit was many times the size of the others, complete with oversized burst cannons and missile launchers. Its Crisis Suit escort hovered above it, armed mostly with short-ranged weapons. Their targeting sensors swept back and forth over the area, searching for any targets of worth among the handful of enemies.

"Most discouraging," Serith mumbled. He freed the Devilfish from his grip, letting the vehicle finally slow its wild rotations.

Then the Riptide battlesuit turned its guns away from the Iron Warrior and toward the barricade, where Daniels and Rarity were ducking with their heads covered.

"What? What is it-?" Twilight started to ask, only for Serith to interrupt.

"Ssh. This trick will work for but a moment. Or however long it takes for them to vaporize the barricades." the Sorcerer admitted, his hands gripped tightly to his halberd as the eye above his helm glowed, "I am accepting suggestions on a course of action, by the way."

"But what about Rarity?!" gasped Spike. "Go save Rarity!"

"Except that one."

Twilight let her shield vanish as her mind raced, searching for an appropriate spell while the war machines surrounded Daniels and Rarity. They were apparently oblivious to her and Serith for the moment; she only had a few seconds, and probably would only get one chance.

And that was when the pounding started.

The battlesuits, which were taking their time to unleash their considerable firepower on the pair of puny bio-signatures huddling behind a ferrocrete wall, halted at the noise.

The deep clanging sound of metal smashing into metal with tremendous force rang through the streets, and every soldier turned toward the source as new energy signatures appeared on sensor displays. The Devilfish, battered but still mobile, took up a position behind them, ready to add its minimal fire support or flee the area if necessary.

The source was a building that lay just behind the Tau soldiers. It wasn't obvious to the casual observer what it was for, but it did possess a pair of super-heavy blast doors at the front of it, as well as an ominous-looking warning sign for anyone who could read Gothic.

"What's a 'daemon engine'?" Trixie asked. Nobody answered her.

The clanging noises continued, and the blast doors shook and strained as huge bulges were hammered into the durasteel barrier.

The battlesuits started backing away after growling noises started coming from the other side, like those of angry dogs attempting to escape their cages. None fired, not wanting to assist in freeing whatever was trapped in there, but neither did any of the soldiers dare turn their back on the doors to engage the few soldiers and ponies that they had come to engage in the first place.

"Is that... a good thing?" Rarity whispered to Daniels as they both peeked over the barricade.

"Hard to say, honestly. Daemons are a tricky lot," the mercenary mumbled as the hammering continued and the blast doors shook, "but I'll take the ambiguous interruption over a firefight that we're sure to lose."

"Point taken."

All at once, the hammering stopped.

The Tau suits made some brief communications with each other as their sensors swept over the area again and again, and soon the formation agreed that whatever was inside the structure had been contained by the walls that had obviously been purpose-built to the task.

The Riptide battlesuit snapped an arm up, aiming its heavy burst cannon at the barricade again as the barrels began to spin.

Once again it was interrupted, this time by a sudden energy spike coming from within the building that brought its sensors deep into the red.

The blast doors, already much abused from the beating given to it from the other side, blasted outward as man-sized orbs of energy smashed into them from within. A thick pall of cooling plasma and vaporized metal spilled into the air from the detonation, and once again the doors were the focus of a dozen Tau weapons.

The smoke around the new hole started to thin, and the Riptide took a cautious step forward.

"Should we be running?" Twilight asked. "Or..."

"Oh, no. I don't think you'll want to miss this," Serith answered with a chuckle.

A muffled cannon report came from behind the doors, and suddenly the Riptide battlesuit was thrown backward as a shell slammed into its front with devastating force. The blow knocked out its defense shielding immediately, although the barrier at least saved the suit from any real damage as it was briefly swallowed by the explosion.

Enormous metal hands reached out to seize the softened metal of the blast doors, and the ponies watched with wide eyes as a Maulerfiend shouldered its way into the breach, its iron jaws snapping while a pair of auxiliary melta cutters stabbed at the surrounding metal and helped carve a path to freedom.

This did, however, give the Tau plenty of time to retaliate, and one group of Crisis Suits hovered over to optimal range as they aimed their fusion blasters at the struggling war machine.

One of the weapons reached its trigger point in its firing cycle before the others, discharging a spear of power comparable to the surface of the sun.

Directly into the back of the lead battlesuit.

Serith lowered his hand as he watched the armor suit disintegrate before the intense energy, savoring the brief surge of shock and fear from the shooter before the aliens all turned their guns on him and away from the daemon engine.

"A twitch of a finger, the press of a button... it can make all the difference in a few heated moments," he whispered as the Maulerfiend finally forced its way through the hole in the blast doors, "let the show begin, puppets."

The first Maulerfiend immediately tackled the Crisis Suits as they tried to escape with their jet packs, still stunned by the recent incident of friendly fire. The second smashed through the hole with considerably greater ease, its many metal tendrils whipping about its body as it sprinted past the first siege walker.

The Riptide, back on its feet, spat a salvo of heavy pulse fire and missiles into the daemon engine, blasting off great chunks of neck plating and cracking open the smokestacks on one side before it was tackled to the ground. Massive claws crackling with energy raked the suit's armor and tore at its arms, and the lasher tendrils wrapped around the battlesuit's limbs to spoil its desperate counter-attacks.

Behind the second daemon engines came two more Maulerfiends, and these ones pried the doors open wider as they forced their way into the streets, hissing and snarling violently.

The Devilfish was already moving to escape back to the defensive formation, accelerating quickly to stay ahead of the siege walkers.

It was nonetheless foiled as the first of the Forgefiends stomped through the breach, its hades autocannons already spinning in eager preparation for destruction. A stream of blazing red shot smashed into the side of the APC and gouged out the hull, sending the hover tank into the ground in a shattered mess.

Before long all the fiends were shrieking battle cries into the air as the surviving battlesuits fled on their jet packs, and the first Maulerfiend finish smashing its targets to crumbling shards before turning its head toward fresh bodies.

"Okay, so, remember what I said about daemons being tricky?" Daniels said as the Maulerfiend stared directly at him.

"What about it? They seem to be doing an excellent job," Rarity watched with approval as one daemon walker tore the arm off the Riptide battlesuit and flung it into the air triumphantly.

"Sure. But the hard part about deploying daemon engines is getting them to recognize friend from foe," the mercenary said uneasily. The Maulerfiend was plodding toward them now, although it was moving at a pace that spoke of curiosity rather than anger.

Rarity bit her lip. "Well, how does one do that?"

"It takes extensive preparations ahead of time," Serith explained as he walked up to them with Trixie, Twilight and Spike close behind, "programming is key, but the imperatives of the machine spirit can only bind a daemonic will so well. Rituals of binding and offerings must be made in order to keep the daemon's urges subordinate to the machine aspect."

Twilight gulped as the massive siege walker approached, its jointed metal tongue snaking out from between its jaws. "So, should I be ready to teleport us out?"

"That would be wise, yes," Serith confirmed as the Maulerfiend gripped the top of the barricade with its arms and leaned over it, glaring down at the assorted creatures below.

"Mister Whipley, come down from there, please. They aren't food."

The voice was so soft that they could barely hear it over the hiss of shifting pistons and squealing metal. Its effect was impossible to miss, however. The Maulerfiend immediately backed away, turning toward the kennels from where it had emerged.

"That... was that...?" Twilight started, her gaze moving to the damaged blast doors.

Massive metal pincers peeled away the reinforced barrier as yet another walker struggled to leave the kennels, making way for blade-covered, crab-like legs and a torso that stood a great deal taller than the other daemon engines.

The Defiler was easily as terrifying as any of the other war machines, but invariably everyone's attention was locked on the yellow winged pony that stood next to the grinning gold mask.

Fluttershy waved briefly as she spotted her friends down below, but then turned toward the fiends ripping apart the Riptide suit and stamping on the dismembered parts.

"All right, I think that one's had enough, actually. Do you still want to go play?"

The daemon engines turned away from their recent kills and crowed happily in the affirmative, some of them pawing at the ground with their feet. The Defiler released a noise like a buzzsaw grinding against steel, and its pincer claws snapped eagerly.

"All right, but be careful. Make sure to stay together for safety, and remember to keep some distance from the humans to prevent accidents, okay?" Fluttershy instructed calmly, pointing a hoof toward the sounds of heavy weapons firing just around the corner, "Mister Crabby, could you stay with me, please? I need to talk to my friends."

"All right, somebody's going to have to explain this one to me," Daniels said, resting an arm over the barricade.

"I think it's exactly what it looks like, dear," Rarity said blithely, "Fluttershy stumbled upon your collection of terrifying monster-machines and grew attached to them, and now they're acting like her pets."

"That's ludicrous," Serith opined, his voice sounding unusually spiteful.

"Yes, it is," Rarity conceded.

The Defiler turned back toward them, its legs pounding rapidly against the ground to do so, and Fluttershy gently climbed down from the torso segment onto one of the claws.

"It's so good to see you two!" Fluttershy said to Twilight and Rarity. "I got separated from the others and ended up in that building with all these poor, trapped... uh..."

"Daemon engines. They're all daemonic war machines," Daniels mumbled.

"Yes, those. The door wouldn't let us out though, so I got Mister Sparks to help open it."

"And by 'help open it', you mean blast the door open," Twilight said with an arched brow.

"Trixie finds it less strange that she melted open the door and more so that she named all the scary walkers."

Fluttershy looked embarrassed all of a sudden, raising a hoof to her mouth. "Well, we couldn't find any other way out! I spent a long time searching for another door."

"There is no other door. And there's a good reason why we shielded that one to withstand a Maulerfiend's claws," Serith snapped, "these machines are weapons, not pets."

Fluttershy was considerably less terrified of the Sorcerer while riding upon a powered claw bigger than he was, but she still replied meekly as she bowed her head.

"I'm sorry Mister Serith, but they wanted to leave so badly! How could I refuse?"

"Is that a serious question?" the Sorcerer drawled.

"Fluttershy, what about the others? Are they okay?" Twilight asked to change the subject.

"I think so. We were looking for Gaela when I got separated from everypony else," Fluttershy explained. Puffs of steam blasted from the defiler's leg joints around her, causing her tail to billow upward briefly like a pink shroud.

"Enough. Let us make for the manufactorum now, while we can," Serith demanded, walking past the Defiler. He swatted the heavy walker on a leg with his halberd as he passed, and the entire machine jerked backward at the gesture, almost shaking Fluttershy off.

"Uh, please don't do that to Mister Crabby. I think you scared him," Fluttershy complained quietly. The others were quite surprised that she seemed to be right.

Serith turned his head toward the pegasus in passing. "It's designation is Ignis Ferrox. And if you're to follow us to the manufactorum, you'll have to leave the walker behind; the interior does not have sufficient ceiling clearance."

As Serith walked off - Trixie joining him immediately - Fluttershy looked back toward Twilight. "Wait, we're going where?"

"The manufactorum, it's just a little further up ahead," Twilight explained.

"Well, most of the fighting noise has died down over there," Daniels pointed out, "being flanked by daemon engines must've done a number on the grayskins. We should be free and clear."

"Uhm... and why are we following Mister Serith into this place, again?" Fluttershy asked weakly, lowering her voice in the hope that the Iron Warrior wouldn't hear.

"That's what I want to know, too," the mercenary grumbled.

Twilight took a deep breath. "We're doing it because I want to meet the Warsmith."

Fluttershy's eyes widened as she understood immediately. Daniels was wearing his mask, so the ponies couldn't see his expression, but Twilight had to assume it was appropriately incredulous.

"You want an audience with the Warsmith? NOW? In the teeth of a xeno attack?"

"Yes, well, since we seem to have an opportunity," Rarity said quickly, smiling nervously as she trotted off to follow Trixie, "come on now, we should move quickly!"

Twilight and Spike followed silently, sharing a meaningful glance with each other as the latter shifted his backpack.

The Defiler turned to follow after them, Fluttershy still perched on its claw. Daniels sighed before he trudged after the massive walker, its metal bulk bobbing up and down in front of him.

"Ah, well. I've faced worse odds for worse reasons, I suppose. Still wonder what this is all about, though..."

****

Ferrous Dominus - manufactorum munitions finishing

Applejack whistled as she looked over the stacks of the ammunition that lined the wall of the long hall they were in. Big boxes of heavy bolter shells made uneven towers and were themselves laden with belts of the fist-sized bullets.

"That's a lotta gunpowder, all right. How long has this place been workin' again?"

"Thirty-two point-nine-seven hours, not counting the period of time since siege lockdown," Gaela answered, "making ammunition is easy, so this part of the manufactorum was put into operation as soon as possible using materials from the fleet."

The Dark Acolyte's heavy footsteps echoed through the empty halls, completely obscuring the sound of Applejack's hooves on the hard iron flooring. Rainbow Dash was hovering just behind Gaela, so she barely made any noise as she stared at the many machines in idle curiosity.

Pinkie was still clinging to Gaela's leg, so she didn't make any noise walking either, but she absolutely insisted on humming a tune while they traveled through the halls; she said it was "theme music".

Gaela stopped as her optics picked something up, and her pace quickened slightly when she noticed the burnt-out corpse of a servitor lying on the ground next to a dropped crate of bolter magazines.

"Aw, now that just isn't right," Rainbow Dash growled as she hovered over Gaela's head, "those servitors are harmless! Why'd they have to kill them? It's like shooting somepony's pet!"

"It's nothing like that," Gaela refuted, walking past the body and stepping more cautiously, "the servitors are an essential component of our work force, and are as valid a target as any if they wish to inflict serious damage."

"But yer still gonna whup 'em for doin' it, right?" Applejack asked.

"Oh, yes, absolutely," Gaela confirmed, "speaking of which: be quiet for a moment."

Gaela remained still, her head turning toward a hallway that intersected with theirs directly ahead.

"You too, Pie," Gaela insisted after a few seconds.

"Okay, fine, but I get to sing a battle song later," Pinkie mumbled after she stopped humming.

Without the background music or their own talking, each of the ponies could hear the sound of boots beating against the floor nearby and rapidly approaching.

Applejack looked up at Gaela, but the Dark Acolyte didn't pay her any attention. Rainbow Dash looked ready to charge in, however, so the farmpony quietly withdrew her rope from her saddlebag and prepared for the worst.

The first Fire Warrior to sprint into the hall was vaporized almost instantly and entirely by Gaela's plasma pistol, leaving only a hot mist and a few scraps of smoldering armor for the second Tau soldier to stumble into.

The second alien, following close behind his squadmate, got a face full of Pinkie Pie as Gaela kicked her foot at him, and the warrior staggered backward as the pink pony clung to his face and started humming a fast-paced combat tune loudly.

The third, fourth, fifth and sixth Fire Warriors actually managed to slow down before they sprinted out into the open, but their attention lingered on their squadmate shouting and trying to pry off Pinkie a little too long.

Gaela rounded the corner and promptly cleaved one of the aliens from shoulder to groin, her axe crackling with energy and her bionic arm blasting steam out the elbow.

Her servo arms moved toward the next target immediately, seizing a rifle and crushing it to shards before the other servo limb stabbed a whirling drill bit into the Fire Warrior's neck.

Rainbow Dash continued hovering back where she had been waiting for some kind of attack order or signal. "... So... uh... do you need some help? There are a lot of those guys, right?"

Applejack hung her lasso loose around her neck as she watch another Fire Warrior vanish in an explosive plasma discharge. "Naw, Ah think she's got this."

The sixth Tau smashed a fist into Gaela's face, successfully shattering his hand against her armor and accomplishing little else.

Gaela sunk her axe deep into the alien's chest and then let them both fall against the wall, her attention returning to the second of the aliens that had emerged.

Said Fire Warrior had finally pried Pinkie off of his head, and he flung the humming pony away before searching around for his pulse rifle.

He spotted it next to a stack of ammo crates, but he barely took a step toward his weapon before Gaela dashed up to him, seizing the alien soldier around the throat with her bionic hand.

"You have one chance to earn a quick death, grayskin," Gaela said coldly, holding the alien up above the floor as he gasped and kicked at her, "tell me where the rest of your wretched force is."

*I don't... speak... gue'la...* the Fire Warrior gasped out. One arm reached for the combat knife in his belt, and in an act of desperate defiance he stabbed it toward the Dark Acolyte's neck.

Her servo arm caught the Tau's regular arm, leaving the alien's blade twitching bare millimeters from the vulnerable tubing material that sealed her neck.

"Wrong answer." Gaela didn't bother tightening her grip, waiting patiently as the Tau warrior's struggling became weaker and weaker.

"Well, ain't this a bit gruesome?" Applejack asked distastefully. "Come on sugarcube, just finish him off fast like the other ones."

"I warned him," Gaela said simply.

"Preeeetty sure he didn't understand a word you said," Rainbow said, grimacing at the alien's choking gasps.

Gaela rolled her eye under her helmet. "All right, fine. Have it your way."

The whirring of servos came from her augmetic as she snapped the Fire Warrior's neck sharply, and then the Dark Acolyte flung the body away like a piece of garbage.

Pinkie promptly changed her tune to a "battle victory" theme.

"Well, you were worried about it earlier, but it doesn't look like there were that many after all," Rainbow Dash noted, hovering up to Gaela while the Acolyte pried her axe free from the corpse where she had left it.

"This was but a small part of the group, I'm sure. A mere six soldiers would have trouble even carrying enough charges to destroy anything of value, and would struggle against the automated defenses."

She activated the power field on her axe, and then watched as the blood coating the blade was cooked away.

"But it would seem we arrived a bit late. These six were running from something, not searching for targets."

"Runnin' from what?" Applejack asked.

"Let's go find out," Gaela said simply, resting her axe against her shoulder before she turned to head down the path the Fire Warriors had taken.

She had to stop briefly as Pinkie attached to her leg again.

"Do you find it fun riding down there?" Gaela had to ask as she stomped down the hall.

"Yuh-huh! I especially liked the part where you kicked me at that guy's face!" Pinkie said brightly. "That was funny!"

"I'm glad you take so well to being used as a projectile. I'll endeavor to accommodate you as much as possible."

"And save one or two bad guys for me next time!" Rainbow Dash said, flying an orbit around the armored woman.

Gaela turned her head to follow the pegasus silently, her mask optics rotating.

"You think the Tau are 'bad guys'?" the Dark Acolyte asked after a long pause.

Rainbow seemed surprised at the question, and she hesitated to answer. "Well... they're our enemies, right?"

"And that places them in the wrong? Ethically?" Gaela asked. "I'm just asking out of curiosity, mind you. It's been some time since I've heard someone attach a moral imperative to a combat mission."

Applejack raised an eyebrow. "What, so ya don't care if yer doin' right or not when yer fightin'?"

"No. I don't," the Dark Acolyte confirmed casually. Applejack waited for her to elaborate, but was disappointed to find that she did not.

She was still mulling over that conversation when Gaela's footsteps stopped.

"Incoming. Just a few targets, but they're moving slowly," she whispered harshly, moving to put her back against the wall just ahead of the next turn. They could already hear the distant sound of heavy footsteps through the halls, obviously from a heavy unit.

"All right, this time I'm gonna get one for sure!" Rainbow Dash whispered, having apparently discarded the discussion earlier about whether she was fighting bad guys or not.

"This time I'm gonna do a somersault!" Pinkie whispered back, not having bothered with the previous conversation at all.

Soon they could all hear lighter footsteps approaching, along with unintelligible whispering.

They waited several seconds in silence, and then Gaela nodded to the others before swinging out into the hall, plasma pistol humming.

She made the understandable mistake of having the pistol aimed at shoulder level, however, and as such would have certainly lost the duel with the boltgun hovering in front of her face without a body holding on to it.

"Gaela, darling! What a relief!" Rarity said as she raised the bolter muzzle up to the ceiling. Twilight brightened immediately as well.

Gaela was understandably confused for a moment as she took in the sight of the bolter wrapped in blue, and needed a moment to absorb the situation. That did mean, however, that she didn't immediately stop her companions from charging forward.

"Attaaaaaaaaaack-oh, hey guys! It's you!" Rainbow Dash peeled off from her assault dive, swooping low over Daniels' head and swatting the surprised mercenary with her tail.

"FACE GRAPPLE!" Pinkie was more invested in the attack, apparently, and leapt from Gaela's leg into a full somersault. She deftly latched onto Twilight's head and wrapped her legs around her neck, immediately dragging the shocked alicorn onto the floor.

"Hey, y'all are all right!" Applejack said happily as she trotted around the corner behind the others. "Ya even found Fluttershy!"

"Oh yes, we've had quite the adventure out there," Rarity said with a tinge of bitterness, levitating the boltgun closer to her as she sighed.

"Whoa, what's with your tail?" Rainbow Dash asked, floating over next to the singed length of purple.

The sound of a boltgun's hammer pulling back and locking into place came from Rarity's weapon, although it was still aimed firmly at the ceiling.

"QUITE an adventure, if I do say so myself," the white unicorn said through clenched teeth.

"Well, this is actually quite a fortunate turn of events," Gaela admitted, "putting aside that Pie seems to have disabled Sparkle for no reason whatsoever..."

"Hmmph mrf hnnmph!"

"Ha ha ha! Nothing can escape my final technique!"

"... We have extra psykers and another soldier on hand," Gaela continued, "and Fluttershy, whatever she does."

"Apparently she commands daemon engines," Daniels informed her as Fluttershy peeked out nervously from behind his legs.

"That's absurd."

"No kidding. It's actually harder to believe when you see it in person, somehow," the mercenary mumbled, scratching the back of his head.

Gaela's optics finally worked their way to the back of the other party. "And you must be the Great and Powerful Trixie. I uploaded several pict-captures of your 'show' on a recommendation from one of my superiors."

"And you must be Dark Acolyte Gaela," Trixie said with casual indifference, "Trixie hears your name every time Sparkle or the others need to convince someone of authority not to throw them out on their flanks." Trixie had several boltguns floating around her head, courtesy of one of the countless weapons crates lying about. Behind her, Spike was now carrying a case in his arms as well as on his back, grunting under the weight of the additional ammunition.

"Indeed. Now that formalities are out of the way, Warsmith Solon should be deeper in, toward the energy cores. We were going to make sure he does not need reinforcements," Gaela explained.

"That sounds like a wonderful idea! We should go along with them! Right, Twilight?" Rarity asked brightly.

"MMMHN!"

Gaela sighed through her vox grille. "Pie. Get down."

Pinkie promptly let go of Twilight's face, rolling away and then bouncing to her hooves.

"Y-Yes, good," Twilight said as she gasped for breath, "Serith, could you go first? Me and Trixie will stay with you. The others-"

"SERITH? Ya mean that creepy jerk is here too? Where?" Applejack's head was whipping back and forth rapidly, and her tail was sticking straight out.

Daniels and the ponies from Twilight's group looked confused, given that the Chaos Sorcerer wasn't exactly hard to spot, but as they glanced back behind them each one came to realize that the Iron Warrior wasn't with them anymore.

"Hmmm... maybe Trixie should learn that trick, too. He seems to get good results with it," the blue unicorn mumbled.

"How the blazes did he sneak off? His footsteps make more noise than the rest of us put together!" Daniels complained.

Gaela frowned under her mask. She had heard someone approaching with them with a gait noisy enough to be an Iron Warrior, but she didn't see him when she had rounded the corner. Inexplicable. And yet, quite typical of the High Sorcerer.

"Irrelevant. He's not here now, which means we will not be relying on his support. Are you ready to proceed?"

"Heck yeah!"

"As you say, dear."

"Ah'm with ya, sugarcube."

"Twilight, guess what! We saw a human naked!"

"Why is THAT the first thing you have to say to me?"

"Trixie believes the first thing she said to you was 'face grapple,' actually."

"Do we REALLY need to do this?"

"Orders are orders, Miss Shy. Just stay behind me if things get dicey, all right? Locked and loaded, Acolyte."

The walk up to the next set of blast doors was done in silence, every human and unicorn aiming their weapon straight forward toward the seam between the heavy barriers.

They passed by a servitor corpse, but paid it no mind.

They gave a deal more attention to a dead Fire Warrior lying outside the blast doors, his rifle missing and a trail of blood leading back to the doors, but they didn't slow their quiet approach.

"Ah can hear something back there," Applejack mumbled, her ears twitching.

Gaela walked up to the security panel and swept her bionic arm over the scanner.

The light turned green, and the doors started to grind open.

Daniels stepped forward first, his lasrifle up and his optics mask scanning the area in low-light mode while the doors finished opening behind him.

Then he lowered the rifle. "Well, then... I guess we won."

It was hard to imagine otherwise. There were Tau bodies everywhere, and the alcove in front of the power relay towers was awash with long streaks of drying blood and pitted from streams of automatic fire. Several battlesuits had been torn apart; some crushed and mangled, while others had been ripped apart by explosive shot. One was even lying on the floor with a power sword stuck into its pilot compartment. The entire area was a charnel house of blue and black stained with alien blood, and there wasn't a single sign of any Company soldiers, Iron Warrior or mortal.

"Wait. Do y'all hear that?" Applejack whispered, looking off toward the relay towers.

Really, it was hard NOT to hear it. A loud, rapid clanging noise was coming from somewhere out of sight, almost obscuring the sound of a roaring jet pack.

"Guns up, ladies. You too, Dahmer," Gaela commanded, her plasma pistol aimed.

"His name is Daniels," Trixie said as she magically pulled back the bolters' slides.

"Whatever. Anybody without a firearm stay on the sides and get ready to pounce. Sparkle, prepare to immobilize the target. Attack on my order. Three..."

The roar of the jet pack got closer, although the bulky relay towers severely restricted their line of sight. The clanging noise got closer, too.

"Two..."

Looking up at the cable bundles that stretched up to the ceiling, Rainbow glanced a bit of blue speeding between the bulk of the towers. Then she glanced a spot of dull metal moving behind it at almost the same height.

"One..."

Gaela's sensor readings flashed in her optical display.

"Hold fire."

Daniels lowered his rifle immediately, but the ponies seemed startled at the command.

They didn't get the opportunity to question it before a Crisis Suit appeared from behind the relay tower, its jet pack burning as it sped over the floor.

And then came Solon.

Everyone except Gaela and Trixie leapt back in shock as the six-legged Warsmith dashed out behind the suit, snatching the Tau warrior out of the air with a huge pincer claw.

Those ponies that had seen the Defiler from before drew parallels immediately with the chassis design and the claw as they watched the Warsmith recover from his pounce. Or rather, Twilight did; Fluttershy was instantly frightened into a state of complete shock, while Rarity was too disgusted at the sight of the Iron Warrior to think straight.

"What in Sam Apple's name is THAT?!" Applejack cried, backing away with Rarity in horror.

"I'll make introductions in a moment," Gaela said calmly as she set her plasma pistol against her thigh, "for now, watch."

Solon raised up the servo claw that held the struggling Crisis Suit, and his many mechatendrils started snapping and biting at the armor, picking away its weapons and disassembling the armor plates.

*You're hard to catch, little one! Was that a ploy to let your squad escape?* Solon asked before the battlesuit's fusion blaster was stripped off and dropped onto the floor.

*You will not win, you gue'la monster! The Greater Good will always prevail!* the suit barked back, struggling within the iron grasp of the servo claw.

*Yes, yes, I'm sure. But until then, I think you can be of use to me.* Solon chuckled as the mechatendrils with melta cutters started carving away at the armor seams, and the other snake-like appendages clamped onto various polyceramic plates in order to peel them off when they came loose.

The spectators watched, fascinated and horrified, as the Tau battlesuit was slowly taken apart piece by piece. The servo claw eased up pressure as the suit's limbs and torso plating fell away, and then it opened up entirely to drop the collapsed frame of the battlesuit cockpit on the floor.

The Tau pilot spilled out onto the ground and began crawling away desperately, halting only when he noticed that there were a number of new individuals blocking his path.

"And what have we here?" Solon asked, switching to Gothic as he approached the alcove.

Every pony except Trixie took a step (or in Rainbow's case, a flap) backward for every dull clang of Solon's leg hitting the floor. Even Pinkie looked terrified, Gaela noted with considerable amusement.

Trixie was feeling quite smug about not freaking out, although she vividly remembered having the exact same reaction the first time she had met the Warsmith.

"Hello, Mister Solon. Trixie was just heading in to see if you needed help with anything." She lowered her boltguns to aim at the disarmed Tau, who seemed stunned into immobility.

"Ash a matter of fact, I do, Mish Trixie. But it ish not your job," the Warsmith said before turning toward Daniels.

The mercenary had reacted quite well to seeing the high commander of the 38th Company in the flesh(metal), in that he had restrained any screams and kept himself rooted to one spot rather than fleeing.

"Sholdier! One of the grayshkinsh got away and made a break for the liftsh. Go run down and shtop her for me, will you?"

Pinkie's eye twitched.

Daniels saluted sharply and then sprinted across the room, all too eager to leave.

"Acolyte Gaela, it'sh sho good to shee you again!" Solon barked, his attention moving to the Dark Acolyte. "And I shee you've brought gueshtsh! I musht apologize for the mesh, I'm afraid. There were a few grievoush mishcalculationsh on our part, and now we're paying the price."

Pinkie snorted and clamped a hoof over her mouth, completely breaking her expression of horror.

"Allow Trixie to introduce our acquaintances here," Trixie said, earning an annoyed look from Gaela that was lost behind her helmet, "in order from left to right, we have Applejack, Rainbow Dash, Rarity, Spike, Princess Twilight Sparkle, and Pinkie Pie. There's also a yellow one named Fluttershy hiding around here somewhere, I'm sure. They're from Ponyville."

Solon tilted his head to one side, his multi-optics glimmering. "I shee. Unfortunately I have little time to shtay and greet you all. Thish ish quite a dishashter we have on our handsh, ash I'm shure you've noticed."

Pinkie Pie now had both hooves covering her mouth, fighting to retain her sniggering.

"Oh, that's quite all right! We were just followin' Miss Gaela around, is all! We can come back later! Wouldn't want to get in your way!" Applejack said, her voice cracking only slightly as she stiffly turned to face Twilight. "Right, Twi?"

Twilight opened her mouth to speak, but found it painfully dry. Looking back at her friends, she could see that aside from Pinkie, they were all casting desperate glances at the blast doors behind them. She could also see Fluttershy's tail sticking out from behind a battlesuit corpse, apparently finding that less horrifying than than the hulk of metal and terror in front of them.

She couldn't even put her hoof on what exactly was so scary. Sure, he was huge, armored, and had at least three guns she could see that were bigger than she was, but she hadn't felt fear this intense when facing the daemon engines or when she had seen the Riptide battlesuits, which were hardly less dangerous. It was something primordial... instinctive, perhaps. Everything in her heart and soul screamed at her to get away as fast as possible.

Solon's chassis lowered closer to the floor so that Solon could reach his free hand down and seize the helpless Tau by his shoulder and haul him up. "That'sh fine. Jusht be careful. The Tau sheem to be in retreat, but there could shtill be ambushesh, and many sholdiers will be-"

And that was when the dam finally broke.

"HA HA HA HA HA HAAAH! That's... I can't... HAAAH HAH HAH!!"

Everyone seemed quite startled as Pinkie Pie burst out laughing, landing on her back and kicking her feet wildly.

Gaela's head snapped toward the howling pony. "Pie, be silent. You stand before the Warsmith."

It didn't seem to help, and Pinkie started rolling back and forth between her guffaws.

"Ish she... okay?" Solon asked, turning his gaze toward Trixie.

"No, not really," the blue unicorn said with a shrug.

"Ish she shick or shomething? We have medical shuppliesh available."

Pinkie's laughing somehow came even harder, and she pointed a shaking hoof at Solon.

"HA HA HA! That voice! I can't - HAAAH!"

Gaela pounded the butt of her power axe on the floor. "PIE! Restrain yourself at once!"

"CAN'T! HA HA HAAA! TOO FUNNY!"

"Ish there shomething shtrange about my voice?" the Warsmith asked, glancing around at the others.

Most of the ponies were staring incredulously at Pinkie, but Trixie shrugged.

"It's the slur. I guess she finds it funnier than the rest of us."

Solon tilted his helmet to the side. "What shlur?"

Gaela twitched. "Trixie. Stop."

"Your slur. You know, the way you pronounce S's," Trixie explained, ignoring the Acolyte.

The Warsmith stared down at Trixie again, and then glanced at Pinkie Pie, whose laughter seemed to be tapering off into panting gasps.

Then he stepped toward Gaela and held out the Tau prisoner. "Acolyte Gaela, take the alien."

"At once, Warsmith," Gaela said, seizing the weakened Tau pilot with her bionic arm and positioning her servo tool to execute the xeno if he started struggling.

"And then repeat after me," Solon continued, "sherious shetbacksh can neceshitate shupply shortagesh."

Gaela's wince was fully visible despite her head being completely covered, and she hesitated for several seconds as Pinkie's chuckling started up again.

"... Serious setbacks can necessitate supply shortages," the Dark Acolyte said reluctantly.

Solon immediately recoiled, his legs shaking the floor as they scrambled backward. "Nurgle'sh beard! Why didn't anybody ever tell me? I shound like an idiot!"

Pinkie's leg was twitching as she gasped desperately. "No more... can't take it... dying..."

"It is of no consequence what you sound like, Warsmith," Gaela insisted, her grip tightening on the Tau prisoner painfully, "such mannerisms are an irrelevance."

"Actually... Trixie has to admit that it makes it way harder to take you seriously," Trixie chimed in.

"Who the blazes do you think you're talking to?!" Gaela demanded, pointing her axe at the unicorn.

"What? Trixie is just being honest! Trixie doesn't care either way, but he should at least know!"

"All right, both of you, calm down," Solon drawled.

As Pinkie's chest heaved to try to get air into her lungs, Rainbow Dash eventually turned to Twilight.

"You know, it's kind of weird, but... this Solon guy doesn't seem that scary anymore, does he?" she whispered.

"Uh... yeah, actually, yer right," Applejack mumbled.

Rarity grimaced. "I don't really know what you're talking about. I find him just as detestable as before. And that SMELL! What is he burning in those smokestacks of his?"

"Twilight? What do you want to do?" Fluttershy asked, peeking out from behind the dead battlesuit.

Twilight almost smiled. The same aura of terror that had nearly sent them all galloping away at a glance had been completely washed away by Pinkie's laughing fit.

Warsmith Solon was still scary, obviously; the man was a Space Marine that towered over other Space Marines, and had butchered a great many Tau in this very room, apparently with ease. But the fear was now an intellectual one, a measurement of his strength against theirs.

And that measurement wasn't so far out of their favor. Aside from Gaela, Solon was alone. There were no more troops searching the manufactorum. They had the Elements of Harmony. The army of the 38th Company was busy fighting off the Tau, and looking carefully at the Warsmith's dull and oil-stained armor, he even seemed to have sustained some damage in his own fight. They would likely never get a better chance than this.

"Spike. Get ready. Girls?"

Spike took the backpack off and then opened it up, withdrawing the wooden box within. The other ponies silently formed up behind Twilight, although Pinkie looked exhausted and Fluttershy was trembling.

"Warsmith Solon! I wish to speak with you!"

Solon looked up from where Gaela was glaring at Trixie. "Doesh it have to do with the Tau attack?"

Twilight frowned as she stepped forward. "It does not. It has to do with your army's presence here in Equestrian lands."

Solon waved his biological hand in a dismissive gesture. "Then it can wait. I have to take shtock of the damage done to-"

"It CAN'T wait," Twilight interrupted, "I will speak to you now."

Solon took pause, and Gaela almost fell right over in shock. Trixie sensed where this was going and took the opportunity to slowly creep away toward the blast doors.

"I shee. Very well, then." Solon's chassis hissed as he walked up to Twilight, and it stopped less than a meter away from the alicorn. Both forelegs of the chassis stopped on either side of her, penning her in, and Twilight found herself craning her neck to look almost straight up in order to meet the glittering light of Solon's helmet optics. "Then shpeak, little one."

Twilight once again found herself unable to form words as the terror from before rushed back with full force.

"Go on, Twi," Applejack said, stepping up next to the alicorn and rubbing their shoulders together.

"You got this," Rainbow Dash assured her as she floated above at Solon's eye level.

"Ugh, the smell gets worse the closer you get," Rarity moaned.

Twilight had to fight back a chuckle as she felt her friends crowd in behind her, shoring up her confidence against the Warsmith's imposing presence. She took a deep breath.

"Warsmith Solon, I am Princess Twilight Sparkle, student of Princess Celestia, who is ruler of the Equestrian nation!" Twilight shouted firmly into the glimmering red that had long ago replaced Solon's eyes. "Your army has sunk its fortress into our world and within our borders and brought war to our people! You've seeded these lands with the corruption of Chaos, and your war machines drive freely through our peaceful villages!"

"Indeed. And your point?" the Warsmith asked.

"By the order of the Princess, I must demand that you and your army leave our world and return to your fleets in orbit! We do not wish to fight you, but we cannot allow this awful power you bear to infect our lands! Please! Leave us in peace!"

Gaela stood silently on the sidelines, almost stunned as all the pieces came together. Of course the ponies hadn't been oblivious to the nature of Chaos, and they had used their relationship with her and Daniels to walk right to the heart of the 38th Company at its most vulnerable hour.

She felt her respect for the ponies rise considerably even as she began drawing targeting reticules over them for her servo laser.

Solon took a long moment to mull over Twilight's plea, the optics array on his helmet rotating and glimmering in the dim light.

"All right, that'sh fine," he finally answered.

Spike unlocked the box that held the Elements as Applejack drew out her lasso from the rope hanging around her neck. Rarity aimed her boltgun at the Warsmith, but also cast her levitation over to the plasma pistol mag-locked to Gaela's thigh. Rainbow Dash slowly circled the grimy Astartes, wondering if there was any place she could hit him without simply breaking her neck against his armor. Fluttershy and Pinkie Pie didn't have any immediate ideas on how they could help, but they steeled themselves to look for any opportunities to assist their friends in the storm of destruction sure to come.

Twilight's horn flared with magic, and her wings spread as she prepared to unleash her full power against the titan of metal and dark power.

"...... Wait, what?"

Author's Note

Tzeentch's eye, I HATE writing Solon's voice.
I imagine him speaking like Bane from Dark Knight Rises, with the same kind of extremely silly what-do-you-mean-it's-not-intimidating muffling to his words, but that voice is hard to get across in writing.
So instead he just sounds like a drunkard. OH WELL!

Hunt's End

Iron Hearts: Book 2

Chapter 4

Hunt's End

****

Ferrous Dominus - manufactorum relay stacks

Warsmith Solon tilted his head to the side, wondering why all the ponies had frozen in aggressive stances.

"I shaid, that'sh fine. Your termsh are acceptable."

Twilight was obviously stunned by the admission, and her friends were little better.

"... Really?" the alicorn asked incredulously, her horn dimming.

"Wow. This is going WAY better than these things usually do," Rainbow Dash admitted, scratching her head with her hoof.

"Well, it'sh not like you're ashking ush to do anything we weren't planning on doing anyhow. We never planned to shtay here permanently. Ash shoon as our shipsh are refitted and repaired we'll depart the planet and the shyshtem, and likely never return."

"Oh." Twilight's eyes glanced down at the floor. "Huh. That's convenient."

"Did you think we meant to stay for some reason?" Gaela asked, having dropped out of combat mode herself. "I described the objectives of our fleet to you. How would we accomplish that by staying here? Even if we conquered this entire world, with the technology levels present here the gain would be negligible."

"Okay, I need something clarified," Rarity said, raising her hoof as she let her boltgun fall to the metal floor, "do you seriously mean to tell me that all THIS is only a TEMPORARY base?" She gestured to the room before them with her hoof, although her meaning clearly extended beyond the manufactorum and out to the fortress beyond.

"Ah, well, that'sh a bit complicated, actually," Solon admitted, turning to stare at the relay towers, "technically, yesh. But everything we've built here ish indeed 'permanent'. It'sh a function of our circumshtancesh and habit to build shtructuresh that lasht. If a wall can't shurvive the onshlaught of time, then what hope doesh it have againsht a cannon?"

The massive Iron Warrior turned back to the ponies, and then backed his clanking torso away from Twilight. "When we're done conshtructing our Warp drivesh we'll dishmantle what we can and abandon the resht. Sho ultimately, ash long ash your demand doesh not require our IMMEDIATE departure, your ultimatum doesh not conflict with our objectivesh."

"Oh, no, that's fine. You can take all the time you need!" Twilight reassured him quickly. "That's more than fair!"

"In that cashe, the only real choice I'm faced with ish whether or not to kill you for your mishplaced impertinence, and that doesh not shound like a good ushe of my time," Solon admitted, summoning up a hololithic data screen in front of him as he spoke.

"Wait, so... this means we get to stay friends with the humans?!" Pinkie Pie said, lighting up with a grin that stretched from ear to ear. "And we get to hang out with them and help them all we want until they leave?!" Applejack and Rainbow Dash seemed equally excited at the prospect, Twilight noticed.

"I don't see why not," Twilight admitted, "I mean, we've already made enemies with the Tau, to the point that they shoot us on sight now, so I guess we really don't have a good reason not to ally with the Iron Warriors explicitly."

Then she added quietly, "Except for all the Chaos stuff, maybe."

"ALL RIGHT!!" Pinkie, Rainbow, and Applejack all cheered the decision, clapping their hooves together in the air.

"I'm glad that thish could be resholved to everyone'sh shatishfaction," Solon said, sounding distracted as the hololith vanished, "but now that it'sh done with, I really have to go. Shome idiot let the daemon enginesh out of the kennelsh without programming them firsht, and they're ushing the ground batteriesh ash shcratching poshtsh. I have to go round them up before we loshe even more buildingsh and equipment."

"Oh, wow, really? Th-That's awful," Fluttershy stuttered nervously as Twilight and Rarity glanced at her silently, "uhm, please be nice to them though, okay?"

Her voice was quiet enough that Solon seemed to miss it entirely, and the Warsmith's spider-like chassis banged noisily against the metal floor as he lumbered toward the blast doors.

"And after I shee to the bashe'sh repair shchedule, I'm going to get thish damn vox grille cleaned," the Chaos Lord grumbled.

"Aww! But it's really funny!" Pinkie insisted as he left.

A dusty snort was her only reply as Solon stepped through the exit, his legs pounding a few of the scattered Tau corpses into a bloody pulp on the way out.

As he passed through, the Warsmith noticed something off on the side of and intersection in the hallway as he passed by.

Serith was leaning against the wall, his halberd resting in the crook of his arm.

"Sherith. Good job keeping the xenosh alive during the attack. Ashuming that'sh what you've been doing all thish time," Solon said as he walked by, his torso pivoting about to face the Sorcerer, "but you sheem to have losht track of them near the end, there. You should work on that."

"Of course, Warsmith," Serith drawled, his visor lenses glimmering as he watched the mechanized Chaos Lord stomp past.

It was mere seconds later that Trixie stepped through the hall after him, the bolters still floating around her head.

"Well, THAT didn't go as Trixie expected," the unicorn mumbled as she magicked the nearest munitions crate open and dumped the guns inside.

"Tell me about it," Serith mumbled, stepping forward, "but these things happen. Shall I escort you back to your room? The Tau have called a full retreat and siege lockdown should end by the time we return... assuming the entire structure hasn't been demolished since we left."

"Trixie certainly hopes not! Poor Suuna was still in there!" the unicorn said, gritting her teeth and walking past Serith. "Hateful creatures, these Tau! What did Trixie ever do to them?"

Serith moved to follow the unicorn down the hall, although they took a different path out than Solon did.

"Well, you did join a military company devoted to hunting and pillaging them," the Iron Warrior reasoned.

"Trixie meant besides that!" the unicorn spat, obviously irritated as Serith chuckled in that dark, mysterious manner that described almost EVERYTHING he did.

The two walked in silence for several more seconds, and the heavy tread of Serith's boots became the most prominent sound echoing in the cavernous halls.

Eventually Trixie cleared her throat to speak once again. "So... just how long have you known that Sparkle was planning to confront the Warsmith like that?"

Serith tilted his helmet down to meet the unicorn's gaze. "Since last night, actually. Your race does not excel in the art of deception. How long have you suspected me of knowing, Lady Trixie?"

"Since you first offered to bring us here without asking why. You're a weird one, Serith, but you're not stupid. Why would you let a bunch of naïve ponies lead you around by the nose without telling you anything?"

"Your words flatter me, Lady Trixie," Serith said with considerable amusement.

"Of course, that would normally beg the question of why you led us right here to your leader and what you planned to do if he hadn't accepted Sparkle's demands..." Trixie trailed off with a sigh. "But Trixie is quite tired of this, and it's enough that everything was resolved without violence. Or, any MORE violence, at any rate."

"Understandable. Although I must say, for a creature who's rarely tasted combat, you acquitted yourself quite well," the Chaos Sorcerer admitted, drawing the topic further away from his actions.

"Was there ever any doubt? But Trixie really does want to know how to do that thing where you broke up the tank with your mind. Trixie's levitation doesn't work on anything that big!"

"Ah, of course. The secret is in knowing the internals of the machine in order to spoil them. The more complex and powerful the device, the more sensitive it is to interference. For example..."

****

Ferrous Dominus - manufactorum relay stacks

"Well, that was quite enlightening," Gaela said as her helmet cracked open, folding down into its open configuration, "I hadn't thought you capable of such guile, Sparkle."

Twilight immediately winced, her ears falling to the sides of her head. In her haste to find and confront the Warsmith of the 38th Company, she hadn't given much thought to how she might smooth out the aftermath.

"I'm sorry Gaela, I really am," the alicorn said, dipping her head, "but I-"

"No apology is necessary," Gaela said as she stared studiously at Twilight with her biological eye, "I know why you did it, and your reasoning is sound. Were I tasked to eliminate your sovereign, Celestia, I might have done the same. Although I must admit such a tactic would not have occurred to me."

Twilight was quite surprised by the cold acceptance of her betrayal, as if they were talking about a sneaky chess move.

"Yeah, Ah've noticed that subtlety ain't really yer strong suit," Applejack mused, walking deeper into the power relay room curiously.

"But, I mean... we still LIED to you," Twilight stressed.

"Yes, obviously. So?" Twilight wasn't sure whether Gaela's indifferent expression made her feel relieved or even worse. "You completed your objective without harming ours, and all of us are still alive. Given the outcome, your decisions were clearly correct. Am I mistaken?"

"Hey! Hey! I have a question!" Pinkie said, happily leaping up onto the Dark Acolyte's chest and somehow clinging to the pieces of her disengaged helmet.

"I'm sure the answer is 'no'," Gaela deadpanned.

"If Mister Solon told you to smile, would you have to smile?" Pinkie asked.

"First of all, Warsmith Solon is not a 'Mister'. You will refer to him by an appropriate title," Gaela said stiffly, "as for your question, as I expected, no."

"Awwww, why not?" Pinkie asked, making her sad puppy dog face.

"Because 'shmile' isn't a word."

Pinkie burst out laughing again, falling from Gaela's armor and rolling onto the floor.

She didn't seem to be the pony most surprised by the answer, however.

"Gaela... darling, did you just... crack a JOKE?" Rarity asked, an intrigued expression on her face.

Gaela raised her eyebrow. "No, I was just... wait..."

The Dark Acolyte immediately slapped her left hand over her mouth, turning away from the ponies.

"Khorne's teeth, I really did. What the blazes is wrong with me?" she mumbled quietly through her armored hand.

Twilight found it odd that she should be so alarmed, but then a lot of things about her was odd. Rainbow Dash sensed an opportunity, however, especially since the dramatic tragedy of turning against the humans had finally been put behind them.

"What? It's just a little joke!" the pegasus grinned, hovering in a circle around Gaela to look her in her eye/optics. "That's good! You could really stand to loosen up a bit, you know?"

"My work is important, and levity is a useless diversion of the weak-minded and idle. If I were to 'loosen up', it could cost the Company resources, or even a battle," Gaela snapped. Twilight had rarely seen her so furious, although the Acolyte was clearly trying to restrain herself.

Rainbow Dash floated up to her and poked a hoof against her chest. "C'mon, a little more fun wouldn't kill you! I know! Next Rarity can paint your not-hooves and you can stay up late talking about colts!"

The servo arm made a sudden grab for the pegasus, but Rainbow rolled out of the way almost lazily before darting away, leaving the augmetic limb to clamp noisily on air.

"R-Rainbow, maybe you should stop," Fluttershy said meekly.

"On the contrary, I like where this is going!" Rarity opined, placing a hoof against her chest, "I would LOVE to take another shot at making that arm presentable, and you DID keep the dress!"

Gaela's face was bright red as she fought to keep her emotions under control, and finally she pulled her power axe close against the neck of the disarmed Tau prisoner (who had absolutely no idea what was going on all this time).

"I'm leaving. I have to intern this creature, and then I will report to my superiors for a repair detail. There will be MUCH to do, and a much-reduced roster of available workers. Entertain yourselves from now on."

Her helmet hissed as it shifted back up into place and pressurized, and Gaela shoved the alien in front of her as she walked off without the ponies.

"Wait, Gaela! I wanted to talk-" Twilight said, but was cut off.

"That's ACOLYTE to you, alien. I'm busy. Waste somebody else's time."

Twilight glared at Rainbow Dash as the stomping of power armored feet became more distant.

"Rainbow! You embarrassed her! Go apologize!"

"Apologize? For what? Suggesting a make-over?" the blue pegasus scoffed. "If she's gonna stick to her 'woman of steel' shtick she can't be that sensitive!"

"Huooooh... my laugh muscles hurt," Pinkie Pie informed the others, "also, I'm hungry."

"Ugh, me too. With all this nonsense about aliens and corruption and such we COMPLETELY forgot about breakfast," Rarity complained.

Spike promptly put away the box containing the Elements of Harmony and withdrew a can of nutrient paste.

"Okay, no, I'm not THAT hungry," the unicorn said with a grimace.

"Yoink!" Rainbow Dash promptly flew by and snatched up the tin. She hadn't tried the stuff before, but if Twilight had choked it down then it was good enough for her.

"Shouldn't we go after Gaela though?" Twilight asked, worried.

"No. She just needs some time back in her comfort zone to calm down. And possibly also deal with any other messy emotions that come from having your home razed and compatriots killed in a terrifying alien assault," Rarity reasoned, "the best thing we can do is give her some of her precious solitude rather than walking all over her bare nerves."

Twilight looked unsure, staring down the hall, but eventually relented. "All right. Let's wait for lockdown to end and then get out of their way. I'm sure the humans have a LOT of work to do."

****

Manufactorum - power control center

"Yeah, okay, I might be a bit in over my head here," Daniels mumbled.

He was currently in a tight hall run over with cogitators and cabling that led to the reactor core.

The doors to proceed to the core had been closed, and in fact required a higher level of security clearance than he had, as well as a passcode requirement specifically to ensure an invader couldn't just swipe some soldier's ID and then get into the most sensitive areas.

Which was probably why he was looking at the pieces of a security door lying in front of him. The door mechanisms as well as the lock had been gouged out by something, and the actual door pieces had been wrenched out and left on the floor.

Daniels took a good look at the damage, noting how deep and rough the cut was. That hadn't been done with any sort of engineering finesse, nor were there signs of energy weapon use.

"Rail rifle. Blast. Not going to survive one of those." Not that he had a prayer of surviving a hit from ANY Tau weapon, really, but some were still more dangerous than others.

Staring down the corridor beyond, he could also see that there had been several heavy bolter turrets in the way. Now they were all carved-out hunks of metal leaking sparks.

Still, whatever he was chasing seemed to be in enough of a hurry that it had left some things unwisely intact. A servitor was manning a control station nearby, its sunken eyes blankly fixed upon the readouts and its body unharmed. That left him with some options, at least.

"Servitor, confirm xeno presence in the power core."

The bio-automata turned toward him.

"Xeno presence confirmed in sub-section 7-D. Visual contact estimated two minutes, fourteen seconds previous to present time. Play audio intercept?"

Daniels quirked an eyebrow. "Sure."

A crackling noise came from the servitor's artificial voicebox.

*Blasted gue'la! Blasted monsters!* A shrieking noise erupted from the servitor, presumably from the door's metal being shot through. *The Commander was right, these aren't Imperial gue'la... the Imperium would never build something like... like that THING back there! Aun'va, I can still smell it, even through the helmet!* Another gunshot, followed by more shrieking metal.

"All right, you can stop. Nice audio quality, but I can't understand a word it's saying," Daniels mumbled, deep in thought, "hmm... is there any way we can just raise the core temperature in there? Just cook the alien on the spot, or at least flush it out?"

The servitor made a rude buzzing noise. "Insufficient security clearance detected. Unit lacks authority for engineering controls."

Daniels groaned. "Good ol' Iron Warriors. Only Chaos Legion that builds multiple, sophisticated chains of command right down to who can touch the bloody thermostat."

The mercenary sighed. "Nothin' for it. In we go."

He started walking into the hall access to the core, but then hesitated for a moment at the doorway, glancing back at the servitor.

"Hmmmm..."

****

Ferrous Dominus - manufactorum fusion core beta

Jerriha breathed heavily as she pulled open the last of the security doors, its lock all but shredded into metal splinters.

The heat that assaulted her as soon as she got into the core area was significant, but tolerable. And the least that she expected. A noisy hum came from the chamber as well, almost oppressive in its intensity and loud enough to swallow all lesser noises entirely.

Two automata, a pair of skittering things with servo arms and welders coming out of their large, spherical bodies, shrieked angrily as she stepped into the core area, rushing toward her with pincers snapping.

The Tau Fireblade fired her rail rifle from the hip, spearing both the machines before they could even hope to touch her and shredding their internals.

*Hmph. Not combat drones. Not that it would be safe to have those in here...*

The more she saw of these humans, the more uneasy she became. She'd fought Imperial troops before and even had the mixed pleasure of commanding some Imperial units when Lamman Sept had helped the Tau Empire recover systems lost in the Damocles Gulf campaign.

These ones were... different, to be sure. Particularly the Astartes. She never liked fighting Space Marines - in the same sense that most people didn't enjoy juggling live frag grenades - but the few she had encountered here made her skin crawl. Putting aside that... THING that had ambushed her team in the power relay stacks.

Jerriha shook her head, realizing her mind had been wandering. She had a power core to dismantle.

Taking off the belt of heavy charges she had taken off of one of her engineers, she wondered how, exactly, she was going to do that.

The actual core of the reactor floated above her in a blazing orb, shimmering within a shell of metal and some clear material that was almost certainly some enhanced form of armorglass. Giant pylons hummed as they rotated around the core, and a complex array of servo-assisted arms hung down above the entire thing. The entire room was full of meter-wide pipes that ran from ceiling to floor and sometimes into the wall, and quite frankly none of it made any sense to her.

*'Take gue'la logistics instead of gue'la engineering,' they said. 'It's much easier, and more applicable for a commander,' they said. Bah.*

Jerriha moved into the core area and selected a pipeline close to the sphere.

*Whatever. The big important-looking thing goes down.*

The Tau Fireblade moved up next to the piping, once again hoisting the charges over her shoulder.

"Hello? You in here, xeno?"

Jerriha almost groaned under her helmet, and put her back against the pipe.

"Come on out, now. Save us both some trouble. You're in the heart of the hornet's nest now, grayskin. No way out except with me. So do you want to do this with lasburns or without?"

Jerriha remained silent, listening to the idiot soldier's shouting as he approached her position. He had just entered the core area, and seemed to be walking past her.

"Hello? You in here, xeno?"

Jerriha turned out of cover and fired a rail right into the servitor's actuator backpack, blowing out its chest from behind and knocking it onto its belly.

The Fireblade blinked as she stared at the body in front of her. A servitor? Then where had that voice come from?

"Come on out, now," said the dying servitor, its electronic voicebox sputtering weakly in Daniels' pre-recorded voice.

A lasgun burst cut into the Fireblade's arm and shoulder, and the Tau veteran dropped her rifle in pain.

Daniels stepped out from behind another of the massive pipes, his breath light as he watched the Tau soldier fall and clutch her arm.

"Well, this looks like a capture! Good for me; there's a bonus for that, you know."

He approached the seething alien slowly, his bayonet lowered and ready to finish her off if necessary.

"Now just stand up nice and sl-"

The moment he got close enough, Jerriha's hand lashed out with surprising speed and seized the muzzle of the lasgun, wrenching it out of Daniels' grip and flinging it away.

She followed it by slamming a foot into the mercenary's shin, bowling the man over before she struggled to her feet.

"Augh! Who the hell actually taught you to fight?!" Daniels howled as his hand went for his stub pistol.

Jerriha staggered toward another massive pipe as a stub round smacked into the back of her armor, deflecting off of it. She ducked behind the obstruction just ahead of two more shots that went wide.

She still had her pulse pistol and sword, but her dominant hand had been the one that was wounded. Jerriha didn't especially like the idea of going against a human soldier with a melee weapon, even if this one didn't seem all that skilled.

"Damn xeno bastard!" Daniel hissed through clenched teeth as he stood up. Tau had relatively poor upper-body strength, as any slavemaster knew, but he had never realized how much pain they could pack in those hooves of theirs. If she had a better angle for that kick she could have broken his leg.

Drawing his knife with his free hand, he warily approached the pipe he knew his target was sheltering behind, his breath coming much heavier than before.

He was quite surprised to see his target suddenly emerge on her own, and utterly shocked to see her swinging the heavy belt of demolition charges with her good arm like a flail.

Daniels managed to snap off another pistol round before the explosives smashed into his side, but it's doubtful it did any good before he was sent flailing to the floor again, flat on his back and with the bombs lying on top of him. His stub pistol, for all the help it had been in the combat so far, bounced away out of reach.

The man grunted painfully as he started to get up, only for a booted hoof to stamp down onto the demo charges and pin him to the floor.

"Well, I think this turned out to be quite a surprising encounter for the both of us. Really, I'm impressed," Daniels rasped as the air was pressed from his lungs.

"You acquitted yourself well enough, fool," Jerriha admitted as she placed her other foot on his wrist, preventing him from making any attempts to use his knife, "just keep mumbling to yourself. Soon it will all be over."

"Are you going to blow me up? Please tell me you're going to blow me up. I don't want any evidence left behind that I was beaten into submission by a grayskin. That's just embarrassing."

"This is the end of the road for both of us, human," the Fireblade admitted solemnly, leaning over so that she could arm the chain of explosives, "there's no escape from here, but at the least I'll take you with me and cripple your power supply while I'm at it."

"Naw, Ah think ya won't."

Jerriha had to admit that after seeing the oddities of Ferrous Dominus and being outsmarted by a lowly human foot soldier, she felt like it would be pretty hard to be any more surprised at the obstacles that had threatened her mission in this accursed place.

And then a little orange horse threw a rope over her head.

*What in the name of-* Jerriha's exclamation was cut off as Applejack's lasso tightened around the her neck, yanking her off of Daniels and pulling her to the floor.

There were a hundred things Jerriha wanted to say at that point - mostly expletives - but rather than waste her greatly diminished breath her good arm drew her pulse pistol.

She didn't get to aim it before an orange leg stamped down on her arm, eliciting another muffled cry of pain from the Fireblade.

"Daniels, ya all right?" Applejack asked, her voice curiously tense.

The mercenary groaned and sat up, throwing the belt of demo charges off him. "Yeah, I'll be okay. Those hooves of theirs are surprisingly heavy, though."

The farmpony snorted humorlessly as she dropped the lasso from her mouth. "Ya'll call those hooves?" Then she raised her foreleg while her eyes gleamed with the promise of violence. "Lemme show ya'll some hooves."

****

Ferrous Dominus fortress perimeter

The retreat had been called and the assault aborted.

Dozens of skimmers clustered around the gap in the palisade, guarding the empty transports as they filled up with desperate humans and the last of the Fire Warriors that had been guarding them.

They came surprisingly close to taking them all. Which spoke darkly of how many soldiers had failed to return. Only those slaves which outright refused to board the transports were left behind.

Some were so leery of associating with aliens that they preferred the well-known misery of slave labor. Some were already so broken by their servitude that they saw nothing of value in the attempt to seize freedom.

But the majority of those that abstained wondered just how far the Tau would go to protect them from their former masters, what the price of that protection would be, and how long the aliens could hope to evade or stand against the Iron Warriors. Until the 38th Company left this world, they knew that there would be no hope for them, and ultimately they gambled that they'd rather stand before the coiled whips of the Traitor Legion than their guns.

So it was that when the last of the Devilfish closed its entry hatch and sped off in front of its escort piranhas, the remaining slaves watched it leave not with hope or regret, but fear... and pity.

The palisade guns made a token attempt to fire upon the departing aliens, but the disruption to supply lines within the fortress meant that most of them were on their last few shells, and the armored skimmers had ample room to dodge incoming fire on the way out. Following the train of blue and black was a much more concentrated, and altogether slower, convoy of dirty iron and gold, and the vehicles pushed out of the palisade gap while their guns roared furiously at the retreating targets.

Ultimately such a show of force was futile, however, and the tanks and APC slowed to a halt against the heavily scarred carcass of the Tau cruiser. APCs were unloaded, and the vengeful Iron Warriors began the miserable task of removing the dead, recovering the wounded, and re-manning the shattered defenses.

And through it all, long columns of smoke rose from the city of iron and flame, flooding the sky with ash.

Precious little of it came from the manufactorum exhaust vents.

****

Badlands - 8 kilometers from Ferrous Dominus

*Yes, Shas'el. All units have been accounted for, and we are safely out of reach of the enemy's main guns. It is feasible that they might attempt to use their artillery against us, but the effect would be negligible.*

A squad veteran spoke wearily into the communications panel in the troop compartment of their devilfish transport, his battered helmet on the floor of the vehicle.

*Give me an overview of the damage caused, Shas'ui. Have we crippled the foe?* buzzed the communicator.

*The attack went worse than hoped... but better than expected. We have caused grievous damage to the gue'la infrastructure and their ability for construction. They lost water supplies, their fuel depot, internal transport, comms stations, numerous power relays, construction yards and repair bays. However, the choicest targets were too heavily protected, and our losses were great. Wherever we stayed to fight rather than flee, we died.*

*I see... is this why Shas'vre Jerriha is not reporting?* asked the voice pensively.

*... Yes, Shas'el Wraithstar. My apologies, but her team took much of our forces and regrouped to assault the gue'la factory. We lost contact with her team, and the forces protecting her escape route were surrounded. We presume a total loss.*

*I... I see. And yet her mission was a success. She and her soldiers fell for the Greater Good, Shas'ui. Her loss will buy us precious time.*

The Fire Warrior doubted that; her loss had been a classic example of overreach against an enemy that easily ranked among the most dangerous and pervasive threats to their entire empire. Still, it was hardly his place to critique her tactical errors; she had paid for them grievously.

*Do the gue'la pursue?*

*They do not. And a good thing; our armored support is barely half of that which set out with us.*

*Then return to base. We will prepare to receive the freed gue'la and arm them. There are many struggles still ahead, Shas'ui. The gue'la will not take this attack lightly.*

*We will not lose, Shas'el,* the veteran warrior said firmly.

*No, we will not. Far, far too much is at stake here. We need... wait, why are some transports slowing down?*

The squad leader quickly switched his attention to a tactical readout on his wrist, which did indeed show several APCs breaking off from the general retreat and slowing as if they intended to disembark.

*I'm not sure, Shas'el. Please stand by why I contact them for an explanation.*

As the formation began to slow to accommodate the unexpected stop, the remaining Hammerhead and Skyray tanks peeled off to act as a rearguard.

The afflicted APCs slowed to a full stop, and then their hatches opened over the sun-baked ground of the badlands.

After a few seconds, several bodies were flung from the access points and onto the hard-packed dirt, rolling across the wasted ground.

Then the hatches closed up again and the transports sped off, allowing the entire convoy to start moving again once more.

*Shas'el Wraithstar, we are on the move again.*

*I see that. What happened? Engine trouble?*

*Not at all,* the veteran Fire Warrior's lip curled, *we found out there were Eldar prisoners among the humans. They look so similar we didn't realize it at first.*

*Eldar? Did you execute them?*

*No, Shas'el. We just let the freed slaves beat them and then threw them out of the transports into the wastes without any supplies or aid. We figured a slow death relatively close to the fortress where they were enslaved was more... appropriate.*

*Ha! Nice.*

****

Ferrous Dominus - sector 11

The Iron Warriors stared at their new prisoner, their expressions of confusion and growing amusement thankfully hidden behind their helmets.

It wasn't just that the brutalized Tau officer had been brought to them by a lowly mercenary and an orange pony, though that was pretty funny on its own. It was more that the Fireblade had been secured with a length of rope, and that her armor was covered in U-shaped imprints.

"Is there a story behind this sorry sight?" one of the Chaos Marines asked as he seized Jerriha by the arm while the other removed the lasso.

Daniels was behind the alien, lasgun aimed at her back and the alien's weapons secured on his coat.

"Oh... no, not really. Just, you know, doing my duty as a member of our glorious company," the human soldier said unconvincingly.

Applejack held a small smirk. "Any o' you big fellers know where Ah can drop off these here bombs?" The string of demolition charges were hanging on the mare's back, although she seemed untroubled by the weight.

"Yes. I will contact a Mechanicus aide to relieve you of the xeno wargear," the Iron Warrior said, apparently not at all concerned with being referred to as "big feller", "remain here until they have met you. You are then relieved until further notice, mortals."

The two Chaos Space Marines stomped off with the Fireblade between them, though Jerriha's gait was weak and clumsy after being so badly thrashed.

Daniels sighed as he sat down onto an empty metal crate, pulling his mask off. "Well that was an adventure, wasn't it? Damned xenos sure did a number on us."

"Ah think ya'll did just fine, considerin' the circumstances," Applejack said with a smile, "but that aside, is there somethin' ya wanna say to me?"

"Yes. Please don't tell anyone that a grayskin beat me up," Daniels begged.

Applejack snickered. "Is that all?"

"Well, it's very important to me. A mercenary's career is his reputation," the human grumbled.

Then, after a few seconds, he added, "Oh, also, thanks for saving my life."

"No sweat, sugarcube. Thought ya might need a hand after old man Solon sent you in on your own."

Then the farmpony grinned at him. "Although if ya wanna make it up to me, Pinkie said somethin' about some really good moonshine 'round here."

Daniels quirked an eyebrow. "I assure you, such rumors are completely false. The booze on offer among us spacefarers is awful, foul-tasting garbage more appropriate for cleaning heavy equipment and disinfecting wounds. Its ONLY saving graces are being exceptionally strong, and suspiciously cheap."

"That sounds like a fine evening to me," Applejack said with a sigh, some of her good humor fading, "Ah could use something to simmer down a bit. Meeting yer boss was a bit... nerve rattlin'. Even if things turned out okay in the end."

Daniels gave her a look. "Turned out okay? You mean getting to him in one piece?"

Applejack didn't respond, and her eyes started darting around elsewhere just to avoid looking at him.

He might have pressed the issue, but it was at that point that a figure broke off from the train of people moving along in front of the manufactorum and approached them. The figure stood out a lot in its own right, being bizarrely tall and wearing the black rubber robe of the 38th Company's Dark Mechanicus, but was also flanked by a half-dozen armed servitors and followed by a pair of Black Praetors. Quite an impressive escort, even if the siege lockdown had only recently ended.

Daniels stood up and saluted uncertainly, wondering who the Techpriest was. The Iron Warrior had said he'd contact an aide, but if he'd had to guess from such extensive body augmentation and heavy security, he'd place the individual approaching him as a Dark Magos; far too important a person to be bothered collecting loot from foot soldiers.

"Introductory: I am Dark Magos Kaelith, Mechanicus Executor. Directive: Lower your arm and present the xeno wargear," the figure crackled.

Wasting no time in speculating on the accuracy of his guess, Daniels quickly removed the rail rifle from his back and held it out. "I didn't expect them to send a Magos to deal with me. I'm-"

"Rifleman Wyatt Daniels, contract mercenary," Kaelith interrupted, a metal tendril snaking out of his robe and snatching the gun, "the only survivor of squad Epsilon 31, pending reassignment. Conclusive: I know who you are."

Applejack gave a worried look at Daniels, but the mercenary didn't seem at all concerned as he removed the pulse pistol from his coat.

"Well, not the ONLY survivor, no."

Kaelith's optics flickered. "Explain."

****

Ponyville

"All right boy, now get the frisbee! Go get the frisbee! Here it comes!" Lyra said with a grin as she levitated a red plastic disk into the air.

Building up her magic power for a second, the green unicorn launched the toy skyward across the open green space that dominated the park.

The crack of a lasgun issued from behind her, and then the frisbee was neatly carved in half by a laser bolt, sending both halves plummeting to the ground as wisps of smoke came from the burning plastic.

"GOOD BOY!" Lyra said enthusiastically, turning to the soldier behind her and then standing up on her hind legs to give him a hug around the waist. "Who's a good boy? You are! Yes you are! Yes you are!"

Bon Bon laid on a bench nearby, nervously looking around at the other ponies who were using the park to walk their own pets. "Lyra, ponies are STARING!"

"Pft. Whatever. They're just jealous," the unicorn decided, nuzzling the soldier's hip.

"Want me to shoot them, too?" Jacob offered, glancing about at the various equines staring at him in fascination and unease.

"Nah, it's cool. Wanna go 'chase' the squirrels?" the unicorn asked as she dropped back onto her hooves.

Jacob checked the charge on his lasgun. "I've still got most of a clip left. Sure, let's go."

****

Ferrous Dominus - sector 11

"No Magos, I'm afraid I can't explain it. But I'm still pretty sure he's alive," Daniels said with a shrug.

"Irrelevance, then. A soldier that is no longer under the command of the Company is effectively a casualty," Kaelith said, his body leaning over to bring the glimmering green optics closer to Daniels' face.

Applejack quickly put down the explosive belt and then backed away, thoroughly creeped out by this new person. Aside from Gaela, she hadn't had cause to closely observe the twisted cyborgs of the Dark Mechanicus that she had seen so far, but having one stop to talk brought an unwelcome level of attention to the grotesque engineer-cultists.

And Kaelith was definitely a weird one. With his elongated body wrapped in jet-black rubber and curling around just to talk to shorter people (which was everybody), he resembled some kind of nightmarish caterpillar with metal legs and a dozen glowing eyes.

"And here's the last of the photon grenades and the sword she was carrying, Magos. Anything else that she's got is still with her, but I'm sure the Astartes will catch it."

Kaelith's tendrils snatched up the grenades and pistol, but ignored the sword. "Pre-emptive explanatory: Most Tau melee weapons are mundane and useless, reflective of their frequency of use. The blade is of little use to anyone, least of all the Company's Mechanicus. Expansion: It may have 'sentimental' value to you as a combat trophy."

"Ah. Sure. A combat trophy." Daniels glanced furtively at Applejack, and then gave his attention back to the Dark Magos. "Will that be all?"

"Negative. Explanatory: I am to debrief you in full."

This surprised Daniels considerably. Why would a Dark Magos want to speak to him?

"Expansion: The rest of your squad was perhaps an acceptable loss for the location of a Tau field base, but it was still in defiance of every projection and calculation as to the Tau's standing forces," the Dark Magos said, his static-like voice reaching something like a growl, "now that the xenos have launched a full assault, we cannot afford further miscalculation. I detected your identification clearance moving through the manufactorum after the signal identified as a xeno soldier. The same one that you defeated and captured."

Daniels chewed his lip. "Well... I did have SOME help..."

"Irrelevant," Kaelith snapped, "Interrogative: Between the Warsmith and automated defenses, sufficient force had been deployed to stop the xenos. I wish to know how it came to you to eliminate the threat before the fusion core was damaged."

The mercenary scratched the back of his head. "Yeah, I wonder that too, to be honest. Even Lord Serith had taken off by then." He shrugged. "The Warsmith didn't feel like doing it himself though, so it fell to me. And the automated defenses aren't worth squat against a single trooper with a gun like that. Not with all the cover in there."

"Daniels, what's this crawly feller about, anyway?" Applejack asked, getting annoyed. Kaelith budged one of his optics lenses in her direction, but otherwise ignored the equine entirely.

"Oh, this is just something they like to do. The DarkMech doesn't like it when their models and spreadsheets don't match our messy little reality," Daniels said with a shrug.

Kaelith's optics swirled about on one side of his face. "Interrogative: Your own level of combat force is negligible compared to that necessary to breach the reactor core. Why did you not seek reinforcements?"

This time the man smirked. "Well, the Warsmith gave me a task to do right then, didn't he? Besides, nobody else was sending troops into the manufactorum. It would have taken too long, and as a rule you don't let even one or two enemy soldiers run around in your base."

"Logical flaw: If you had been dispatched with ease, as was likely in that engagement, then the enemy would still be able to sabotage the core regardless," Kaelith pointed out.

"Sure. But then I'm dead, so what do I care?"

Kaelith went silent at this, but Applejack clicked her tongue.

"Hey now, don't be like that. You had a pretty good shot of taking that varmint down on your own. She was definitely hurt before Ah got to her."

"Okay, but the Dark Magos is still right. It was a REALLY stupid thing to try to do. If the grayskin weren't wandering around our own bloody base I wouldn't have done it."

Kaelith's body straightened significantly, lifting his head into the air. "Conclusive: Yet you carried out your orders anyway, based on the strategic principles of warfare, irrespective of estimations concerning combat ability and applicable force."

Daniels raised an eyebrow. "Yes, Magos. So?"

"Expansion: Such principles are developed due to the unreliability of predictive models in warfare. Example: Typical Iron Warrior doctrine would have seen to the completion of the defensive wall before committing any significant number of soldiers to an assault. Conclusive: These principles exist for a reason, and in violating them based on logical analysis we left ourselves vulnerable."

Daniels nodded slowly. "Well, data can be wrong sometimes, Magos."

"Affirmative: Our current difficulties vindicate your reservations."

The mercenary chewed his lip briefly. "Not just that, actually. You see, this isn't a colonization drive we're fighting here. I don't care what the Tau themselves say, it doesn't match anything I've seen on the ground. And I'm not just talking about the assault force that plowed through Dominus."

"Request: Observational analysis."

"The ponies, for one," Daniels said, pointing at Applejack, "I could tell there was intelligent life on this planet five kilometers out from the drop site, and yet none of them even heard of the grayskins before the Company landed on the planet. That's not how the Tau colonize worlds. There should have been diplomatic contact before the first pulse gun landed on-world."

"And WAY before they wrecked mah farm!" Applejack snapped.

Once again, Kaelith favored the pony with merely peripheral attention. "Analysis: The Tau made planetfall immediately before the Company, and they did so under threat of annihilation. Hypothetical: They may have been forced to adopt unusual tactics to address their desperate circumstances."

"Yeah, that's a fair assumption, but I'm not buying it," Daniels said, his arms crossed over his chest, "the grayskins came here PREPARED for this. They didn't just pitch their camp in the woods overnight or spread vox-killing drones around that they just happened to have on hand. I don't even believe they fled to this world out of desperation anymore. They're here to infiltrate this planet. And for all they've surprised us, it seems like we've surprised them just as much. I definitely think we've been wrong about their presence here, and not just in terms of their numbers."

Kaelith paused briefly. "Analysis: Unusual hypothesis, but there is no immediate data to refute your observations other than the questionable testimonies of the xenos and purely circumstantial evidence. It may merit further investigation. Conclusive: This debriefing has yielded useful strategic insight. I will depart."

"Yo, Magos. Before ya go, Ah got a question for ya," Applejack said, taking a step forward.

For the first time, Kaelith's head swung entirely toward the pony, although the Dark Magos took several seconds before he reluctantly replied. "Request granted. You may speak."

Applejack jabbed a hoof at Daniels' rifle. "Ya'll said that Daniels was too weak to take down that alien, right? Then why don't ya'll give 'em better weapons? Those Tau peashooters seem to pack a lot of punch, and there're a lot of 'em around, now."

"I've always wondered that myself, actually," Daniels admitted, "if we were Imperial, shunning xenotech would make sense, and if we didn't fight the Tau as much as we did maybe ammunition supplies would be a concern, but since that's not the case I don't know why we don't all pack pulse rifles. I know the Iron Warriors haven't been taking the guns for themselves."

Kaelith emitted a static-laced popping noise that was probably meant to approximate a laugh. "Explanatory: The Tau use a sophisticated system in their weapons that disables their guns when the registered owner is killed. There is a sensor in their armor plates that will link to their weapon and send out a signal when the xeno dies. This sensor is also necessary to fire a Tau weapon, as firing one without it will also cause their weapons to disable themselves. The majority of Tau weapons we scavenge are thus scrap material, not usable weapons."

"But the grayskin that had that stuff is still alive," Applejack pointed out.

"Conclusive: That is why it is valuable. End conversation."

The Dark Magos turned around without another word, his long body curling about like an eel. The servitors all made a synchronized 180-degree turn to follow him, and the Praetors growled irritably before the entire party stomped off to care for the wounded base.

"Ya sure seemed more at ease with that feller than the Iron Warriors. Did ya know him?" Applejack asked as she and Daniels made to leave.

"No. But unless you mean them harm, you have nothing much to fear from the Mechanicus. They're here to help, and they're not soldiers. Even the Scavs are less hostile than your average Astartes," Daniels explained.

Applejack nodded slowly. "Okay, Ah guess Ah can see that. Some of 'em are still creepy as all get-out, though."

"What, the augments? It's just appearances, AJ. And most of that scrap is pretty useful to them," he said with a chuckle.

She rolled her eyes. "Yeah, okay, Ah know: love and tolerate."

"Love and what now?"

"Love and tolerate. It's like our national motto or somethin'," Applejack said, "though Ah think it might need to be revised with an exception or two after we've gotten rid o' those dang Tau."

"Oh, don't be like that. I think it's lovely," Daniels laughed, "now let's go find us a stiff drink."

"Ah hear that, sugarcube!"

****

Ferrous Dominus - command center

The roar of flamers followed the heavy tread of a terminator suit as Sliver once again entered the command complex.

In the room behind him, a pair of Iron Warriors in specially sealed armor suits were blasting his discarded chemical tank attachment with fire, removing the last traces of the otherworldly infection from the damaged vessel. After that, they would track his passage through the base, cleansing the plague spills and eventually the areas where the Viral Scourge had been used. Everyone showing signs of infection, Astartes or mortal, would be forced to swear their souls to Nurgle on the spot or be purged.

It was a tiresome precaution, and one that Sliver himself thought grossly unnecessary. If it were up to him to dictate Company doctrine, the entire fleet would be sworn to the Plague God, and such useless and futile efforts would be moot.

Then again, he was never really clear on why every Iron Warrior and mortal with something to lose hadn't already sworn themselves to Nurgle. Practical immortality and freedom from the ills and pains of living could be theirs with mere prayer and token rituals; compared to that, why anyone would cling to something as meaningless and transitory as their health was a mystery to him.

Sliver reached the door to the strategium, casting thoughts of theology and divine gifts aside. It was a meager distraction from the tasks ahead, and his focus was necessary.

The doors slid open, and as he trundled through he saw the assorted mortals rush to put on their masks and rebreathers. He restrained an annoyed snort as he once again approached General Gnoss across from the main tactical hololith. The man didn't seem to have budged from that spot since the last time Sliver had seen him. Which was to the mortal's credit.

"Lord Sliver," the man said sharply as possible through his dark-lensed environmental mask, "I should inform you that I just received contact from Lord Kessler. The assault force has recently left the engagement zone and all elements are returning to base."

A rumbling growl came from the Chaos Lord. "Were that force not deployed, we would have eassily turned asside thiss attack. We have ssuffered much for the Warssmith'ss hasste."

Gnoss said nothing, which didn't mean that he disagreed. As a rule, human soldiers stayed out of the power politics of the Chaos Space Marines and followed their orders without deference to a particular Lord. It would be very unwise for the General to join the vice-commander in criticizing the orders of the Warsmith, even though they both knew that Solon would let him get away with it.

"Damage reportss. Every esstimate you have," Sliver eventually demanded.

"It's bad," Gnoss admitted with a sigh, "not critical, but very bad. We're guessing five hundred lost in soldiers, workers, and support, but that number can only go up. If we count servitors destroyed and slaves taken as well, it's easily twice that. As I mentioned before - and you saw in person - the xenos made a strong push for the armor lots. They seem to have prioritized transports against battle tanks, and we're looking at somewhere along the lines of seventy percent of our reserve transports out of action, including almost all of the reserve land raiders and flyers. Not all of them are a total loss, but with our repair facilities likewise demolished we have weeks worth of work to do before the surviving units are fit for action again."

Sliver released another shuddering growl from deep under his mask respirator, but Gnoss was pretty sure it wasn't an actual sentence, so he continued.

"Of course, the real damage was to base infrastructure. It would take less time to list all the sectors that WON'T need repairs. First all the wrecks and bodies will have to be moved out by scavenging teams, then emergency supplies moved to the sectors which need them. Then we'll need to transport new materials and construction equipment from the Harvest to replace that which was lost before serious repairs can begin. Being optimistic, we're looking at two weeks to get back to where we were this morning. Maybe another week to complete those structures that were still being developed, due to the slowdowns, damage, and lost manpower."

The general shifted his posture slightly, sensing Sliver's already dour mood deteriorating even further. "And, of course, this will all come at a considerable cost to our surplus of supplies. The Warsmiths back in the Eye won't be happy about that."

Sliver was silent, the large red eye of his helmet staring unflinchingly at the hololith.

"My lord? What are we to do about the Tau?" Gnoss asked, determining that he didn't have anything else useful to tell the Nurglite.

"The Tau?" Sliver asked, focusing his attention on the human once again. "I could not care lesss about the Tau. Worthlesss children playing with forcess beyond their ken. They lash out at uss becausse we showed weaknesss. I would expect nothing lesss of the deluded wormss that think themsselvess worthy to be our enemy."

Sliver turned away, stomping back toward the entrance from where he had come. "To the Warp with the Tau, and with thiss planet. We will repair our fortresss, make our enginess, and then leave thiss place with all hasste. If the graysskinss want thiss rock, then it shall be theirss. It matterss not to me, nor to our misssion."

General Gnoss bowed. Lord Sliver was well-regarded in the 38th Company as the tactical head of the Legion, the true leader behind their mercurial and curious Warsmith. He was hardly surprised that the man would ignore the impulse for retribution against the aliens for the sake of their true objectives.

Suddenly a junior officer shouted, "General! We have an aerial sensor intercept from the tower guns! Coming in fast!"

Sliver paused before the exit of the strategium as Gnoss spun toward the officer.

"Identification! Ordnance or an enemy flyer?" Gnoss demanded.

The officer paused, his expression shifting into a grimace as he stared at his instruments. "Neither, General. It's... friendly." He said the word awkwardly, as if he felt it was inappropriate.

In an instant, Gnoss knew what was happening. There was only one friendly unit that could approach them at high speed through the air and would also be daft enough to do so without regular vox clearance.

"Telliss..." Sliver growled as he stomped out the door.

****

Ferrous Dominus - sector 20

He descended like a meteor, smoke billowing from his metal wings behind him as he lowered the power output to his flight pack.

The air sang as he cut through it, and Tellis could FEEL the burning friction of his speed through his armor, as if the shell of ceramite braced with adamantium was another skin.

Which it mostly was by now, but he still found the comparison profound.

Just before his visor altimeter read ten meters he kicked his body up out of his nosedive, releasing the pent-up power of his daemonic wings in a furious burst just before his armored feet hit the ground.

The impact effect was entirely too much like an artillery strike, and ferrocrete cracked underneath him as a shock wave of fire blasted in all directions. His armor strained under the pressure of the impact and the heat of his wings, but the daemon within the plate reveled in such reckless stunts and refused to break.

The brief firestorm washed away into the winds, and with a triumphant screech the Raptor Lord thrust his hands into the air.

"I'M BACK, BITCHES!!" the Khornate fighter roared, his trophy skulls rattling against his breastplate.

Absolute silence greeted his proclamation, and this time it wasn't even the shocked or embarrassed silence from the other Company soldiers. There was hardly anybody around, and those few people that had witnessed his landing were ignoring him completely, rushing off to important tasks elsewhere in the fortress-city.

"... Whoa, what happened here?" Tellis asked no-one, lowering his arms as he finally noticed that all the smoke in the sky wasn't coming from the manufactorum's smokestacks.

The familiar sound of footsteps in terminator armor reached his autosenses, and the Raptor Lord turned to see a certain diseased hulk exit the command center.

"Hey fatso! Wassup?" Tellis asked brightly, waving to Sliver as the much larger Astartes lumbered toward him.

"Telliss... you arrive ahead of the resst of the asssault force," Sliver said simply.

"Yeah, good to know your stupid-looking giant eye still works. So what happened here?" Tellis asked, pointing toward a chimera that was driving full speed away from a Maulerfiend that seemed to be chasing it playfully through the streets.

Sliver stopped. "What do you mean 'what happened'? Ferrouss Dominuss fell under heavy xeno asssault mere hourss ago."

"WHAT?!" Tellis screeched, causing Sliver to actually take a step back from the volume. "There was a fight here and I didn't know? Why didn't anybody tell me?!"

"We DID," Sliver said, making a brief retching noise from within his helmet.

Tellis was silent for several seconds, and then he tilted his head back and put his index finger against the side of his helmet.

"Oh, wow. I have like 30 unheard vox messages," the Raptor Lord mumbled, "geez. This is kind of embarrassing."

"It iss no matter. Your incompetence iss reliable enough to be factored into my battle planss," Sliver drawled, "but I musst assk, if you did not come here ahead of the resst of the army to asssisst with the defensse, why did you come back ahead of the otherss?"

"Oh, I was just guiding a few pegasi here, that's all," Tellis said with a shrug, "there were a pair of 'em that wanted a guide back to FD, and it's not like there was anyone left there for me to stab. So I showed them in."

Sliver stared for several silent seconds at the Khornate Raptor. "... Pegassi?"

"Yeah, I decided I kinda like 'em. Though I'm digging the zebras too," Tellis explained with a negligent shrug as he walked off away from Sliver, "anyway, you're boring, so I'm going to find an active pict-capture unit and see if I can get any footage of the base blowing up. Laters!"

****

Ferrous Dominus - sector 6

"I don't know what you were expecting, Rarity. Lockdown JUST ended, and a lot of the base is wrecked. Cooking probably isn't a big priority to them right now."

Rarity didn't seem at all comforted by Twilight's logic as she stared down at the tin of gray, slimy nutrient paste in front of her.

The ponies - plus Spike and minus Applejack - were sitting together just outside one of the cafeterias across from the barracks, atop an iron dining table peppered with lasburns and a few holes from pulse rounds. The other tables were similarly scarred, and many of them were still lying on their sides from having been used as makeshift barricades, but at least here all the corpses had been removed.

"If I could get to a kitchen, then I could make us something," Spike pointed out, always eager to help Rarity. That said, he had already finished a tin of the tasteless gruel and was looking for a spot to discard the tin.

"Yeah, it's probably not a good idea to go wandering around in places we don't belong while the Iron Warriors are still looking for any Tau that were left behind," Rainbow Dash reasoned before she gulped down the last portion of her second tin of nutrient gruel. She wiped her mouth with her foreleg, then continued. "Besides, this stuff is fine."

"Rainbow Dash, I don't think you should eat more than one at a time," Fluttershy mumbled.

"She's right," Twilight said between mouthfuls of her own ration, "these were formulated with a human's calorie requirements in mind. They're bigger than we are."

"Well, I kick way more butt than the average human, so it's fine," the blue pegasus said decisively, bouncing her empty tin into the burnt, hollowed-out chassis of a chimera that lay nearby.

Twilight rolled her eyes, and Rarity poked irritably at the can with her hoof.

"They can cross the vastness of space and set up a fortress in a few days, and yet the science of decent food eludes them," Rarity decided in disgust. Then she glanced at Pinkie. "Wait, are you eating this too? I thought you couldn't stand this swill!"

Pinkie grinned, her spoon still in her mouth as she held up the tin in front of her. "This isn't a human ration; it's a Pinkie ration!"

Twilight raised an eyebrow and then looked more closely at the tin. "That is a can of cake frosting with a picture of your face taped over it."

"I brought more in my bags! I'm going to give them out to the humans and teach them what food is supposed to taste like!" The pink pony's eyes burned as she described her mission, and she stood up into a heroic pose with the can balanced on her hoof.

Twilight looked exasperated, but Rainbow suddenly looked thoughtful. "You know, now that you mention it, are we going to be staying here until the humans are gone? We only came here to get them to leave, right?"

"Yes, you're right," Rarity said as she pushed her ration tin away with her hoof, "at this point I imagine all we could do is get in their way. You can hardly even enjoy the novel sights anymore after the Tau attack. Every flaming hunk of wreckage looks just like the next."

Twilight hesitated, chewing her lip. "Well... sure, you can leave if you want, but at least ONE of us should stay... you know, to make sure they're really going?"

Pinkie, Rainbow Dash, and Fluttershy looked skeptical at the idea until Rarity leaned over toward them.

"Our room is right next to the humans' futuristic space library."

"Ohhhhh," they all said in tandem as Twilight flushed.

"That place got blown up pretty good though, didn't it?" Spike asked.

"Well, sure, but Serith did say it was a SECONDARY data center," Twilight said, "the point is, there's a wealth of knowledge here the likes of which we'll probably never see again, and it would be foolish not to take advantage of it!"

Rarity rolled her eyes. "That's fine, darling. But there's no reason for any other ponies to be here."

"So should we tell that to those two?" Pinkie asked, thrusting a foreleg out toward the streets.

"Destruction! Carnage! Pandemonium! Everywhere we look lay hulks of twisted, burning metal! The bodies stacked like sacks of flour and craters decorating the ground like... like... uh..."

"Like your face in junior high?"

"Hey! Dang it, Snaps! I'm going to have to edit that out now!"

A pair of pegasi mares were walking down the middle of the avenue, the first a rich ivory and the other a dark brown. They both had on saddlebags packed near to bursting, and the ivory pegasus had a voice recorder wrapped in a wing while the other was snapping photos with a heavy-duty camera.

"Ahem! Craters decorate every street and sidewalk! This is devastation brought to life!" the first pony continued, waxing dramatic into the recorder. "Our trip to the human kingdom has turned into a tour of horror! What catastrophe has taken place here?"

She clicked off the voice recorder, and the camera pony giggled. "The editor's gonna eat this up with a spoon. I'm getting some great shots."

"This is the story of the century! Aliens! Warfare! Technology beyond our wildest dreams! It doesn't get any better than this!" the first mare crowed.

"Hey, is that Princess Twilight Sparkle over there?"

The ivory pegasus snapped her head around, and then she released a happy squealing noise when she saw a purple alicorn and several other ponies staring at them from some distance away.

Twilight seemed startled as the pegasi galloped over to her and her friends, both of them looking way too happy to be here.

"Princess Twilight Sparkle! I'm Scoops, of the Cloudsdale Times! Do you have time for an interview?"

Twilight was reasonably surprised. "A reporter? How did you get in here?"

"We followed the crazy flying guy with the claws," the brown pegasus said as she took a picture of the mostly dumbfounded group.

"Awesome! Tellis is here!" Rainbow Dash cheered. "C'mon Fluttershy, let's go find him!"

"But I don't-hey! Wait!" Fluttershy yelped as Rainbow snatched the gunmetal access card from her saddlebag and then took off, prompting the other pegasus to follow after her.

"Anyway, enough about us, how did YOU come to be here?" Scoops said eagerly, clicking her voice recorder on again as she leaned in toward Twilight. "And how much of this havoc are you and the other Elements of Harmony responsible for?"

Twilight recoiled. "We're not responsible for any of it!"

"Well, maybe a LITTLE," Rarity allowed, placing a hoof on her boltgun. Unlike Trixie, she had chosen to hold onto her scavenged weapon.

"Okay, look, we were caught in this place when it was attacked, but we had nothing to do with it," Twilight assured them, "another alien race called the Tau did this."

"MORE aliens? Oi, they're coming out of the woodwork these days," the camera pony mumbled, "know where I can get a picture of one of these 'Tau'?"

"Dead or alive?" Pinkie asked.

"Whatever."

"Sure! Follow me!" the pink pony promptly bounced away, and Snaps followed in close and eager pursuit.

Scoops, meanwhile, was happily pressing the others for more information. "And when these 'Tau' creatures attacked, did you come to the noble humans' defense? Or did you watch the terrible humans get their deserved punishment?"

"A little of column A, and a little of column B," Spike admitted. There was definitely more than one occasion in which Twilight could have saved a soldier's life if she had really wanted to.

"The nation of Equestria does not take any side in the conflict between the 38th Company and the Tau Empire," Twilight insisted before adding, "although individual ponies may act on their own based on their conscience, of course."

"Our conscience usually sides with the humans, incidentally," Rarity noted, "they're not nice people, but they don't shoot at us."

Scoops flipped off her recorder briefly. "A bit too 'gray area' for my tastes, but I can make it work." Then she turned the recorder back on. "Alien wars aside, what is your opinion of Ferrous Dominus? Ponies in Cloudsdale saw the ship that built this place descend from orbit, and rumor and speculation have been running rampant ever since. I'm here to expose this place to the Equestrian public and show them what it's all about."

"Well, just take a look around, dear," Rarity drawled, "because the view hasn't changed considerably since the battle. Ugly bare metal, smokestacks spewing filth into the air, and guns everywhere you look. The Iron Warriors can create vessels that move through space and trains that float over the ground, but there isn't a shred of class in this entire bastion. Never mind that its inhabitants are by and large violent killers."

"Should I disregard the fact that you're clearly in possession of a human weapon?" Scoops asked, eyes narrowing.

"Yes."

"Done. Princess Sparkle, your thoughts?" Scoops asked.

Twilight looked hesitant about speaking on this topic, but that was hardly on account of having nothing to say. "Well, their purely technological achievements are so far ahead of ours that we've barely even theorized many of the scientific principles that underpin their basic technologies. And the results of their mastery of physics and computing is obvious in the sheer efficiency and speed with which they operate, which is how they erected a fortress this size in a matter of days. So I think it's somewhat narrow-minded to judge them so harshly on their culture alone."

"Isn't the entire reason we're here to see them off because we think their culture is awful?" Spike pointed out.

"Chaos is not a 'culture'," Twilight countered sharply. "... Probably."

Scoops nodded vacantly, more interested in getting Twilight's words on tape than understanding whatever she was babbling about. "And if I may speak candidly, what is the official ROYAL line on the 38th Company? Are they to be welcomed as potential friends or scorned for their dark and unambiguously evil nature?" She leaned in closer and then whispered, "I mean, the guy that led us here was wearing skulls as accessories. Have you seen him? Total freak. Answer the question, please."

Twilight leaned away slightly, rather uncomfortable at having somepony ask her to speak for Equestria's royal house. "Uh... all I can say is that there is no immediate conflict between the Iron Warriors and ponykind."

"Oh, come on, I'm sure you can give me more than THAT," the pegasus pressed, leaning in toward the alicorn, "the lizard said that you're here to 'see them off', didn't he? What did he mean by that?"

Twilight winced awkwardly, leaning even further away from the persistent reporter.

"Oh my, look at that!" Rarity said suddenly, beckoning behind the ivory mare with a hoof. "A giant mechanical crab is walking by with an even bigger mechanical crab!"

Scoops' eyes darted over to glance at Rarity, although she didn't otherwise budge a millimeter. "Seriously? That's the best diversion you could come up with? Do you think I would... fall... for......"

The pegasus trailed off as a rapid series of distant pounding noises grew louder behind her, and Scoops slowly twisted her head around.

"I don't care what shome 'unidentified bio-form' shaid, you do not have authorization to change your deshignation! You are Ignish Ferrox, not Mishter Crabby!" Solon admonished as he walked along the avenue at speed.

The Defiler screeched out a reply that sounded somehow disappointed to anyone who could stare at the scene without being scared witless.

"Well, then I'll have to change their namesh back too! Bloody troublemakersh! If I ever find out who let you lot free, I'll feed the imbecile to the daemon forge!" Solon snarled as he walked toward the breached kennels.

Scoops took several seconds to try and make sense of what she had just seen, and then finally shook her head, having failed at the effort.

"Okay, well, giant mechanical crabs aside..." she began, finally turning back to Twilight, Rarity, and Spike.

Or rather, the spot where they had been. At present, the only sign of them was an unopened tin of nutrient paste and a few twinkling lights left over from a magic teleport.

"... Well played, Princess," Scoops grumbled grudgingly as she turned her voice recorder off, "oh well. Still plenty to see around here. Ooh, I heard that showpony, the Great and something-something was performing here! I'll bet she'll do an interview!"

****

Sweet Apple Acres

Big Macintosh placed an empty bucket under the large spigot attached to the Apples' new water extractor, and then pressed a hoof gently upon the pressure lever located next to the base.

The tall, silvery cylinder made a humming noise, and several green-tinted lumen strips lit up as water was sucked out of deep aquifers and purged of contaminants and impurities before being pushed into the spigot. Within seconds the bucket was full, and Big Mac took his hoof off the lever to stop the flow.

Then he dropped a dry towel into the bucket, took the handle in his mouth, and walked back toward the house.

As he entered the doorway, several heads turned to look. Three of them were equine heads, and four were human... even if their faces had mostly replaced the recognizably human aspects with cybernetic parts.

"Over here. I need some more rags, too."

The Scavurel Core was sitting next to a pair of beds, upon which were the fairly mangled bodies of two of his soldiers. His own armored body was scarred, but mostly intact; only his servo arms were in any obvious disarray, having been shredded and twisted in the crash of his gunship.

The other two Scavurel had not fared as well, and what mechanical components could still be removed from their bodies had been detached so that their flesh wounds and mechanical damage could be tended to.

The one of the four that easily looked the worse off was the Mechanicus pilot, but that was mostly because her lower torso had been removed long ago and because Big Mac had broken her support housing free of the gunship to get her out. Besides having no ability to walk and a damaged life-support pod attached below her hips, it also meant that there were many torn cables and coiled wires that hung loosely from her body. Despite this she insisted that she was actually unharmed; apparently the pilot's pod was much better placed to survive a crash than the gunship's passengers.

Big Macintosh walked up to the Core and placed the bucket down, and the man immediately reached his cracked metal arm into the water and brought up the cloth. Apple Bloom left the room to get the requested rags.

"Do you think they're gonna be okay?" Scootaloo asked as the squad leader began wiping one of the Dreg's wounds.

Crabapple beeped from the corner, where it had been stood next to the sort-of-disembodied pilot. +Analysis of life signs indicate stable heart rate and breathing patterns. Secondary life support systems are operating within minimal tolerances to compensate for weakening of primary organs.+

+You're a terrestrial probe, not a medi-bot,+ the pilot snapped back in Binary, +you're hardly qualified to judge the survivability of a wounded soldier. Humans are delicate.+

Crabapple made a rude buzzing noise. +Unit Crabapple is well-versed on the failings of bipedal bio-forms. Even so, the analysis stands.+

+Us 'bipedal bio-forms' are the ones that built you, you insubordinate lump of sensors.+

+Unit Crabapple is unsure why Unit Lenna includes herself among bipeds, given her total lack of locomotive extremities. OH! What now?!+

+Why you wretched, useless piece of...+

As the pilot and the probe bickered pointlessly the Scavurel Core had finished wiping down his subordinate's leg, having ultimately ignored Scootaloo's question. He took a pair of forceps and stared down at the bleeding tissue uncertainly.

"Are you sure you don't want us to call a doctor?" Sweetie Bell asked, trying to hold her stomach at the sight of the bloody and torn flesh on display.

"A pony doctor isn't going to be familiar with the human anatomy, which is a basic requirement for medicine," the Core buzzed, his voice crackling behind the shielded mask that made up his face, "never mind that our augmetic implants would confuse what little applicable knowledge might be useful. If either of the Dark Acolytes had survived, they would be a much better choice to help, but they didn't. Until we can get new transport to Ferrous Dominus, I'm the best option."

"Eeyup," Big Mac agreed as Apple Bloom trotted back into the room with several old towels on her back.

"Give it to me straight, Geth. Am I going to make it?" the Dreg on the cot said. His face mask had been removed, and his pale and withered face moved awkwardly, having forgotten life outside of a shell of metal.

The Scavurel Core sighed. "You'll live, Polben. But your leg... I don't think we can save it. It'll have to come off."

The fillies gasped, and Big Macintosh cringed sadly.

Polben, on the other hand, whooped happily and raised a thumbs-up.

"Yes! New augment!" he cheered.

"Aw, really? What about me? My flesh-arm really hurts!" complained the woman on the other bed.

"I told you, it's just a fracture. Those heal easily," Geth said.

"Well, what if there were sudden complications, like-"

"Karei, if you injure yourself further, then I'm going to put you right back in the wreck where the horses found you," the Core snapped.

Scootaloo leaned in toward the other ponies. "These people are weird."

"Eeyup," Big Mac agreed.

"Macintosh," Geth said suddenly, turning toward the red stallion after placing a rag over Polben's bloody leg, "I... I'm not really sure how to say this..."

The man trailed off, looking genuinely confused and embarrassed.

+The response most applicable to this scenario would be 'thank you',+ blurted Crabapple.

"Ah, yes. Thank you, Macintosh. And... thank you too, multicolored equine spawn," the Core said awkwardly, "our estimated chance of survival without your assistance was very near zero. You saved my life, and that of my surviving unit, when you were under no such obligation."

"Think nothin' of it," Macintosh said, rolling his stalk of wheat from one side of his mouth to the other, "we're always obliged ta help out someone in need, 'specially after they built us a home. Ah'm just sorry we couldn't help the others."

The Scavurel looked startled to hear it.

"Huh. I guess he CAN talk," Lenna mumbled, revealing the cause of their surprise.

"Such... indiscriminate aid is not practiced where we're from. I'm sure we're taking you away from a great many important, if utterly asinine and primitive tasks," Geth admitted.

"That's all right. Y'all hungry?" Big Macintosh asked, taking the casual rudeness of the Mechanicus in stride as usual.

"No, but I should operate sooner rather than later," Geth said regretfully, "do you possess a plasma cutter, by any chance?"

"Nnope."

The Scavurel Core shook his head. "Right, right, technology level. Then do you have any sort of strong cutting tool? I imagine you have something to tend to all those primitive flora groves of yours."

Big Macintosh's expression shifted to look somewhat uncomfortable. "We have a hacksaw. But-"

"Yes, anything with the word 'saw' in it should work out," Geth said with a nod.

"If it's not heat based, then that means the wound won't cauterize..." Polben mused. "He should probably also bring a tarp, then."

Big Mac turned to his little sister with a queasy expression she had never seen before. "Y'all should probably go play in the club house fer an hour... two hours."

Apple Bloom nodded slowly, noting that Sweetie Bell in particular looked like she was feeling ill. "All right, Big Brother. Come on Scoots, help me with Sweetie."

****

Ferrous Dominus - psyker dorms

Twilight sighed as she took out a quill and parchment from her bags, placing it on the table in her room and then climbing onto a cushion.

"This has been the most terrible day," Rarity moaned, levitating a hand mirror in front of her to stare at the shortened length of her tail, "really, between the attack and all the missed meals, this could be our most trying quest in the name of ponykind thus far."

"I don't remember the last time a quest to save Equestria ended with the villain behind it all agreeing to back down and then walking away," Twilight pointed out as she stared down at the blank parchment.

Rarity rolled her eyes. "Fine, so I suppose it could have been even WORSE. But I'll be happy to wash my hooves of this place regardless. The humans have their good points, but their city is an abomination, and so is their leader."

Twilight nodded slowly as she levitated the quill into position. "Dear Princess Celestia: we have reached the fortress of the Iron Warriors and seen firsthoof the corruption of Chaos. This place seethes with a dark power, and the very walls of the fort seem to spread blight across the soil. We've met a human that practices Chaos magic; a cruel, manipulative Sorcerer named Serith who basks in the hateful energy of this place and would hurt his own allies for the sake of petty convenience. We've seen terrifying creatures of living metal and magic with the minds of beasts, armed and used as weapons for the humans' wars. What's more, we have met the Warsmith: a monster of machine and Space Marine..."

Twilight trailed off, unsure where to go with that. When it came to the Warsmith, she was of two minds. Her cold rationale told her that he had been surprisingly reasonable, and even fairly polite. Every other part of her was disgusted by the man, and she honestly wondered if she shouldn't have broken out the Elements of Harmony and destroyed him anyway.

"... A monster of machine and Space Marine that wears horror like a coat of fur," Rarity continued, "covered in weapons and stinking of death... among other things."

"Ooh, that's good! Thank you!" Twilight said brightly, writing down the passage eagerly. "Even so, he revealed to us that his army's stay in Equestria was always meant to be temporary; our planet is nothing more than a staging ground for their latest battles to them, and they have no apparent interest in harming Equestria or spreading the influence of Chaos here. They say they will leave soon, and don't care to fight us."

Twilight dipped her quill into her ink pot as she thought of what to say next. "I must confess that we're all quite relieved and happy that we don't have to fight the humans after all. Military strength aside, the humans and even Iron Warriors are not all bad, and I wonder if we could have co-existed happily were it not for this dark power that infests them. Since tensions between Equestria and the 38th Company have come to nothing, we will be staying in Ferrous Dominus for a little while longer to study this place. There is obviously a great deal that we can still learn here, both about the Iron Warriors and the galaxy around us. Your faithful student, Twilight Sparkle."

Rarity watched as the alicorn finished her letter and then rolled up the parchment. "Nothing about being caught in the middle of a Tau assault?" she wondered aloud.

"I'll get to that later," Twilight confirmed, "first I'd like to browse the Company's archives on the Tau Empire and find out more about them. We know almost nothing about the other side in this conflict."

Then the alicorn frowned. "By the way, I've been putting off asking you this for as long as possible, but are you seriously keeping that boltgun?"

Rarity looked startled as she beckoned to the massive gun lying on her night stand. "What? A mare needs to be able to defend herself, Twilight! It's a dangerous world out there!" She levitated the weapon up and stared approvingly at the muzzle. "And while I may dislike the humans' militarism, I can appreciate a good tool as much as the next pony. Even if this one could definitely use some dressing up. I was thinking a purple base, with my cutie mark under the ejection chamber in decal. What do you think?"

"It's a great idea! It'll look perfect!" Spike offered enthusiastically.

"I could hardly care less. Just be careful with that thing," Twilight said less enthusiastically as she sealed the parchment. "Spike, over here."

The young dragon puffed up his cheeks and then blew out a stream of magical flame, and the paper vanished before them.

Outside their room, a pattern of intricate glyphs suddenly flared into view over the exterior of their door, crackling with ghastly light.

Then the surge of magic faded and so did the symbols, vanishing from lines of gloomy crimson to a faint, almost imperceptible stain on the door's surface.

****

Ferrous Dominus - Serith's quarters

"Busy, busy, busy," Serith chanted as he stepped into the from door to his quarters, his force halberd resting on his shoulder.

He walked briskly past the foyer and the large, heavily warded cages that were stacked along the wall amongst long streaks of blood, hurrying toward the room that he had prepared and set aside for his experiments.

"So sorry to keep you waiting, my dear," Serith said loudly as he unlocked the heavy, rune-covered door by inserting a set of distinctive sigils into the arcane riddle spelled out there. The text immediately flared with energy before the runes re-arranged themselves, ensuring that the next attempt to unlock it would require a different answer. Then the door began to open, albeit slowly.

"I didn't think you'd make such a... hasty retreat after obtaining exactly what you wanted. Luckily, I placed the appropriate countermeasures after learning that teleportation was among your kind's arcane talents."

The door finished opening, and Serith stepped through it, immediately turning his gaze on a wrought iron cage built into the corner.

"I'm afraid you'll be..."

Serith stopped talking as he finally realized that the ensorcelled prison he had constructed contained not an alicorn, unicorn, or even any of the lesser, mundane life forms that infested this world, but rather an entirely inanimate roll of paper.

"Today has been just rife with disappointments," the Iron Warrior sighed, moving to the cage and then using his force halberd to push the scroll toward the edge of the prison. The cage was of course heavily protected against psionic power, so he couldn't even levitate the paper out of it.

After plucking the message from the cage floor, he unceremoniously broke the seal and unrolled it.

"The power to unmake and reshape reality at her beck and call, and she uses it to send letters," the Chaos Sorcerer grumbled as his visor started moving down the page, "Let's see... corruption and blight, blah blah blah, I'm cruel and manipulative, blah, the Warsmith is a monster... hmn. Even I think that's a bit unfair. It's probably the Nurgle thing."

His visor tracked down to the bottom of the page. "Feh. Not even a very interesting letter. What a waste of time."

He walked over to a metal desk covered in tribal trinkets and alchemical burns and placed the message in a small iron box.

"Well, I suppose I should go recharge the conjuring interruption sigils on her door now. She might send something worth intercepting EVENTUALLY. So much to do!"

Author's Note

I have a persisting, irrational fear that one of my readers is making a detailed spreadsheet of all the sectors I've numbered and described in Ferrous Dominus and then points out that I've been inconsistent about the main purpose of sector "11-D beta" or something. It haunts me at night.

Burning Dreams

Iron Hearts: Book Two

Chapter 5

Burning Dreams

****

Ferrous Dominus - 2 days after Tau assault

Gaela stared at the new wall segment with approval, watching as the Dark Techpriests conducted the final reinforcement procedures and began their prayers. The edifice towered over her, while on the ground below armored hatches covered the entrances to stashes of ammunition supplies, repair materials, and the tunnel network that would allow the base's defenders to move from structure to structure without having to cross an exposed avenue. A system which, obviously, would have been of great use had it been completed two days ago.

Every Dark Mechanicus unit working on the final components of the fortress security did so with a persistent sense of embarrassment, quite conscious of the fact they were patching a gaping hole in their defenses long after it had been exploited. They were also using new or improvised equipment and a range of ill-constructed servitors; after having their best construction equipment destroyed by the Tau, much had to be brought down from orbit and dug up from deep within the cargo holds of the fleet.

The manufactorum, all but unscathed in the attack, had been pressed into service early, and Kaelith had been given full control over the facility in order to manufacture any parts or new equipment that might speed the repairs.

Gaela turned away from the walls and generated a data prompt, uploading the list of facilities left to repair in order of priority.

It was a long list.

"At least the septic cyclers have already been fixed. I wouldn't want to volunteer for that 'honor'," the Dark Acolyte grumbled as she boarded a Chimera to take her to the Mechanicus facilities.

****

Ferrous Dominus - sector 18

Twilight was seriously beginning to get tired of this "guest security clearance" she had been saddled with when she had arrived here.

"Access denied. This is a restricted area."

At first it had seemed fine; after all, she had to take what she could get. But now that she had confirmed that the humans were leaving the planet and it wasn't necessary to fight them after all, she felt like she could have been granted AT LEAST the same access level as Trixie.

"Access denied. This is a restricted area."

The alicorn clenched her teeth as she stared up at the edifice that decorated the primary data center. Evidently this was a Dark Mechanicus facility, which explained the relief of a half-cybernetic skull ringed by a Chaos Star. It also, apparently, explained why she wasn't allowed in.

"Come onnnnnn!" Twilight whined as she pressed the blank gunmetal card against the reader built in next to the massive double-doors.

A rude beeping noise came from the machine.

"Access denied. This is a restricted area."

As the purple pony fumed, a Dark Techpriest walked up to the entrance past her, his ID being passively scanned by the security monitors which recorded his identity according to his cranial implants. Really, there were exceptionally few members of the 38th Company that could access this data center who actually used a card rather than a system in-built into their body or armor. The inclusion of a card scanner was more a function of standardized construction design than anything else.

As the doors creaked inward to allow the Techpriest passage, Twilight quietly shifted to the side to stand behind him.

He took a step forward toward the entrance, and so did she.

And then suddenly the alicorn was staring down the barrel of a laspistol.

"Access denied," came the Dark Techpriest's voice, issuing from somewhere deep within the darkness under his hood, "this is a restricted area." his servo arm clamped shut menacingly as he held his pistol steady.

Twilight backed away immediately, her heart and mind racing. "S-Sorry! It's just that the secondary data center hasn't been repaired yet, so..."

Twilight trailed off. Not because she had nothing more to say, but because the Techpriest had turned away and walked in the moment she had backed up, uninterested in what she had to say.

Her muzzle scrunched up in frustration. There HAD to be a way for her to get into the data center. Trixie might be able to do it, but it was almost a two-hour walk to get here from the psyker dorms without the train.

"Maybe I could teleport into an alcove inside?" Twilight mumbled under her breath as she looked over the building. Unlike the secondary data center, this one didn't have windows, but she had glimpsed the interior before the doors had shut and it certainly seem cavernous enough to infiltrate.

Twilight was not so absorbed in her pursuit of knowledge that she had become oblivious to her surroundings, but she still hadn't paid any great attention to the heavy footsteps moving behind her until she had noticed that they all stopped.

"THIS is the security alert?"

Twilight was gratified, after she turned around, that least none of the Iron Warriors were aiming their oversized guns in her face like the Dark Techpriest had. But then, such a show of intimidation was grossly unnecessary with five Chaos Space Marines looming over you.

"Can I help you? Uh... my lord?" It had taken Twilight a moment to remember what Daniels had told her about addressing the Astartes. They had all pretty much ignored his advice since he gave it to them, but now seemed like a particularly good time to practice not offending the super-soldiers.

"The security cogitator issued an alert that someone with insufficient security clearance had made repeated attempts to gain entry to this facility," rumbled one of the Iron Warriors, his blood-red visor glaring down at her.

"Ha ha! Silly me! I didn't know that the machines conjured up a security team if I kept trying to get in! I am SO embarrassed!" Twilight laughed, although her voice came out rather high-pitched. "Sorry to bother you gentlemen! I'll just be going now! Er, my lords!"

"Hold," commanded one of the Chaos Marines, and Twilight froze like a statue. "This one has a horn."

"So what?" asked another, not particularly interested or worried about the pony.

"Dest said that these ones are psykers. The Dark Magi may wish to know that a psyker was trying to get into one of the Mechanicus facilities."

Twilight was marginally interested to hear the name of a familiar Iron Warrior mentioned, but her more immediate concern was that the Astartes apparently thought of her as a more serious security threat because she knew magic.

It was all the more worrisome that they were right, and she felt a deep pang of regret for considering sneaking in via teleport earlier.

"Sparkle, what are you doing?"

The Iron Warriors turned toward yet another figure stomping up to the entrance in heavy armor, although her gait was considerably less hefty than a Space Marine's. Twilight nearly shed a tear in relief, even if she still swore to herself that her intentions were innocent and completely justified.

"Dark Acolyte. Is this a... friend of yours?" one of the Iron Warriors asked, his voice hesitant.

"I know her," Gaela answered neutrally, "she's no security threat to anyone. Not anymore, anyway."

The more suspicious Chaos Marine would have certainly liked to hear an expanded explanation of that, but his squadmates weren't so willing to waste their time.

"Fine then. We have more important tasks to attend to," a different Iron Warrior said indifferently, walking off toward a Rhino idling on the side of the avenue. The others followed with varying levels of hesitation.

Gaela had her mask on as she walked up to Twilight, so the alicorn couldn't tell exactly what expression she was making, but Twilight was guessing "irritated contempt".

"Thank you, Gaela! That was a bit scary," Twilight admitted as she trotted up to the Dark Acolyte.

"I can hardly fathom how one feels fear after staring into the optics of the Warsmith and demanding that he and his army flee into the void," Gaela noted wryly, leaning on her power axe.

Twilight winced, glancing about to check if the departing Astartes had heard that. "This and that are two different things. Anyway, do you think you can let me into the primary data center?"

"Absolutely not," Gaela answered flatly.

Twilight seemed stunned by the rejection. "But... I mean..." then she lowered her head. "Is this about Rainbow Dash teasing you before? I'm really sorry, we didn't mean to hurt your feelings."

Gaela tilted her head to the side, obviously perplexed. "I really have no idea what you're going on about. You're not allowed in the primary data center because it's a Mechanicus facility. Its cores are much more comprehensive and powerful than the others, and it houses secret knowledge forbidden to outsiders. Even most Iron Warriors aren't allowed inside."

"Oh. I see," Twilight mumbled, feeling embarrassed that she had spent so long trying to get into such a place. "It's just that the data cores in the other center were destroyed."

"Yes. As you might expect, they're very low priority infrastructure," Gaela admitted, stepping past Twilight and walking down the avenue, "if they weren't part of the Mechanicus colonizer that we used as the foundation of the base, they wouldn't have even been constructed when you arrived here."

The purple pony moved to follow her immediately. "So those are the only two data centers?"

"No, there is a tertiary unit near the Astartes barracks," Gaela admitted.

Twilight's face lit up.

"But that one is for the exclusive use of the Iron Warriors and high-ranking human personnel, since it contains sensitive information about the Legion."

Twilight's expression promptly darkened, much to Gaela's amusement.

Considering the matter concluded, Gaela walked in silence with Twilight following behind her for some time.

While she was perfectly happy with the silence, however, Twilight - as usual - had questions for her.

"So you're not mad at us anymore?" Twilight asked cautiously.

"I was never mad at you or anybody. Such a useless outburst of dramatic emotion based in response to mere verbal provocation is entirely beneath me," Gaela said flatly, "any display of anger or petty petulance you may have interpreted in my words and actions are pure misrepresentation on your part."

Twilight was rather surprised to hear that. Not so much that Gaela wasn't holding a grudge as the fact that Rarity was so spot-on about her reaction.

"Oh, well, I just thought that might be the case since I haven't seen you since the attack," the alicorn mused aloud.

"I've been rather busy rebuilding the fortress," Gaela deadpanned, "I haven't even slept the last two nights."

Twilight chuckled humorlessly. When she put it that way, her concerns about not having anything to read seemed quite trivial.

"Do you have a rebreather?" Gaela asked suddenly, changing the subject completely.

"What? No, not really. Why?" Twilight asked, looking concerned.

"You might have noticed that it's standard equipment for every individual in the 38th Company. Aside from preventing longer-term damage from pollutants from the manufactorum, it also allows our units to operate in heavily contaminated areas and around certain individuals that also pose an obvious health risk," Gaela mused, "I have no idea why you and the other mares are still here, considering your original objective, but if you stay then I'll have respiratory protection designed for your facial anatomy."

"Really?" Twilight brightened considerably, so enthralled at the thought of being given a gift of human technology that she didn't really pay much attention to the reasons why it was necessary. "Thank you! I'd really appreciate that!"

Gaela didn't respond immediately, turning toward a large, unlabeled structure and sweeping her hand over the access panel. "Until then, it would be wise to keep a fair distance from the Warsmith. He is not especially infectious, but he is a devotee of Nurgle regardless."

The doors swept open, and Gaela entered immediately.

"Distance from who, now?" Twilight asked, following her in without thinking about it.

Twilight froze stiff once the doors shut closed behind her, realizing that this entire time she hadn't thought to ask where they were going or why.

The building seemed to be a dedicated storage house, with metal sheets and plates of various alloys and dimensions lying in tall stacks and aligned in neat rows, but all of the alicorn's attention immediately focused on Warsmith Solon. Which was only to be expected when the man was a tremendous, weaponized arcano-mechanical monster, really.

It took her a few seconds to relax her body, even though she logically had little reason to fear the 38th Company's supreme commander anymore. She still wasn't able to brush off the gut feeling of horror and revulsion that she felt when she beheld the Warsmith, and even if they weren't exactly enemies he was still the leader of a force that Celestia had deemed corrupt enough to be exiled from the planet.

"Warsmith, as requested I've come to inform you that the palisade wall is complete to your specifications. The region around that quadrant of the fortress has been cleared for mine fields, and the tunnels to the perimeter bunkers have been dug and rigged properly." Gaela dipped her head and banged a fist against her armored chest. "The iron without has been set. Ferrous Dominus is secure."

Solon swiveled slightly on his chassis to regard the Dark Acolyte. "Excellent, Acolyte Gaela! And the other repairsh continue on shchedule?"

"Indeed. The Dark Mechanicus is working at all speed to make General Gnoss' 'optimistic estimates' a reality." She raised her head again, and then nodded an acknowledgment to the only other human in the building. "Master Delgan."

The human, which Twilight had only just realized was there, nodded curtly in response. "Dark Acolyte, so good of you to join us. I think you may be of some help on this matter. Especially considering that you walked in with one of the xenos on your heels." He spoke through a small rebreather plate that fit over his chin and covered just his nose and mouth.

Gaela glanced at Twilight, wondering how she had ended up becoming the Company's pony representative.

But seeing as she couldn't remember the name of that mercenary they got along with, she nodded reluctantly. "How may I be of service?"

She noticed at about this time that Solon's biological arm was holding a stack of papers. She hadn't paid it any attention at first, but now that she was looking at the Warsmith more critically, the papers didn't seem like anything she might find among the Company's supplies.

"Mish Hoovesh dropped thish off today with the day'sh mail drop. It'sh a copy of the Cloudshdale Timesh," Solon explained.

Twilight's eyebrows rose. "Wait, so those reporters actually wrote the story?"

Delgan cleared his throat meaningfully as Twilight entered the conversation. "Pardon me, but I don't believe you've been introduced, Miss...?"

"Oh! Sorry! I'm Princess Twilight Sparkle, student of Princess Celestia," the purple pony said, pressing a hoof to her chest.

Delgan straightened immediately. "A princess? So you're a relative of your king?"

Twilight blinked. "Er, no. We don't have one of those."

"Ah. A queen, then?"

"Actually, Princess Celestia is our ruler," Twilight explained.

Delgan's brow furrowed. "You have the same title as your Sovereign?"

"Their political complexities don't bear taking seriously," Gaela snorted, "now what's this about a story?"

"Evidently we've been featured in an Equestrian newshpaper. The article ish shurprishingly poshitive and shympathetic," Solon said, shaking said newspaper.

Twilight's made a face. "Really?" She could list plenty of things she liked about humanity personally, but she would be surprised if many of those qualities were apparent to a pair of naïve pegasi looking for a dose of sensationalism to make a name for themselves. Especially in the aftermath of a battle.

"If I may, Warsmith?" Delgan asked, holding out a hand.

Solon relented, thankfully sparing them all from having to listen to the Warsmith butcher the article with his warped pronunciation.

"'The view of Ferrous Dominus looks every bit as one would expect of a city of space men: a fantastic edifice of futuristic metals humming with energy and amazing technologies. But today this dark, tranquil bastion of fun-loving humans and less-fun-loving super-humans was cruelly assaulted by a race of star-faring invaders known as the Tau Empire!'"

Twilight looked annoyed. "She does know that you're all technically star-faring invaders too, right?"

"She doesn't say we're not," Delgan pointed out with a knowing smirk, "ahem. 'Your correspondent was lucky enough to sit down with the Great and Powerful Trixie to get a detailed account of this harrowing conflict in order to share the grisly and heroic details with you, our reader.' What follows is a fairly unlikely account of an extended combat encounter by Miss Trixie and two unnamed pony lackeys of hers. Apparently she didn't want to give their names to protect their reputations. Needless to say, our little entertainer accumulates quite a grisly kill count by the end."

Twilight's eyebrow twitched.

"Anyway, after that the article talks at length about Ferrous Dominus itself, including a confirmation that the nation of Equestria sees the 38th Company as a neutral power that has temporarily settled in its lands. A much better reception than we're used to, as I'm sure you're aware," Delgan said with a wry chuckle.

Gaela found all this completely bizarre, but she had become mostly acclimated by now to the ponies' stunning naiveté regarding the darker powers and their place in the galaxy's never-ending conflicts. "Out of curiosity, what do they say about the fortress itself?"

"There'sh a quotesh from Mish Rarity which wash a bit shcathing, if completely accurate, and a much more favorable one from Mish Shparkle here," Solon explained, "but again it draws moshtly from Mish Trixie, who was very generoush."

Delgan continued. "Again, from the paper: 'The Iron Warriors run a disciplined society that sees efficiency as an end in itself. Obviously their technology is on par with our greatest feats of magic, even if it's really strange how they sometimes pray to it. Their darkly militant nature takes getting used to, and few humans are as polite and gracious as your average pony, but it must be considered that they are an alien culture locked in a struggle for survival against the ruthless and monstrous Tau.'"

Delgan and Solon snorted in amusement at that description of their enemies, and Twilight shook her head in exasperation.

"It finishes with the line: 'All things considered, the Iron Warriors run a decent enough civilization, putting aside all the slavery,'" Delgan finished.

Twilight sighed. "Well, okay, obvious biases aside, that-" then her eyes bugged out. "Wait! Slavery? You have slaves?"

"As you can see, it's something of an issue for them," Delgan drawled, handing the newspaper back to Solon, "but as the Warsmith said, on the whole it was quite agreeable."

"Hold on! Why do you have slaves? Are they talking about the servitors?" Twilight asked, her head snapping from one person to the next. Everyone ignored her.

"Look! They even put in a pict-capture of me!" Solon said, opening up the paper.

One of Gaela's optic lenses extended, and she focused on a grainy black-and-white image of Solon leading a defiler through the streets. Below it read the caption "A giant metal crab takes its young out for a post-combat walk among the ruins of the base, just one example of the strange and exotic space creatures found in Ferrous Dominus."

"Charming, Lord. I'm still not sure of the relevance of all this, though," Gaela admitted, looking up at the Astartes high commander.

"Why are you ignoring me? Gaela, do you have a slave?"

"It is relevant because we have developed an unexpected... 'rapport' with the natives," Delgan said, "and this could be useful."

"I'm not sure how," Gaela admitted, "although I'll admit the ponies have aided my own combats successfully, militarily their civilization is a joke. The camp hidden away in the Everfree probably could have conquered the nation if the Tau had a mind to. And their resource base is equally pitiable. They still construct buildings with WOOD, for Dark Gods' sake."

"The value of any given individual or group is not limited to their combat efficacy," Delgan said smugly, crossing his arms over his chest, "likewise, a civilization's worth is not limited to its technologies or piles of ores. The facility of trade can unearth treasures not apparent to the Iron Warriors or Dark Mechanicus."

"We're here to build engines, not acquire 'treasures'," Gaela countered.

"Do you use the slaves to build the engines? Guys?"

"The new timeline for completion of the Warp engines is two months, Acolyte Gaela," Delgan said with a shrug, "not a long period by any stretch, but more than enough time to explore our helpfully 'neutral' friends and search for any goods worth trading. Lord Serith, you may be aware, is having quite a time studying the local psykers. If someone of his considerable experience might find some interest in Equestria, then I have more than a fair chance."

Gaela frowned under her mask. "... I suppose I will have to yield to your superior expertise on matters of... economy... Master Delgan. I'm still unclear on what requires my attention, though."

"Why, you're the obvious choice to join me as envoy to the Equestrian nation," Delgan explained.

"I have seen and heard a lot of absurd things since we made planetfall, Master Delgan, but that tripe easily ranks among the worst," Gaela said flatly, "the Dark Mechanicus performing diplomatic functions is ridiculous enough, but even among our ranks there would definitely be better negotiators than I."

"Oh, I don't know," Solon disagreed, "you're already acquaintancesh with a Princessh. That hash to be worth shomething."

"Stop ignoring me! Why do you have slaves?!"

Gaela hung her head. "Warsmith, my relations with the ponies are entirely circumstantial. And if I might add, quite exasperating. I could certainly be of more use aiding the reconstruction."

Solon considered this point, tilting his head up. "That'sh a fair point. However, we could probably ushe another opinion. Mish Shparkle, what do you think?"

The humans and Astartes all turned toward the extremely nonplussed alicorn.

"I think you should free all your slaves," Twilight said flatly.

"Are you shtill on about that?" Solon asked. "I was ashking about Acolyte Gaela. If we're going to be negotiating with your people, then your ashishtance would be a boon. Would it help if the Acolyte were to sherve with Mashter Delgan?"

Twilight grit her teeth. "I REALLY want to talk about the slavery thing instead."

"We can make it an item of negotiation," Delgan said without a drop of sincerity, "answer the question, please."

Twilight frowned. She didn't really want to let the subject slide so easily, but she wasn't sure what she could do about it here and now. That, and she had to admit that the idea of the humans and ponies meeting each other in a setting OTHER than desperate firefights against a hostile third party sounded fantastic.

"Yes, I would appreciate it if Gaela was there," Twilight finally said, her eyes narrowed, "she's been very helpful and informative to us. And she's also so blunt and unsubtle that she's easy to trust. She would be a very good choice. Daniels is nice, but he isn't very well-informed, and your people don't really seem to value his opinion. And any Iron Warrior would probably make an awful diplomat. No offense."

A groaning noise came from Gaela's helmet, and the Dark Acolyte slumped over.

"There, you shee? So for now conshider yourshelf envoy of the Iron Warriorsh!" Solon said brightly before turning back to Delgan. "Mashter Delgan, I'm ashigning your people to handle any further contact with the poniesh in general. Sherith sheemsh generally unintereshted in the duty anyway, and it makesh shenshe to ushe the shame men we ushe to deal with piratesh and warbandsh."

"THAT'S a relief," Twilight muttered. She didn't know Delgan or any of his people, but he would have to make quite an effort to be less likable and more dangerous than Serith.

"As you wish, Warsmith. I will prepare immediately. Miss Sparkle, Dark Acolyte, you should expect to depart Ferrous Dominus early tomorrow. I will contact your rooms with the exact details this evening."

The trademaster bowed deeply to each of them in turn, and then briskly walked toward the exit.

"So... NOW can you explain to me what this slavery thing is all about?" Twilight asked, turning back to Gaela.

She and Solon shared a glance before looking down at the alicorn.

"I don't know what needs to be explained. We take prisoners and make them slaves," Gaela said, "then we make them do any unskilled tasks that require brute force. And of course, trade them to other parties as necessary."

"Shlaves are quite a common currency acrosh the galaxy," Solon confirmed.

"That's an atrocity!" Twilight complained.

"I think we know a BIT more about atrocitiesh than you do, Mish Shparkle," Solon said with a grim chuckle.

"Just think of them as the Company's assistants," Gaela suggested.

Twilight's eyes narrowed. "What's THAT supposed to mean? Spike's not a slave!"

"Fine. Whatever you say," Gaela mumbled, her patience starting to wear thin against the pony's moral outrage.

"Mish Shparkle, ish there shomething you wanted? I couldn't help but notice you entered with the Acolyte deshpite having no particular bushinesh here," Solon asked.

Twilight clammed up immediately, since she didn't have any particular reason to be there, but Gaela spoke for her.

"She was in this sector trying to get into the data center. Needless to say, she was rebuffed rather harshly."

Solon seemed intrigued at this, his torso shifting lower to the floor so that he could more easily look the pony in the eyes.

"Oh? What were you looking for?"

Twilight winced, shrinking back. "Oh, just some reading material. I thought it might be good to learn more about the Company. And the Astartes. And human technology. And-"

"She's a natural-born adept," Gaela mused, "apparently she manages a data repository for ponies back in her settlement."

"I shee. Do you have a datashlate handy, Mish Shparkle?" asked the Warsmith.

Twilight silently fished the item out of her saddlebag with her mouth, unsure where this was going.

A mechatendril snaked out and snatched up the dataslate, bringing it up to the Warsmith's head.

"Let'sh shee now. An essay on the Primarchsh ish a good shtart, the hishtory of the Great Crushade, and then... hmm."

He looked up at her, having noticed the topics already downloaded. "Sho you take an interesht in Chaosh, do you?"

Twilight smiled shakily. "An ACADEMIC interest, yes." That her interest was mostly in how to stop and defeat such a power didn't really need to be brought up.

"A shtudy of the darker powersh can eashily transhform into an obsheshion, young xeno. I'll upload a few excerptsh from the Book of Lorgar and itsh brother text, the Lectitio Divinatush. For reference. Have fun."

Twilight wasn't completely sure how he had uploaded things onto the dataslate by looking at it, but then the man's entire body was a work of techno-wizardry that defied explanation.

She couldn't keep the grin off her face as the creepy mechatendril - seriously, why did his tentacles have eyes and mouths? - lowered the dataslate back down to her, and she took it eagerly in her jaws.

"Thank you! I mean, I would rather be able to browse the data centers, but this is okay too!" Twilight said as she stuffed the electronic reader into her bag.

"You might want to disinfect that before handling it with your mouth anymore," Gaela mumbled, "just saying."

"Wash that all you needed, Mish Shparkle?" Solon asked, turning away. He made a short gesture with his hand, and one of the truck entrances to the storage area started to rumble open.

"Well, actually, I did have one question for you. If that's okay," Twilight said hesitantly.

"Shpeak."

"Weren't you going to get that vox grille cleaned?" Twilight blurted out.

Solon's shoulders slumped. "Yesh, well... it proved more difficult than anticipated without being able to take the helmet off."

Twilight's head cocked to one side. "Wait, you can't take it off? Why not?"

"My armor long ago fushed to my dermal layersh," Solon said, knocking a fist against his breastplate, "it ish now a part of my body, not unlike your fur. Jusht far, far more usheful."

Twilight didn't think the analogy adequate, and it showed on her face. "So you can't even take it off to bathe?"

"We should probably end this conversation here," Gaela interjected quickly, "Sparkle, it seems we'll be leaving tomorrow. I know the others have been stuck here for lack of available transports out of Ferrous Dominus, so you should let them know that they can go back home now."

"Oh, right! Good idea!" Twilight turned away toward the exit and started heading out.

Then she paused and turned back toward the Dark Acolyte. "And Gaela? I'm really glad you're coming with us. Thank you." She quickly rushed out into the streets, quite aware that she had a long walk to get back to the sectors where she and her friends were staying.

"She'sh quite the charming one, ishn't she?" Solon asked as the alicorn dashed out of earshot.

Gaela frowned under her mask. "I don't know. She didn't seem especially grateful that you personally addressed her lack of reading material. What does she think your job is? The Warsmith of the Company deigns to hold audience with her and she acts as if such an honor is to be expected."

Solon waved his hand dismissively. He had long grown numb to the casual ingratitude of his peers and underlings. Many considered it another sign of his weakness, but he didn't especially care.

"Ash long ash we're on the topic, Gaela, I've looked over your debriefing notesh, and I'm intrigued. You really think Centaur III ish an old human colony?"

Gaela briefly turned her head toward the doorway, checking for any signs that Twilight might have returned. "Almost certainly, Warsmith. The presence of equines and many other forms of old-Earth fauna and flora are but the first clues."

The Dark Acolyte brought up several pict-captures she had taken with her optics, linking them to Solon's noosphere register. "Their technology level represents an almost classic case of post-colonization tech regression, although there's no way to know if the regression occurred before or after the original human colonists vanished. I favor the latter theory, as it does make a considerable amount of sense that a group of intelligent but uneducated equines might have cast aside the technology that was too complex for them to figure out and maintain. They would have kept those tools whose use were obvious, and over time they would have replicated these tools using less advanced materials."

Solon generated a hololithic image of the Apple family farm from the pict-captures he was being sent. The hololith flickered, and sections of the image were separated and then zoomed: the homestead, in its previous form before it was destroyed by a greater Gnarloc. A hammer. A door. A book. A spoon.

"As you can see, their tools and architecture are clearly human derivative. It's unfathomable how a purely terrestrial, quadrupedal species would have come to design multi-story buildings without sufficient population density pressures. And even more unlikely that they would have developed handles and door knobs clearly designed to be manipulated with digits. The fact that these designs still exist after all obvious traces of the original colony has vanished indicates that equine 'society' at large has never quite developed the penchant for human innovation and efficiency, even to the point of changing their common tools to be more easily used by their fingerless populace."

"Fashcinating... but might the Tau have shomething to do with it inshtead? Thish region ish in their territory, technically," Solon noted.

"The Tau Empire, being much smaller and better unified than the Imperium, keeps a much better hold on its colonies. They would not have claimed this place and then abandoned it so easily. In addition, there's one significant cultural artifact that is uniquely human."

Solon turned off the hololiths. "They shpeak and write Gothic."

"Precisely, Warsmith. The evidence thus far points overwhelmingly to the presence of an old human colony. The Tau presence here is extremely recent, and their influence upon the native species here negligible." Gaela shifted her posture to lean on her power axe. "Of course, these are all idle observations that have nothing to do with our mission here. It does not affect our objectives if the ponies originated from a human settlement or not."

"Oh, where'sh your shenshe of adventure?" Solon asked with a chuckle. "Related to our mission or not, I find it mosht intereshting. Sho long ash you're going to be out exploring the native shettlementsh, I'd like you to reshearch the topic. Who knowsh? Shomething good might come of it."

Solon started heading out of the building, and Gaela followed him.

"Warsmith, may I make an inquiry?" Gaela asked hesitantly.

"Of courshe. Shpeak."

"On our way to the fortress, I spoke with an Iron Warrior named Dest. He informed me that sometimes Astartes from other Legions join the Iron Warriors and are sent to the Company because they are not trusted by the Legion masters," the Dark Acolyte explained hesitantly, afraid she might be venturing into some kind of taboo subject.

Solon turned his torso to the side and his helmet tilted down to make optic contact. "That'sh true, if not mishleading. Mosht of the 'outshidersh' taken in by the 38th Company are obtained through trade. We often find Chaosh warbandsh in deshperate need of shuppliesh, and quite often they have nothing to offer ush in trade but themshelvesh. I think it's a rather pleashant arrangement, given the difficulty of shecuring new Chaosh Shpace Marinesh. Shliver hatesh it, though."

"I see, Warsmith. So then, Lord Tellis is...?" Gaela trailed off as Solon sighed heavily.

"Ash much ash I would like to blame him on an inferior gene-build, Tellish ish an Iron Warrior and alwaysh hash been. The blood of Perturabo flowsh through him, if not a shred of hish intellect."

Solon turned away as he continued down the avenue. "Desht, however, ish a different shtory. He'sh very young, and hish capture wash recent."

"He certainly gave that impression. If I may ask, Warsmith, what Legion did he come from?" Gaela asked curiously.

"Not a Legion. Not anymore. The Chapter that created him ish called the Imperial Fishtsh."

Gaela almost fell over in shock.

Solon stopped, sounding out the Chapter name in his head. "Fishtsh. Fisht. Blasht it all, I shound like I'm trying to shpit out my vox grille! Ugh."

"He... was a loyalist? And he is... trusted?" Gaela asked pensively. Putting aside the bitter enmity between the Iron Warriors and Imperial Fists, she was surprised that a Legion as infamously security-heavy and paranoid as the Iron Warriors would be willing to accept Space Marines from loyalist Chapters.

"I was a loyalisht once too, Acolyte. Ash were you. Mosht of ush were," Solon mumbled, seeming distracted, "few humansh are born into the darknesh. The path of the damned ish a choice. Shometimes a choice made before the shightsh of a boltgun, but a choice nonetheless. Remember that."

"Yes, Warsmith. Of course..."

****

Ferrous Dominus - sector 6 mess hall complex Delta

Rarity tried to conceal her distaste for the slop that was being dropped on the plastic tray in front of her, but such a monstrous effort of will was ultimately beyond her.

"Is there any way to obtain something a bit more... fresh?" asked the unicorn, her forelegs holding her upright against the lunch counter in front of the cooking station.

The mess cook, a hulking, greasy mess of a woman with a Chaos star engraved in the side of her face out of scars, stared down at the equine with about the same level of affection she had for insects nibbling on her supplies.

"You asked for no meat, xeno. Boiled greens it is."

Rarity glanced at the steaming lump of pasty sludge. "And what kind of vegetables are these, exactly?"

"The green kind," the cook answered flatly.

"That's not funny."

"I'm not much of a comedian."

They held an annoyed staring match for several seconds after that, apparently oblivious to everyone else in the line behind the unicorn.

"You know, I'm a personal friend of Lord Serith," Rarity half-lied, tilting her nose up, "do you know who that is?"

The cook looked surprised. "Oh, yeah! I saw the Great and Powerful Trixie's show the day before the attack." Then she smiled. "Well, if you're friends with him, then I guess you don't need to eat this crap after all!"

Rarity smiled graciously. "I'm happy to hear that."

"Just go find him and have him summon you a fresh meal from the void, or whatever it is you witches do."

Rarity's expression fell, and her ears fell flat against her head.

"Either way, you're holding up the line. Move along, xeno."

Rarity levitated her tray along the counter top, mumbling irritably under her breath.

Rainbow Dash came next, floating above the counter. "Yo! Gimme two cans of that nutrient goop!"

The cook grunted and flung two ration tins at the pegasus, one at a time.

Dash caught both of them, one in each hoof, and then flashed the cook a wide grin. "Thanks! Later!"

The blue pegasus darted off after Rarity, leaving the woman rather shocked.

"... How the hell did she catch those with no hands?"

Rainbow Dash overtook a very grouchy Rarity to land on a metal bench where most of her friends had settled to eat lunch. Every pony was there except Twilight and Trixie, and Daniels and Spike were also in attendance (the latter with the backpack he'd been practically attached to since they'd arrived).

Rainbow landed next to Applejack, noting that the farmpony was sitting with her head resting on the table and her hat down over most of her face.

"Hey Applejack! You feeling better yet?!" Rainbow shouted far louder than was strictly necessary.

Applejack grit her teeth as the pounding in her head intensified, but otherwise did not acknowledge the flier.

"I warned her not to drink more than I did. Gaerim's synthehol is powerful stuff," Daniel muttered in-between bites of his steamed meat.

"I didn't even know drinking a lot could give you a headache," Fluttershy mumbled, "I've never heard of that happening with cider."

"Drinking way too much and then complaining about the predictable consequences is a staple of human culture," Daniels noted sagely, "as is forgetting about the experience the moment you have another bottle in front of you."

Rarity finally reached the table, letting her tray fall onto it with a rattling clacking noise. Daniels had to physically stop himself from laughing at her angry pouting expression.

"I have no idea how your species manages to feed itself on this slop," the unicorn grumbled to Daniels, glaring as if he were personally responsible.

"Rarity, what're you complaining about? It's a free meal!" Rainbow pointed out as she slammed one can on the edge of the table, popping off the lid.

"Which is entirely too high a price for something of this quality," Rarity insisted, levitating a fork uncertainly over her food.

"I'm telling you, you should just suck it up and eat the rations. I've only had a couple, and I feel better than ever!" Rainbow Dash paused to lift the can up over her muzzle, gulping down a thick wad of the tasteless ooze. Then she wiped her mouth and continued. "I haven't even thought about taking a nap since we got here! And yesterday I flew five circuits around the base and I wasn't even winded!"

Then she made a face. "Well, I was a LITTLE winded, actually, but I think it was from the pollution, not from the effort. It's pretty nasty up there."

"I still don't understand why my Pinkie ration didn't catch on," Pinkie Pie mumbled, copying Applejack's pose with her chin lying flat on the table, "I offered it to lots of different people, but every human that tries it eats one spoonful and then gives back the rest!"

"Um, I think it's because they can't eat a meal of cake frosting, Pinkie," Fluttershy offered, "if a pony were to eat that and nothing else, then we'd get sick."

Pinkie's head rose up off the table. "But I've been eating them and nothing else since I got here!"

"That's actually a little terrifying," Daniels said, glancing at the pink pony.

"Pinkie is a special case. Her body is like mostly sugar or something," Rainbow Dash insisted before swallowing the rest of the nutrient paste.

"You know what Twilight said," Rarity warned.

Pinkie sighed. "I'm not allowed to use myself as an example of decent or sane behavior."

Rarity finally worked up the courage to take a bite of her meal, and she immediately cringed as she forced it down her throat, the fork shaking in the grip of her levitation.

"It tastes worse than it looks!" the snow-colored pony cried, tears welling up in her eyes. "How is that even POSSIBLE?"

Spike started panicking immediately. "The kitchen is open now, right? Maybe I can-"

"Oh, give it a rest. Both of you," Rainbow Dash grumbled as she popped the lid on the second ration tin, "the humans have to eat this every day, right?"

"Not EVERY day," Daniels admitted, "sometimes we have creamed maize as a nice change."

"Creamed what?"

"Maize."

"How can you cream a maze?"

"No, it's a vegetable. Small, crispy edible bits arranged all over a long core. Usually yellow."

"Oh, you mean corn."

"What does the Blood God have to do with this?"

That particular miscommunication probably would have gone on longer, but Pinkie spotted a certain purple pony coming in from the entrance.

"Hey, look! It's Twilight!" Pinkie cheered, her mood brightening instantly as she starting climbing up Daniel's shoulder and waved from atop him.

"Hey! Careful!" the mercenary shouted. Earth ponies were not especially light.

"Hey everyone! How are you?" Twilight asked as she approached.

"Miserable," answered Rarity, looking shaken and haunted from having eaten half her meal so far, "please tell me you have some idea on when we can depart this glorified scrapyard."

Rainbow Dash rolled her eyes. "It's not like anypony is stopping us from leaving, Rarity."

"Perhaps the distance between here and Ponyville is trivial for a pegasus, but I can't travel that far on hoof!" the unicorn insisted. "Especially not when I've barely eaten during this whole trip!"

Rainbow seemed quite unsympathetic, but Twilight nodded. "Well, then I have good news! We're leaving tomorrow!"

Rarity's overdramatic expression of joy made her want to giggle.

"Finally! Back to my home and away from this industrial blight!"

"That's good," Applejack said quietly as she raised her head up, "Ah wanted to check on how mah farm's comin' along anyhow."

Twilight nodded as she levitated Rainbow's second ration tin toward her.

"Hey! That's mine!" the pegasus complained.

"I see the empty can next to you, Dash. I told you to stick to one a day like the humans," the alicorn chided, "anyway, the Iron Warriors have decided to negotiate with Equestria formally. So they're sending out Gaela and another human, and we can go with them."

"Negotiate formally? What does that mean?" Rainbow asked.

"It means we meet your ministers and leaders and cut deals with them, rather than random ponies we run into while out on sorties," Daniels explained.

"Awww! But I liked the old system!" Pinkie complained. She was now laying on top of Daniels' head, with her back legs braced on his shoulders and her forelegs hanging in front of his face.

"Frankly, I'm surprised that the Iron Warriors care," Daniels admitted, having mostly given up eating while Pinkie was climbing on him.

"I'm not sure they do, but that man Mister Delgan does," Twilight said with a shrug as she started eating the nutrient paste she had swiped, "the important thing is that we can get back home safely tomorrow."

"Are you and Spike coming with us?" Fluttershy asked.

Twilight's expression soured. "Well, yes. I would stay, but the data center is still broken and they won't let me into the other ones." Then she pursed her lips. "Also, I'm a bit worried that I haven't heard back from Princess Celestia. I wrote her a letter after the Tau attack and another last night, but I haven't gotten a response. I want to meet with her in case something's wrong."

Twilight went back to eating the ration she had seized, and for a few long seconds they ate their meals in peace (more or less; Pinkie was still on Daniels' head).

Then the door to the mess hall were smashed open, sending the heavy plates of metal flying into the room and bowling over several hapless diners.

Tellis stomped into the mess hall, the wings of his flight pack scraping the top edge of the doorway.

The Raptor Lord halted once inside, his helmet scanning the mess hall interior as everyone nearby scrambled to get away from him. He spotted his target fairly quickly; the brightly colored ponies stood out a great deal, after all.

"Why would you do that?! The doors open automatically!" cried a man pinned under one of the metal plates.

"It's hard to make a good entrance with automatic doors," Tellis explained absently, "you can't slam them, so it's hard to draw attention to someone entering, you know?"

Considering the subject concluded, he stomped over to the table where Rainbow Dash was already waving at him.

The other ponies were considerably less welcoming; aside from Pinkie Pie, they were wincing and trying to avoid eye contact with the metal giant as he approached.

"Hey Telly! What up?" Rainbow asked, zipping over and slapping a hoof into the palm of his gauntlet.

"Heya Rainbabe. How're you liking the grub?"

"It's positively awful. How does your kind grow so big on this rubbish?" Rarity volunteered.

"Don't answer that. It only encourages her," Rainbow Dash warned. "Anyway, it looks like we'll be heading back to Ponyville tomorrow."

"Sweet! So am I!" Tellis said happily.

"You have orders to deploy to Ponyville?" Twilight asked.

"Meh," the Raptor Lord answered with a shrug.

"Never mind," the alicorn sighed, turning back to her ration, "stupid question."

"Yes. Yes it was," Tellis agreed immediately, "anyhow, Lord Sliver is going to hold an assembly for most of the Company's Iron Warriors in a little bit, and I'm just checking in to see if you wanted to come."

Rainbow Dash looked confused. "Why would we want to go to that? I've never even heard of that guy."

"I thought you might want to see four hundred super-soldiers getting chewed out for being morons, that's all," Tellis said with his arms crossed over his chest.

Rainbow Dash brightened instantly, giggling with her hooves to her mouth. "That sounds awesome! I'm in."

"Actually, I could stand for a little schadenfreude myself," Rarity said, finally shoving the scraps of her lunch away, "I'll join you as well."

"Whoa, whoa, hold on," Tellis said quickly, holding up a palm, "this is an Iron Warrior event, snowball. That means cool kids only."

"Well, I'll just be on my way, then," Daniels said promptly, dropping Pinkie Pie onto the table and then quickly scurrying away.

Applejack looked disappointed to see him leave, but then returned a wary gaze to Tellis. "So yer sayin' the rest of us can't tag along?"

"Nah, I'm just saying that I'll need to have Dash here vouch for your cool factor," Tellis said with an absurd level of seriousness, "naturally, pegasi are cool by default. Her and Shy are definitely coming."

Fluttershy winced. "Um, I don't mean to be rude, but I don't really want-"

"The rest of you need to be cleared, though," Tellis finished, ignoring Fluttershy's timid protests entirely.

Rainbow Dash's brow furrowed in thought as she eyed her friends, apparently taking the responsibility thrust upon her shoulders quite seriously.

Finally, her expression shifted to a more solemn one. "Sorry, Twilight."

"Hooray! I'm cool!" Pinkie cheered.

The alicorn rolled her eyes. "Whatever. I have new dataslates I have to read anyway. I didn't even want to go."

"You'd rather read than watch a small army being yelled at like naughty children?" Tellis asked, snorting. "Good call, Dash. All right, the rest of you follow me. It's a long walk to the training arena, and apparently evolution was really pissed at most of you when it was deciding who gets wings."

Tellis started heading out, and the others quickly and with varying levels of remorse said good bye to Twilight.

"You're staying here, Spike," Twilight deadpanned when the young dragon tried to bid her goodbye.

"Why? He's cool enough. He breathes fire!" Rainbow Dash insisted.

"That is super metal. He's in," Tellis agreed, looking back.

"Spike..." Twilight said as her eyes narrowed.

Spike sighed. "Yeah, okay. I'll see you guys tomorrow."

****

Canterlot Castle - Celestia's study

Luna entered Celestia's study at a brisk trot, stepping into the room before quickly levitating the door shut behind her.

"Sister, thou called for us?" the younger Princess asked, standing at attention at the entrance.

Celestia didn't answer her immediately; she was standing over a writing desk with an extremely perturbed expression on her face. A quill levitated in front of her, its tip wet with ink, and a sheet of parchment was pinned to the surface of the desk.

Celestia wet her lips briefly as she returned the quill to the ink pot, and then heaved a weary sigh as she turned around.

"Yes, Luna. I need to speak with you. It's about the humans."

"Indeed, We assumed as much. The dark bastion and its armies hath been a topic of great diversion to everypony as of late," Luna snorted, "rumor abounds, and the Royal Guard nervously spins tales of exotic and invincible weapons. 'Tis quite a mess."

Celestia nodded grimly. "Everypony knows by now that war has descended upon our fair nation. Most are reasonably concerned as to where Equestria will stand as battle lines are drawn." She shook her head sadly. "However, that will have to wait. I'm very concerned about Twilight."

Luna quirked an eyebrow.

"I have heard nothing from her since she departed for the human fortress," the white alicorn admitted, staring down sorrowfully at the parchment.

"Dost thou not have methods to spy-pardon, observe Twilight Sparkle's whereabouts?" Luna asked.

"I do, but they're not working," Celestia complained, her horn lighting up with magic power, "I believe some outside power is thwarting me, because every time I use the scrying spell it is redirected."

Celestia cast the spell to show her, and Luna recoiled in surprise as a floating image of an utterly unfamiliar landscape appeared in a small translucent window in front of her.

"KILL! MAIM! BURN! KILL! MAIM! BURN! KILL! MAIM! BURN!"

Luna blinked. "Who is that?"

"I have no idea!" her sister said, clearly frustrated. "I've tried this spell six times now, and in each case it just shows me this psychopath in red!"

"KILL! MAIM! BURN! KILL! MAIM! BURN!"

"By the ancients... look at him go," Luna mumbled.

"Every time I've seen him he's in a different place, so I don't think it's some kind of prepared image," Celestia sighed, "he's been hacking away at people every single time, though. I think he's actually been fighting non-stop since this interference began."

"Hark! There be some sort of giant metal contraption approaching!" Luna shouted, as if to warn the character from the image. "How will he overcome tha... ah. Never mind. 'Tis quite an axe he has." Luna sat down, her eyes fixed intently on the magical image. "This is actually quite fascinating. How long can he keep this up for, dost thou think?"

Celestia cut off the image, much to Luna's disappointment. "Focus, Luna. I can't contact Twilight through magical means. I fear the worst."

"Well, we can rule out the worst," Luna said immediately, surprising her sister, "thou hast not read today's Cloudsdale Times, I take it. It hath caused quite a stir."

In a flare of magical power, Luna summoned her own copy from a magical pocket.

"The Cloudsdale Times? Hardly an example of journalistic excellence," Celestia grumbled. Equestria had very few decent news outlets. In her opinion, anyway.

"It hardly needs to be in order to confirm that Twilight Sparkle is alive and well, Sister," Luna noted, floating the paper over to the larger alicorn and peeling it open.

Celestia raised an eyebrow at seeing a picture of a comically grim-looking Pinkie Pie standing upright over the corpse of a Fire Warrior, an unloaded bolter in her hooves and an unlit cigar clenched in her teeth.

"Well, that's a relief. But why are newsponies touring the evil death factories of a race of alien invaders?" Celestia asked, frowning at an image of some kind of mechanical crabs.

"Because the invaders let them, t'would seem," Luna said with a shrug, "the rest of the article is quite sympathetic to the humans. Suspiciously so. But certainly the Elements of Harmony yet live."

Celestia frowned, looking toward a chest where she kept Twilight's friendship reports. "Then why has she not contacted me? Perhaps she is still looking for an opportunity to confront the invaders' leader?"

She shook her head and turned back toward her sister. "It doesn't matter. So long as my faithful student is all right then there is yet hope. I will send her a letter requesting an update. Luna, I wish for you to attempt to contact her as well, if we receive no immediate reply. Enter her dreams and speak to her there; she may not be able to write to me openly, but you should be able to speak freely that way."

"Excellent idea, sister," Luna said, standing up sharply, "We shalt make preparations with all haste!"

"Thank you, Luna," Celestia said as she went back to her parchment, "I fear that even if she has survived so far, even more terrible fates can befall a pony that trifles with the darker powers."

Luna snorted as she walked out. "Aye. Thou needn't tell US that."

Celestia winced, but quickly went back to writing.

****

Ferrous Dominus - Serith's quarters

"The primary difficulty in this technique is focus. Mainly in that it requires much less of it than expected."

Serith stood off to the side of the room, his hands clasped behind his back as he observed and recorded the current trial being undertaken in his study.

Trixie was sitting in a corner opposite him, poring over several sketches of a butcher automata's internals.

Between the two was a live butcher-class automata, swaying slightly back and forth as it remained locked in idle mode. It looked much like the one that Serith had sicced on Trixie during her first magic show, although many of the limb weapons were different.

"Focus must be maintained to seize control of the object, to force the mind within the matrix of metal and energy," Serith warned, "but as soon as it is achieved one must let the mind wander. Focusing on one element will serve to make the effect end sooner; as soon as you have crippled whatever particular item has your attention, your concentration will break with the sense that your task is concluded, and the damage will be limited. Let your imagination rummage through the machine like a child searching for a toy. Turn servos to clay, wires to water, and extinguish the flames within that power the device."

Trixie took a deep breath and then closed her eyes, her horn glowing as she began.

"To take hold of the machine, you need only project your will to a single part; your knowledge of the inner workings of the device must necessarily include that part, in order to anchor your will. From there such knowledge is irrelevant; you needn't know how a body works to make it stop working."

"Is that how you can use this spell on vehicles belonging to alien species?" Trixie asked as she concentrated on the automata.

"Indeed. The technology of the Tau is an utter enigma to me, just as it is to all Astartes." Serith stopped, and then corrected himself. "Most Astartes. I believe the Warsmith is wholly comfortable with such bizarre devices. Yet no matter how advanced the alien becomes, certain simple devices do not bear upgrading. The Tau vehicles use servo assemblies for their turrets and weapon mounts. They are easy to mass-produce, reliable, and resilient. From there I unmake the vessel."

The butcher automata started to tremble as Trixie's magic poured over it, and it blurted several irritated-sounding strings of binary.

A sudden sucking noise came from a different corner of the room, and Serith turned his head toward his ensorcelled cage as a scroll fell back into reality, having been plucked from the flow of the Warp.

"Another one? It's not even evening yet," Serith said, walking over to the cage and reaching in to get the parchment.

"What's that?" Trixie asked. Her spell was still going, and the automata was shaking even more than before.

"I set up a ward over Lady Sparkle and Rarity's room to intercept any teleportation and send the teleported subject here," he explained as he stood up again, "I was expecting Lady Twilight to try to teleport out of Ferrous Dominus, but all she's been sending is letters, so I've been intercepting and reading them." He broke the seal on the latest scroll.

Trixie's brow furrowed, although it was mostly from her magic exertion rather than concern. "Why would you do that?"

"Well, given that Lady Sparkle has already proven herself to be hostile to our presence here, I could say that I'm checking her communications for any sign of sabotage or any hints of other plots against my Warsmith," Serith said with a disinterested tone as he slowly unrolled the parchment, "but if I'm being honest, I'm mostly doing it just to antagonize her."

Trixie snickered. "You're awful."

"Oh, I know. Now let's see here..." he tilted his helmet to the side. "Huh. This isn't from Lady Sparkle, she's the recipient." He looked up. "Fascinating. I didn't even know the ward worked both ways."

A fizzling noise came from the automata, and Serith's attention quickly focused on the machine as it sputtered and blasted sparks out of its sockets.

Its tendril limbs quivered, and then the body collapsed as its sensor lights flickered and went dark.

Serith tossed the parchment aside. "My, my... and on your first real attempt, too..."

Trixie huffed desperately, sweat trickling down her brow as the magic finally faded from her horn. "Was there ever... any doubt?"

"Well, it did take you FAR too long to break it down," Serith noted, "on a battlefield you would have been shot long before you took apart any vital systems. And of course, automata are small and easily crippled with most weapons. Still, it is a superb first step."

"For now, Trixie will take it," the unicorn gasped, her breath evening out as she stood up, "Trixie will practice more, but for now Trixie is going back to Suuna for a belly rub."

Serith chuckled lightly as he placed the letter in the same iron box as the others. "You're going to become addicted to those, at this rate."

"Pff. Trixie already is," the azure unicorn said shamelessly as she stepped toward the foyer.

Then she halted and looked back. "On that note: Trixie knows that Trixie is easily the most fascinating, amazing, and - let's face it - beautiful pony you'll ever meet, but from now on do not record Trixie without Trixie's permission."

"Oh, fine. Just break that big red bubble in your room, then," Serith said as he turned back around.

"No, that's okay. You have permission. Trixie just wants to know about it ahead of time." She idly smoothed out her hair before she headed out of the room, a smug smile on her face as usual.

****

Ferrous Dominus - sector 9 training arena

"Is that the guy?" Rainbow Dash asked as a hulking, rust-encrusted figure stomped onto a raised platform in the center of the arena.

"Yeesh! What the hay happened to him? He look like he's about to keel over!" Applejack exclaimed.

Tellis snickered. "Nothing happened to him. He always looks like that. That's Nurgle for you."

Tellis and the ponies were currently standing on a raised balcony above the spectator stands that held most of the Company's Iron Warriors. It had an excellent view, and was reserved for the Chaos Space Marine officers.

Tellis was technically an officer, but the balcony had been occupied already when he had arrived, and its occupants had hardly been willing to leave for the sake of Tellis' pony entourage.

And that was why Warpsmith Kessler and his Lieutenant Torrin were lying in a heap in the stands below.

"Ooh, I think he's starting!" Pinkie said excitedly.

"I ssuposse I should offer you congratulationss," Sliver said suddenly, silencing the murmuring crowds as his weak, raspy voice boomed over the local vox, "to thosse Iron Warriorss assembled here before me, you are the ssurvivorss. The Sspace Mariness sstill sstanding after a xeno sstrike force sstormed through our basse and killed everything it ssaw. You are the cowardss that fled the danger, or the incompetentss that found time to play in this world'ss foresstss while Ferrouss Dominuss wass sstill vulnerable. You imbeciless have presserved your livess at the cosst of much of our basse and the dignity of our Legion."

Sliver's single eye slowly scanned the crowd as his voice halted.

"Congratulationss, wormss."

"Are all your leaders revolting metal monsters with speech impediments?" Rarity asked, turning her gaze up at Tellis.

"No, not all of them. I don't have a speech impediment," the Raptor Lord pointed out.

"Heh! Look at 'em squirm down there," Rainbow Dash giggled.

"Just as a disclaimer, none of this lecture applies to me," Tellis insisted, "since I was on deployment elsewhere, I have an excuse."

"But didn't he also include the guys who were goofin' off near the Everfree instead of helping out here? Ah think that would include you, too," Applejack noted.

"As a second disclaimer, shut up or I'll punt you into the next sector."

"Never before have I sseen ssuch weaknesss in an Asstartess battle force," Sliver continued, stomping across the raised stage, "forty-one brotherss dead. Twice that number wounded. Half the fortresss, ruined. Iss thiss all you are? With all your experience, might, and the power of the Dark Godss running through you, thesse pitiful blue inssectss have run circless around you."

Sliver reached the edge of the stage, his eye glaring down at the Iron Warriors there. "The Dark Mechanicuss reacted with sskill and sspeed to keep the Tau filth out of their facilitiess. Even the human mercenariess, the lowest of the low, performed well under ssuch conditionss, sslowing the xeno advance and capturing their leader with lesss than two hundred cassualtiess."

"Speakin' in the technical sense, that was me. But Ah let Daniels take credit fer it," Applejack confided in the others.

"I helped too!" Pinkie said brightly. "The Tau have no defense against my face grapple technique!"

"I feel like the pony contribution in general is kind of being ignored," Rainbow Dash complained, crossing her forelegs in front of her.

"Whatever. How many xenos could you have possibly taken out during the assault?" Tellis scoffed.

Pinkie snickered. "More than you did."

"But you, our Iron Warriorss... my Legion... you were sslow. Clumssy. Dissorganized. Iss thiss the army raissed by the great Perturabo, the greatesst ssiegemasster to ever live, and the Warmasster'ss right hand?"

"WHEEEEEEEEE!"

Sliver paused in his lecture to glance upwards as something bright pink flew through the air overhead, but quickly dismissed the distraction.

"You dissgrace your father with your incompetence, and in your folly you vindicate every Legion Warssmith who lookss down on the 38th Company ass a warband of imbeciless and weaklingss."

Sliver's breath came heavily as he gazed at his troops. "Ssome among you were at the foot of the wallss of the Imperial Palace itsself when it wass ssiieged on Terra, at the height of our great Legion'ss glory."

Sliver made a noise half-way between a snort and a cough. "And look at you now. Sstruggling to hold our own fortresss againsst a graysskin force barely a tenth our ssize. You dissgusst me."

"Dude, harsh," Rainbow Dash noted, although she was snickering.

"He does make some valid points," Rarity admitted, "even if I don't know the events he's referring to."

"I think he could be a little nicer about it, though," Fluttershy noted quietly, "I'm sure the Iron Warriors tried their best."

Tellis glanced down at the ponies, confusion evident despite his helmet. "Okay, seriously, NONE of you care that I just booted your friend across the whole freaking arena?"

"We've all wanted to do that at some time or another," Applejack assured the Raptor Lord, "Ah'm sure she's fine."

"I've ssaid what needss to be ssaid. Return to your dutiess. And know that today, at leasst, your humiliation iss fully desserved."

Sliver turned away and stomped down the stairs leading away from the platform, pausing only briefly as the pink creature from before galloped across his path back toward where she had come from.

As for the Iron Warriors, not a peep issued from the gleaming ranks of the super-soldiers as they digested their lecture.

Some seethed quietly, furious that their own sacrifices and flawless efforts had to be judged in sum with the performance of their unskilled peers. Others rationalized away Sliver's judgment, figuring that they had followed their orders as given and performed their duties as should be expected given the quality of the Company's leadership. The majority of the Chaos Space Marines, however, internalized Sliver's shame and began considering their actions during the assault with a more critical lens. Things they could have done differently, consequences they should have foreseen, and tactical decisions they had made in error.

None of them spoke, each warrior descending into his silent prison of doubt or self-pity.

Well, most of them, anyway.

"HA! What a bunch of losers!" Tellis laughed, pointing at the gleaming masses below and guffawing at high volume.

"Telliss, you're the worsst of all of them," Sliver said flatly as he walked toward the edge of the arena to join his bodyguard.

"Pf! Whatever! You would have LOVED to have me around when the Tau broke in!" the Raptor Lord shouted down.

Pinkie popped up from behind his flight pack. "But you weren't around when they broke in. You were hanging out with pegasi from Cloudsdale. And when you think about it, that's a much worse failure than being here and not being able to fight off an enemy fast enough!"

One drop-kick later, Pinkie was again flying through the air, somersaulting with her legs bunched up underneath her.

"WAAAHOOOOOO!!"

****

Ferrous Dominus(?) - later that evening

Through the twisted mirror lens of the Warp, all reality was subverted into nightmare and senseless emotion. Walls of iron became flame or darkness. Individuals were mere motes of light, flickering within a sea of boiling power. Thoughts and images were given form, manifest into horrifying, twisted, and - most often - extremely angry avatars.

The world of dreams lay in-between the Warp and reality, both in metaphysical terms and in its illustration of the waking world. Matter had consistent form, but was permeable. Souls stood stronger against the flow of power, but were still little more than spots of candlelight against the gloom. Thoughts, or more specifically, dreams, held power here, but fell short of coalescing into willful monsters.

It was familiar territory for Luna, but even in this twilight realm, safe from the lethal reality of guns, lasers, and plasma, Ferrous Dominus was an intimidating bastion. The soldiers manning the walls were far from its only guardians, and its masters were all too knowledgeable about the dangers of the realms beyond.

Just getting within the walls was quite unpleasant, if not actually challenging. As Luna neared the fortress, soaring through the air on an astral wind, her fur began to stand on end and her vision began to get murky, as if she was seeing through oily water rather than the clear, crisp winds of the dream world.

The effect only got worse as she glided over the walls, and once she landed on the marsh-like ground within the fortress her visibility had been reduced to a mere few meters. The ferrocrete below sucked at her hooves like it was trying to drink her up, and she had the distinct feeling that something - or perhaps multiple somethings - were not only aware of her presence, but watching her intently.

Luna set off at a trot, her body blurring through the dark, gloomy avenues as she sped her search. Even with her physical sight hindered by the gloom, finding Twilight would be a simple matter. Alicorns and even unicorns shone brighter in the dream realm than other ponies, and she could already sense the surging power of the Element of magic even through the haze of living darkness that sought to foil her.

She moved faster as her body was further displaced from the Materium, unbound to its generally stable flow of time. Hundreds, perhaps thousands, of minds at rest zipped by her.

She had to focus everything on finding Twilight to keep her attention to her task; not because of any sort of psychic trickery or dark interference, but merely because Ferrous Dominus was honestly intriguing. Despite her many years of experience (albeit much of it on a barren, intemperate rock) she had never seen or heard of anything like the human fortress-factory, and if she gave in to her curiosity she would have certainly taken her time to observe the place and perhaps peek into the dreams of its inhabitants.

But the Princess of the Night was focused on her mission, and she paid the distractions no mind.

Soon Luna had crossed much of the base, and as she slowed her pace the flow of time likewise returned to a more sedate pace.

She frowned at the sight of the building before her; heavily damaged, with its front door and windows smashed apart and the interior pock-marked with craters. The empty, shattered lobby was merely the front-most part of the structure, however, and she could sense both Twilight and Rarity inside.

Luna didn't bother going in the front entrance; her body could seep through the hazy matter-image of the dream world like water through a sieve. Walls and such were purely obscuring obstacles, no more a hindrance than the branches of a puny shrub.

Which was the reason Luna was so surprised when she smacked her face flat onto the wall of the secondary data center.

The Princess stumbled backward, completely stunned. Had the humans created some sort of dream-metal that could shield them from the spirits of the night? If so, she found such a precaution absurdly wasteful, if not grudgingly ingenious. Very few dream-creatures were any sort of threat to anypony.

Frowning, she moved over to the gaping, ash-strewn entrance and walked into the doorway.

As her face once again smashed flat against an inexplicably hard surface, she concluded that something was in fact amiss.

Pulling back from the point of impact, Luna raised a hoof and placed it flat against the invisible barrier.

With her hoof resting against it, she tested the strength of the barrier by leaning against it, trying to push through. In the back of her mind she knew that the idea of forcing her way through something relied on assumptions of applying force that didn't work in the dream world, but then, things like magic barriers weren't supposed to work here, either.

Either way, she pushed and strained against the psychomantic shielding with no effect, and after a minute of fruitless labor the Princess backed up to consider her options.

The first idea that came to mind was lighting the shield up with magic to try to get through, but the further she thought on that plan, the worse an idea it seemed. She didn't know anything about this defense, and using magic in the dream realm, outside of the consciousness of a single individual, was almost certain to have unexpected consequences. What if it leaked over into reality? What if the shield collapsed suddenly and some excess magic hurt Twilight and her friends?

What if it started attracting huge flies, like the one staring at her from the sidewalk?

It took Luna several seconds to properly process the sight of a filly-sized fly hovering next to her just out of leg's reach, its wings beating silently in the murky, corrupted air.

It took several more seconds for Luna to actually acknowledge the thing; first she squeezed her eyes shut, counted to ten, and then opened her eyes again, hoping that the anomaly would be gone.

But the insect stubbornly continued existing, its compound eyes gleaming in the pale light cast from the dream-image of lumen strips and bulbs.

Luna wasn't sure what to do. Insects, obviously, weren't really supposed to be in the dream realm. Their mental presence was so slight as to be literally beneath her notice. And that was referring to real-life insects that would have appeared as blips of light. This creature had a very well-defined form, possessing the body of a common housefly grown to monstrous proportions.

As revolting as it was, however, it wasn't actually doing anything to bother her besides floating nearby and being far too ugly to deserve the privilege.

"Can we... help thee?" Luna asked awkwardly. It was weird enough talking to a gigantic insect, and more so in the dream realm. She had never spoken to a creature in this plane outside of its actual dreams.

The fly bobbed up and down briefly, and then turned away to hover down the street.

Luna didn't budge, and before the fly was obscured by the poor visibility it stopped and turned back around to stare at her.

"Thou wishes for us to follow thee. Lovely," Luna said, her voice dripping sarcasm.

She gazed back at the data center, and the beacons of magic power that lay within. Without focusing exclusively on Twilight's, she could feel others as well, but nonetheless the minds all lay inexplicably out of reach.

Luna reluctantly turned to follow the fly. Her original goal may have been foiled, but she would at least investigate the human fortress herself and the anomalies within. Perhaps she could aid Twilight that way, or stumble upon one of the other Elements of Harmony.

As soon as she picked up a cautious pace the fly started moving again, leading on through the streets as the flow of time dilated around them.

Luna followed, but did so without the steadfast urgency with which she had sought out Twilight.

Without her attention focused, she began to take in some of the other details of the place, or at least what details she could make out through the haze of darkness and insubstantial nature of the dream realm.

There was something undeniably grand about the grim, Gothic architecture that towered overhead, riddled with hateful symbols and dedicated to evil beings from beyond the veil. It took considerable dedication and resourcefulness to build something so large, and even in the current twilight dimension between reality and the Empyrean it hummed with energy and activity. There were enormous cranes shifting nearby as they worked tirelessly to rebuild a structure that had fallen, and everywhere the flickering lights of waking souls moved in great eddies through the base. Evidently there was much to do at night for the humans, for so many to still be awake and active.

Soon she noticed that the fly had stopped again, this time despite her following it. It was hovering in front of the wall of the manufactorum - not that Luna knew what it was called - while bobbing excitedly and rubbing its forelegs together as if it was looking at a meal.

"We wish thee to know that we art only refraining from wiping thee from this and every other realm of existence because we art curious," Luna warned the insect, "do not suppose that thou art beyond our power."

It was doubtful the fly understood any of this, and the gigantic dream-insect eventually landed softly on the wall of the manufactorum before sinking its head into the surface and squirming through it.

Luna grimaced at the sight of the hairy, wriggling abdomen vanishing into the wall surface.

"Well... here goes naught," the Princess grumbled before pushing forward.

****

???

Solon squinted as he turned a micro-driver, his gen-enhanced vision refocusing the surface of the circuit board at a much finer resolution as he drew electron paths to be reinforced later.

The Space Marine was stooped over a square table on a veranda, his mighty hands moving minutely around a cube-shaped device of no obvious purpose.

Behind him, rolling hills turned into numerous rocky outcroppings, each of them mounted by great towers of various purposes. Some boasted enormous windmills that trailed thick power cables down to the ground. Others were arcologies packed tightly with tenants and overrun with idyllic gardens and ornately carved furniture. One of them was a farmstead, surrounded on all sides my fields of grain and grazing animals. Water trickled down from heavy moisture engines mounted atop the tower, drinking from the dry air and draining into grand, precisely constructed aqueducts that irrigated the fields below.

Solon turned the cube around as he finished his previous work, and then glanced up at the view from the veranda.

"Beautiful, is it not?" He said aloud, his eyes dropping back to the cube. "When most think of the home world of the Iron Warriors, they assume it would be a fortress world, like the ones we build now. Guns and bulwarks built into every mountain and entire continents turned over to silos, batteries, and the reactors to power them."

In the hall behind the veranda, Luna cautiously stepped out of the shadows, saying nothing. She had no idea how the man had known she was there. She didn't even know exactly who he was.

She had an inkling, though.

"Olympia was more fortunate than that, however. After it was pacified our Primarch was free to mold it in his own image. His true image, not the hard-nosed goliath that he presented to outsiders."

Solon still hadn't turned toward the Princess, rolling the cube around in his hands and observing the minute imperfections carefully. "I often retreat here during rest cycles so I can toy with the designs in my head. It's a wistful, sentimental image. One that has been rejected and forgotten by most of the Legion. Much like the world itself."

Luna stepped up to the edge of the veranda, her eyes scanning the towers. She had to admit it was a breathtaking sight: a shining example of human architecture and brilliance without the sickly feeling that one experienced gazing upon the spike-studded edifices of Ferrous Dominus.

"This place is not polluted by thy hatred?" Luna asked, still staring at the hills.

"Olympia wasn't polluted by hate, it was burned by it. This is but a memory fragment, preserved for my own use," Solon explained, putting his device down. He reached over the table toward a brass goblet full of dark wine.

Luna turned her attention fully to the man. He was clearly an Astartes, matching the size and proportions she had seen in images of the Space Marines, but rather than bulky powered armor this man had on only a thick white toga and sandals. His head was shaved bald, and sections of his skin were drawn over with tattoos of strange, esoteric scripture and runes.

He was heavily muscled, unnaturally so, yet even as his body was shaped like a brute his eyes gleamed with a deep intelligence and his fingers moved with a cautious dexterity, as if he was afraid of breaking the things they touched.

"... Thou art the leader of the humans, yes?" Luna finally asked.

Solon took a sip from the goblet, and then rewarded Luna with full eye contact.

"I am Warsmith Solon, high commander of the 38th Company. It's fleets and armies answer to me. And who are you, to step into my dreams like a child wandering through an unfamiliar structure?"

Luna frowned, not liking that he had compared her to a child. Her relative immaturity compared to her sister was something of a sore point with her. "We art Princess Luna, Guardian of the Night! We hast not 'wandered' anywhere, invader!"

True, she'd had no intention originally of meeting this man and had been led here by some bizarre third party, but he (probably) didn't know that.

"Another Princess. How many of you are there?" Solon asked between sips from his goblet.

"Last We checked, four. But that number hath been rising of late, so who knows," the blue alicorn mumbled before clearing her throat, "on the subject of Princesses, We demand to know what thou hast done with Princess Twilight Sparkle!"

Solon quirked an eyebrow at the Princess's narrow-eyed glare. "I held audience with her, acquiesced to her requests, and then gave her some reading material. Why?"

Luna made an incredulous expression. "Dost thou take us for a fool?"

"Yes, but that has nothing to do with this," Solon admitted as he rolled his goblet about in his hand, "just this afternoon I spoke to Miss Sparkle and she was fine. The only occasion in which she has been restricted from leaving the premises was the xeno assault two days ago. That is all I know about her presence in our fortress."

Luna kept her deeply suspicious expression. "Then why hath she been unable to contact our sister?"

"Why would I know or care?" Solon asked before turning away toward the view of the hills.

Luna bristled at his dismissal, but at the same time his indifference seemed perfectly genuine. She decided to shift topics slightly.

"If thou hast agreed to Equestria's demands, why art thou still here? We saw little signs of departure within thy fortress, only rebuilding of that which hast been razed."

Solon turned his attention back toward Luna, his eyes narrowed. "I don't much appreciate being interrogated, Princess Luna. You infiltrate my fortress, intrude upon my rest, and then think to demand answers from me?" He took a long drink from his goblet. "For a species that prides itself on its peaceful, harmonious nature, your kind's approach to diplomacy is unwisely aggressive."

Luna made a dismissive expression. "We seek no diplomacy with thee, Warsmith. Thou constructs bastions of war within our borders and spreads corruption through the air itself. Thy soldiers march amongst our people as if this were thy land. Our very world weeps at thy presence, and the hate and destruction thou brings! Thou art our enemy!" Luna insisted, raising her head high in defiance.

"Yes, yes, war, hate, blood, pollution, corruption, blah blah blah," the Warsmith said with a roll of his eyes as he walked past the table to get a pitcher of wine, "I've heard it all before, Princess. The situation remains the same. We are staying until we've constructed our engines and eliminated the Tau. After that, we leave. I will not leave prematurely and abandon my starships for the sake of your people, so you have little choice but to bear our presence until such time comes." He refilled his goblet and then once again locked eyes with Luna. "Or... you can try to defeat us."

An explosion sounded behind Luna right after Solon finished speaking, and she turned her head to glance behind her.

The previously peaceful countryside had been completely shattered. Towers burned or crumbled before her eyes. Great columns of light lanced downward in the distance, carving the ground apart and swallowing entire structures in death. Groups of Iron Warriors, armored in brushed steel and beaten gold plate, but lacking the horns and trinkets acquired over millennia of Chaos worship, marched in lockstep down hills with bolters and blades drawn. Crowds of people, unarmed and lacking any military dress or identifiers, fled before them. With every few steps, the Iron Warriors would release a coordinated volley, and a great swath of the crowd would fall.

"Your people remind me of the Olympians, in some ways," Solon remarked as he leaned against the veranda railing, "idyllic. Privileged. Content. Curiously insolent."

The crowds were driven down toward each other, and the Iron Warrior advance slowed as the super-soldiers identified the wounded and finished them off. Eventually the tides of people coming from different directions flowed into each other, confusion and paralysis overcoming the momentum as the great mass shifted and swirled in search of escape.

The report of distant artillery sounded in the distance as the advance of the Space Marines halted entirely.

Luna turned back toward Solon, not bothering to watch as the crowd of civilians was pulverized. She looked singularly unmoved.

"Is this tripe supposed to impress us?" the Princess asked flatly. "Art We to watch thy 'mighty army' in battle now?"

"Battle? This?" Solon asked, moving his hand with the goblet in the general direction of the slaughter. "Miss Luna, this is not battle. Battle implies combat. It requires resistance. Opposition of lethal means." He gulped down some wine before continuing. "This is massacre. Nothing more, nothing less. No more a battle than the butcher faces when plying his trade against the lamb."

Luna quirked an eyebrow. "We do not know what this means."

"Right, herbivore. Never mind. My point is that organizing the murder of Olympia was less a sortie and more a chore. The closest thing to a challenge was optimizing the use of ammunition. Using mass-reactive rounds to cut down fleeing civilians is an utter waste of good bullets."

Luna once again looked at the carnage taking place outside the veranda, noting that the scene had now completely changed since she had last looked. Now she was witnessing the destruction of a town, its finely sculpted architecture shattered under massive siege guns.

A couple dashed through the clouds of smoke and dust flowing through the town, falling against the door to a homestead and beating desperately against the door.

After a few seconds it cracked open, and the pair were bundled inside quickly, arms drawing them to safety before the door was closed and latched once more.

Then their sanctuary vanished in a burst of fire.

Luna tilted her head slightly as she watched a Vindicator siege tank drive through the dark spot where the home used to be, its dozer shield parting the scorched rubble before it.

"Dost thou regret it?"

Solon looked surprised as the alicorn turned back toward him. Her gaze was softer now, for some reason.

"Regret what?"

"Doing this," Luna clarified, nudging her head at the scene of destruction, "this world was thy home, yes? T'was this... 'Primarch's' legacy. And thou destroyed it. Dost thou regret this decision?"

"It was not our decision," Solon said firmly, his hand tightening on his goblet, "we were pushed here. By the Imperium, by the Emperor, by our so-called citizens, by Horus, by Lorgar, by that thrice-damned worm Erebus..."

Solon trailed off in his rant, aware that his goblet was starting to deform in his hand. He was also belatedly aware that none of his excuses would even mean a thing to the alicorn princess, and he brought his mind back to the question.

"... No. I regret nothing," Solon said finally, putting his goblet down, "self-destruction is in our nature; our father, mighty in body and mind, seemed damned from birth only to destroy, and his efforts to create turned to ash before him time and time again. Only his weapons, his wars, persist. His fury and dark intellect are his gifts to us."

The Warsmith turned his gaze on Luna. "But regret? That is not in our blood. I'll not color our sacrifices and suffering with doubt and shame."

Luna's expression hardened again. "There art no shame in admitting fault and making amends for thy crimes."

"Bah! We can make no amends," Solon decided, turning around to face the veranda and lean on the railing as he crossed his arms over his chest, "my Legion has been hunted ever since our betrayal, and our sentence is annihilation. So our grievances and crimes are sorted on the battlefield, vindicated or rebuked with the thunder of boltguns. Do I regret the slaughter of Olympia? Should I regret the hundred genocides before that? Should I turn my gun away from the battles to come as my enemies hunt me down across the stars? No. Regret is useless and there are tasks before me that require completion. Wallowing in self-reflection and doubt is a meaningless diversion for private moments far from the battlefield."

"Like now?"

"Until you showed up, yes."

Luna raised an eyebrow again as she sat on her haunches. "We hath not considered thine ilk to be so... philosophical. Might the corruption of Chaos fall lightly upon thee?"

The Iron Warrior snorted. "Perhaps it does. Or perhaps your understanding of my 'corruption' is flawed." Then he paused and turned his head back around. "Ah. This is my favorite part."

Luna turned around as well, and a small gasp escaped her lips. She was staring at a distant city, its towers stretching higher than any in Canterlot and numbering in the hundreds.

Above the city, a vast metal vessel slowly sank through the air, leaking fire and smoke from dozens of massive wounds.

"That was the Magnificence of Irud. We deliberately avoided destroying her right away to position her over the city, and then cut away her engines," Solon explained as he pointed to the dying starship, "her orbit decayed and she sank into the atmosphere, right on top of Barellas, a major city on the southern continent. More than thirty million souls, crushed by their own defender, and without a single extra bullet fired. Only the Iron Warriors can manage murder with that kind of economy."

Luna didn't have much to say to that, so she silently watched as the space vessel reached the towers, smashing through them as if they were made of cards. As the ship impacted the ground the shock waves began to tear the surrounding buildings apart, ripping their substructures out from under them before a wave of dust and rubble washed through the city.

A nearby gunshot distracted her from the sight of a city's deathblow, and Luna's attention focused instead on the estate behind them.

There were several men and women fleeing through the halls, wailing desperate pleas and protests as they staggered away.

Iron Warriors walked after them. The Space Marines shouted no battle cries. They answered no questions or pleas. There was no sign of any sort of tactical acumen or military effort in their movements.

They walked after their victims, eventually caught up with them, gunned their chainswords, and then carried out their orders.

Luna watched it all with a detached expression. She could hardly feel anything for the dream images in front of her, and she hardly felt like condemning the Warsmith for crimes he committed however long ago against people she knew nothing about on a planet she would never see.

"We will not let thou do this to our citizens," Luna said firmly.

Solon stared at her with a bemused expression. "I've already insisted that I don't intend to do so, but since you don't believe me I find myself curious as to what you think you can do about it."

Luna's dour expression shifted slightly into a smirk. "We art the Princess of the Night, Warsmith! Dreams art our element, and no villain that slumbers is safe from our power!"

Luna stood up, her wings spreading before her eyes flashed a solid white and her horn lit up with magical energy. "In the realm of dreams, we hold dominance! Should thou challenge us, thou shalt find thy mind undone by our terrible power!"

Solon looked entirely unimpressed, and he took a drink from his dented goblet before speaking again. "Really, now? You can harm me in my dream and cause tangible damage to my waking self?"

"Indeed!" Luna barked. "And in contrast, thou shalt find us quite invulnerable within this dream state! So We say to thee: leave our world with all haste, or prepare to face our wrath!"

"Let me think about that," Solon said dryly before gulping down the rest of his dream wine. Then he set the goblet down. "Cogitator Assidium three-seven-zero, terminate rest cycle."

Luna blinked her still-glowing eyes. "Pardon? What dost that-"

And then the world collapsed under her.

****

Canterlot Castle - Luna's study

A magic circle flared to life under Luna's semi-conscious body as she was shunted out of unreality, and with a flash of light and a cracking noise not unlike thunder the alicorn's eyes snapped open.

Gasping, Luna reflexively staggered to her feet, her head jerking back in forth in a panic as she tried to ascertain where she was.

Her heartbeat slowed as she realized she was back in her study. She often began her journeys into the dream realm from here, as it was the safest place to keep her true body while projecting her powers.

Luna grit her teeth, her wings trembling in fury. Solon had rebuked her. HER! The Princess of the Night! Flung her across time and space and tossed her back into her real body with nothing more than system command. How was that even possible?

"Son of a MULE!"

****

Ferrous Dominus - Solon's forge

The hiss of steam came from a dozen devices at once as the arrays of neural uplinks pulled free of the sockets on Solon's helmet and spine. Those sockets then slid closed as the Warsmith cycled back to full awareness.

"Bloody hell, you can't even shleep on thish planet without being accoshted by talking horshesh," Solon grumbled as the locking bays for his legs cracked open one by one, freeing his heavy metal appendages.

Stepping out of the rest bay, his legs clanging hard on the iron floors, the Nurglite stomped past several piles of scrap materials and esoteric components salvaged from the Tau ships and various bits of wreckage. There was quite a bit, and the piles were growing.

"Ah, well, nothing for it. Ash long ash I'm awake, I think I'll build a new train. With a shield thish time! And an ionic cycler engine! Hmmmm!"

Lumen strips turned on and actuators twitched to life as if the factory mechanisms sensed his intentions, and soon the Warsmith's forge was alive with activity as the smell of burning metal mixed with the ejections from the noxious censers hanging from the ceiling.

"Build, build, build!"

Author's Note

I have no idea why I decided to give all this dialogue to characters who can't talk like normal people. I had to revisit Luna's lines like three times over to make sure I put in all the "thou"s and "dost"s. I'm not even clear on whether she's supposed to talk that like, honestly.
But it's more fun this way, so whatever.

Business Sense

Iron Hearts: Book 2

Chapter 6

Business Sense

****

Ferrous Dominus - gates

"I cannot tell you enough how glad I am to be getting back to pony civilization. I have been away from my work - and my kitchen - for far too long," Rarity said as she approached the line of idling Rhinos.

Twilight and her friends were gathering in front of the gates as the servitors lugged Rarity's luggage pile to the lots. Only Applejack was absent.

"Oh, come on Rarity. How many ponies can say they've been through what we have while were here?" Rainbow Dash asked, hovering above the group. "Think of all the awesome things we got to see!"

Rarity looked annoyed. "True. I suppose I'll carry the memories of skulking through a smoldering fortress being shot at by robots and space men forever. Unfortunately."

"I think you're carrying more than just memories out of here," Twilight mumbled, her eyes fixed on Rarity's luggage. Among the suitcases and duffle bags was a single munitions case colored gunmetal and banded with warning stripes.

"So which vehicle are we going in?" Fluttershy asked, staring pensively at the Rhinos and Chimeras lined up in front of them. Iron Warriors and security men were milling about in front of them, occasionally giving the group of ponies and baggage lingering glances. They had been around long enough that much of the Company had at least heard that there was a collection of ponies who had been allowed into Ferrous Dominus, but they were still enough of an oddity to warrant attention wherever they went.

"I'm not sure yet," Twilight admitted, "Gaela's supposed to meet us here. She'll know."

"The Acolyte is running late," barked a voice heavily distorted by a vox grille behind them, "I'll lead you to our transport."

The ponies turned to regard the Iron Warrior speaking to them, and Pinkie immediately lit up.

"Desty! It's you!" the pink earth pony cheered, galloping up to the rhino driver in a flash.

Dest raised an arm almost lazily as Pinkie erupted into the air, and intercepted the leaping pony to prevent her from clinging to his helmet. Pinkie didn't seem troubled by this defense, and simply grabbed onto his arm instead as she grinned.

"Oh, uh, hello... Dest?" Twilight said uncertainly.

She really had no idea how Pinkie had identified the Iron Warrior so quickly. Unlike Serith and Tellis, Dest's voice and armor seemed almost exactly like that of the other Chaos Space Marines that had the same job; she would have found it almost impossible to pick out the driver among a group of the other vehicle pilots grouped at the edge of the lot.

"Hello, xenos. It seems I drew the short straw again," muttered the Iron Warrior as Pinkie clambered up onto his shoulder.

"Hooray! I thought we wouldn't get to see you again!" the party pony said.

"I'm not unsatisfied with the arrangement," Dest allowed in what was easily the closest he'd ever come to a statement of affection. "Follow me. My other Rhino was destroyed during the xeno assault, but I've been assigned a new one."

"So this is your third vehicle?" Rainbow Dash asked.

"On this world, yes," Dest mumbled as he started walking toward the lots, "my luck at surviving wrecks is matched only by the misfortune of the transports I pilot, it would seem."

The Chaos Space Marine pointed to one of the transports parked in the lots. "There it is. Have the servitors begin loading your things."

"Thank you, Mister Dest," Rarity said as she trotted past him and happily began directing and assisting the cybernetic servants.

"You said Gaela is running late?" Twilight asked as the servitors lumbered past.

"Yes. I am not privy to the details, but I can only assume there was some conflict with her previously assigned duties and her unexpected reassignment to Master Delgan's team," the Iron Warrior surmised, "right now the Dark Mechanicus units are very valuable. Several officers have been bartering with them to have certain repairs done faster, so I'm sure the Dark Magi were reluctant to let her go."

Twilight nodded in understanding. "Well, that's fine. Applejack's running behind too, so we're not just waiting on her."

"Oh? Do you need someone to fetch your companion?" Dest asked.

"No, she'll be along. She just wanted to say goodbye."

****

Ferrous Dominus - sector 6 barracks unit delta

"There he is. Lower bunk on the fifth row, by the window."

Applejack nodded as she spotted the familiar head of hair. "Ah see him. Thank ya kindly, sugarcube."

After dismissing the mercenary that had led her up to this area, Applejack trotted over to Daniels' bunk.

"Rise 'n shine cowboy. Ah got a thing'r two to say to ya," the farmpony said, knocking a hoof against the leg of the bed.

Daniels didn't respond at all, and was still facing away from her as he slumbered.

Applejack's expression became annoyed. "Yo! Git up already! Ah know ya can hear me!"

Daniels shifted slightly in response, rolling onto his back as one arm slowly reached out toward the orange pony.

Applejack wasn't sure what he was doing at first as his hand reached for her head, and she was none too impressed when he grabbed the rim of her hat and pulled it down over her eyes.

"Sleeping now. Late watch shift," mumbled the man as his arm went slack.

Applejack pushed her hat back into place, and then stood up next to the bunk, placing her forelegs on top of the resting man. "Look, either you get up now and talk fer a minute, or Ah give yer boys here an example on how the Apple family harvests trees and wakes up lazy farmhands."

The other soldiers seemed quite interested in this, but ultimately they were disappointed as Daniels groaned and turned over some more so that he was at least facing the pony as his head rested on the pillow.

"What're you here for, AJ?" Daniels murmured, his eyes squinting against the dim lights of the barracks. "We've been running long and heavy guard shifts due to the attack. I'm not getting much sleep today."

"It'll just take a minute," the orange pony insisted, "sit up, would ya? Ah don't want ya nodding off 'fore Ah'm done."

It took way too long for Daniels to do so, but eventually the mercenary was sitting on his bunk in his shorts and tank top, scrubbing his hair with his hand.

"Thanks. Ah just wanted to say goodbye to ya," Applejack said, smiling a bit somberly, "me and the others're headin' back home today."

Daniels blinked rapidly. "Oh? Where are they?"

Applejack shrugged. "They're already at the gates. Even though somepony fixed up yer train, they didn't wanna take another trip out when Ah told 'em where Ah was goin'. They all said that we'd run into ya again later anyway."

Daniels nodded. "Seems likely. If we run any more units through Ponyville they'll probably put me in one of them. And you might be back, I suppose."

"Yeah, well, just in case Ah wanted to see ya before Ah left. Ah might be awful busy when Ah get back, and so might you." Then she wet her lips and leaned in her head to speak to him at a much lower volume. "Also, they don't exactly take good care of ya over here. If... Ah mean, if ya..."

She trailed off nervously, and Daniels chuckled lightly.

"If I kick the bucket after you leave, you at least wanted to say goodbye first. Thanks," he smirked and placed a hand on Applejack's hat, shifting it back and forth in an awkward attempt to pet her, "you're a good kid, AJ. It's kind of a shame you had to make friends with creeps like us."

"Oh, don't you patronize me!" Applejack snapped, though she didn't really seem angry. Nor did she make any attempt to stop him from rubbing her head. "Somepony's gotta look out fer ya. You'd already be fertilizer if Ah weren't around."

"True enough. Goodbye, AJ. It's been fun," Daniels said somberly, letting his hand drop.

"G'bye Daniels. Keep yer head down," Applejack said sadly as she turned back around, trotting toward the exit.

Daniels sighed as the doors shut behind the blonde earth pony, rubbing his face with his hands.

"Sooooo..." began the man laying on the bunk above, leaning his head over the edge of the mattress. "... Was she, like, your girlfriend, or...?"

"Oh, you can go straight to Hell," Daniels snapped, dropping back to his bunk and closing his eyes again.

He heard the door to the hall slide open again, and the mercenary craned his head to see if Applejack had come back to say something else.

When he saw a Dark Techpriest enter instead, he closed his eyes again. During waking hours he would very much like to know why a Techpriest would be wandering about in the barracks for human foot soldiers, but he was currently too tired to indulge his curiosity.

"Rifleman Wyatt Daniels. Your attention, please."

A hefty groan came from Daniels as he cracked his eyes open again. "Blast, I'm popular all of a sudden. I don't suppose there's a beautiful HUMAN woman among everyone lined up to keep me from sleeping?"

The Dark Techpriest tilted its head to the side. "I am female, as a matter of fact, but I am unsure as to the relevance of this."

Daniels slowly pulled himself upright, turning his gaze toward the Techpriest. He honestly couldn't tell by looking if it (presumably she) was telling the truth.

"Well, I suppose it's best that you didn't wait for me to fall asleep again. What can I do for you, Techpriest?" Daniels asked.

"I require your attention for only a few moments, Wyatt Daniels," the Techpriest said, not bothering to introduce herself, "I have an item for you from Dark Magos Kaelith."

Daniels promptly became far more alert. "Say what, now?"

She had a long, thin rifle case hanging from her back-mounted servo arm, and the Dark Techpriest swung it around to present the item to the mercenary. "I have an item for you from Dark Magos Kaelith," she repeated, unable to understand the man's confusion from such a simple statement.

Daniels hesitantly reached out to take the case, and then laid it over his lap.

"What is it?" he asked, staring at the gene-lock built into the side.

"It is a Tau rail rifle and pulse pistol," the Techpriest said simply, revealing a smaller attaché case being held by her bionic tri-clawed arm, "this is an extra ammunition supply. Although we have significant stocks of Tau munitions available to us in the fleet, be advised that these stores are not readily available in Company armories, nor will you be able to scavenge such ammunition from fallen allies. It is advised that you practice discretion when using your new weapons to conserve ammunition in the field."

Daniels stared down at the case, then up at the Dark Techpriest. "Okay, let's back up a tad. Why is the Dark Magos giving me presents?"

"These are not gifts," the Techpriest replied coldly, sounding slightly offended by the notion, "I was informed that I may have to explain the disbursement of these items at length, so I have prepared an explanation."

"I'm all ears," Daniels said, utterly overwhelmed.

"The Dark Mechanicus deals in many forms of currency, Wyatt Daniels. Materials and data are common, but even more so, the Mechanicus deals in favors."

"I'm following you," Daniels mumbled.

"You performed a favor of considerable value to the Dark Magos: you protected one of the fusion cores from damage by the xeno intruder," the cyborg cultist explained, "in order to repay this debt, Dark Magos Kaelith modified the intruder's weapons such that anyone can fire them without issue. He has now given them back to you, and considers his obligation negated."

Daniels felt fairly numb as he passed a hand over the gene-lock. A light promptly lit green, and the case split open along a horizontal seam.

Inside was the Fireblade's rail rifle and sidearm, exactly as the Techpriest had said, along with several ammunition packs for both. The casings had been replaced such that it was shielded with durasteel over an adamantium frame, and the rifle included a bayonet attachment that one would never find on a Tau weapon. They also bore the Legion colors of gunmetal with gold trim rather than their old heraldry of blue and black.

"I guess my main question is why I'm being rewarded so well for just doing my job," he asked, "I mean, I was just hoping for a nice bonus to this month's pay at BEST."

"The Dark Magos considered your actions to go beyond the usual demands of your function and determined that he stood indebted to you," the Techpriest said, although she was starting to sound slightly tired of the conversation, "and he thought it fitting to repay your efforts with the weapons that you yourself secured. Is this unsatisfactory?"

"Nope. Most satisfactory," Daniels said as he shut the case, "I'll need to put in some extra target range practice to get used to new weapons, but I'm right pleased, Techpriest."

"Excellent. Then our business is concluded," she said, turning away from the man and heading back toward the doors.

Daniels stared down at the case briefly, then looked up again. "Actually, Techpriest?"

She halted.

"You have a cutting torch handy?"

She turned and nodded wordlessly.

"In that case, I was wondering if you could make a TINY modification for me..."

****

Ferrous Dominus - gates

Applejack hummed to herself as she approached the gates, her saddlebags clinking noisily from the bottles stuffed within.

She spotted her friends quickly, finding it as easy as anyone else to spot the cavalcade of brightly colored ponies among the industrial grays of the fortress.

"Ah, finally. At least we only have to wait on Miss Gaela now," Rarity said as Applejack trotted up to them. She was laying by the side of the rhino, which was almost smothered by her luggage.

Twilight beckoned over to the side of the lots. "Give your badge to that man in white before we leave."

"Roger!" Applejack said brightly, trotting off in that direction.

"Well, she seems chipper," Rarity noted.

"I'm sure she's happy to head home again after it was wrecked," Fluttershy said with a pleased smile.

"Not to mention that this whole mission to save Equestria from the evil human army ended pretty well for all of us," Rainbow Dash pointed out, "the humans leave on their own, Equestria's saved, and we even get to hang out with them until they go."

"True. That... That could have gone much worse," Twilight admitted, chewing her lip.

Applejack returned from the security station, taking off her saddlebags. "Yo, where can Ah stash this?"

"Anywhere inside," Twilight said, beckoning to the open rear access ramp of the transport.

When Applejack carried them in, however, she heard the distinctive sound of glass containers bouncing against each other.

"Wait, Applejack, what do you have in there?" Twilight asked in alarm. Rarity and Rainbow Dash also looked quite intrigued.

"They call it amasec," Applejack said, wedging the saddlebags next to a tool box and hoping the vehicle wouldn't shake too much.

After she was satisfied that it was secure, she walked back out. "Ah brought some cider with me when Ah came here and plenty o' bits. After tryin' some of the human moonshine fer mahself I figured Ah'd bring some back and see how it'd sell. So Ah traded fer it."

"Can I try some?" Rainbow Dash asked excitedly.

"Sure. Fer forty bits a bottle," Applejack said flatly, smirking as Rainbow blinked in shock.

"FORTY? There are magic potions that sell for less than that!" Rainbow Dash complained.

"Supply and demand, sugarcube. Ah only got four of 'em," the farmpony said smugly, leaning against the Rhino, "that was my 'dear friend discount' price, too. This'd run sixty bits fer most ponies."

"I see the magic of friendship is trading at a premium of twenty bits nowadays," Rarity said with an amused smirk, "ever the businessmare."

A slow and deliberate clapping sound came from behind the ponies, eventually distracting them from their conversation.

"Well played, Miss. It gladdens me to see the soul of a merchant exists within your people."

Only one of the ponies knew the man who was approaching them, and Twilight had only met him briefly. The mustachioed human bowed.

"I have not met most of you, I believe. I am Norris Delgan, Trademaster of the 38th Company. I will be accompanying you and Acolyte Gaela to your settlement."

He wasn't wearing his rebreather at the moment, and was also dressed in a fine officer's uniform with the medals and ribbons normally pinned to the breast replaced by a single golden Chaos star that somehow managed to seem refined in the ensemble. Even his facial reconstruction was smooth and carefully resembled the shape of the flesh it replaced, in stark contrast to the bulky and mechanically optimized augments of the Mechanicus and Iron Warriors. He was the first human any of them had met that wasn't dressed like he was prepared for a firefight, and Rarity found herself instantly interested, if not still cautious.

Rainbow Dash and Applejack introduced themselves, receiving polite nods from the man. Fluttershy had already retreated into the Rhino to hide from him and Twilight had already met him, so soon Rarity found the Trademaster's calculating gaze on her.

"I am Rarity, Mister Delgan. May I ask why you're coming with us?" the white unicorn mused, an eyebrow raised. "I'd heard that the 38th Company was planning to negotiate with Equestria, but given its military nature I would have expected a general or professional diplomat, not a merchant."

Delgan stood silently for a few seconds, and then chuckled happily in response to the question. "Miss Sparkle, you never mentioned that one of your friends possessed such extraordinary wit and political acumen." He straightened before he answered the unicorn's question. "I am acting as liaison to your people because it occurred to me alone that such an arrangement might be beneficial. Sadly, my Astartes masters could hardly care less. It was quite generous of them even to spare the Dark Acolyte Gaela for my purposes, considering the current need for repairs about Ferrous Dominus."

"And what kind of benefit do you hope to find in Equestria, Mister Delgan?" Rarity pressed, plenty suspicious of the human's motives.

Delgan continued smiling as he circled the unicorn, observing her with an intensity that had Spike clenching his teeth angrily. "Commercial benefits, Miss Rarity. The Iron Warriors, with a few exceptions, see other life forms as either assets to be expended or targets to be destroyed. The Dark Mechanicus dismissed your entire civilization as worthless at a glance based on your technology level and your dependence on psykers."

He stepped past the ponies, and then he looked up at Rarity's luggage as he rubbed at his chin. "Those segments of the 38th Company, while indispensable and extremely capable in their own right, suffer from... let's call it 'limited vision'. They see the entire galaxy as a series of objectives or build orders to be completed. Their work is their life, so they have little concept of matters like comfort, diversion, or culture. But these things DO matter. As much as the Iron Warriors would insist otherwise, you cannot run a settlement, or even a reasonably large base such as this, on nothing but metal, bullets, and nutrient paste. I can see the value in the more abstract products of a species. Art. Food. Language. Influence."

Twilight saw that Rainbow Dash and Applejack weren't even paying attention to the man anymore as he spoke, and seemed to be involved in a quiet argument about Applejack's amasec.

Rarity, on the other hand, looked like she was trying to hold back tears of joy.

"Thank you, Mister Delgan! I had very nearly given up on your species entirely!" Rarity said, pressing a hoof against her chest. "Ever since I arrived I've seen nothing but gun-toting brutes wearing rags and metal tromping about in this industrial blight and chugging filth that could strip the paint off walls!" Her expression turned somewhat bitter. "Half the time I attempt to talk to them, it's 'be silent, xeno,' and the other half it's 'away with you, witch'! You cannot even imagine what a relief it is to finally meet a human with a sense of tact and class!"

Delgan grimaced. "It must have been unbearable, truly. To say nothing of the GROSS inconvenience of the Tau assault."

Twilight quirked an eyebrow. "'Gross inconvenience'? Didn't a lot of people die?"

"Ugh, I don't even want to think about the Tau," Rarity said irritably, dismissing Twilight's question. "Just LOOK at what those pests did to my tail!"

Delgan tilted his head as he focused attention on the short length of shining purple that curved down behind the unicorn's rear and then curled upward at the tip.

"It looks immaculate," he said simply, "whatever did they do to it?"

"It was immaculate with twice again the length before those thugs burned it off!" Rarity scowled.

"Scoundrels," Delgan spat, shaking his head. Then he spotted a patch of black moving among the transport maintenance crews. "Ah, you'll have to excuse me. It seems our Acolyte has arrived, and I require a word with her."

He bowed and then turned away, leaving the ponies on their own once more.

"My, what an utter snake of a man," Rarity said with a chuckle as soon as Delgan was out of earshot.

Twilight and Spike looked startled.

"What? You seemed like you were really getting along with him," Twilight said.

"Well, of course I was. I wasn't lying when I said I was happy to meet a human with style and etiquette. But Mister Delgan was trying far too hard to ingratiate himself. And really, pretending like he cared about my tail when he probably had friends and associates who were killed in the attack was just transparent. Who would do something like that?"

Twilight's mind boggled. "So you dislike him?"

Rarity couldn't suppress a laugh. "Are you joking? Twilight, darling, after coming here and being faced with armored giants, indifferent soldiers, deadly Sorcerers, and gigantic metal monstrosities, getting to deal with a smarmy, manipulative stuffed shirt is an absolute treat. I barely restrained myself from hugging him."

"Come on, AJ! Twenty bits! If it's good I'll pay the other twenty, okay?" Rainbow Dash complained loudly enough to draw the two horned ponies away from their previous topic.

"What kinda business ya think Ah'm runnin' Dash? Moonshine don't come with a performance guarantee!" Applejack snapped, standing in front of her saddlebags like a guard.

Rarity snickered. "You know, as TRADEMASTER, I'm sure Mister Delgan has plenty of whatever swill you're trying to get your hooves on, darling."

Rainbow Dash brightened immediately, although Applejack looked annoyed by the prospect.

"Gaela's coming!" Twilight said excitedly as she spotted the black-robed figure walking toward them with Delgan.

The Dark Acolyte didn't offer any greetings as she got within earshot, and immediately started disbursing whatever information she felt was immediately relevant.

"We're going to be taking a medicae transport with us, and we'll be stopping at the Apples' farm," she declared, "this will extend the travel time somewhat."

Applejack blinked. "What? Aw, that's okay. You can let everypony off in Ponyville instead if it would be faster."

"No, we cannot," Gaela responded flatly, "immediately previous to the Tau attack the Mechanicus transports that were assigned to set up your agri-facility were shot down near your farm. There were a few surviving Scavurel that require support."

Applejack gasped. "The Tau got 'em before they could build mah house?"

"No, they were shot down on the way back. Your facilities were completed on schedule immediately prior to enemy contact."

The farmpony blinked as she worked out when they had finished. "Oh. Wow, y'all work fast, doncha?"

"We do," Gaela agreed as her helmet broke open and shifted into its disengaged position, "so we'll set up there first."

Delgan bowed. "I will be taking a different transport directly to your village, so we must part for a short while."

"Hold on!" Rainbow Dash commanded, causing the man to pause. "Do you have any... what was it called? Amasec?"

Delgan's demeanor changed instantly, and he stood up straighter as he placed his palms together. "I have a great deal, as a matter of fact. Someone has to keep real liquor around to compete with that filth brewed by the soldiery."

The blue pegasus smiled hopefully. "Can I have some?"

"If I can have fifty of your 'bits'." Delgan replied with a smirk.

As Applejack snickered, Rainbow staggered and dropped onto the ground, as if the price had struck her from the air. "But that's even more than what Applejack wanted!"

"Actually, from what I hear I'm under-cutting her price by one-sixth," the trader said as he inspected his fingernails, "but you won't be getting any discounts from me, lass."

Rainbow Dash moped as the Trademaster walked off toward his own convoy.

"Whether in service to the Imperium, the darker powers, or any of the factions that count themselves as 'free', capitalism is always the same," Gaela noted absently.

Then she glanced about, frowning. "We seem to be missing Pie. Will she be along, or shall I engage in that asinine running gag to summon her?"

"Oh, she's here," Twilight insisted, pointing toward the rhino, "she's with Mister Dest."

****

Rhino cab

"This button controls the smoke launchers. It deploys an obscuring screen to foil incoming attacks, although the protection is marginal at best."

Pinkie grinned as she stood with her front legs on the control board of the Rhino and her rear legs on the bench that served as the crew seat.

"This is the navigator. It draws on local scans and recon data to generate a picture of the region and locate objectives and obstacles. How useful it is varies widely from mission to mission."

Pinkie pointed to a large button in-between the two tread control levers that were Dest's primary interface to drive the transport. "Is that the horn? Can I honk the horn?!"

"You may NOT honk the horn," Dest said sharply, "the horn is for my use only."

Pinkie's happy expression turned to a simpering pout instantly, and she stared pitifully at the Chaos Space Marine.

"Your attempt to influence my decisions with sudden and dramatic emotional shifts will fail," Dest stated flatly, his crimson visor glimmering in the dim light.

Pinkie's lip started quivering.

"... You may not honk the horn. But you MAY man the combi-bolter," Dest allowed.

"Woo-hoo!" Pinkie cheered. She promptly climbed up the ladder rails behind her toward the top hatch.

"Lord Dest?" called Gaela from within the transport hold. "We are ready to depart."

Dest watched the indicator lights for the rear access ramp turn off as the locks engaged. "Heading out, then. Pie, don't fire the gun while we're still in the base."

"Not even at the servitors?" the earth pony asked, already seated behind the combi-bolter and swiveling about for targets.

"Not even at the servitors. You can shoot at whatever you want once we leave the security cordon."

"Hooray!"

****

Ponyville

"Hey, Bloom!" "Wait up!"

Apple Bloom glanced behind her as Scootaloo and Sweetie Belle raced from the schoolhouse to catch up.

"Oh, hey. Y'all comin' over today too?" Apple Bloom asked happily, trotting across the schoolyard.

"Of course we're coming over! Everything exciting has been happening at your farm nowadays!" Scootaloo said brightly.

"Oh, I don't know about that. There are still bunkers next to Fluttershy's cottage, even after the humans left," Sweetie Belle pointed out.

"Hey blank flanks!" shouted a voice from behind them, immediately banishing their good mood as two other fillies trotted up behind them.

"Where are you three off to in such a hurry? Back to your nutty space shack?"

Apple Bloom glared behind her at Diamond Tiara as the pale pink filly trotted up to them. Silver Spoon followed behind, as usual, and held the same haughty expression as the pair of fillies giggled.

"My mother actually stopped by there yesterday," Silver Spoon said suddenly, raising a hoof to her mouth as if to stifle giggles, "she said the whole place looks more like an amusement park than a farm! If you showed off the humans with metal limbs, you'd have a full circus, complete with freak show!"

As Diamond Tiara and Silver Spoon laughed, Apple Bloom rolled her eyes.

"Look here, now. Normally Ah'd stick around and take yer sass, but Ah don't have time fer that today. Mah brother needs me to come home and help out since Applejack is still away."

"Didn't Lenna say she would help out, though?" Scootaloo asked.

"Sure, but what's she gonna do? She don't have any legs!" Apple Bloom countered.

The amused expression on Diamond Tiara's face wilted slightly as the three markless fillies began talking amongst themselves again. "Even without legs, she has to be more help than YOU," the pink filly surmised, pointing to Apple Bloom.

The red-headed pony turned her head away. "Fer yer information, Diamond, Ah get plenty done with Crabapple's help."

"Who's Crabapple? Did your family have to start hiring part-timers because you were too useless?" Diamond Tiara asked.

"That's her, over there!" Apple Bloom said, breaking into a gallop and sprinting down the road.

Crabapple wasn't exactly hidden by the shade of the tree that the automata was standing under, but the two unfamiliar fillies didn't really notice the painted-up machine until Apple Bloom raced toward it, and then they stopped short in surprise.

+Command unit Apple Bloom has been secured. Perimeter has been scanned. Commencing retrieval mission.+

Diamond and Silver glanced at each other.

"It looks like a trash can on legs," the latter noted.

"Yeah, she kinda does, but she's nice," Apple Bloom said happily, nuzzling one of Crabapple's armor plates. Sweetie Belle and Scootaloo started climbing up the main body so that they could ride the probe home.

"What IS that thing?" Diamond Tiara asked, taking a cautious step back.

"It's an intelligent machine the humans made," Sweetie Belle said smugly, quite pleased to be able to talk down to the pair of privileged ponies, "one of the Scavurel said they're dropped onto planets from space so that they can scout the surface for the human space ships!"

The two marked fillies shared another glance, feeling increasingly out of their element.

"And why do YOU have one?" Silver Spoon demanded of Apple Bloom.

The young farmer snorted. "It's a long story, and like Ah told ya, Ah don't have a lotta time. But in a nutshell, the Warp did it." She started walking down the road, and Crabapple moved into step behind her, matching its commander's pace.

Apple Bloom's explanation was utterly unhelpful to the two confused ponies, although Diamond Tiara was quick to shake off her surprise and curiosity.

"Yeah, real impressive, taking some human garbage that they probably dumped in your yard by accident."

Apple Bloom remained silent. Partly because she really did want to get home as soon as possible, and in part because that guess was basically what had actually happened.

"Whatever. I could get one of those walking tin heaps if I wanted one," Diamond Tiara said, running a hoof back to brush through her hair.

She was quite annoyed when the three unmarked fillies promptly burst into laughter.

"Pft! Yeah, good luck with that," Scootaloo snorted.

"I think you'll have to get along a little better with the 'freaks' before that'll happen," Sweetie Belle pointed out with a smirk.

Apple Bloom didn't bother rebuking the two fillies, and started galloping faster. "C'mon Crabapple, giddyup! Big Brother's waitin'!"

Diamond Tiara and Silver Spoon watched them go with matching glares of annoyance. Neither filly had a good response though, so they simply waited until their classmates were out of earshot.

Then Diamond turned toward Silver. "Your mother went to Sweet Apple Acres again this week? Isn't that the third time?"

Silver Spoon winced. "She's there a lot. Even though we still have plenty of apples. I think she might have a crush on Apple Bloom's brother." Her ears fell flat against her head. "Things have been a little uncomfortable at home."

Diamond grimaced. "Well, come stay at my place tonight. You can help me bug my daddy to buy me a space robot!"

"Okay!" Silver Spoon said, perking up instantly.

****

Sweet Apple Acres

A loud thumping noise came from the orchard as one of the apple trees shook violently, its branches trembling before the apples broke free and tumble to the ground.

Big Macintosh turned around as the apples bounced around his hooves, reaching his head down to grab those that hadn't landed in his buckets already.

"That has to be the most absurd method of fruit harvest ever contemplated."

Positioned under a different tree was a large harvest wagon, and sitting inside it was Lenna, the Dark Mechanicus pilot.

Long, prehensile metal tendrils slithered up out of her shoulders, and these curious extremities darted into the trees before cutting away at apple stems or wrapping around branches to free the fruit strung out along them. The apples would then be dropped directly into the bucket Lenna was carrying in her more ordinary arms.

"I'm serious. The damage to the flora from such a crude method of harvest draws energy away from the process of generating fruit in order to repair the tissue damage. The amount of force you're using to dislodge the foodstuffs is immense, and all these trees display obvious signs of accumulated abuse on their exterior layers."

"Eeyup," Big Mac agreed, putting the last apple in his bucket and then carrying the full buckets over to the wagon.

Lenna's tendrils filled up a bucket of her own, and she placed it at the far corner where her own apple piles lay.

"In addition," the pilot continued as the red stallion brought his buckets over and put them in one by one, "your method sometimes leaves a few apples remaining on the branches. Putting aside the accumulated wastage, those abandoned apples may end up sprouting new trees for your grove if left alone, and pass along the genetic variations that lead to stronger stems. Ultimately, this will select for those traits that will make your job more difficult."

Big Mac paused and glanced up at the boughs of the apple tree, spotting one of the deep red morsels almost hidden behind the leaves.

"Eeyup," he agreed, and then placed his last loaded bucket into the wagon.

"So you concede that your method of harvest is ineffective?" Lenna asked, planting her hands on her recently fixed life-support pod.

"Eenope."

Lenna leaned over forward, the blank gunmetal visor that was grafted over her eyes almost touching Big Mac's snout. "Why not?"

"'Cuz Ah've finished three trees fer every one o' yours," Big Mac said simply before he started walking to the next tree.

Lenna straightened out and said nothing for several seconds as she studied her apple pile as compared to Mac's.

"It's more like two-point-eight-three trees for every one of mine," the pilot corrected grudgingly.

"Ah'm in no hurry," Mac said in explanation as he arranged the next set of buckets.

Before he could kick the next tree, Lenna felt a sensor ping and checked her instruments.

"We have vehicles incoming. Point seven kilometers from present position," she said grimly, swiveling about in her pod to face the intercept.

Big Macintosh snapped his head up, staring in the same direction she was.

"IFF signatures detected... they're friendlies," Lenna said, her voice curiously unchanged.

Big Mac relaxed. Slightly.

"I'll need to get closer to establish a vox link," Lenna advised, glancing over to the stallion, "shall we?"

"Eeyup," Macintosh said as he tossed the emptied apple buckets into the wagon.

After their tools had been loaded up, Big Macintosh hitched himself to the front of the wagon and then started moving them through the orchard.

Lenna placed her hands to her temples as she worked out the data scraps she could pick out of the distant units. As a pilot, she was used to doing such things with the considerably more powerful instruments of a Mechanicus vehicle, but even ripped from her cockpit she still had the tools to assemble a wide-scale picture of a potential battlefield.

"There are several units. Too large a group to be a scout mission. Not enough to be a strike force. And if it were an infiltration task force I wouldn't have picked it up."

Big Mac glanced backward as he carried the cybernetic woman along, his eyes looking mildly concerned.

"I believe that this is our transport group to take us home," Lenna reassured him, "but that can't be all. There are too many vehicles."

Big Macintosh could hear them now, the deep rumble of the transport engines reaching out into the orchard.

"Almost... there! Got a link!" The network antennae attached to her back quivered as it shifted upward.

"This is unit 90017-871 requesting identification of incoming convoy."

"This is dispatch alpha seven responding to your useless string of numbers," crackled a voice from her vox unit, "good to hear you tin men are alive and vigilant. No, Pie, pull down the top lever before you attach the new clip. Yes, like that."

Big Mac stopped to listen in to the new voice, and Lenna shrugged.

"Anyway, we have a ride to take you back to civilization. Try not to get this one blown up along the way."

"Confirmed, alpha seven. Make your way to the agri-complex. I will inform my squad Core that you have arrived."

Big Macintosh started moving again, heading for the farmstead.

Lenna cut the vox link, and then crossed her arms over her chest. "Well, it's about time. Ferrous Dominus should have received our distress beacon days ago. A little longer and we'll be out of your hands. Ah, I mean, hooves."

"Eeyup." Big Macintosh carried the wagon along for almost another full minute, listening to the rumble of heavy vehicle engines get closer. Then he turned his head to the side.

"Thanks fer helpin' out. Ya didn't need to do this."

The Mechanicus pilot tilted her head to the side, perplexed. "Helping out? You saved our lives. Aid to the Dark Mechanicus is not so easily forgotten."

She reached down and picked up an apple. She didn't like the look of it one bit - it was far inferior to nutrient paste - but it was clearly the primary foodstuff of this agri-facility, and the livelihood of its owners.

"Helping you harvest these 'apples' is simply a productive way to pass the time. I do not even consider it repayment for your assistance."

"Well, Ah do," Big Macintosh said simply as the farmhouse/bunker complex came into view.

Whatever Lenna was about to say in response was interrupted by the bark of a combi-bolter firing, and Lenna immediately threw herself to the side, tilting her pod over far enough that she fell sidelong into the bed of apples behind her.

Big Mac flinched and ducked his head as small explosions started ripping through an apple tree several meters away, but there wasn't much else he could do while hitched to the cart.

"Dispatch alpha seven!" Lenna barked as she re-established the vox link. "Why have you opened fire? I'm reading zero enemy contacts!"

Rather than hearing the vox-garbled reply of the Rhino driver, she instead heard an angry shout in the background.

"Pinkie, quite shootin' up mah farm! They just got it fixed up, daggone it!"

"But Desty said I could shoot whatever I wanted!"

"I did say that. Pie, you may fire at will. Try not to hit our mission objectives, though."

"Okie-dokie-lokie!"

"HEY! Ah said QUIT IT!"

Lenna terminated the connection again, and then hauled herself upright. "So it seems your relative has returned."

"Eeyup," Big Mac started moving again, his nerves settled already. He was quite happy to hear that his sister was finally back; as crazy as things had been in Sweet Apple Acres with the new facilities and the Scavurel, he could only imagine what she had gone through in the heart of the Iron Warrior fortress.

But he had to disapprove of letting Pinkie Pie man a gun turret.

"Whoo! I'm a space pirate!" Pinkie shouted in glee as the stream of bolters finally ate all the way through the trunk and the apple tree teetered over. The Rhino pulled in ahead of them next to the farmhouse, and Big Mac could easily spot the excitable and brightly colored earth pony shuddering in time with the bursts from the combi-bolter turret. There was another Rhino behind it, and several other transports of different design were heading down the road and past the farm, leaving them behind.

"Mah trees! What did mah poor trees ever do to ya?!" came a shout from within the Rhino followed by a loud banging noise.

"Applejack, calm down!"

"Yeah, you almost hit the human booze!"

Lenna ignored the shouting as Big Macintosh carried her past the front of the Rhinos and toward the farmstead. "I've contacted the Scavurel and informed them of the situation. Additionally, I have a notice from Crabapple that your youngest sibling has likewise arrived."

The rear ramp of the Rhino dropped open, and Applejack promptly charged out, her lasso at the ready. "Ya daggone crazy pink piece of..."

She almost stumbled over her own hooves as she finally got a look at Sweet Apple Acres again for the first time since it was rebuilt.

"What in tarnation?" she gaped as she stared at the bunker complex, and then her gaze snapped from one new building to the next.

"Whoa! This is awesome!" Rainbow Dash said as she took off out of the transport, hovering above the farmer. "Your house looks like a bunch of bunkers stacked on top of each other!"

Applejack grimaced. "It ain't exactly homey, is it?"

"Well, look at it this way: with all that armor plating it has now, you may be able to go a full month without having to repair the barn," Rarity pointed out as she stepped out of the transport.

Twilight exited with Gaela, and the former gaped as she beheld the wonders that had become of the Apple family land.

"Ah, I see everything was completed according to specification," Gaela said, her voice sounding much less annoyed than usual as she studied the complex. Then she saw Big Mac, who was unhitching himself from the wagon.

"Macintosh, have you had time to inspect the facilities since completion?"

The red stallion stepped free of the wagon before nodding to the armored woman. "Eeyup."

"I made several modifications to standard pattern systems to make them more accessible to ungulates. Mostly replacing levers at waist and chest level with lever plates on the floor. Did you have any difficulty using them?"

"Nnope."

"I didn't recall the measurements of your barn footprint at the time of choosing a pattern for the central bestiary, but I selected a design based on the approximate needs of a small-scale facility. Is the volume sufficient?"

"Eeyup."

"Excellent." Gaela paused briefly. "On an unrelated note. I find your laconic speech patterns quite agreeable. If only all ponies were so pleasantly terse."

"Hey!" Twilight exclaimed, guessing that she had been used as a point of comparison.

"Ah don't get it. What're all these other doohickeys?" Applejack asked as she finally moved her attention past the farmstead. There were a few new structures besides her house and barn, and they didn't even look like anything she had seen in Ferrous Dominus.

"These are all necessary facilities for the practice of agriculture at any reasonable scale," Gaela explained, "plus a light generator to provide the necessary energy, since your power infrastructure can charitably be described as 'primordial'."

Twilight raised her foreleg into the air. "I would like to see the power core, please." She hadn't been allowed into the fusion reactor back in the fortress, and Applejack's description of the core had been limited to "a hot room with a lot of pipes and floatin' thingamajiggers."

"In a minute. Pilot, report," Gaela said, turning to Lenna.

The withered woman straightened, ignoring Rainbow Dash as the pegasus hovered over to her curiously. "I've contacted the Scavurel and they're preparing for departure. One of the Dregs has a fresh amputation, but otherwise damage has-"

"SWEET BABY LUNA!" Rainbow Dash suddenly screamed as she stared into the wagon. "Your legs are gone!"

The ponies (save Big Mac) and dragon recoiled in shock. Lenna was still in the wagon, so her lower torso was hidden from the grounded ponies.

"That's awful!" Twilight said, wincing. "That crash must've been terrible!"

"Ah'm so sorry," Applejack agreed, taking her hat off and holding it sadly against her chest, "if Ah hadn't wanted y'all to get mah farm rebuilt so soon-"

"I wasn't injured in the crash," Lenna interrupted irritably.

A stunned silence briefly dominated the gathering.

"Then... what happened to..." Rarity trailed off uncomfortably.

"They were in the way. So I got rid of them. Over a decade ago, in fact. In the Mechanicus extraneous limbs are replaced with more useful ones," Lenna explained, "can we drop the subject? I'm really quite tired of having to explain this to every equine I meet."

Most of the ponies didn't seem entirely comfortable simply leaving the topic at that, but none of them were willing to insist that she elaborate.

"So is that what happened to your eyes, too?" Rainbow Dash asked, poking at the blank visor.

"Oh, no. A daemonic harpy clawed them out. Hateful beasts, really; I'm glad the Iron Warriors don't employ them." Then she glanced down at Applejack. "So you needn't feel responsible for any injury on my part. You can feel bad about the Scavurel and Dark Acolytes who perished in the crash, though."

"Do you?" Rainbow Dash asked the pilot.

"Not really. They were all fundamentally awful people."

Rarity sighed. "Not to interrupt the constant outpour of gallows humor, but is there any chance I can get a helping hoof with my bags? Mister Dest isn't taking us into Ponyville proper."

"Eeyup." Big Macintosh started unloading the wagon to free up the space; he would need all of it to accommodate the luggage.

"Applejack, I'm going to go show the power station to Sparkle and explain its mechanisms. You can accompany us or inspect the facilities on your own," Gaela said as she walked away. Twilight followed while trying not to skip in joy. Spike remained behind, naturally, to help with Rarity's luggage.

After retrieving her saddlebags from the transport and walking into the complex, Applejack was somewhat discouraged to find it exactly as sterile and military-looking on the inside.

She supposed she couldn't complain, since an ugly free house was still leaps and bounds better than no free house, but it wouldn't be easy to furnish this place. Some of the interior from their old farmhouse had been salvaged, but even if they'd managed to save all their furniture, they now had more than double the floor space.

"Hey Granny, hey Bloom," Applejack said, greeting her family as she poked her head into the kitchen, "Ah'm back!"

"Big Sis!" Apple Bloom promptly jumped up from the table and galloped over to Applejack, almost leaping up onto her.

"Welcome back, dearie. I was just baking some apple pie for the young'ins," Granny Smith said as she placed a raw pie into a large metal receptacle.

As soon as the elderly mare withdrew her hooves, the door to the receptacle slid shut.

"Analyzing substrate material... adjusting core temperature..." crackled an electronic voice from the oven. A second later the door panel locked and the viewing glass glowed red.

Granny Smith raised an eyebrow. "Ah didn't even know it did that. Crazy newfangled contraptions."

"This place is gonna take some gettin' used to," Applejack mumbled as Apple Bloom pawed at her leg.

"Sis! Tell us about yer trip to the human fort!" the youngest Apple sibling begged. Scootaloo and Sweetie Belle were seated in front of a low table in front of Granny Smith, but looked extremely interested as well.

Applejack sighed. "Oh, ya know, it went about as expected. Some evil space wizard messed with mah head, the Tau showed up to make a mess o' things, and Ah had to stare down a giant Iron Warrior with huge robot spider legs. Then Ah trampled some alien floozy and got plastered fer most of the rest of the trip."

The fillies seemed appropriately impressed by the extremely abridged tale of heroics, and Sweetie Belle piped up next.

"What about my sister?"

"Rarity mostly complained a lot. In her defense, most of it was legit," Applejack said with a shrug, causing Sweetie to wilt in disappointment. "She did pick up an unhealthy interest in them human weapons while we were there, though. Ah hope she stows that thing somewhere safe."

"Did you go to space?!" Scootaloo asked, her tiny wings twitching in excitement.

"Ah did not. Ah was too busy beatin' up grayskins and samplin' the local beverages," Applejack said curtly, walking past the fillies, "Ah did bring y'all some souvenirs, though."

She reached into her saddlebags and pulled out several objects as the young ponies squealed in excitement below.

"Ah got this star amulet from some sketchy guy wearin' incense burners with books tied to his back and stuff. This thing is called an 'auspex'. Ah picked it up off the street durin' the attack. And then we have a banner with the Iron Skull on it. Not really the nicest decoration, but it IS from space."

She laid out the items on the counter, and the fillies stood over them, their eyes gleaming.

Sweetie's excitement faded somewhat as she looked at the Chaos amulet. "That thing kind of makes my horn hurt."

Applejack shrugged. "Then ya should probably take somethin' else."

Sweetie Belle quickly nabbed the auspex as Scootaloo took the amulet she had duly rejected. Apple Bloom looked giddy as she spread out the banner, which was a jet black standard with the Iron Skull superimposed over a golden Chaos Star.

"Thanks, Sis! You're the best!" Apple Bloom said brightly.

"Thank you, Miss Applejack!"

"No sweat, girls. Now Ah'll see ya'll later. Ah gotta see about turnin' one of the cells in this fancy bunkhouse into a proper bedroom." Applejack walked off as the young ponies prodded their new belongings.

Sweetie Belle stared down at the auspex, the gears in her head turning.

"You know, Apple Bloom... I just thought of something."

"What's that, Sweetie Belle?" Apple Bloom said as she folded up her new banner.

"Well, between Crabapple, the Scavurel, and your sister actually touring the human fortress, your family knows more about the aliens than anypony else in Equestria."

Scootaloo blinked. "Hey, yeah! And we've gotten to know them a lot better too just from talking to Geth and the others! And now we even have some alien stuff!"

"We already had plenty of alien stuff," Apple Bloom pointed out, "Big Mac was haulin' wreckage into the new barn all yesterday."

"Okay, fine, alien stuff that wasn't recently on fire," Scootaloo corrected, putting the amulet on over her head.

"Never mind that! What if studying aliens is our special talent?" Sweetie Belle asked brightly.

Apple Bloom's eyes widened. "Isn't that really dangerous, though?"

Sweetie gave her a look. "... So what?"

"Ya gotta point there," the yellow filly admitted.

"This is going to be so awesome! Maybe we'll get to visit the Iron Warriors fortress too!" Scootaloo cheered.

"Cutie Mark Crusader..." the three young ponies began.

"ALIEN HUNTERS!" crowed Apple Bloom and Scootaloo.

Sweetie Belle frowned. "I was thinking 'xenobiologists,' actually."

"Pft. That isn't even a word," Scootaloo scoffed.

"It is so a word!"

"Is not!"

"Is too!"

"Foodstuff has reached optimal grain consistency. Deactivating heat source. Door locks disengaged," interrupted the oven.

"Pie's done already? My, that was quick," Granny Smith mumbled.

"Additionally, the correct term is xenologis," crackled the grating, electronic voice.

"See? Even the oven knows better!"

"Oh, shut up Scoots."

****

Ponyville - Twilight's library

Twilight yawned as she stepped inside her treehouse, already a bit tired despite it barely being past noon.

She mostly blamed Rarity for that, since they had spent quite some time helping her bring her luggage into her boutique. How the unicorn had even packed that much on her own was a mystery.

"It feels good to be back home again," the alicorn mused.

"I wouldn't know," Gaela said blandly as she entered behind the purple pony.

Spike came in behind her. "I'm kind of surprised you decided to stay with us instead of that merchant guy."

"I could, if you wish, but I'd prefer not to," Gaela offered simply, "I dislike Master Delgan considerably. His affection for opulence and luxury disagrees with me, and his influence among my masters grates at my nerves."

Twilight giggled. "It's fine, you can stay here. Spike, you can take off that pack now."

"FINALLY," the young dragon grumbled, sliding off the boxy leather backpack he had been constantly wearing since they left, "I've been practically attached to this stupid thing the entire time. You even made me clutch it in my sleep."

Gaela quirked her eyebrow. "What is inside?"

"Oh, uh... jewelry," Twilight answered tepidly, "very important jewelry."

Spike unbuttoned the pack and slid out the wooden box inside. "Yeah. Jewelry nopony even wore."

"Well, we should be thankful for that," Twilight murmured as she started unpacking her own bags.

Spike cracked the box open.

"... Hey, Twi? Uh... are we TOTALLY sure that Princess Celestia left us the Elements of Harmony?"

Twilight's ear twitched, and she froze.

"Spike," she said calmly, still facing away from the dragon, "why would you ask that?"

"Well, Princess Celestia does make mistakes," Spike said, his voice sounding increasingly desperate as droplets of sweat beaded on his forehead, "or... or it could have been a test! To see if you could resolve the problem without them! In which case, you totally passed!"

"Spiiiiiiiike..." Twilight said dangerously as she turned around, her horn flickering. "What's in the box that Princess Celestia gave us?"

Spike just made an incoherent noise in the back of his throat, so Gaela reached down and snapped up the case.

Looking inside, her one remaining eyebrow arched again.

"I take it this isn't what you were expecting?" Gaela asked flatly as she turned the case around to show the alicorn.

Twilight's pupils shrunk to pinpricks as she stared at the contents. Bundled in the cavity where the six Elements had been stacked was a single large, heavy amulet. The general shape was a Chaos Star made of ebony, although in the middle of it was a closed eye made of gold. Attached to the back of the accessory was an iron circuit wafer of some sort threaded with wires, and the amulet hung from a loop of heavy, tarnished chains.

There was a folded sheet of parchment below the amulet, but Twilight was so stunned and enraged by the sight of the Chaos artifact that she didn't notice it until Gaela plucked it from the box.

The Dark Acolyte unfolded the parchment and then placed it in the grip of her servo arm so that it hung in front of her eyes.

"Dearest Princess," Gaela began as she read the letter, "I'm sure you've noticed by now that I have confiscated the sorcerous artifacts that you thought to smuggle into Ferrous Dominus. Please understand that this seizure of your property is simply the enforcement of our security measures, and not in any way an act of specific harassment or retribution."

Twilight's teeth clenched and her eye started to twitch. She already recognized the general tone of the letter, and she could only think of one individual among the 38th Company who would recognize her "sorcerous artifacts" for what they were.

"I realize that this may severely disadvantage you," Gaela continued, "so I have opted to gift you with a personally sanctioned substitute that you may use at will within the confines of our fortress. I realize that it may be inadequate, especially as I had only one amulet to offer despite confiscating several artifacts, but I'm sure you understand the limits of my position." Gaela paused to snort at that. "You may keep the amulet, as I will not be returning your artifacts. Sincerely-"

"SEEEEEEEEERRRIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIITTTH!!!"

****

Ferrous Dominus - Serith's quarters

"My, what temper," Serith said to himself as he stared up at the ceiling, feeling the reverberations through the Warp.

Such hatred, when given a name and focused by a powerful psyker directed to another, could cross entire sectors. Being within the same nation meant that he heard it almost as if Twilight was in the next room.

"Really, it's about time. I expected her to find out long before she left," the Sorcerer mumbled as he made some adjustments to the servo-skull hovering above his workbench.

Behind him, within a contraption of spinning gearwork and wild bundles of sparking wires, the Element of Loyalty was strung up into a sophisticated conduit strung with sensors and amplifiers.

"Servo skull, activation command: begin recording in file 773-A. Title: Elements of Harmony, Analysis."

Serith backed away from the servo skull and then placed a hand on the bizarre contraption behind him before he spoke again.

"I am now beginning intense analysis of the so-called 'Elements of Harmony,' confiscated from Twilight Sparkle during the Tau incursion earlier this week. Preliminary study leads me to believe that these objects are psionic weapons of some sort; there was talk of them being used against us, and much discussion of their likely efficacy against the Iron Warriors' military might."

He pointed to the Element of Loyalty. "This necklace with the lightning bolt is to be my first test case. I have determined that the Elements emit a sort of 'seeking signal'. A psionic wavelength that acts as a sort of key to safeguard the artifact. This sort of effect is... rare, but not unheard of. What is extremely unusual is the sheer complexity of the wavelength key that would match the signal. Often, such mechanisms use fairly simple emotional concept such as rage, or joy, perhaps coupled with a psychic image to act as a reaction test. In the case of the Elements, however, the wavelengths are deeply layered and extremely complicated, to the point that I cannot make any meaningful effort to disentangle them. I believe a direct test of psycant resonance may yield better results."

Serith paused. "It should be noted that some of these items react... strangely when handled. The one with the fruit-shaped jewel actually burned my gauntlet, and they don't move easily with telekinesis."

The Sorcerer shrugged. "On the other hand, these artifacts belonged to the ponies, a species which cannot be described as very hostile or security-conscious. Even their capability with psychic power, while advanced in its uses, are based on several complete misunderstandings as to its nature. They still call it 'magic', for one. I am confident that whatever feeble secrets these amusing little creatures keep, I can unravel."

He turned to the device and powered it on with a thought; gears started turning while black strings of power sparked along the cable attached to the Element of Loyalty.

"Beginning resonance."

****

Ferrous Dominus - Trixie's quarters

"So that's why I want to find a cook book and have a real kitchen installed. It would be better for both of us if you could prepare meals here rather than having to eat that slop in the cafeteria or those gross nutrient rations," Trixie said as she read a dataslate while laying across Suuna's lap.

"Of course, Mistress. That would give me more to do during the day, as well," Suuna agreed as she brushed Trixie's mane.

Suddenly the floor shook underneath them, and Trixie found herself being hugged tightly by her assistant as the roar of a furious explosion reverberated through the hallway outside.

After a few seconds the shaking stopped, and they both listened fearfully for alarm klaxons.

"I'M OKAY!" shouted Serith from down the hall.

****

Ponyville - Twilight's library

"That rotten, lying, cheating, evil, awful, no-good, revolting, reviled, malicious, terrible, filthy, vile, evil-"

"You said evil already," Gaela interrupted absently as she studied the Chaos amulet with her optics.

"Rrrrrrrrrrrrgh!" Twilight's horn pulsed with fury as if she were trying to destroy the subject of her ire then and there, from across the country. Which she might have been, for all Gaela knew.

"SPIKE!" Twilight barked, causing the young dragon to flinch. "You had ONE JOB!"

Spike stumbled backward fearfully. "I don't know what happened! I didn't let the backpack out of my sight once, I swear! I literally hugged it to me while I slept!"

"Then how did this happen?" the alicorn demanded angrily, advancing on the dragon dangerously.

"I don't know! I really don't!" Spike protested.

"While I don't mean to make excuses for the weakness of your servant," Gaela began, closing the box, "what, exactly, do you suppose he could have done to protect your artifacts from Lord Serith?"

Twilight turned her angry gaze toward Gaela. "He could have... he... I mean..."

She trailed off as the gears in her head turned. Serith had the Elements, apparently, but Spike said he'd never left the backpack. She had seen firsthand that Serith could casually change the way that people's minds worked to erase his presence or even cause them to shoot an ally in the back. It was hardly any great presumption to think he could manipulate memories too, or put a target to sleep on a whim. What COULD Spike do against that?

Twilight was confident that she herself would prove more resistant, but where had SHE been when the Elements were taken? She didn't know. She hadn't really bothered to keep track of Spike while in Ferrous Dominus. There were plenty of times she had been separated from him without even thinking about it.

Spike blinked as Twilight's expression gradually shifted from furious to annoyed to crestfallen.

"This... This is MY fault," Twilight admitted sadly, hanging her head, "I was responsible for the Elements, not you, Spike. I pushed that responsibility onto you and then just ignored you while we were in the fortress."

Her tone became more bitter. "I mean, we don't even know when Serith took the Elements because I never even thought to check on them! If it weren't for you checking on them just now I would've handed the box right back to the Princess and not known what was wrong until she told me!" Twilight looked horrified at the thought.

"Do you think she'd like the Chaos amulet?" Gaela asked as she placed the box down.

"No, she's not really a fan," Spike assured her.

Twilight pulled her head up, giving her assistant a miserable, pleading look. "I'm sorry for getting mad at you, Spike."

Spike scratched the back of his head. "Are you also sorry for leaving the Elements with me and making me the target of an evil space wizard in the first place?"

"Don't push it, Spike."

"Okay."

Gaela started perusing the book shelves, only distantly interested in Twilight's current problem. "So what do you intend to do to get these weapons back? Or are you going to abandon them to Lord Serith?"

Twilight frowned, gazing down at the floor. "We'll have to go back and take them back from him."

"That's an effort doomed to fail. Challenging the Sorcerer will be perilous enough. Challenging him on his territory, where he has already effectively and easily bested you, is a fool's errand."

Twilight gave Gaela an annoyed look. "I'm not necessarily talking about fighting him."

"Neither am I," the Acolyte assured her, plucking a book from the shelf, "if you try to fight him you're going to lose, without question. Trying to outsmart him offers at least a slim possibility of success, but you'll need a better plan than that."

Twilight fumed silently for several seconds, and then her expression darkened. "I... I really don't know what to do. I've faced villains before, but I've always known where they stand. What they wanted."

The alicorn sat down on her haunches. "Serith is... different. I can't figure him out. He acts like a friend but isn't sincere enough about it to fool anypony. If he wanted to hurt me or somepony else, he had plenty of opportunities, but he helped us instead. And when I stood up to him to save Daniels, he didn't even try to get his way... even though I'm pretty sure he accomplished what he wanted. Then I only find out what he's done long after I left. What is he after?"

Gaela started flipping through the book, skimming its contents. "I can't imagine. I doubt anybody can, even his fellow witches. Lord Serith is positively ancient, mercurial, and regarded as bizarre even by his brother Iron Warriors. The only one who can claim to know him well is the Warsmith himself."

Spike scratched his chin. "Do you think Solon would help us? He was actually pretty friendly the first time we met him."

Gaela glared at Spike over the top edge of the book. "The Warsmith was RATIONAL, not friendly. And he'll be equally rational when being informed that Lord Serith took a set of sorcerous weapons from you with which you probably intended to attack him."

Twilight winced badly, her ears pinned to the side of her head. It was a quite a wrinkle in the situation that Serith's excuse for taking the Elements, while certainly disingenuous, was still perfectly legitimate.

"Do you have any advice, Gaela?" the alicorn asked hopefully.

Gaela went back to the book she had picked out. "Yes. Learn to use the Chaos amulet, because you'll never see your artifacts again. Also, you may wish to take greater care not to cross Lord Serith in the future."

"We can't abandon the Elements of Harmony!" Twilight insisted.

"Without a deeper explanation of why this is so, I can hardly advise you to challenge an Iron Warrior for the sake of some trinket," Gaela explained, closing the book and sliding it back into place, "in any case, with Master Delgan preparing to set up shop in your nation and introduce himself to your leaders, you'll have ample opportunity to gripe about the Company's actions."

Twilight sighed and chewed her lip. She was in trouble, but perhaps not as much as she had first thought. Certainly there had to be advantages to having an enemy that didn't treat you like an enemy.

"I think I have an idea," Twilight mumbled as she made her way upstairs, "Spike, could you open the library for me, please? I'll be in my room."

"Sooo... no letter to Princess Celestia?" Spike said with a quirked eyebrow.

Twilight almost miss-stepped, but caught herself. "Not yet, no. I need to prepare some things first."

****

???

"And now, for Trixie's next trick, Trixie will summon a monster from the very air!"

Trixie raised her hooves in the air as a cluster of spotlights centered on her, feeling her cape flap in a warm breeze.

Stretched out before her as far as the eye could see was her audience. Her public. Her devoted admirers. Humans, ponies, dragon, minotaurs, and even Space Marines were packed together among the seats and walls to watch, and enormous viewing screens were mounted further afield to project her glorious image even further.

Trixie's horn flared with magic, though it was hidden beneath her wizard hat.

Within moments, a pink mist seeped upward from the floor, followed by a flash of light.

When the light abated, Serith stood next to Trixie, looking back and forth as if he didn't know where he was.

"Serith! Whatever are you doing here?" Trixie asked with mock surprise. "Trixie was trying to summon a monster!"

As the audience laughed, Trixie sighed into the vox headset. "Well, Trixie supposes there's no helping it. Take off your helmet and say hello to the audience."

The Iron Warrior wordlessly reached up to take his helmet by the horns, and then lifted it up.

The audience gasped as they beheld a horrific daemon with a half-dozen eyes and a rictus mouth underneath the helmet, its Warp-flesh squirming and glistening under the intense light.

"There's Trixie's monster!" the blue unicorn said, knocking a hoof against her head. "Where did you get Serith's armor? You so silly!"

The daemon roared as the armor containing its body split apart, spilling its numerous bladed limbs onto the stage while murderous eyes tried to choose a target.

"Yeah, okay, Trixie's done with you now," the unicorn said nonchalantly as magic energy surged around her and formed a magic circle.

A lance of magical lightning slammed into the creature from above, and the hoots and cheers coming from the humans and post-humans in the audience doubled in volume as the Warp beast was reduced to a black stain on the stage.

"TRIX-IE! TRIX-IE! TRIX-IE!" chanted the crowd loud enough to make the ground shake. Humans clapped, ponies pounded the ground, and minotaurs beat their chests. The adulation was almost suffocating, but Trixie drank it all in and took a bow.

"Marvelous! Simply marvelous!" exclaimed a group of ponies that walked up onto the stage. They were very well-dressed and had immaculately styled manes, along with numerous shiny accessories that marked them out as members of the upper class to anypony who cared.

Trixie wasn't one of those ponies, but she accepted praise from anyone, whether the most meager vagrant or self-absorbed noble.

"A stunning performance!"

"You simply MUST perform at my events from now on!"

"I cried tears of joy and laughter!"

"Where art We now?"

It took a few moments for Trixie to realize that one of her fawning public was a bit... different than the others. It was strange, but her mildly annoyed voice sounded much clearer and her features seemed much more distinct than that of the clamoring ponies around her. Trixie could barely see much of her head amongst the crowd though, so she couldn't establish much other than the pony having a dark blue coat and an unusually long and pointed horn.

Then, as if in response to her attention, the other ponies shifted aside and Trixie got a good look at the figure.

"Ah! You must be Princess Luna! It's an honor to have you at my show!" Trixie said brightly. She had never met Luna before, or even seen a good picture of her, but there weren't so many alicorns around that one could easily lose track of who was who.

Luna glanced over at Trixie, and then she looked up at the banners hung over the stage.

"So thy name is 'Trixie', then?"

Trixie's smile faded somewhat. "Ah... is there a reason you're at Trixie's show when you don't know who Trixie is?"

Luna nodded, looking somewhat exasperated. "We were unable to find Twilight Sparkle, despite the absence of the strange barrier we encountered last time."

"Twilight Sparkle? Never heard of her!" said one of the nearby audience ponies in a needlessly loud voice.

"That's kind of a silly name, isn't it?" asked another mare, giggling to herself.

Luna looked annoyed, and then her horn started to glow. "This is quite annoying. It shalt be easier to speak without such noise."

Trixie didn't get the chance to ask what she was talking about before a flare of light burst from Luna's horn, briefly obscuring Trixie's vision before she could even blink.

When she did finish blinking, the unicorn saw that she was now facing the Princess alone; every other human, pony, and other sort of creature had completely vanished without leaving even the scorch mark that had remained from the daemon's departure.

"Wh-What did you do? What happened to Trixie's audience?" Trixie asked, backing up fearfully as she whipped her head around.

"We hast banished the dream-constructs that hath populated thy fantasy," Luna explained, stepping up fully onto the stage so that she could stare down at Trixie properly, "now we may speak without interruption or diversion."

The gears in Trixie's mind started grinding away as she put several new facts together.

Luna had apparently banished a crowd of dream-constructs.

That meant she was asleep and dreaming.

This also suggested that Luna was not a product of her dream.

That meant Luna, Princess of the night, had seen fit to interrupt her dreams in order to speak to her.

Trixie's ears fell flat against her head. "Is Trixie in trouble?" she asked nervously.

"That depends on thine answers," Luna said as she stared down at the showpony with a bemused expression, "if thee cooperates, then there is little cause for concern."

Trixie gulped.

"We came here for Twilight Sparkle, yet cannot sense her within this cage of death and smoke. What hast befallen her?" the dark alicorn demanded.

"Uh... Trixie is pretty sure she just went home."

Luna gave her an incredulous look.

"Well, that's all Trixie knows about it," the unicorn insisted quickly, "something might have happened to her since then, Trixie supposes, but Sparkle bade Trixie goodbye this morning. Did you check in Ponyville?"

Luna lowered her head as her eyes narrowed. "Nay, we did not." Then she stepped closer to Trixie, looking suspicious. "And how is it that thou lingers here after Twilight Sparkle's departure? Hast thou cast in thy lot with the invaders?"

"Trixie just works here," Trixie insisted, becoming increasingly annoyed. Even after Twilight's mission was a complete success and she had moved on, somehow the purple brat was STILL causing her problems.

This seemed to surprise the Princess. "What dost thou do for an army of aliens from beyond the stars?"

"This," Trixie said flatly, gesturing all around with her hoof.

Luna glanced about, taking in the sight of the posters with Trixie's grinning face and huge hanging banners bearing her cutie mark.

"Thou must enjoy thy work a great deal, to dream of it while at rest," Luna remarked.

"You know, this all seems like a completely unnecessary invasion of Trixie's privacy. Couldn't you have bothered one of the humans instead?" Trixie grumbled. "Serith warned Trixie that Trixie's dreams might be troubled after he accidentally broke the psycho-whatever shield, but Trixie wasn't expecting the trouble to come from other ponies."

Luna considered this, frowning. "We suppose thou hast ample reason for complaint. We were quite curious to find thee still present when We sensed no other ponies, and hast no particular reason to interrogate thee."

"So does that mean that Trixie can go back to her previously scheduled fantasy now?" the unicorn asked hopefully.

"Aye, this is acceptable," Luna agreed, "unless thou wishes to accompany us as we accost Warsmith Solon."

Trixie's eyebrow rose.

****

???, but a different ??? than before

Solon rolled the Tau disruptor drone about in his hands as he studied its power transmitters, noting the way that the surface armor seemed to react unusually with light even in the absence of a proper power source. As his eyes traced the surface of the device, parts of it seemed to fade away, only to reappear with the slightest movement of his pupils.

It was a magnificent device, more devoted to invisibility than even the Tau stealth suits; the stealth armor served primarily to spoil the aim of anything targeting it rather than remain totally undetected, but this drone, not having to worry about erratic energy discharges or rapid movement, was designed to be totally missed by patrolling soldiers who could have wandered within arm's reach. Even most Space Marine visor systems wouldn't have picked it up.

Solon's workbench was located on the observation deck of a massive warship, and aside from the flooring and door one could see the void all around them.

Currently that void was filled by a huge armada of spacecraft. Battle barges, cruisers, and thousands of fighters danced through space among raking volleys of deadly light as two Space Marine Legions tore each other apart. Every few seconds another ship would buckle and fall apart in the distance, leaking fire and debris, but Solon didn't let the distant havoc distract him.

The door opening behind him, however, had his attention immediately.

"Is this going to be a regular thing now?" Solon asked, glancing behind him. "I usually wouldn't bother to take another rest cycle just a day after the last one, but I had to cut it short thanks to you."

Luna snorted as she walked into the observatorium, clearly unsympathetic. "We shalt invade thy dreams as We deem necessary, Warsmith. Do not think that thou art free of our influence."

Solon released an annoyed sigh. "Why is Miss Trixie with you?"

Luna glanced behind her as Trixie stepped into the room cautiously, totally overwhelmed by the inner workings of the space ship. "We happened to enter her own dream earlier, and thought she might wish to accompany us. Thy dreams hath quite a... grand and realistic quality to them."

"That's because they're digitally recorded memories," Solon said flatly as he went back to his work, "calling them 'dreams' is a bit like referring to a pict-capture as a 'drawing'."

Trixie slowly stepped up to the wall of the observatorium with awe, staring up at the ships burning above them.

"What... What IS this? What is Trixie looking at?"

"This is the battle of Phall," Solon explained absently, "see those ships painted yellow? Those belong to the Seventh Legion, the Imperial Fists. The Sons of Horus trapped them here, and then we entered the system to kill them all."

Luna and Trixie walked a slow circuit around the observatorium, staring up at the flaring lights and glimmering hulks of metal. Luna's expression was serene and approving, like she was quietly enjoying a nice art gallery. Trixie's was more akin to childlike awe. Even after meeting actual aliens and personally seeing honest-to-Celestia vessels capable of flying through space, she hadn't been anywhere close to prepared to witness something like this.

Solon was content to let the ponies stare, glad that Luna was distracted. He had assumed that if she had slipped into his dreams again that she'd try to assault him, and he had taken appropriate countermeasures. He was glad to see that she didn't seem interested in fighting, or was at least being subtle about her intention to assassinate him this time.

Trixie finally peeled her gaze away from the space battle to stare at Solon instead.

"So... is this what you look like without your armor?" Trixie asked. The Chaos Lord was wearing nothing but a black bodysuit that clung to his form and sealed the nerve sockets and circulatory inserts in his skin. It was a completely different image than the horrifying, clanking monstrosity of his armored chassis, and Trixie wouldn't have thought the two could be the same if Luna hadn't told her ahead of time who they were visiting.

"This is what I looked like once, yes," Solon mumbled, cracking open the disruptor drone's gravitational regulator, "the flesh you see here is long gone in my physical body."

Luna's ears twitched in interest, as she hadn't yet seen Solon's physical form.

"Do you ever... miss it? I mean, the parts below the waist, at least?" Trixie asked, trying her hardest to be diplomatic about the question.

"What, my legs? No. I have six of them now, and much higher carrying and power generation capacity than before." He turned the gravitational regulator over, checking for any irregularities in its design. "Aside from the brain, everything in the human body can be easily replaced, and inevitably improved upon. I'm far more capable now than in the past."

"Then why do you dream of yourself like this?" Trixie asked, beckoning to his body.

"For hollow nostalgia, mostly. I didn't lose my first limb until the siege of Terra," Solon grunted, detaching the regulator and studying the circuit threading on an armor panel, "so when I view a given period, I also take the form I possessed during that period."

"Fascinating. May we visit thy siege next?" Luna asked, still staring at the space battle.

"No. My mind is not a galactic tour bus," Solon grumbled, "I'm trying to work, here."

As Luna pouted, a pair of torpedoes blasted through space past the observatorium, coming close enough that they could see the rivet work on the shell casing.

Trixie yelped in surprise at seeing the huge weapons speed by. "Mister Solon? Is this place safe?"

Solon paused to consider the question. "As a matter of fact, it's not. In fifty-eight seconds the frigate you see coming up behind that battlecruiser wreck is going to release a volley that takes down this ship's void shields and punctures the observatorium. The memory coils survived, though, and the recorders can work fine in hard vacuum, so it still captured the rest of the battle from this viewpoint."

Trixie's eyes widened. "Then Trixie has to get out of here!"

"Why? You're a mental projection. You can't die, never mind die of something as passive and mundane as void exposure," Solon insisted.

"Trixie isn't so sure about that! Trixie is new to this sort of thing!" the blue unicorn protested in a panic.

Luna squinted at one particular vessel in the distance and beckoned to it. "Is that the one thou speaks of?"

"Yes. What was it... Valiant Death, I believe it's called."

"A fitting name! Have at thee, villain!" Luna shouted, her eyes flaring a solid white as her horn lit up.

Trixie and even Solon looked startled as a half-dozen identical copies of the torpedoes from before flickered into existence in a ring around the frigate.

The torpedoes finished materializing and then thundered forward, smashing into the enemy ship before its crew could even figured out was what happening, never mind react. The void shields fell instantly, and in seconds the ship was swallowed by explosions as the massive weapons tore the vessel apart from the inside.

"Ha ha! That shalt teach thee to oppose us!" Luna cheered triumphantly at the cloud of burning debris that used to be a spacecraft.

"What are you doing?" Solon asked irritably, standing up from his workbench.

"We art defending us from thine enemy," Luna answered blithely, as if the question was absurd.

"I told you, this is a memory, not a procedurally generated fantasy," Solon growled, "you can't just change a major part of the battle like that! The cogitator doesn't know what to do!"

"We do not understand thy umbrage," Luna said, "what difference doth this make?"

It was about then that the floor flickered. It shifted, quivered, and then reasserted itself beneath them without shifting any of them at all.

"That was weird," Trixie observed needlessly.

Above them, the space battle had frozen. Not stopped, in the sense that the ships had ceased firing, but literally frozen, with ordnance and lances suspended in the void on their way to their targets.

"We art confused," Luna admitted, "doth this mean We hast won?"

Then the entire world around them turned a solid blue, accompanied by a constant buzzing sound.

"Oh, this is just perfect," Solon snapped, noting that the disruptor drone was gone along with everything else but himself and the two ponies. "The model is gone and now I have to go reboot the entire cogitator bank. I do hope you're proud of yourself, Princess."

"We hast inflicted upon the foe such a mighty blow that it hath crippled reality itself and thus banished the entirety of the enemy force," Luna said with a satisfied nod, "aye, We art quite proud."

"Lovely," the Warsmith grumbled as his body started to shimmer away. Within moments, he was gone.

Trixie frowned as she glanced around her, seeing nothing but blue and the occasional scrap of white text that seemed to convey nothing but gibberish.

"Mister Solon seemed pretty agitated. Trixie wonders if it's a good idea to annoy him."

Luna snorted. "Speaking plainly, it is our goal to oust him from our planet and banish his armies to the cold, merciless void from whence they came. We care nothing for his peace."

Trixie grimaced. "Is it too late to go back to Trixie's dream?"

A new string of text, significantly less cryptic than the rest, appeared between the two ponies.

Reboot cycle activated. Terminating program in 3... 2...

"Aye," Luna confirmed, "We believe it is."

And then the world collapsed around them.

****

Ponyville - the following day

Rarity hummed to herself happily as she strolled through town, enjoying the crisp morning air and its stark contrast to the smoky filth that polluted the exterior of Ferrous Dominus. She supposed it was a frequent advantage of being called upon to travel to awful places that it made it much easier to appreciate the clean, simple pleasures of living in Ponyville.

Spotting Delgan's trailer at the end of a row of buildings, she headed straight for it. Despite being smaller than the surrounding houses, it was quite easy to find; not only was the trailer extremely gaudy with golden gargoyles and tall crimson banners hoisted into the air, but it was located behind a fortified barricade and next to a group of Chimera transports parked in a tight square.

Rarity paid the defenses no heed as she trotted up to the trailer. The quad guns turned to track her as a target as she walked up to the perimeter, and she could feel the curious gazes of the human guards manning the barricade as she walked past them. But she ignored them and they eventually did the same to her.

The exception was a burly figure in heavy carapace armor that stood in front of the trailer entrance and carried a flamer against his chest. He very deliberately stood up straighter as the white unicorn approached, and spoke up well before she got within arm's reach.

"That's close enough. State your name and your business here, xeno."

Rarity halted. "My name is Rarity. I'm here to see Norris."

The guard was wearing a full face mask complete with optic array and respirator, but Rarity could STILL see the man's hesitation when she used Delgan's first name.

"Do you have an appointment... Miss Rarity?" the guard sounded like he had almost choked trying to say her name with a measure of respect, suddenly afraid that she was somepony important. It was almost cute, really.

"Oh, no, I just thought I'd drop in and welcome him to town. You know, see if he had gotten settled yet."

The guard nodded slowly, and then reluctantly reached for his vox unit.

He hesitated, however. "Why are you armed?"

Rarity had the boltgun that she had scavenged in Ferrous Dominus in her right saddlebag, although it was barely recognizable by now. It had been painted a dull purple so as not to overpower her cutie mark, which had been stuck under the casing ejection slot in decal. The entire thing had a new glossy coating, and it was slung in a dark purple holster that Rarity had made to match her mane color and then made into a full saddlebag.

Rarity sighed over-dramatically. "These are dangerous times in Equestria. Aliens can come pouring into town at any moment and evil creatures prowl the wild. Were that I could defend myself with my wits alone I would be well-suited to go without such awful weapons, but as things stand I resort to your human tools." She smirked. "I'm sure Norris understands. Looking at you, he's clearly a man who knows the value of security."

The guard nodded absently, placing a hand to the side of his head. "Master Delgan?" He paused. "Yes, Sir. There's a xeno here to see you, Sir. She calls herself Rarity?" Another pause. "Yes, Sir, that's her. Yes, Sir."

The guard took the hand from the side of his head and then stepped to the side, swiping his hand over a scanning panel.

"You're clear. Please leave your weapon at the door inside, Miss Rarity."

"Of course," she said absently, barely even listening to the soldier as she entered.

Once inside the trailer, Rarity paused briefly to marvel at the interior. There wasn't so much as a sliver of gunmetal on display, with the walls and ceiling wallpapered in ivory and fine silks hanging in large bolts from pins on the ceiling. Paintings were hanging from the walls, mainly of Iron Warriors with unusually elaborate armor, and numerous polished weapons hung at the back of the living space above a plush-looking bed.

"Miss Rarity! I cannot express enough my gratitude to see you again," Delgan said as he entered the "living room" from another room that took up the front-most section of the trailer. He was wearing the same type of outfit as the previous day, although Rarity's tailoring-honed eyes could spot several minute details that proved it was a different uniform.

"This is simply wonderful to behold," she admitted as she stepped forward, looking up at one of the paintings, "the psyker dorms were practically opulent compared to those of the menials, and according to Rainbow Dash the Astartes live no better. It warms my heart to see this and know there's at least ONE among you humans that appreciates real civilization."

Delgan's demeanor turned solemn. "You shouldn't hold it against my fellow humans. Many would doubtless appreciate such fine living, but they lack the means. And the permissions."

Rarity's eyes glanced toward him briefly. "Permissions?"

"The Iron Warriors have a special distaste for luxury," Delgan said sourly, standing next to the unicorn as he stared intently at his own paintings, "they see decadence and hedonism not only as a weakness, but a corruption. Any hint of excess in their combat troopers is stamped out ruthlessly to prevent the spread of potential Slaaneshi worship."

"Slaaneshi? I'm not familiar with that term," Rarity admitted, turning fully toward the man.

"The less you know about it, the better," Delgan admitted, "their grudge against the Prince of Excess is quite old, and the history complicated. To say nothing of the theology. But suffice to say, my men and I are only allowed such fine living because it goes hand-in-hand with our duties and because we are not military men. And even then I am watched very carefully for any signs of... deviancy."

He shook his head. "But enough. You come to welcome me and I trouble you with the politics of dark gods and Space Marines! Put down your weapon and make yourself comfortable!"

Rarity gladly took him up on his offer, levitating her saddlebags onto a brass coat rack next to the door. Then she stepped over to a small plush chair on the opposite side of the room and sat down.

"I trust you had no trouble setting up? I was slightly worried that you wouldn't be able to simply move into Ponyville without me or one of my friends to vouch for you," Rarity asked. Not that any of her friends were likely to do such a thing; given the personalities that they'd had to deal with so far from the 38th Company, every one of the soldiers and agents were distrusted by default.

"A little bit, actually," Delgan admitted as he sat down opposite the snow-colored pony, "after entering the village perimeter I went looking for a local authority to inquire about the proper permits and local ordinances in order to park everything. I was eventually directed to your mayor, but she seemed quite agitated at the prospect of humans leasing land in Ponyville."

Rarity placed a hoof against her chest, looking deeply concerned. "Oh, dear. I hope you were able to resolve the matter peacefully."

"But of course," Delgan assured her with a smile, "I deal chiefly in trade, not murder. I was able to offer her a security detail in return for allowing me the use of this space. There was simply no way she could refuse!"

****

Ponyville - City Hall

Mayor Mare stared pensively at the two men in carapace armor standing on either side of the entrance to her office.

"So... how long are you going to be 'guarding me,' exactly?"

"Until our shift is over and our replacements arrive," rasped one of the men from behind a black visor and respirator.

"No, I meant how long is this whole... agreement going to last?" Mare asked, trying not choke on the word "agreement".

"Until Master Delgan says so. Until then, your safety is assured," the guard explained.

"Until Master Delgan says so," the other guard repeated.

The pony's ears flattened against her head. "Is there any chance you could do your bodyguarding out in the hall, at least?"

The two men considered that for a moment, their visors turning toward each other.

"Oh, well, we would..."

"But that would make it harder to get to you in case of an emergency."

"I mean, a xeno battlesuit could fly right up to that window and put a pulse shot through you, and if we were in the hall we wouldn't know until we heard you screaming."

"Yes. Much safer to stay in here, where we can see you and what you're doing at all times."

Mayor Mare sighed, a single tear crawling down her cheek.

****

Ponyville - Delgan's trailer

"In any case, that's all sorted out, now. I have the permissions I need to stay on a temporary basis, and I've even called in for a shipment so I can open up a little flea market here," Delgan said with a grin, "I doubt your people are much in need of nutrient paste or autoguns, but I'm sure we humans have cobbled together something you might like.

"Oh, indeed. After seeing Applejack's farm, there's no doubt at all that you have things we could use," Rarity agreed, "the door mechanism in particular was very clever."

"Yes, well..." Delgan trailed off, glancing at Rarity's boltgun, "despite what I said earlier, I do have weapons available if you'd like them. An Astartes boltgun must be quite... unwieldy for something your size."

"It's heavy, of course, but levitation does much to help with that," Rarity agreed, "but if you'd like to accompany me to one of the restaurants in town for brunch, I would be happy to hear more about your inventory, and you can sample some of our fine pony cuisine!"

"That sounds delightful," Delgan said, inwardly wondering what a grass-eating species would consider "fine cuisine". "Just allow me to prepare a guard detail, and we can be on our way."

****

Ponyville - Horseshoe Café

"I do hope you'll find something that suits your taste. Obviously you won't find any meat on the menu, but humans eat fruits and vegetables too, correct?"

Delgan nodded absently as he scanned the menu, occasionally glancing around him at the café itself. They were seated outside, and his bodyguards had formed a loose perimeter of four men around the dining area while the townsfolk gawked at them.

Delgan was acutely aware that he looked ridiculous seated awkwardly on the small hay pile that the café used for seats, but he tolerated the indignity. He was already out on something resembling a date with a magical marshmallow-colored horse, after all.

The waitress pony was very slow in approaching their table. Not because she didn't want to attend the table, but rather because the moment she approached every one of the gunmen turned to stare at her.

"H-Hello. Can I take your order?" she asked. The question sounded curiously genuine, as if she really wasn't sure what to do.

"I'll have the daffodil salad with vinaigrette, please," Rarity said, levitating her menu shut.

"Of course. And you... Sir?" the waitress asked uncomfortably, turning toward the human.

"Fruit salad with a side of fried eggs," said Delgan, "and some hot tea. Jasmine. No sugar."

"And of course, I'll be taking the tab," Rarity added. The waitress murmured her thanks and gathered their menus, eager to be away from the attention of the bodyguards.

"Most generous of you, Miss Rarity," Delgan said with a smile.

"It is nothing. Classic Ponyville hospitality," the unicorn insisted with a grin, "besides, how would you pay? I can assure you that the café doesn't accept credits."

"I do hope I'm not burdening you, though. You never did mention what you do for a living," said the Trademaster, shifting the subject.

"Oh, I'm a fashion designer!" Rarity said brightly.

That gave the rogue merchant pause. "Is there much demand for that? Our waitress is the first pony I've seen wearing clothing, and it was nothing but a uniform vest."

"Most ponies don't wear clothes every day. They're expensive, and somewhat difficult to move in," Rarity explained, "you humans seem to find them very popular, though."

"Right. But I can't imagine that profession is very lucrative," Delgan mumbled. Considering Rarity's cutie mark and her mannerisms, he had guessed she was an heiress or jeweler. Dressmaker wasn't exactly a low-class profession, but he had no idea where it stood in a society that favored nudity.

"You'd be surprised," Rarity retorted as the waitress tepidly placed their tea on the table and then scurried away, "My customers usually order customized designs, and some even insist on having a new outfit to each special event they have planned. Such commissions can cost a pretty bit."

"I see. I suppose if clothes were classified as a rare luxury item in general, you could indeed make a fine living from them," Delgan mused as he poured him and Rarity some tea.

Rarity sighed wearily before levitating her tea cup next to her cheek and feeling the steam against her face. "Having to occasionally put my orders on hold to protect Equestria is awful for business, however. Completely necessary, obviously, but still difficult. I have quite a backlog from the past few days I spent exploring Ferrous Dominus."

"Oh? I hope I'm not exacerbating the problem," Delgan said before sipping gingerly from his teacup.

"Not at all," the unicorn assured him, "I'll have plenty of time to meet my deadlines. Assuming Twilight doesn't show up with some new mission to save the world."

They both chuckled at that.

Then they flinched as a flash of violet light flared next to their table.

Twilight noticed immediately as she teleported in that several humans were turning to brandish weapons at her, but she ignored them as she spotted Rarity.

"Rarity, I need your help! Serith stole the Elements of Harmony!"

Delgan winced as Rarity immediately slammed her face flat onto the table. The teacup dropped down next to her a moment later, bouncing to the side and spilling much of its contents onto the ground.

"I've little care for heroism. It has no respect at all for schedule," he muttered before he took a long sip of tea. Then he raised a hand. "Check, please."

Author's Note

For anyone wondering why the Element of Honesty seemed to shortchange Rarity's murder spree during the Tau invasion: Applejack wasn't there, and Rarity wasn't especially eager to brag about it. I couldn't find a good way to shoehorn that exposition into the conversation, so I'm shoehorning it in now at the end.

I like the word "asinine".

Diplomacy Check

Iron Hearts: Book 2

Chapter 7

Diplomacy Check

****

Ferrous Dominus - sector 2, brig complex primarus

Serith's armor raised few eyebrows as he strode purposefully into the prison lobby, heading straight for the security gates.

This was mostly due to everyone's eagerness to avoid looking at the Sorcerer at all, but not even the Iron Warrior guards, none of them explicitly afraid of the superhuman psyker, gave much thought to why Serith's armor was so badly scorched and broken. The ways of Sorcerers carried obvious dangers beyond even that faced by a "normal" warrior of Chaos, and it wouldn't have surprised any one of the men or Marines there to hear that one or more of Serith's experiments had blown up in his face.

Serith said nothing as the gates picked up his armor's IFF emitter - thankfully still functional despite the damage - and began the long and melodramatic process of deactivating its locks and grinding open.

Neither of the Iron Warrior guards standing within arm's reach spoke to him as he waited. There were only a few reasons for a Sorcerer to be roaming around the brig, and all of them were distinctly terrible. No Chaos Legion could be described as "merciful", and the Iron Warriors were certainly not an exception, but there were plenty who found the use of witchcraft on their soldiers and prisoners a step too far; embracing the will of the Gods was one thing, but surrendering their military resources to the whims of madmen was the death knell of military order and discipline.

Serith could literally feel their distaste as he finally stepped through the gates, and he found it amusing. Every one of his "brothers" would gladly embrace any weapon of metal and energy with the bare assurance that it functioned within the stunted, limited realm of science, and many of them would take up weapons with a blatantly daemonic nature as well, judging them as gifts from the Gods. But still they arbitrarily shunned the psyker and the use of sorcery wherever they could. Their distrust of such powers ran deep.

But there were some things that only the psyker could accomplish, and there were those among the Company who were more practical as well.

"General Gnoss," Serith said simply as he entered a security station, acknowledging the man hunched over a table covered in charts and notes.

"Lord Serith," General Gnoss said as he straightened, "thank you for coming. I'd heard there were some kind of disturbances around your quarters and-"

"General," Serith interrupted softly, silencing the man instantly, "dispense with your small talk and get to the briefing."

Gnoss pursed his lips briefly. "Very well, Lord." He pointed at a bank of monitors on the wall. "There she is, cell 9-B. Tau female, Fire Caste, rank Fireblade. Her name is Jerriha. She's by far the highest-ranking grayskin we've caught."

"And she may have the information we need?" Serith asked, clasping his hands behind his back.

"It seems likely. Most of the grayskins have been kept deliberately in the dark as to what their strategic goal here is. You know how it is; they're told what they need to know and nothing else. But from what we can tell, she was in charge of the assault on Ferrous Dominus."

Serith gazed at the image in the monitor bank. The Fireblade was seated in a single cell, her head down away from the pict-recorder.

"Her disposition?"

"Well, we haven't done any hard interrogation of her, and I think she's surprised by that. Surely she was expecting to be tortured by now. As you can imagine though, she hasn't been especially grateful for our restraint. She's refused to tell us what we want to know. Up until now, that's been okay, since Lord Sliver has made gathering intelligence a low priority, but now Warsmith Solon has personally requested new data on the enemy to explain their unexpected strength on this planet."

Serith turned to look at Gnoss again. "And what do you want to know?"

"Three things, Lord: where their bases are, how many of them there are, and why they're here," the General explained.

"It is as good as done," Serith said, picking up a note pad and ink pen from the table.

Scarcely a minute later, the heavy door of cell 9-B cracked open, and Jerriha was instantly on alert.

Strategies for a possible escape or perhaps a capture of her visitor vanished at the first sight of a power armor gauntlet pushing the door open. Trying to outwit and overpower a Space Marine was folly under the best of circumstances, and these were not the best of circumstances.

"So now the mighty Astartes do the torture in the human armies too? My, but your kind are good for just about everything, aren't you? Do you do windows?"

Serith took in the weary sarcasm of the alien prisoner, feeling the lingering fear buried under it.

There was a small table and stool in the cell on the opposite wall from the bed, both of them bolted tightly to the floor so that the prisoner couldn't use them as weapons or decent barricades. Serith pointed to the stool.

"Sit down over there," he ordered calmly.

Jerriha cautiously did as ordered, her eyes never leaving the glowing red seam in the Iron Warrior's helmet that marked out his own.

"So, are you finally going to torture me? You've all been such gracious hosts so far, I was beginning to wonder if I was sent to the wrong facility," Jerriha said, trying her best to sound bored while staring down the giant encased in metal.

"You have a point, actually. I believe these cells are slightly larger than the menial rooms," Serith mumbled as he glanced about the interior, "but as to your question: no."

He placed the pad of paper and pen down in front of the Fireblade.

"Allow me to explain how this is going to work. It makes little difference whether you cooperate or not. I am here to extract information from you. I am going to get that information by rifling through your mind, not unlike an adept sorting through dataslate files. There is not a thing you can do to stop me. Do you understand?"

Jerriha was silent for several moments, and then she started chuckling. "Is this your new game now? Trying to scare me into confessing? Does that actually work on some prisoners?"

Serith tilted his helmet to one side. "I know that your kind are not entirely ignorant of the Warp. You at least know of the existence of psykers, do you not?"

Jerriha smirked, leaning forward over the table. "You think to scare me with tales of 'witchcraft'? Yes, I know of psykers. I've even met one or two from our human resident planets. They can't do what you're proposing to do."

"Oh? They must deal in a different sort of psychic mastery," the Sorcerer mused, "you think I'm bluffing?"

"If you can read my mind, don't you already know?" the Tau woman countered.

"No, actually, I've been preoccupied with making you write the information I want while you're distracted."

Jerriha glanced down at her hand.

A terrified scream echoed through the halls of the cell block as the Fireblade flung the pen from her hand that she didn't remember taking up. Then she tore the top page from the note pad - already boasting a roughly sketched map of the region - and frantically tore it to shreds.

Serith chuckled as the alien soldier glared up at him, her eyes filled with equal parts hate, confusion, and naked terror.

"Ah, yes... this is what I was looking for," Serith said reverently, "the moment of realization when the target truly comprehends their helplessness. You cannot trust your body. You cannot trust your senses. You cannot even trust your mind. You are more vulnerable before me than you could have possibly imagined."

Jerriha's heart thundered in her chest as her eyes glanced about her cell.

"Thoughts of suicide, now? Ah, yes. Death can be trusted. Death tells no secrets. That is a realm I have not yet mastered," the Sorcerer admitted, brushing the note pad off the table and onto the floor, "but you will not escape me so easily, xeno worm."

"I will... tell you... NOTHING!" Jerriha snapped even as panic started to overwhelm and paralyze her. Or maybe it wasn't panic, but just more of the Sorcerer's power? It was impossible to tell where her will ended and the Iron Warrior's began, and that was more terrifying than any foe or torture she may have faced.

"You pitiful, wretched creature," Serith said with an utterly false sense of sorrow, "you are little more than a book to one such as I. Books do not speak. They are read."

****

Ferrous Dominus - brig complex Primarus, ten minutes later...

As Serith strode back into the security station, General Gnoss was waiting patiently at the same table as before, although now he had a cup of caf in front of him.

"She seemed to put up quite a fuss," the General remarked as he met the gaze of the Sorcerer, "I had to mute the recorders. The screaming was getting obnoxious."

"The process isn't usually so painful as all that," Serith admitted with a hefty shrug as he stood opposite the pirate veteran.

"Oh? Did it hurt more because she resisted?"

"No, it hurt more because I was feeling spiteful," Serith said bluntly, "first the Tau assault and now even the xeno prisoners are wasting time that I would otherwise be spending on my own projects. I'm actually quite bitter about it."

Gnoss didn't say anything immediately, taking a moment to compose himself and think over what he wanted to say. He hadn't known the Sorcerer was in such a bad mood.

"Ever the cautious one, aren't you, General?" Serith drawled, his visor tilting down to look over the map. He had picked up Gnoss's sudden unease.

"This Legion rewards caution more than courage, Lord," the General noted, "did you succeed in acquiring the data?"

"For the most part," Serith said, raising a hand over the map, "deceptions and resistance are useless defenses to psionic interrogation, but that does not make it easy. The answers are often abstract or incomplete. The simpler the question, the clearer the answer."

A flaring red light appeared over the map, and Gnoss felt the hairs on the back of his neck stand up as the mysterious mote of energy slowly burned a patch of the parchment laid out in front of them.

"The location of the Tau bases were simple enough to determine."

"Bases? There's more than one?" Gnoss asked, alarmed as another patch of the map began to darken.

"Indeed. This canyon region contains a transport hangar. It's the reason we have not yet found the lander we chased here from the fleet engagement. This spot over here is their main base."

Gnoss glanced at the Sorcerer in askance. The larger spot was a vague blob with the furthest edge about fifty kilometers from the perimeter of Ferrous Dominus. "Here? So close? They're within heavy artillery range!"

"Indeed. It should hardly come as any surprise by now, but this Sept appears to possess and utilize superior stealth technologies to evade detection by our sensors. What's more, the infrastructure to spoil our scanners was most certainly not established in the short time between the Tau transport and the Company making planetfall. The grayskins were on this planet long before we were."

Gnoss wet his lips. "Why? What are they here for?"

Serith emitted a sharp groan. "The answer to that query was more... obtuse. 'Why' is always a more difficult question. I obtained images of combat, mostly. Some far-off campaign that this 'Jerriha' was part of. Victory parades and fleets being launched. Cities ruined. Fields of debris in space. Very abstract."

Gnoss considered this as his eyes fell to the region that contained the Tau base. "You mentioned a campaign? A campaign against what?"

"Orks," Serith said with a shrug.

"ORKS? We haven't seen a single sign of greenskins anywhere in this system!" General Gnoss protested.

"Yes. It may have been a misunderstanding, or perhaps a clever attempt at misdirection on her part. Or perhaps they play some non-obvious role in all of this. The Tau might be looking for a weapon to use against the Orks here amongst the native life-forms, for example. It could be anything. Or it could be nothing; she may have been unclear on her purpose here and simply imagined her role as being part of the larger struggle against the Tau Empire's enemies."

Gnoss nodded slowly, possibilities swimming about his mind. In the end, however, he was reminded of Sliver's quite emphatic disinterest in the Tau's purpose. What did it matter to them if gray and green aliens butchered each other, or if it had some obscure connection to a remote system in the galactic frontier?

"Well then, I suppose that matter is still up in the air. What then concerning their total strength on this world?" Gnoss asked.

"That was quite difficult to piece together, in fact, but I managed to come up with a rough estimate," Serith said as he turned his helmet to look over the monitor bank, "the Tau total force, while ultimately inferior to our own, is quite sizable. In fact, it is my personal opinion that were the Tau to have deployed a greater portion of their total force against Ferrous Dominus during the assault, they would have had an excellent chance at seizing the fortress with the bulk of our forces scouring the forests."

Gnoss crossed his arms over his chest. "Perhaps they were afraid of over-reaching? It's doubtful the grayskins know much more about us than we do them."

"Perhaps. But timidness is not a trait associated with the Fire Caste of the Tau. It is my belief that they chose not to commit to overrunning the fortress because it did not serve their objectives, not because they feared failure."

"But we don't know their objectives, only that it has something to do with Orks."

"Maybe," Serith reminded him.

General Gnoss nodded, and then saluted to the Iron Warrior. "Very well. This intelligence is more than enough to act on. Thank you for taking the time to assist us, Lord Serith."

"Not at all. It was a pleasure to serve," the Sorcerer drawled sarcastically as he moved to exit the room.

****

Ponyville

"All right, fine. I think I understand what happened."

Rarity was walking through the main square of town with Twilight and Spike, listening wearily as the alicorn princess explained the situation to her.

"So if Serith has the Elements, how are we supposed to get them back? I'm still convinced that the only reason we survived our FIRST trip was because the Warsmith turned out to be bizarrely reasonable," Rarity asked, "please tell me you don't want to march back to their fortress and demand a showdown with Serith."

"No. That was my first thought, but I have a better idea," Twilight said, beckoning the unicorn closer.

Rarity leaned in cautiously, and Twilight lowered her voice. "I want to invite Serith here, using the negotiations between Equestria and the 38th Company as an excuse. With Serith away from the fortress, we have a good chance in confronting him."

Rarity quirked an eyebrow. "Uh huh. And... WHY would Serith leave the safety of his mighty fortress to tour the country of the ponies he just ripped off?"

"Because Mister Delgan is going to invite him," Twilight said with a clever smirk, "and he's going to tell Serith that we insist on dealing with the Iron Warriors as well, and with him specifically. All you need to do is convince Mister Delgan!"

Rarity did not look impressed by the scheme. "'All I have to do'? Do you think that's going to be easy?"

"It won't?" Twilight asked.

"Well, it MIGHT have been before you teleported up right in front of him and then shouted our current difficulties to everypony in town," Rarity muttered as her eyes narrowed, "after hearing that Serith stole something of ours, don't you think he might be quite suspicious that we suddenly need Serith to travel here for completely unrelated reasons?"

Twilight winced, and her ears fell flat. "Right. That. Sorry. I kind of didn't notice him before I saw you and blurted that out. But I'm sure you can talk him into it! You seem like really good friends!"

Rarity rolled her eyes and then leaned in next to Twilight close enough that their cheeks almost touched. "Twilight, darling, normally your naïve innocence is quite charming, but this is serious and it's time to put that big fancy brain of yours to work. Me and Norris Delgan are not friends. We are contacts. Associates. We flatter each other and make nice for many reasons, but friendship isn't one of them. He's simply someone who I can stand to be around and share a meal with - in stark contrast to, say, every Iron Warrior I've ever met - and who might provide some advantage to me in the future."

Twilight tilted her head to the side, perplexed. "Some advantage? Like what?"

"I don't know yet. But he's going to be the one representing a population of heavily armed space men who want to explore commercial opportunities with our people. It doesn't take much imagination to see the benefits of knowing a man like that. Likewise, I assume Mister Delgan indulges my empty compliments and small talk because he thinks he might get some benefit from knowing me in the near future. It's typical upper-class politics. I'm just relieved there are humans that play it the same way we do."

It alarmed Twilight somewhat to hear Rarity speak with such cold cynicism about something that she had mistaken for honest friendship, but she had to admit that everything Rarity said made sense. And given how badly she had underestimated Serith, it seemed especially wise to treat the 38th Company more suspiciously from now on.

Besides, the fact remained that Norris Delgan was a part of her plan not because he was a decent person, but because he had connections and influence none of them had. So, really, she was treating him in exactly the same way, except without actually going through the effort of being nice to him.

"Well, okay, so we might have to make a deal with him," Twilight allowed.

"Almost certainly," Rarity griped, "but really, even if Mister Delgan calls on him, wouldn't it be rather foolish of Serith to come?"

Twilight nodded reluctantly. "Well, yes. It would make more sense for him to stay away. But then, most of Serith's actions and behavior haven't made sense to us. Why did Serith take the Elements and then let us leave? Why did he help us get to Solon during the Tau assault? Why did he leave us a magical amulet after taking the Elements of Harmony?"

"Speaking of which, is the amulet any good?" Rarity interrupted.

Spike wordlessly reached into his pack and produced the artifact.

"Well, that answers that," Rarity spat, almost gagging at the sight, "you couldn't get me to wear that thing if my life depended on it. How positively gauche."

"Sure. As I was saying," Twilight continued, "I can't pin down Serith's game, but I'm betting that if Serith is asked to meet and negotiate with Princess Celestia he'll be too interested to turn it down. Once he's in Canterlot we can isolate and subdue him."

Rarity looked skeptical. "You think we can defeat Serith without the Elements of Harmony?"

"Yes," Twilight said with a determined nod, "the Iron Warriors are powerful, but not invincible. And Serith in particular fights using magic, which is a field that we're used to. I'm positive that we can overcome him!"

Rarity was silent for a long moment, touching her chin with her hoof.

"Well, it's not a GOOD plan by any means, but I can't think of a better one. And we certainly have to do SOMETHING." The white unicorn sighed. "All right. I'll get Mister Delgan to help. Although I can only imagine what he'll demand in return."

Spike looked worried about that prospect, but Twilight was relieved. "Thank you, Rarity. I've already sent a letter to my brother for the next phase, but for now it's up to you."

"One more question, though," the unicorn said before Twilight could turn away, "where's Gaela? Wasn't she with you?"

"Oh, she's watching the library," Twilight assured her, "she doesn't really seem bothered by us plotting against one of the Iron Warriors, but I thought it was good as a general rule not to have her around while we're doing it."

****

Ponyville - Twilight's library

Gaela's optics read a sudden surge in local energy patterns as a booming noise came from upstairs, and she looked up from the book she was reading.

"If that isn't Twilight, then the second story is a restricted area. If it is Twilight, your teleports are displacing an unusual amount of atmosphere. You may want to look into that."

Gaela went back to reading.

A few seconds later, a large white alicorn descended the steps. The Dark Acolyte glanced toward the Princess briefly, bringing up the pict file and noting the label.

"You would be the pony sovereign. If you wish to check out a book, Sparkle has briefed me on the process. Assuming you have a library card."

Princess Celestia inevitably focused on the Dark Acolyte, her eyes narrowing. The woman was wearing her power armor, as usual, but her weapons had been put away and her helmet was disengaged. "Where is Twilight Sparkle?"

"Out," Gaela said curtly, still reading her book.

Celestia's brow furrowed behind her crown. "What are you doing here?"

"Reading," Gaela managed to reply with even greater disinterest than before.

Celestia stood silent for several seconds as she stared at the Dark Acolyte's back, thoroughly irritated at her responses.

The ruler of Equestria took a calming breath, and then spoke in a more soothing tone. "I would like you to give me your full attention, please. This is quite important."

"No," Gaela said flatly, startling the Princess, "my current responsibilities are limited to the distribution and administration of books. Beyond that I have no obligation to attend to you. You may peruse the books at your leisure, or borrow them with the proper documentation. If you have no intention of doing so, then you're just wasting both our time."

Celestia's eye twitched. "Do you know who I am?"

Gaela again refused to look up. "Do you imagine that I care?"

Celestia continued to glare at the woman, but it was hard to appreciate the tension between them when the Dark Acolyte wouldn't even make eye contact.

"Why are there still humans on Equestrian soil?" Celestia eventually demanded.

"Because of many reasons, most of which would be meaningless or incomprehensible to you. But in summary, it's the Tau's fault," Gaela responded, managing to give a lengthy answer while providing absolutely no useful information.

Celestia scowled, and a golden glow encompassed her horn. "You realize I can detain and imprison you at will, do you not?"

"I had assumed as much," Gaela muttered as she put away the book she had been reading and removed another right next to it, "but based on initial analysis of your questions upon arriving, you would be acting in almost complete ignorance of the circumstances of my presence here. As such, any punitive actions you take against me for some petty slight could easily undermine your own agents and ultimately the safety of yourself and your nation. It is logical to conclude, then, that you will instead return to your other duties and await contact from Sparkle rather than complicating matters by harassing me further." She started flipping through the new book, again not bothering to check on the alicorn's reaction.

Celestia fumed in silence for several long moments.

Then the glow around her horn faded. "I'm going back to my castle," the Princess mumbled, "when Twilight returns, tell her that I came to speak with her, and that she should contact me right away."

"No," said Gaela.

Princess Celestia paused to glare at the Dark Acolyte again, but was again ignored.

"I'll leave a note," Celestia grumbled, walking back up the stairs.

****

Ponyville - Delgan's Market

"Good, good. I want the servitors to be the first thing our customers see on their approach. Sevaan, get the lumens set up against the Chimera."

"It's not really the best place to set them, though."

"That's okay, they're not likely to be a big seller. A third of the bloody horses can generate light with their thoughts. Glenn! Make sure there's another load of power cells accessible! I'm expecting those things to move!"

Delgan directed his apprentice merchants and assistants in setting up his market, watching as numerous tables were set up, decorated, and then piled with devices.

Most of the items were mundane by human standards: power generators, heaters, auto-cleaners, vox casters, and tools. Among them were more unique techno-artifacts like gravity plates and servitors prominently displayed to attract the most attention, even if most ponies would be hard-pressed to come up with an item worthy of being traded for one.

Conspicuously absent were weapons and Chaos artifacts. Not that such things weren't for sale, but Delgan could read the local culture well enough to put such items in storage to be shown on demand.

The key to dealing with alien markets was novelty dressed with prudence. Alien cultures naturally found each others' good interesting, but would quickly shun anything that clashed too badly with their local norms.

"Hold up, there! We're still setting up. There's no entry right now," Delgan heard one of his guards say.

"Oh, that's okay. I'm here to speak with Mister Delgan," said a familiar voice.

Delgan debated whether or not to turn around and acknowledge Rarity. He felt like he had overestimated her importance when he had first singled her out among the six ponies that had ventured into Ferrous Dominus, and he really did have better things to do at the moment than trade pleasantries and bemoan the interruption of their earlier meal.

More importantly, last he'd heard Rarity and Twilight were involved in some plot of Serith's. He was in no hurry to associate with anyone or anything that had made an enemy of an Iron Warrior.

"Pull back the Chimera on the right! Set up another table and lay out some spare parts or something! You never know what some people will buy if it's from another planet!" he ordered to one of his apprentices.

Then he turned around and inclined his head.

"Ah, Miss Rarity, Princess Twilight," he said, disregarding Spike entirely, "how may I be of assistance today?"

Rarity stepped ahead of the others and passed by the guard, a slightly strained smile on her face. "I was hoping to continue our earlier conversation, actually. We never did get to discuss the particulars of your negotiations here, and I was hoping to join you in your eventual tour of our capital."

Delgan mulled that over. Such a topic was hardly something that needed to be attended to immediately, when he was clearly busy. On the other hand, Twilight was behind her watching with a pensive expression, meaning there was certainly another dimension to their discussion that Rarity hadn't explained.

"Very well, if it cannot wait," Delgan said reluctantly before turning toward his men, "Kerrin! You're in charge! Have Sami appraise all proffered trade items and don't forget receipts this time! If my inventory is low again I'll have the both of you fed to the Harvest!"

"Sir!" "Yes, Master Delgan!"

The Trademaster made a casual gesture to Rarity as he headed for his trailer. "Come. We'll speak inside."

Rarity followed him, heaving a tired sigh as she did so.

Twilight and Spike moved to follow as well, but promptly found a pair of plate-armored legs in the way.

"You stay here," mumbled the guard through his mask, "there's no entry unless Master Delgan says so."

Twilight blinked in surprised, and then aimed a hoof toward Rarity. "Ah, we're with her."

Delgan halted and cleared his throat meaningfully. "My apologies, Princess, but I'll be speaking to Miss Rarity alone. Please follow the instructions of my security personnel at all times, as they are here for your safety."

Twilight didn't like the sound of that, but reluctantly backed away as Rarity followed the man into his trailer. Again she had to reason that this actually reflected quite well upon her plan; it was to be expected that he would negotiate with Rarity above her. That was why she had asked Rarity to help in the first place.

Still, Twilight didn't trust Delgan, and she wasn't going to sit around staring at some soldier's shoes while her friend might be in danger. Spike looked equally concerned, although she had a hunch that his concerns were slightly different than hers.

"Come on, Spike," the alicorn said quietly as she turned away, "let's go find a better spot to wait for her."

****

Ponyville - Delgan's trailer

"Your friends could use some instruction in subtlety," Delgan murmured as he opened a cabinet on the wall.

Rarity chuckled ruefully. "Twilight is such an innocent little thing. It's charming, really."

"There is no such thing as innocence," Delgan intoned grimly as he pulled out a bottle of amasec, "only degrees of guilt."

He removed a pair of liquor glasses and placed them on a counter. "Princess Sparkle traveled into the heart of an Iron Warrior fortress, braved the fury of the Tau assault and faced the Warsmith himself. If she'd possessed any true innocence, by now we've already stripped her of it." He poured a shallow pool of amasec into each glass. "All that's left is naiveté and weakness."

Rarity's grudging and desperate smile faded. "We do what we can, Mister Delgan. But I would appreciate it if you didn't insult my friends."

The Trademaster placed one of the glasses next to the unicorn as he sat down across from her. "Very well, then let's get down to business. What is it you want, exactly?"

"Serith," Rarity said simply.

Delgan paused briefly, and then gulped down his own glass of liquor. "That's quite a tall order," he admitted as he spilled more of the amber liquid into his glass.

"You see, Twilight has insisted that negotiations between our two species involve the Iron Warrior leadership as well. And who better to represent the Company than Serith?"

"Almost anyone," Delgan drawled.

"Well, okay, yes, but most of them we haven't met," Rarity pointed out.

"Miss Rarity, you do yourself a disservice with this utterly transparent deception. If you want Lord Serith brought here, you don't want him because of some political advantage."

Rarity released a melodramatic sigh as she levitated up her glass and sunk back into the chair cushion. "Oh, but I tried my best. You have to give me credit for that."

"I do. I also must admit that it might have worked had Princess Twilight not blurted out in front of me that Lord Serith had taken something of yours."

****

Ponyville - Delgan's trailer exterior

Twilight and Spike quietly teleported into place between Delgan's trailer and one of the Chimera transports parked behind it, fitting neatly into the crack between vehicles that would have proven challenging for a human.

"Spike, you keep watch for any guards," Twilight whispered as she pressed her ear up against the wall of the trailer.

"Do you really think you can hear them like that?" Spike asked uncertainly.

"No. Luckily, I have a spell for that," Twilight said as her horn started to glow.

Twilight's eyes filled with light, and as she stared hard at the trailer the wall seemed to fade away in front of her, revealing the sights and sounds within.

"One does not even go near a Sorcerer if one can help it, Miss Rarity. And opposing one is an act of sheer madness."

"Then consider us mad," Rarity countered, "specifically, we're mad that he made a certain... trade without our knowledge or consent, and we'd like the opportunity to have a stern talk with him." The white unicorn sipped her glass of amasec gingerly, taking the time to savor the rich liquor.

"And by 'stern talk' you mean to destroy him?" Delgan said with a raised eyebrow.

"Oh, I don't know. We have a history of resolving dangerous matters with the Iron Warriors without fighting," Rarity pointed out, taking a longer sip of her drink.

"One incident is not a very storied history," Delgan pointed out.

"Three incidents," Rarity corrected, "Twilight confronted the Warsmith, Rainbow Dash SOMEHOW made friends with that Tellis lunatic, and I managed to get Acolyte Gaela into a dress without MUCH manhandling."

"Twilight?" Spike whispered.

"Everything's okay so far," Twilight said, trying to keep her assistant from interfering with the spell, "is there a guard coming?"

"No, it's just... why do you know an eavesdropping spell?" Spike asked uncomfortably.

"Can't talk now! Quiet!"

Delgan was silent for several seconds as he considered her claims. "If this is to be a non-violent encounter, then that leaves me scope to act. Obviously, I will not deliberately deliver my masters into mortal danger for personal gain; there's very little personal gain that can offset a bolter round to the head, as you might understand."

"Splendid!" the unicorn cheered, levitating her glass over to Delgan for a refill. "Our highest leaders will be on hand to welcome him to Canterlot, our capital!" Rarity had no idea if that was true or not, but she certainly hoped that Twilight wasn't planning on ambushing Serith with just the six of them plus Spike. She'd mentioned something about Shining Armor, but she hadn't really asked about the rest of Twilight's plan. She was finding the first part trying enough.

"Of course. I have some substantial pull with the Warsmith, and I can see to it that he is sent here. But I need a guarantee from you that he will survive the trip. I don't really expect the lot of you to be much threat to an Iron Warrior Sorcerer, but I must be sure that I'm not on the hook for the loss of a valuable Company asset." Delgan filled Rarity's glass a little more this time, his eyes thoughtful and calculating.

"Of course," Rarity said simply with a smile, drawing the glass back to herself in the air.

"Then all that remains is to discuss what you're going to do for me in return," Delgan smirked as he took a long, gentle sip from his glass.

Rarity's smile dimmed somewhat. "Of course..."

"All right, now we're getting to the important part," Twilight mumbled, her eyes and horn still glowing with magic.

Spike was almost chewing his nails, although he made a token effort to glance to the side every now and then to see if a guard was peeking in on them.

"Is she okay? What's happening?"

"Nothing yet. Shush!" Twilight hissed, staring at the wall.

"He's not, like, touching her or anything, is he?" Spike asked.

Twilight rolled her eyes, which had the effect of casting magical, coruscating light in an arch over the side of the trailer. "No. They're just talking and having a drink together."

"Having a drink? Is he putting the moves on her?" the young dragon demanded angrily.

"Spike, give it a rest," Twilight snapped, turning toward him and inadvertently blinding her assistant, "nothing's happening that's worth interrupting, yet."

As Spike blinked rapidly to recover his vision, Twilight turned back to the trailer. "Besides, that would just be too weird. They're not even the same specieeeeugh..." Twilight trailed off into a cringing expression as she realized who she was talking to. "Uhm... hush. They're talking again."

"What is Canterlot like?" Delgan asked, rolling the amasec about in his glass as he stared into Rarity's eyes.

"Oh, it's delightful. Beautiful architecture, the finest foods, and ponies of class and taste everywhere you look. A bit hard to get to, though. We'll need to take the train. As will Mister Serith, I suppose."

"It sounds like a considerable market," Delgan remarked, "one I would like to break into."

Rarity quirked an eyebrow as she sipped her amasec.

"You see, as nice as it is to establish a trading post here in your quaint little village, this is hardly the sort of market I'm looking for to distribute my goods, nor does it have much of the sort of products I'm looking for to take back to the fleet. Well, besides apples, I suppose. Everybody likes those."

"They're a classic," Rarity agreed, "apparently even on other planets."

"Anyway. I wish to open another market in your capital, but given the bureaucratic resistance I've encountered here, I doubt that's going to be possible within a short enough time frame to be useful." He paused to take a drink, and then sighed. "I can get my way easily enough dealing with a rural mayor, but I seriously doubt that I'll be able to overcome such obstacles in a proper city full of alien psykers and - I presume - your primary military force."

Rarity snorted and put down her glass. "You desperately overestimate the usefulness of our soldiers."

Delgan put his glass down as well and then laced his fingers together atop his legs. "Yes, well, my point is that humans are unlikely to be welcome to lease property and do business in your capital. As far as I can tell, your civilization has no established xeno business laws, and I don't think we'll be treated favorably. Given that we're a band of space pirates worshiping evil gods and fighting brutal wars on your national territory."

"And then there's the slavery thing," Rarity pointed out.

"Yes, fine. There's that, too," Delgan grumbled, "I could try to eat away at the bureaucracy, do some favors and strong-arm a few clerks, but we have a few months here at most." Then the Trademaster smiled. "You're going to make all that unnecessary."

"Oh? I do hope you're not overestimating my pull with the royal family," Rarity warned, "I can get Twilight to put in a good word, but we don't have any special authority."

"It's not your status that works to my advantage, Miss Rarity, it's your species," Delgan said with a smile, "I need you to work as my agent. I'll provide you with the resources, and you'll provide me with a storefront in Canterlot and all the amenities it needs to sell your new stock of 'alien artifacts'. You'll hire pony employees so as to keep the human presence in the city minimal, and I might even send you to buy something I fancy in the city."

He picked up his glass again, and raised it in front of the unicorn so that it was almost touching her horn. "How does that sound? Guarantee me my shop, and I'll guarantee you our Sorcerer."

"That sounds... far more reasonable than I had expected, actually," Rarity admitted, "I was thinking you would have me flog your goods on the black market or something!"

"That's plan B," Delgan admitted, still holding his glass up, "and believe me, you don't want to know what plan C is."

Droplets of sweat beaded over Rarity's coat as she levitated her glass over to bump against Delgan's. "Then here's to the success of the probably legal scheme!" the unicorn cheered with a forced smile before pulling the glass back and gulping down its contents. "Ugh. This is just going to push my work further into backlog."

Delgan snorted as he drained his glass. "Please. I'll give you a servitor. They can work day and night sewing and cutting on any design you come up with. You'll triple your productivity and work far less."

"Oh?" Rarity leaned forward, extremely interested. "Tell me more."

Twilight ended her spell, and then rubbed at her face with her foreleg. "Gah, that spell is hard on your eyes."

"Why'd you drop it? Is Rarity in trouble?" Spike asked pensively.

"Rarity's fine, and what he wanted for his help wasn't that bad. We're leaving," Twilight said, her horn glowing as she prepared another teleport.

"Wait, we're not taking her with us? But what if he-"

"Spike, like I said, give it a rest. We have work to do and nothing's going on in that trailer that we should be worried about. We're leaving."

And then, in a flash of purple, they were gone.

Five minutes later, the door to Delgan's trailer suddenly burst open, startling the guard on duty as his employer almost tumbled out of the doorway.

"Master Delgan, are you okay?" the guard said immediately, his weapon at the ready. Delgan's face was flushed a bright red, or at least the parts of his face that weren't metal.

"Y-Yes!" he blurted far too loudly. "Yes. Our guest just needs, uhm, a little fresh air."

After a few tense seconds, Rarity came out of the trailer, her gait wobbling and her eyelids hovering uncertainly. She was also bright red in the face, but for a completely different reason.

"Sho shorry dahling. Did I shcare you back there?" Rarity slurred as she stumbled down the two steps separating the trailer from ground level. "Ish okay tho, hun. I wash jusht playing. Yer not really my short of shtallion anyhow."

She giggled as she reached the ground, throwing her head back. "Lishen to me, everypony! I'm Warshmith Shpider Legsh!"

"It's my fault, really," Delgan admitted as he wiped his hand against a wet spot on his cheek, "she's barely half my size; I forgot to cut her portions accordingly."

"Applejack, izzat you? C'mere, dahling, give Rarity a hug!"

"Oh, hey Rares, you here to see the human stuff they got... what in tarnation have you been drinking?! Yer breath smells like turpentine! Hey! Git offa me!"

Delgan grimaced. "Still, I wouldn't have figured her for a horny drunk."

"Aaaaapplejaaaaack... take me to your brother. I have an itch only he can shcratch," the unicorn drawled, her body draped over the earth pony like a pair of saddlebags, "with hish giant, juicy, red-"

"We're goin' back to your boutique, sugarcube. Ah don't have time fer this. And quit droolin' on me!"

Delgan watched his guest depart, and then glanced over at the guard. "I'll double your pay this month to forget everything you just saw."

"Absolutely, Sir!" the guard said enthusiastically, snapping a salute.

"Lovely. I have to get back to work..."

****

Ferrous Dominus - Sliver's quarters

Most Space Marines tended toward a spartan, pragmatic existence. It was perhaps characteristic of the men that sacrificed their human lives to become living weapons to live with as little as possible to do their jobs. This was even more the case for the Iron Warriors, a Legion that prided itself on brutal efficiency and technical excellence.

But there were exceptions allowed where their leadership was concerned. Besides Warsmith Solon himself, who kept an enormous forge full of xeno artifacts and spare parts, the Company's vice commander likewise preferred a more elaborate dwelling.

The difference was stark, however. Solon's ministrations to Nurgle were short and personal. Sliver was a seething cauldron devoted to the plague God, and he fashioned his quarters to reflect his deeper allegiance.

Piles of carcasses and rotting vegetables were arranged with deceptive care around the perimeter of his room, and in the middle a small altar had been brought from his quarters on the Harvest of Steel. Incense burners hung from the ceiling, slowly spewing vile gases into the air, and mad, esoteric writing was smudged onto the walls with a paint devised of dirt, blood, and sewage. Even the floor was damp, warm, and somehow soft, despite ostensibly being made of the same metals as the rest of the building.

It was a lair of filth and rot, utterly inimical to all human life that had not devoted itself to Nurgle. To those that had, it was a work of art, and a veritable zoo of fine microbes and disease.

Sliver was in the midst of adding to the writing on the wall when the sensors on his door informed him of an approaching visitor.

He didn't really need the sensors to tell him; Solon made enough of a racket moving anywhere that you could hear him walking a block away.

"Hello, Warssmith," Sliver drawled, still stooped over in front of the wall as the doors slid open.

"Greetingsh, Shliver!" Solon welcomed brightly as he stomped into the dwelling. His mechanoid legs sunk into the floor with every step, sticking to the slimy surface as if it were gum. The door quickly slid shut behind him, cutting off the flow of contaminants to the rest of the base.

"Good newsh! I jusht got the report from General Gnossh! Sherith hash dragged the information we wanted from the xeno leader! We have them!"

Sliver paused, and then he slowly put down the crumbling clay pot that held his "paint". "I ssee."

"Enemy numbersh are a tad higher than we expected, but the General came up with a good shtrategy that I wanted to run by you. You shee, he wantsh to move the artillery corp out to-"

"I do not approve," Sliver interrupted, his armor gears creaking as he turned toward the Warsmith.

Solon's optics rotated as he paused. "What? No artillery? You haven't even heard the resht of the plan."

"I do not approve of ssending out a sstrike force," Sliver clarified, "tell me, Warssmith, what iss ssuch an attack ssuppossed to accomplish?"

Solon paused again, uncertain. Several of his mechatendrils had curled about and were staring at the Warsmith, as if the semi-sentient tendrils wanted an explanation as well.

"Uh... to... crush the hated foe? Victory for the Company... and the Legion? Or... glory for Chaosh, maybe?" Solon said, sounding less and less sure of himself.

"At the cosst of ssignificant livess and ssupplies. Livess and ssupplies that are needed elssewhere, to fight real threatss. Our brotherss cut deep into the greatesst military power in the galaxy. Lord Honssou sswellss our rankss and forgess new armiess for our cause. Abaddon plotss hiss next bloody drive into the Imperium. All thirsst for bulletss, energy, and armor. And what are we doing in the meantime?"

Solon took a step back. "Uh... fighting... Tau?" he asked, clearly uncertain of his answer.

"Yess. Sskirmishing with upsstart weaklingss on ssome frontier world of no importance to anyone," Sliver answered his own question, "what doess it matter if we sslaughter the Tau here or not?"

"Uh... well... it would make our operationsh on thish planet shafer in general," Solon pointed out, although his voice was faltering.

Sliver took a hefty step forward. "Our operationss conssisst of manufacturing. They all take place within thesse wallss. The Tau cannot touch uss here. They cannot harm our shipss in orbit. All they can do iss ssit, and wait, and hope we venture out of our fortificationss and into the ssightss of their gunss. This planet meanss nothing to uss, and we have no need to vanquish the foe. The only obvious route to failure iss to attack."

Solon took another step back, holding up his hands as if to ward off his vice-commander. "Okay, yesh, that'sh a fair point. What about their landing shilo? It'sh not heavily defended ash far ash we can tell, and we might be able to capture another of their shipsh!"

"Need I remind you what happened the lasst time you jumped at the chance to asssault the graysskin assetss?" Sliver demanded, walking forward as his helmet tilted upward to maintain optics contact. Even in terminator armor, he was utterly dwarfed by the Warsmith, and yet Solon flinched back nervously from his second in command.

"How many brotherss, workerss, Techpriesstss, and mortal gunss were losst due to our hasste to sslay the xeno?"

Solon backed up far enough for the doors to shift open again, startling him to a stop.

Sliver stopped advancing, the single fishbowl lens of his helmet pulsing a bright red as it stared up into the array of optical sensors littering Solon's helmet. "Every fruitlesss attack made againsst the Tau iss another gap in our armor inviting retribution. Every losst brother and wrecked vehicle iss another sstep away from our objective, no matter how many graysskinss they sslay in their passsing. Every needlesss additional cycle we sspend on this revolting, prisstine world iss another misstake that cannot be corrected or redeemed!"

Solon's legs folded inward as his chassis lowered itself as close to the floor as possible in his effort to shrink back. "Okay! Okay! I undershtand! No more shtrike groupsh! You're right!"

Sliver finally turned away, relieving his master of his damning gaze. "Make no misstake, Warssmith. Thiss iss your Company, not mine. But if you choosse to attack, you do so againsst my recommendationss."

"No, no, that'sh okay," Solon said hastily as he walked backwards out of the room, "you make a very convincing cashe, Shliver. I'm going to go back to work now! Farewell!"

Solon's legs pounded a fast rhythm against the metal flooring as he retreated from the "Nurgle wing" of the Astartes barracks.

He knew that Sliver had been sour about being ignored during the initial assault on the Tau camp, and he was certainly displeased as everyone else about the Tau assault, but Solon had expected his vice-commander to be more eager for revenge and bloodletting. Instead, it seems that the Nurglite saw their circumstances as a purely strategic mistake, and in that sense blame for it lay squarely on Solon's shoulders.

"Well, I guess there ishn't much elshe to do than go back to building thingsh, then," the Warsmith mumbled to himself. Considering Sliver's deteriorated mood, he would want to stay as far as possible from his vice-captain until more progress was made on the Warp drives.

Maybe he could help retro-fit the Tau ships? Certainly the Dark Mechanicus could use his help, considering his extensive knowledge of Tau technology and mastery of their language. It would also get him out of Ferrous Dominus long enough to give guard duties a chance to wear down Sliver's temper.

Solon was distracted from his thoughts by a vox signal beaming to his helmet. The encryption key was unique, and he recognized it immediately.

"Why hello Mashter Delgan! How nice to hear from you!" Solon said brightly, glancing about for anyone else in the halls who might hear him. "Do you have newsh to report already?"

"I do, Warsmith," crackled his vox unit into his ear, "I've established a foothold in the xeno settlement and am already collecting local goods in exchange for some of our surplus material. However, tomorrow I'm to meet with their leaders, and I wish to request assistance."

Solon hesitated. "Ashishtance... what kind of ashishtance, exactly? Becaushe if you require troopsh, I'm afraid there'sh a bit of a problem with that." He hoped that wasn't the case. It would be extremely embarrassing to admit that he couldn't send out any more soldiers because he was afraid of making his vice-commander mad.

"Just one, Warsmith," Delgan responded, "you see, the ponies wish to discuss matters of the Company's military presence here as well, and to that end, they've requested the presence of an Iron Warrior of rank to accompany me." A cough came from the other end of the vox connection. "Lord Serith's name came up several times."

Solon tilted his head to the side. "Sherith? That'sh an odd requesht. I didn't think he wash sho popular."

"Well, he certainly has a way with the ponies, my lord. Is this a possible arrangement?"

"Of courshe! It'll be good for him to get out of hish lab for a while. He keepsh blowing it up, shomehow."

"That's... uh... well, in any case, thank you, Warsmith. This is a considerable aid to my cause. And Lord Serith is sure to have an interesting time here as well, I'm sure," Delgan mused from the other end of the vox link.

"Yesh, shplendid! Shend me the coordinatesh and I'll arrange everything right away!" Solon agreed with a level of enthusiasm that honestly surprised the man on the other end.

"Of course, Warsmith. Data upload incoming. I will continue with my tasks here and await his arrival. Farewell."

****

Ponyville - Twilight's library

"All right. Good. I think everything is prepared."

Twilight sounded out of breath as she entered the library, although her exhaustion was more mental than physical.

As much thought as she had put into her plan, she was plagued by constant doubts about what she had done, the ponies she was putting into harm's way, and how likely it was that her unlikely scheme would succeed. Looking at it logically, her position was exceptionally bleak.

But she pushed such thoughts behind her. She had done all she could short of flying back to Ferrous Dominus and blasting the wretched Sorcerer, and it was widely agreed that was a terrible idea.

"Hi, Gaela," Spike said as he walked in behind Twilight and dropped his pack on the floor. The Dark Acolyte was standing against the wall with a book in her hand, and she grunted an acknowledgment as the alicorn and her assistant entered the room.

"Gaela, did anypony stop in while I was out?" Twilight asked.

"Yes," Gaela answered simply. Her servo arm twisted around and pointed at the desk where Twilight kept the administrative and lending records.

Twilight trotted over to the desk, noting that there was a large sheet of parchment that hadn't been there before, and a postcard on top of that.

Twilight levitated the postcard up in front of her.

"You are cordially invited to PARTY HARD at the most METAL celebration on this side of the galaxy," Twilight read aloud, emphasizing the capitalized words appropriately, "come one, come all, and help welcome the human visitors to Equestria as we paint the manufactorum red in Ferrous Dominus itself! Sci-fi dress is encouraged. No Tau allowed. You can dress up as a Tau, but it's not recommended since the humans will probably shoot you."

Twilight finished reading the card, and then stared at the Iron Skull graphic grinning at her from the side of the message.

"I... I don't even know where to begin..." Twilight said, her voice sounding somewhat frantic as she stared at the postcard.

"You should probably start with 'where' and 'when', which are conveniently detailed on the back," Gaela answered as she put down the book she was reading, "if you're wondering 'who', then obviously Pie was behind this. She stopped by nearly ten minutes ago to drop that off, and gave me one as well. 'How' she thinks to manage this is likely a fruitless line of questioning."

Twilight turned away from the desk as she stared hard at the postcard, as if willing it to reveal the secrets behind Pinkie's thought process. "She's throwing a party? In your base?"

"That is what the little paper rectangle suggests, yes," Gaela mumbled, crossing her arms over her chest, "I can confirm nothing."

Gears started turning in Twilight's head. "This is... okay. I might be able to use this."

"It's quite resourceful of you to turn your friend's lunacy to your advantage," Gaela opined.

"You kind of have to, with Pinkie," Spike explained.

"I'm going out," Twilight said, "I need to talk to her. Spike, you stay here with Gaela, all right?"

The purple alicorn didn't wait for an answer before she rushed out the door again, leaving her assistant and temporary roommate behind.

"Well, she seems like she's keeping busy. It must be quite trying to challenge an Iron Warrior, much less a Sorcerer," Gaela mumbled.

Spike cringed, lacing his claws together nervously. "So, uh... are you really... okay with that, by the way?"

Gaela turned to regard the young dragon silently, her emerald green optics rotating in its socket.

"That depends," the Acolyte admitted, "I am devoted to the goals of the Warsmith and the 38th Company, not simply any given member of it." She planted her hands on her hips. "Lord Serith's goals do not seem to align very well with those, and his actions are a petty distraction from our tasks at hand. While I cannot actively side against Lord Serith in this matter, I have no obligation whatsoever to protect him from retribution or aid him in taking your things."

Then she picked up Spike's backpack off the floor.

"That said, I can't imagine any sort of psionic trinket is worth facing an Astartes Sorcerer over."

"The Elements of Harmony are kind of a big deal," Spike pointed out.

"As I gathered while you and Sparkle were away," Gaela noted, taking the Chaos amulet from the pack, "but their status as a glorified superweapon renders them eminently replaceable. Why, exactly, can this artifact not replace them? At least in part?"

"You mean, besides the fact that it came from the same guy who nicked the Elements?" Spike asked.

"Yes, obviously. Besides that."

Spike walked up to her, scratching at his cheek as he stared at the eye in the middle of the Chaos Star. "Well, I dunno. What does it do?"

"From what little I know of Chaos sorcerous artifacts, I would presume it to be a psionic amplifier. Perhaps it also serves as a stable-pattern force emitter," Gaela mumbled, "such items usually perform a specific psionic effect with greater reliability and constancy than a psyker could manage on their own. Generating energy shields is common, for example."

"That sounds kind of neat," Spike said, poking the amulet. It was surprisingly warm to the touch. "Do you need to use magic to use it?"

"I don't know," Gaela admitted, seeing the dragon's growing interest, "do you 'use magic' as you put it?"

"No. Well, kind of?" Spike scratched his head. "I don't think I'm one of those 'psykers' you're always talking about, at any rate."

There was a brief silence.

"Did you want to try it on?" Gaela asked directly, holding the amulet down to him.

"Well, why not?" Spike asked as he took the ebony star. "It couldn't hurt, right?"

"Actually, my experience with such objects implies-okay, never mind, you're putting it on."

Spike braced himself as he dropped the iron loop over his head, but no rush of power or surge of agony hit him as the heavy amulet fell flat against his belly.

"... Well?" Gaela asked, having already activated her pict recorder as she observed the dragon.

"I don't feel any different," Spike admitted, holding his arms out as he stared down at the alien accessory, "how do I look?"

"Only slightly more ridiculous than usual," Gaela admitted. The amulet was large even by human standards, and on the young dragon it dangled almost to the floor.

"Well, I don't see what the big deal is. It's nothing but a fancy-looking hunk of metal," Spike decided after a brief pause, gripping the amulet around the edges.

Definitely harmless. We should probably stick together from now on.

Spike glanced up at Gaela, surprised. "Really? You want to stick around with me?"

The Dark Acolyte quirked her eyebrow. "No. What gave you that idea?"

"You just said we should."

"No I didn't."

Meh. Forget her, then. She seems like a buzzkill anyway.

Spike's forehead furrowed as he heard the voice again, and then he glanced around for the possible source.

Finally, after several seconds, he looked down at the amulet.

Hi!

"AAAAAH! AAAAAH! AAAAAAAAAAAAAH!!!"

****

Ponyville - Sugarcube Corner

"Pinkie, is this for real?"

Twilight stood at the front of the line at the Cakes' bakery, holding up the postcard invitation with her magic.

"Of course it's real, silly billy!" Pinkie said brightly. "Can you make it?"

Twilight was silent for several seconds, staring hard at the invitation. "I have... questions," the purple alicorn said reluctantly, "starting with how you got permission for something like this."

"Easier to ask forgiveness than seek permission!" Pinkie quoted brightly.

"Whoever said that clearly wasn't dealing with a military authority," Twilight countered, "also, there are the purely physical logistics of it. How do you plan on bringing the pony guests all the way to Ferrous Dominus and then getting them past the gates?"

Pinkie's smile shifted into a smug smirk. "You just leave the details to aunt Pinkie. When it comes to parties, even those grumpy-metal-pants Space Marines are no match for me!"

"Personally, I think it's a lot of bother for nothing," said Mrs. Cake as she placed a platter of cupcakes on the counter, "why would we want to welcome those awful space soldiers to Equestria?"

Twilight frowned. "Well, that's a good point, although they're not ALL bad..."

"They've still got bunkers and gun turrets lying around Fluttershy's cottage!" Complained Roseluck, who was standing in line behind Twilight. "And their stupid tanks rolled RIGHT over my flower gardens!"

Cheerilee nodded sadly behind her. "Obviously it's very dangerous for them to be fighting their war in our country. Nearly half my class brought in discarded bullet casings for show and tell yesterday! And I don't trust that mechanical thing Apple Bloom is hanging out with nowadays, either!"

Carrot Top snorted. "And that's all aside from the slavery thing. Can you imagine? Slavers in Equestria! That's horrible!"

Twilight winced at the barrage of perfectly legitimate complaints. It was hardly her fault that the humans were in Equestria, but she DID bring them straight to Ponyville.

Pinkie Pie, on the other hand, put her hoof to her chin as she thought over the complaints. "Okay, that's all true," she allowed, "but on the other hoof, they're space pirates."

The other ponies in the bakery fell silent as they considered that, but Twilight looked bemused by the comment. "Pinkie, when you use that expression like that, you're supposed to list something POSITIVE about the subject. Like maybe 'they rebuilt Applejack's farm' or 'they've promised to leave in a few months'."

Pinkie smirked. "Wait for it..."

"Well, I didn't know they were space pirates," Mr. Cake said as his wife nodded, "that's kind of neat, actually."

"I suppose it's their job then, isn't it?" Cheerilee sighed, shrugging. "Oh well. I'll have to warn the children not to play in their minefields, though."

"Ooh! I just thought of a great costume for the party!"

Twilight gaped as the other ponies' moods lifted and they started discussing the expected festivities.

"How do you DO that?!" Twilight demanded of the pink pony.

"Trade secret," Pinkie said with a wink, "now did you want to order something?"

Twilight shook her head. "No, I just needed to confirm this with you. You see, Serith-"

"Yeah, I know," Pinkie interrupted, rolling her eyes, "it's a major plot point by now, so let's not waste more time explaining everything again, all right?"

Twilight gaped some more for several seconds, and then reluctantly suppressed her disbelief.

"Here," the alicorn said, levitating a scroll out of her saddlebag and onto the counter, "your party is taking place at more less the same time as the meeting between Princess Celestia and Serith. I've cast a spell on this scroll so that it will light up when I use a certain trigger spell, no matter how far away I am. If and when it lights up while you're at the party, I need you to read it and follow the instructions. All right?"

Pinkie saluted grimly. "Yes, Cap'n! You can count on me!"

"Thanks, Pinkie. We're going to pull this off, I'm sure of it!" Twilight turned away and trotted out the door, exuding confidence.

Mr. Cake waited until the door closed behind her, and then turned toward Pinkie. "So does this mean you'll need more time off to save the world?"

"Nah, I'm pretty sure I can take care of this on my own time," Pinkie assured her employer, leaning in toward him, "and if I screw up, then I won't need any more time off at all! Or my pension, for that matter! Ha!"

The Cakes looked quite uncomfortable as Pinkie's chuckling trailed off.

"That's horrible," Mrs. Cake noted.

"Yeah, dark humor isn't really my strongest area," Pinkie admitted seriously, "but I'm getting better! I've gotten a lot of practice since the humans showed up!"

"Pinkie? Please go back to serving the customers."

"Okie dokie lokie!"

****

Ferrous Dominus - Trixie's quarters

"So then, of course, Trixie's mortar shot goes off-target. Trixie has never fired such a weapon before, and the man didn't explain how the weapon was aimed at all. The explosive went almost straight up!"

Trixie was currently lounging in her room on top of Suuna's lap, describing her latest show to Serith. The Sorcerer was standing against the wall near the door, chuckling at the tale through his vox grille.

He could have easily viewed one of the numerous recordings of Trixie's show rather than ask her about it personally, of course, but somehow it seemed far more interesting and enjoyable to hear about it from the showpony herself.

"Trixie had only seconds to act, so she reached out with all her greatness and power and pulled Trixie's target up off the ground and toward her, right under the mortar shell!"

Serith's chuckling grew louder as he imagined it. "A brilliant ploy, Lady Trixie."

"Was there ever any doubt?" Trixie preened. "Of course, it would have been even smarter to move out of the blast area while I was moving the target, but Trixie forgot that they explode when they land. If Suuna hadn't tackled Trixie out of the way, Trixie might have needed a few of those 'augmetic' thingies you humans have!"

"I do what I can, Mistress," Suuna said as she ran a brush over Trixie's back, "but perhaps it would be best if you stopped performing with live ordnance?"

"But those are Trixie's most popular events! And after ruling out duels, there isn't much else for the soldiers to challenge Trixie at, anyway," the unicorn mused.

Trixie's self-satisfied expression faded slightly. "Back on the subject of lost limbs though, Trixie couldn't help but notice that your hand is gone, Serith."

Indeed, even as the Sorcerer listened to the unicorn describe her show and occasionally commented on it, his entire left forearm was a burnt, twisted mess that ended at the wrist of the armor sleeve.

"What, this? It's nothing," the Sorcerer assured her.

"Trixie didn't want to say anything, because Trixie knows how embarrassing it is to miscast a spell, but that seems... well... kind of serious."

"As I said, it is a trifle. I'll just get a new hand," Serith said dismissively.

Trixie's expression shifted to one of open concern. "Okay, fair enough, but Trixie is still worried. There's been a lot of accidents coming from your room lately."

A dusty snort came from Serith's helmet. "There's only been six of them in total."

"That's a lot to have in a few days when it comes to magical mishaps," Trixie said as she pushed herself up into a sitting position, "you should slow it down a bit before you really hurt yourself."

Serith took pause at this. He genuinely didn't know how to respond to such an earnest concern for his welfare. It was a completely bizarre feeling.

"I see... very well, then. Perhaps you're right," the Sorcerer mumbled, staring down at the stump of his vambrace, "I've been working with some very... difficult materials. I've gathered a great deal of data already. Perhaps it is enough."

"That's all Trixie's saying. And of course, if you need assistance with your research, you can always rely on Trixie for help!" the blue pony assured him, placing a hoof against her chest.

"A generous offer. But I..." Serith trailed off as a data intercept rune lit up on his visor display. "Just a moment. It seems I have... deployment orders?"

He tilted his helmet back as he read the details. "How odd... it seems I'm to take part in a diplomatic mission."

Suuna cringed, agreeing wholeheartedly that it was extremely odd to ask such a thing of a Chaos Sorcerer.

"Why is that strange?" Trixie asked, much less in tune with the general abhorrence most felt for Serith. "You have more personality than a hundred of the lesser Iron Warriors put together!"

Serith barked another laugh. "Such praise! But I think my inclusion in this mission has... ulterior motivations."

His remaining hand tapped the chin of his helmet, and then he lowered his gaze toward Trixie.

"Lady Trixie, do you know what the most valuable asset in war is?"

"Magic," the unicorn said without hesitation.

"Ha! A close second, I'm sure. But the correct answer is: certainty."

He turned away from the pony, his gaze sweeping over the room interior. Trixie had dressed it up considerably, adding large, dark blue banners on the wall that boasted her cutie mark alongside the Iron Skull of the Legion.

"In a less abstract sense, it's information. If you know your enemy's number, location, and armaments, then you have all but defeated them; it is only a matter of deploying sufficient force with the correct wargear. War as such becomes little more than a bureaucratic chore."

He walked up to the banner and drew his hand across the eyes of the Iron Skull. "But I prefer the term 'certainty'. Warriors know how to act when data is lacking. But rob them of their direction, confuse their sense of friend and foe, and their will evaporates. If you're not certain of what your enemy is after, how can you foil him? If you cannot trust your allies, how can you work together? If your enemy takes no obvious action against you, how can you be sure he is even your foe?"

Trixie snorted. "If that's the case, then Trixie should be invincible! Trixie is certain of everything, even when Trixie knows nothing!"

Another chuckle escaped Serith's vox grille. "Perhaps that's why you have so little fear of me. My power is utterly meaningless before your confidence."

"Oh, don't be too hard on yourself," the blue unicorn said with a smirk, "you're still better at that machine-breaking spell than Trixie is. For now."

"At least I have that," Serith drawled, "in any case, it would seem I'm off to Canterlot upon the morrow. Would you care to come along?"

Trixie rolled over on Suuna's lap so that she was facing the ceiling. "No, thank you. Trixie has another show, after all. Besides, Trixie just KNOWS Sparkle is going to be there, and Trixie doesn't need that right now."

"But of course. Farewell, Lady Trixie," the Sorcerer said, walking out the door.

"Suuna. Belly rub, please," Trixie requested as the door closed, "we'll get supper in an hour or so."

"Of course, Mistress Trixie," the assistant mumbled, her hands going to work automatically.

The blue unicorn smiled as Suuna did her job. "Speaking of which, you're starting to fill out nicely compared to when Trixie rescued you from a lifetime of cruel, unpaid labor. Before long Trixie's going to have to start turning away human suitors clamoring for your attention."

Suuna made a face at that. Her enslavement - to allow for Trixie's insistence that she wasn't a slave any longer - was far too recent for her to contemplate any sort of romantic or sexual relationship with the men who previously would have worked her to death. Had she still been in the pits when the Tau had arrived, she would have jumped at the chance to leave the fortress, even if it meant taking up arms against the Iron Warriors.

"Mistress, may I ask you something?"

"Sure."

"Why don't you fear Lord Serith?" she asked nervously.

Trixie gave Suuna an odd look. "Why would Trixie fear Serith? Serith is Trixie's friend."

Suuna frowned uneasily. "Do you really believe he thinks of you the same way?"

"Who cares?" Trixie answered.

Suuna recoiled slightly at that sentiment. "You don't care whether a Chaos Sorcerer is just toying with you for his own ends?"

"No, Trixie doesn't," the unicorn answered simply, "Serith acts like he's Trixie's guardian, and Trixie finds him much more amiable than the other Iron Warriors. That's enough for Trixie, so he's Trixie's friend. That's that."

"But... do you know the sorts of things he's up to? The rumors I've heard from some of the menials about him-" Suuna began, only to be interrupted.

"Doesn't matter to Trixie. Even if they're probably true," the unicorn admitted, "also, you're slowing down, Suuna."

Suuna quickly resumed her earlier pace of rubbing as Trixie cleared her throat.

"It's like Trixie said earlier: Trixie is always certain of her decisions and insights."

Suuna's brow furrowed. "And what if you're wrong?"

"Then Trixie will be perfectly certain of her new decisions and insights," the blue unicorn mumbled, "but being suspicious and second-guessing is useless."

Suuna mulled that over for a few minutes as she continued with Trixie's massage. It still didn't seem like a good idea to her to associate with Serith, or any Iron Warrior for that matter, but Trixie had only benefited from the relationship so far. And if she did spurn his presence like the other ponies had, did it make her any less likely of being entangled in his twisted projects?

"Blessed be the mind too small for doubt," the young woman mumbled to herself.

There were several seconds of silence before Trixie craned her neck to look her assistant in the eyes. "Did you just call Trixie stupid?"

"What? No! I was just... Your thoughts on... No!"

****

Ponyville - Twilight's library

"Finally. Only one more thing to take care of, and I'll be as ready as I'll ever be," Twilight said as she entered her treehouse.

Gaela glanced up from where she was studying the Chaos amulet. She was currently beaming a low-intensity laser into the back of the circuit wafer, and she turned her servo tool off as Twilight entered.

As interesting as that was, however, Twilight's attention inevitably focused on Spike, who was crouched in a corner and trembling.

"Spike? Are you okay?" the purple alicorn asked.

"YES!" Spike shouted, leaping to his feet and whirling around. "TOTALLY FINE! HOW ARE YOU?!"

Twilight flinched away from him. "Spike, stop yelling! This is a library, not an opera house!"

Hey man, are you going to take that from her? Why does she get to tell you what to do?

Spike chewed his lip desperately as Gaela stood up.

"He's just-"

"Hungry!" Spike interrupted at slightly lower volume than before. "Do you want me to cook something? I could cook something!" Gaela gave him an unreadable look, but refrained from speaking up again.

Laaaaaaaame. Come on buddy, don't let her walk all over you like that!

Twilight shook her head as she started ascending the stairs to her room. "No thank you, Spike. I had a nutrient ration this morning. They may not taste good, but they really are convenient, filling you up for the whole day."

"Oh, okay," Spike said, sounding somewhat out of breath, "do you need me to do anything else? Like, something outside, maybe?"

"No Spike, stay here. I'm going to be sending a letter to Princess Celestia in a bit," the alicorn princess said as she vanished upstairs.

Spike dashed over to Gaela as soon as she was out of sight. "Please don't tell Twilight I was messing around with the amulet," he whispered, "Celestia was really worried about this 'corruption' thing, and if she finds out I'm hearing voices in my head..."

You know what would solve ALL your problems? A knife and a shovel.

Gaela looked skeptical as the young dragon clung to her robes with his eye twitching. "If you don't wish Sparkle to be informed of your current predicament, I won't volunteer the information. But I'm not going to lie on your behalf."

"Thankyou thankyou thankyou," Spike murmured, his chest heaving as he tried to think clearly through his sense of panic and the snickering echoing within his skull.

Whoa, is that a plasma pistol on her leg? Nick that, dude! Those things are sweet!

Spike quickly snatched up the Chaos amulet and then shoved it back in the box from whence it came. "This thing is dangerous! We've got to get rid of it!"

"That seems like a waste," Gaela admitted, crossing her arms over her chest, "just because you don't want it doesn't suggest that it's useless."

"I didn't say it's useless, I said it's DANGEROUS!" Spike hissed as he shut the box closed.

"So? Dangerous things are almost always useful," the Dark Acolyte reasoned.

Spike groaned and gave up on convincing the cyborg woman to help him. Taking out a magic marker, he started writing "Danger!" "Evil!" and "Do not wear!" on the box in large lettering.

Mmmph! Mmmhrm mmrh!

Spike felt a surge of relief at hearing the telepathic voice muffled, and he quickly stuffed the box in his backpack.

"Spike? The letter's ready!" Twilight said as she descended the stairs again, levitating a scroll in front of her.

Spike walked over to her stiffly, doing a comically bad job of trying to look natural. Luckily for him, Twilight was quite distracted, herself exceptionally worried about the letter she was sending.

"It's so strange that I haven't gotten any responses back from the Princess," the alicorn murmured as she stared at the parchment.

Gaela glanced at the note still laying on the main desk of the library, but said nothing.

"I hope everything's okay. I'm sure there must be a lot to deal with right now, with the 38th Company and the Tau fighting in Equestria. She's probably just too busy to get back to me."

Mmmph! MMMNPH!

Spike mentally willed Twilight to hurry up and give him the letter so that she might leave again. Once she was out of sight, he would bury the Chaos amulet deep and be rid of the blasted voice once and for all.

"Well, I suppose all I can do now is keep moving forward," Twilight decided, floating the scroll over to her assistant. "Here you go, Spike."

HA! Just kidding! We're telepathically linked now! Putting me in a box doesn't help!

"AAAAAAH!!" Spike screamed, causing Twilight to jump back in surprised and Gaela to remain completely unfazed.

"Spike?" Twilight asked uncertainly, backing away.

"Great! I'm so happy to help!" the young dragon said loudly, holding his hands out as he tried to cover up his shouting.

Twilight stopped backing up, but she eyed her assistant suspiciously. "Spike, are you all right? You've been acting weird ever since I got back."

"It's just, you know, stress! These past few days have been hard on everypony!" Spike claimed, his hands still reaching out for the message.

You know what's an AWESOME stress reliever? Torturing those who have slighted you! Let's start with Twit-light here.

"That's... true," Twilight allowed, "and I guess it's not going to get less stressful, either."

She paused, and then stared up at the stairs again. "There's a lot at stake here, Spike. So much depends on the stupid whims of one Iron Warrior, and I don't know what's going to happen. If he decides to fight us... we can win, probably, but then what about the Company? What would they do?"

"Lord Serith is uniquely despised among the 38th Company," Gaela admitted, "but that said, no one would thank you for dispatching him. As soon as your civilization is categorized as a threat to our operations, it ends."

Spike glanced up at her uncertainly. "Our civilization ends, or your operations?"

"Guess," the Dark Acolyte said dryly.

Now see, that chick I like. I could smell the blood on her the moment she picked me up. If you're going to be some chick's whipping boy, you could at least choose the one with lasers on her back.

Twilight sighed. "Right. I'll just have to see that it doesn't come to that. Spike, send the letter." She turned away. "I'm going to go read something. I need to calm down."

"Got it!" Spike said as he plucked the scroll from the air. Then he held it in front of his lips as his cheeks puffed up.

A stream of black fire laced with feathery curls of bright red swallowed the parchment, and within seconds the paper was reduced to a fine white ash that floated down onto the floor.

Gaela raised her eyebrow, and Spike's eyes bulged.

Okay, so, first thing I did when we joined was upgrade your fire breath. That thing before? The teleport breath? Super weak. You'll do way more damage now.

Spike's jaw went slack, and his eyes reflexively glanced over to the stairs in time to see Twilight's tail vanish from sight. Obviously she hadn't seen what had just happened.

Would have told you earlier, but you were still busy freaking out. Try not to be such a wimp, all right bro?

"I am SO dead," the young dragon moaned, hanging his head.

"Well, if you are forsaken by everyone you know due to your inadvertent corruption, you could always come with us," Gaela offered with a shrug.

"Really?" Spike asked, chewing his lower lip. "What would I do with you guys?"

"I'm sure you'd be trained as some sort of Chaos battle beast and let loose on hostile worlds while the fleet pillages the local settlements. You'd eventually die a brutal and painful death on some distant, unknown planet, surrounded by the scorched corpses of your foes," Gaela envisioned aloud.

Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, YES!

"... I'm going to bed," Spike grumbled, holding his head as he walked away. "Hopefully this will all wear off eventually."

"Hope is the first step on the road to disappointment," the Dark Acolyte said as she started perusing the books again.

Tch! I was gonna say that.

"AARGH!"

****

Ponyville - train station (the next day)

Twilight wasn't surprised to see Rarity waiting for her at the train station as she, Spike, and Gaela made their way onto the platform.

She was slightly surprised to see that the snow-colored unicorn had brought along her boltgun in her customized saddlebag. Such a thing didn't really belong in Canterlot, but she had to reason that they had to be prepared for things to get ugly.

She was very surprised to see that Rarity's mane was in a slight state of disarray. It would have been barely noticeable to someone who wasn't a close friend, but the normally impeccable curl of her hair was much looser and messier than usual.

She also look quite irritable, but that observation belonged back in the "not surprised" category.

"Hello Twilight," Rarity grumbled, "Gaela, Spike."

"Hi Rarity. Is everything all right?" Twilight asked in concern.

"Oh, more or less," the unicorn answered, stepping closer as her head dipped, "just a word of advice, darling: don't drink the humans' liquor. It does awful things to a girl's head."

"I was under the impression that was the entire point," Gaela remarked, "in any case, has Master Delgan arrived yet?"

"Yes, he's over next to the booth, yelling at someone," Rarity explained, pointing a hoof to the side.

Gaela immediately left to speak to the Trademaster without another word.

Rarity glanced back at Spike, noting that the young dragon seemed unusually subdued. He hadn't said anything when he had arrived, and didn't seem to be paying any particular attention to her, which was always unusual.

"Spikey? Your eyes are red," the unicorn noted, tilting her head to the side.

Spike flinched. "Oh, uh... I didn't get enough sleep last night."

"Your eyes are a little red too," Twilight pointed out.

Rarity glared at the other pony for pointing out yet another flaw in her current appearance. "Not in general, Twilight. His pupils. Look."

Spike got a sinking feeling in his stomach as the two ponies stared critically at his eyes, but couldn't really think of anything to say. How could he explain this away?

"Interesting choice," Rarity finally said, "it contrasts with your scales very well. I didn't even know you wore contacts."

Twilight blinked in surprise (unsurprisingly), and Spike laughed nervously.

"Well, I just thought I'd try something new! I'm, uh, glad you like it!"

You know, it'd be way easier and faster to mutate you into a Warp-powered killing machine if you'd just wear me again. There's only so much I can do from way over here.

Spike bit down on his tongue to keep from screaming in frustration and horror.

He was eventually relieved of any extra attention as Gaela and Delgan approached the group again.

"My deepest apologies for the delay," Delgan said, adjusting the collar of his suit, "I was just discussing a matter of some urgency with my staff."

Twilight immediately looked concerned. "Is there something wrong?"

"Nothing that affects the day's schedule, no," the Trademaster assured her, "I was just informed that a few of my transports and some supplies were 'borrowed' by the staff without having gone through the proper channels."

Rarity looked perplexed. "How strange. Why would they steal them?"

"It's unlikely to be blatant theft. Every one of those vehicles can be tracked down, and the staff in question did leave notes explaining when the vehicles would be returned." He shrugged. "The issue is bureaucratic. Still, I can't help but wonder what they plan on doing with my equipment."

****

Ponyville - town perimeter

The Chimera transports rumbled out of Ponyville and then ground to a halt, their multilaser turrets twitching back and forth for targets.

All of the vehicles were hitched to large metal trailers, and one of them was already full, stacked with crates of supplies that had been "borrowed" from Delgan's stocks.

As the transports idled, a large, dark shape in the distance approached up the road, its path marked by a plume of dark smoke.

As the engines of the APCs grumbled loudly, ponies started arriving. Some carried wagons or bags of their own, and these ponies approached the transports cautiously with their bounties as the rear ramps of the APCs fell open.

Masked men and women emerged with their guns holstered, and they greeted the Equines brightly before loading the barrels, boxes, and bags into their own trailers and transport holds.

"Make way, everypony! Party wagon coming through!"

Those ponies that were watching the commotion from the road quickly bolted out of the way as an enormous wagon lumbered through, being pulled by Big Macintosh. It was filled with boxes and barrels to the point that the pile of supplies reached the height of some of the smaller houses, and standing atop it all with a bullhorn was Pinkie Pie.

Opposite the "party wagon", the Gorgon super-heavy transport that had been on approach to Ponyville ground to a halt, its imposing metal frame blasting pressurized air from a dozen vents.

The armored prow of the Gorgon slowly creaked open, lowering the deployment ramp onto the ground as the vehicle's cab opened up.

"Well, I'm actually somewhat impressed," Dest admitted as he landed on the ground, causing the ponies waiting nearby to flinch back, "you arranged this all yourself, Pie?"

Pinkie snickered into the bullhorn, amplifying her self-satisfied laugh. "A Pinkie Party cannot and will not be denied! Right guys?!" She turned toward the parked Chimeras.

Whoops and cheers came from the humans loading up the transports, and some of them stopped to offer firm salutes to the pink equine.

"Good job finding a transport big enough for everypony, Desty! That thing is GINORMOUS!"

The Iron Warrior grunted through his vox grille. "Securing it was no simple feat, either. Luckily it's classified as a 'mercenary' vehicle, so at least I didn't have to argue with any Astartes drivers." He glanced toward the ponies standing nearby. "The Gorgon will be able to handle this many."

"All right everypony, we're heading out!" Pinkie barked into the megaphone, rousing an elated cheer from the various mammals below. "Guests into the big one! Mackie, hitch the wagon up to the back of the Gorgon! Vinyl, put your gear in the first Chimera! Cloudkicker, Flitter, Derpy, Rainbow Dash, you know what to do!"

Rainbow and a handful of other pegasi took off into the air, cans of paint hanging from their necks and paintbrushes clenched in their teeth.

Dest watched in fascination as the pegasi started swiping the brushes against the blank gunmetal walls of the Gorgon's hull. Soon a crude copy of Pinkie's balloon-cluster cutie mark adorned one side of the mighty transport. Rainbow had apparently taken charge of the other side herself, so naturally, the other side had Rainbow Dash's cutie mark instead.

"Well, that's going to prompt a few awkward questions," the driver mumbled to himself as Pinkie's supply wagon lumbered behind him, "bah, whatever."

Dest waited until Big Mac finished attaching the wagon to the Gorgon, and then he upped the volume on his vox emitter. "ALL RIGHT, XENO REVELERS! LOAD UP AND SHIP OUT! TONIGHT THE VERY WALLS OF FERROUS DOMINUS SHALL QUAKE WITH OUR MERRIMENT!!"

A chorus of cheers boomed from within the transport hold, as well as from the humans and ponies closing up the Chimera doors.

"Hey, Mister!" shouted a voice near the Gorgon's entry ramp. "Can we use the gun turrets?"

Dest glanced over at a pair of unicorn colts and then shrugged his heavily armored shoulders. "Sure, why not? Just keep in mind that I'll be turning them off once we reach the security perimeter. No shooting on fortress grounds."

Snips and Snails saluted gleefully and then dashed back inside as Dest climbed up into the cab again.

"Entry ramp disengaged. Magna-locks active. We are clear to move."

Pinkie bounced up on top of the driver's cab. "PARTY BUS IS GOOOOOOO!!"

****

Canterlot - train station

"Gaela, Mister Delgan, I'd like to introduce you to Canterlot! Capital of Equestria and home of my teacher, Princess Celestia!" Twilight said brightly, stepping out of the train and stretching out her wings.

Gaela and Delgan followed her, the former taking some extra time to fit her servo limbs through the doorway.

As Delgan's guards waited to exit in front of Rarity and Spike, the pair of humans scanned their surroundings mutely.

"I don't understand. Is the city in the mountain?" Gaela asked, her bionic eye pulsing as it took in data.

"I believe this IS the city, Acolyte," Delgan said dryly as he stepped aside to let the others exit.

Gaela looked honestly confused. "On what planet does THIS rate as a city? Never mind a capital!" she demanded, waving her biological hand at the city. Her bionic arm hoisted her power axe, as the Dark Acolyte had refused to leave her weapons behind.

"On Centaur III, clearly the cities are smaller than what we're used to," the Trademaster said sharply, "does it really bear arguing about?"

Twilight wilted as Rarity and Spike joined her.

"She doesn't seem very impressed, does she?" Rarity asked. She'd spent most of the ride fixing her hair and nursing her hangover, and her appearance had been restored to its usual glory.

Spike had spent most of the ride wringing his hands and trying to attract as little attention as possible. He too had succeeded.

"This place couldn't hold more than a few thousand citizens!" Gaela pointed out.

"Well, Canterlot is a rather exclusive place," Rarity pointed out, tapping a hoof against Gaela's leg armor, "there simply aren't that many ponies who could afford to live here."

Delgan couldn't suppress a grin. "I like it already."

Before Twilight could think of some way to try to impress the Dark Mechanicus priestess with the city in which she had been raised, she heard a whistle from below the platform. She turned her head to look, and the alicorn lit up immediately. "Shining Armor! You made it!"

Twilight galloped down the platform toward her older brother, almost crashing into the unicorn stallion.

"Hey, whoa! For somepony who has wings now, you sure don't land softly!" Shining Armor said with a chuckle as he hugged his sister.

"Hey you two, don't forget me."

Twilight laughed as she moved past her brother. His wife and her foal-sitter from long ago greeted her with a smile.

"Hi Cadence! You came too?"

"Well, I when I heard that my sister-in-law needed help, what else could I do?" Cadence grinned. "Besides, somepony needs to keep an eye on this big lug." The couple chuckled.

"What exactly reinforces the sub-structure of this population center? You built it onto the side of a mountain. I could demolish this entire 'city' with a handful of melta bombs and a landslide if there were no other structural defenses in place."

Shining and Cadence's smiles died slow and painful deaths, and Twilight's became more nervous.

Shining Armor in particular regarded the hooded, heavily armored woman warily as she approached. "Canterlot has survived for more than a thousand years, Miss. I think you'll find it sturdier than that."

Gaela met the gaze of the white stallion with blue hair, and he made a face as her bionic eye pulsed and rotated. "That's actually rather impressive. I wouldn't have give this place more than four centuries before it crumbled from tectonic and erosion forces alone." Then her eyes returned to the skyline. "Although something else might destroy it, if you're not careful. I don't see a single heavy weapon emplacement among the towers."

"This is Gaela, I presume?" Cadence said dryly, stepping lightly toward the Dark Acolyte. "The one most of your notes are based on?"

Twilight quickly rushed to stand between the human and the pony couple. "Right! Introductions! Gaela, this is my big brother, Shining Armor, and his wife, Cadence! She used to be my foal-sitter when I was a filly."

"Noted," Gaela said flatly, her optics fixed on Shining.

"Shining, Cadence, this is Gaela, a Dark Acolyte of the 38th Company!" Twilight said. She noted that Delgan and Rarity were busy talking on the platform still, and the Trademaster was pointing out various buildings.

"It's very nice to meet you, Miss Gaela," Cadence volunteered, stepping forward and inclining her head slightly. "Twilight has been taking very detailed notes on humans and post-humans during her time with you, and sent a copy of them with her summons. It's an honor to finally meet you!"

Gaela didn't respond, still staring at Shining Armor. It seemed like it was starting to creep him out a little bit.

Cadence waited for several seconds, and then cleared her throat. "Excuse me? Miss Gaela?"

The Dark Acolyte finally turned her head to look at the pink alicorn. "You said you were his wife?"

"Yes. So if you stare much longer, I'll have to charge a fee," Cadence joked.

Gaela's frown tightened, a very small change in expression that Twilight was now able to identify as confusion. "You form monogamous breeding pairs?"

Cadence and Shining both recoiled slightly at this, but then they chuckled.

"Well, that's a pretty... scientific way of putting it! No wonder you and Twily get along!" Shining Armor said.

"To answer your question, yes, we do," Cadence said delicately, "humans don't? Twilight's notes didn't have much to say about human mating practices."

"Sometimes," Gaela mumbled, turning back toward Shining Armor, "but... Shining Armor is precisely the second male pony I've ever met, when I have ID files for twenty-six females thus far." She glanced at Cadence, and her bionic eye pulsed again. "Twenty-seven. I've probably seen a few more stallions in passing, but still... what exactly is the gender ratio among your species?"

Shining and Cadence gave each other silent, unreadable looks, but Twilight chuckled.

"Oh, THAT'S what you were thinking?" It was just like Gaela to get stuck on a statistical detail like that. "It's actually not as badly skewed as it seems. A lot of stallions join the military, which is male-dominated."

"Even if that were the case, it would seem that such apparently heavy conscription would deplete the local male population and you'd have the same problem as if they didn't exist," Gaela pointed out, "so what is the actual ratio?"

"Nation-wide, it's about five-to-one," the purple alicorn explained, holding her head high as she recalled her reading on Equestrian census results, "you can look at me and my friends as a sample group! Between us and our siblings, there are eleven girls, while me and Applejack both have brothers, which makes two boys!"

Gaela didn't say anything immediately, glancing over to Shining Armor and Cadence. They remained absolutely silent with expressions so carefully neutral that she was sure the two had something to add to the conversation but were choosing not to.

"That doesn't really explain how your population remains stable," the cyborg pointed out, "with an imbalance that severe, wouldn't the number of breedable pairs shrink with every generation?"

Twilight shook her head. "Not at all. We... uh..." The alicorn trailed off, looking uncertain. "Wait a minute... how... but then..."

Cadence and Shining shared a brief glance, and then the former cleared her throat. "With the power of love, something like that is irrelevant!"

Gaela looked somewhat bemused. "Really. Love. Your fertility rate must be astronomical."

Cadence laughed as Twilight stared at the ground in thought, and then she leaned to the side to look past the Dark Acolyte. "Oh, look! There's another human! Come introduce me, Twilight!"

"Huh? Oh, sure." The two alicorns stepped away, although Twilight still looked distracted.

Shining Armor waited several seconds, then leaned in toward the human woman.

"Anyway, don't tell Twilight, but the answer to your question is: extramarital affairs," Shining said quietly, "that, and the occasional magic-enabled pregnancy."

"Ah. That would explain it," Gaela said with a nod, "but then why the pretense of marriage?"

"It's a staple of a loving and stable society," the unicorn said as he sat down next to her, "but, you know, sometimes a stallion has to do what a stallion has to do. Not just for Equestria, but for the species."

There was a brief moment of silence.

"That's also why there are so many orphans and single mothers in our loving and stable society, incidentally," Shining added.

"And why you sometimes import males from other species? I've seen how the dragon looks at Rarity," Gaela turned her head toward the others, her optics whirring softly.

Shining made a face. "No, that's pretty... unique. But, you know, whatever makes them happy. If they are happy. I don't really ask about that." Then he looked up at the Dark Acolyte again, tapping a hoof against her thigh plate. "What about you? Married?"

"No. I belong to an order of technological adepts that find such things to be a waste of time and energy. On my planet children are made in factories, like equipment. It's a staple of an efficient and perfectly industrialized society," Gaela said in a perfect deadpan, "incidentally, our efficient and perfectly industrialized society has no single mothers or orphans."

"That's... wow. That's different," Shining said with a grimace, leaning away from the armored woman, "so, what, humans don't ever fall in love?"

Gaela glanced down at the blue-haired unicorn, her bionic eye whirring softly in its socket.

"... It's... complicated," she admitted, leaning on her power axe, "the removal of biological and logical imperatives to reproduce doesn't necessarily eliminate all desire for companionship, emotional support, or sexual fulfillment. But with heavy indoctrination and significant genetic tinkering we can at least minimize such disruptive empathies. Fear of punishment usually removes what's left. Our production standards cannot be endangered by the frailties of flesh."

Shining Armor took almost a full minute to interpret that statement and all its implications.

"You're terrifying," the unicorn stallion said bluntly, his ears falling flat against his head.

"Thank you," Gaela said without a hint of irony.

As the white unicorn took a few nervous steps away from the Acolyte, Twilight walked up to them again with the others behind her.

"Mister Delgan says that Serith should be on his way soon. We have some time still, so why don't we look around the city a little bit?"

Delgan had an eager smile that Gaela found quite off-putting, but she didn't have any particular reason to want to stay near the train station until everyone had arrived. "That's fine."

"Is he arriving by train? I should probably get somepony to 'escort' him," Shining Armor said with an edge to his voice.

"No, not at all. He'll be arriving by gunship transport," Delgan explained, waving a hand, "there are a few balcony gardens and such things around here; one of them will make a decent enough landing pad."

The ponies looked a bit doubtful about that, but none of them contradicted the man as he started walking ahead of them. "Come on now! We have so much to do and so LITTLE time! Hah hah!"

****

Ferrous Dominus

Bright red lumens flared near at the perimeter wall of the Iron Warriors fortress as a heavy gunship lifted off from its launch platform.

A dozen quad guns scanned the skies around its flight path as it built up speed, cresting the palisade and beginning its long run toward the castle embedded in the wall of a distant mountain.

Soon after leaving the effective range of the fort's perimeter guns, the transport activated a series of unique devices attached to the facings of the gunship.

The gold and gunmetal exterior shimmered like a disturbed pool of water, and then slowly faded away to become transparent. Within a minute the gunship was all but invisible, only its exhaust trails visible as it cut across the pristine skies of Equestria.

Such technology was very rare indeed, especially for a Legion that didn't exactly pride itself on stealth. It did have its drawbacks, however, in that it utterly blinded the sensors while the craft was in transit due to the way it bent light and heat around its exterior. It thus relied on pre-programmed flight pathing to reach its destination, and would have to de-cloak in order to land.

The advantages of such a device, however, were obvious. It was almost undetectable to any sensor conventional enough to be mounted on standard weaponry, as well as the naked eye.

As evidenced by the fact that not a single pony or person could find the source of the strange, nearby rocket noises when the gunship roared over the small convoy heading in the other direction. Even the smoke contrails were eventually shrugged off as exhaust from the transports rumbling across the empty plains.

Transports that were now painted a variety of festive colors. One of them had mounted an enormous speaker system above its fuel stores and was blasting techno dubstep loud enough to rattle the hull, while the gorgon super-heavy transport boasted clusters of balloons on all sides and seemed to be spurting bursts of heavy bolter fire into random trees that it rolled past. On the front prow, the most vital armor piece that was the vehicles most unique and distinctive feature, the words "PARTY BUS" were painted in huge pink letters.

The gunship probably would have called that in. But the sensors were inactive, due to the cloak. Thus both transports ran right by each other, each one entirely oblivious to the other vehicle.

"WOOOO!! PARTY ON!!"

Conference and Confetti

Iron Hearts: Book 2

Chapter 8

Conference and Confetti

****

"This. Right here. I can see it now; the storefront, the staff, the displays... it's perfect!"

Norris Delgan stood in front of a small, empty storefront at the base of a tall multi-story building, holding his hands out and staring at the boarded-up windows.

Rarity frowned. "I don't know... it's a bit out of the way, isn't it?"

"That's ideal for a business that doesn't want to attract too much attention," Delgan explained, stepping up to the front, "besides, all the shops on the main thoroughfare are currently occupied. I don't have the time to 'evacuate' one first before I set up."

Gaela and Spike stood behind the trademaster and unicorn, the former looking quite bored. "Who knew that you had the aspirations of a shopkeep?" the Dark Acolyte asked, leaning on her axe. "Is hawking explosives and shiny objects to system raiders just not exciting enough anymore?"

Delgan paused in his admiration of the empty suite to heave a sigh. "I don't expect you to understand, Acolyte. The Mechanicus adopts a mindset and then hammers the worlds around them to fit. The rest of us must be more flexible. If I'm walking onto an orbital platform with a squad of Chaos Space Marines at my back, then looting is the order of the day. If I'm hailing a base of space pirate, then bulk trading. And if we happen to be poking around the settlements of a friendly civilization, then I'm hardly above setting up little markets. If I don't do so often it is merely because we so rarely face an alien race without guns blazing."

Rarity nodded sadly. "And from what little we've seen of other aliens, we can hardly blame you."

Gaela looked skeptical. "Could you not at least choose a more obviously industrial region to set up shops? How are you going to acquire sufficient raw materials in a place like this?"

"There's more to be gained here than simply another cart load of ore and oil. Why do I have to keep explaining this?" Delgan muttered.

"Because I don't believe you," the Acolyte answered sharply.

Standing a ways behind them were Shining Armor, Cadence, and Twilight Sparkle, the three of them engrossed in their own conversation about the other group.

"She really said that?" Cadence asked, looking skeptical as her husband nodded.

"Yes! I mean, not in those exact words, because I didn't understand all of them, but that was the gist of it!" The unicorn shook his head. "She talked about falling in love like it was some sort of disease! And that birth factory thing was just... eugh."

Twilight chuckled nervously. "Oh, she was just exaggerating. A little bit. Probably. Gaela explained the birth-factories on her homeworld and even admitted that they were pretty rare. Not all humans are like that."

"Yeah, just the humans that have landed in our country and are trying to associate with us," Shining grumbled, looking upon his little sister with concern, "I don't know as much about them as you, obviously, but I can already tell that Princess Celestia was right. These humans are bad news, Twilight. The sooner they're off our planet, the better."

As Twilight chewed her lip, Cadence hummed to herself. "Well, I'm not sure I believe that."

Shining gave his wife a hurt look. "What, you don't believe me?"

"I don't believe HER," Cadence said, thrusting a hoof at the cyborg breaking through the lock on the empty storefront with her servo drill, "from ponies to changelings to even Discord himself, I don't believe that any intelligent creature can survive without love. She may have buried hers deep, but it's there!"

"Yeah, I'm sure that..." Twilight faltered rather quickly once she started searching her memories of the Dark Acolyte for any hint of actual affection. "Well... maybe. But again, she doesn't represent ALL humans."

"Well, I say we find out right now," Cadence said, wetting her lips as her horn started to glow.

Shining Armor and Twilight recoiled as the pink alicorn turned her gaze on Gaela.

"Honey, wait, we talked about this," Shining protested, "you can't just go around pairing up anypony you meet!"

"Quiet, Shining. This is for science!" Cadence said with a grin as her horn flared even brighter.

"Is this what you were expecting?" Gaela asked as she stood outside the doorway, arms folded over her breastplate.

"Just about. Obviously there's a lot fewer power conduits than I'd like, but I'm sure you can fix that," Delgan said with a smug smile.

"And when did I become another one of your lackeys?" Gaela asked, her glare hardening slightly.

"Since you were assigned to my service, obviously," Delgan answered, "what else would you do while you're here if not work? Hobnob with the horses?"

Rarity, who was waiting politely for the two humans to finish bickering with each other, blinked as she felt a spell go off nearby, and thought she caught sight of a faint magical glow briefly encompass the pair of homo sapiens.

They paused immediately.

"Did you feel something just now?" Delgan asked, tugging on his collar uncomfortably as he looked around.

"I'm not sure," Gaela admitted, holding her biological hand to the side of her head as she ran a quick diagnostic, "but... somehow..." she pursed her lips, "I feel as if my usual loathing for you has weakened into mere contempt."

"I see. You know, for the first time, I'm starting to think you may have some sort of value beyond the strict monetary worth of your production," Delgan allowed, rubbing his chin with a hand as he stared critically at the Dark Acolyte.

Gaela stared back at him, her bionic eye rotating in its socket. Silence reigned for several seconds.

"No, I was imagining things," Delgan decided, shaking his head, "really, I don't know what I was thinking."

"Ah, and now the loathing is back," Gaela deadpanned, "good. Where were we?"

"Power conduits," Rarity answered.

"Ah, right! Thank you. I'll need ten to a wall. Go break open that back room and see how big a reactor we can stuff in here," Delgan commanded.

Cadence's face darkened as Shining Armor and Twilight shared a wary glance.

"Twilight, these people are monsters and they must all be destroyed," the larger alicorn said grimly.

"Easy, Cadence," Shining said with a sigh, "they're going to leave anyway, remember?"

"Besides, Gaela and Delgan are the decent ones," Twilight allowed, "the really awful sorts seem to be the Iron Warriors themselves." She grimaced, recalling the post-human soldiers and their mechanized overlord. "I've been reading up on the Space Marines from the information Warsmith Solon gave me. It's not pretty. The humans we can identify with somewhat; they're normal creatures, just with heightened intelligence and a rather brutal culture. The Astartes..."

She trailed off, and Shining eventually nudged her wing with a hoof. "Twily?"

"They're different," Twilight eventually finished, cringing, "that's really the only way I can put it. There's nothing like them in our culture or any other one on our planet. There couldn't be. We have soldiers, sure, but the Space Marines are more like their spears, if anything."

Cadence and Shining spared each other a dubious look, not comprehending.

"So... what? They don't have free will?" her older brother asked.

"Oh, it's not that. They have free will," Twilight corrected before adding quietly, "maybe that was the problem..."

"Sparkle." The cold, clipped voice immediately startled Twilight out of her thoughts about the human super-soldiers, and the alicorn snapped her head up.

"What is it, Gaela?"

"I've received a vox transmission from Ferrous Dominus. The transport should be arriving in a matter of minutes," Gaela said, resting her power axe on her shoulder.

Shining Armor nodded, his expression turning far more serious. "Right. Where are they landing? We have a special 'welcome' prepared for him."

"Judging from the model of transport craft and direction of the fortress, I believe our 'diplomat' will be touching down on the west balcony gardens," her servo arm pointed over to a path leading to the relevant area.

Cadence frowned. "There are usually ponies picnicking in those gardens at this time of day."

"I'm sure they'll move to safety once they have an Astartes gunship hovering over them," Gaela assured her, "even if not, the pilots will fire a spread of warning shots with the heavy bolters to scare off anything left in its landing zone."

Awkward silence dominated the area after that until Twilight cleared her throat.

"Shining? Maybe it would be a better idea to clear those ponies out of there ahead of time," she suggested.

The unicorn bolted away immediately.

"You know, as diplomatic agents, you could do a lot more to keep from disrupting the peace in Equestria," Cadence complained, her tone straining to remain calm.

"I don't really think you appreciate how unusual diplomatic conduct is for our forces," Gaela replied dryly, "for example, the current Company-wide orders not to fire upon your people are justified on the grounds that it would be a waste of ammunition."

"I thought you were going to talk to them about that!" Twilight said, frowning at the Acolyte.

"I did. General Gnoss ultimately decided that the current orders were clearly adequate, given that we haven't killed any of you yet."

Cadence turned a bemused gaze on Twilight. "Twilight, why are you friends with her?"

"Love and tolerance," the purple alicorn mumbled, "lots and lots of tolerance."

****

Ferrous Dominus - security cordon outer perimeter

There was understandable confusion among the security staff as their sensors registered a convoy of friendly transports rumbling toward the base. Although the number of transports approaching matched up closely enough with the number of vehicles deployed outside the fortress perimeter, there was no reason to expect them to be returning at the same time, and without a hail from Delgan to announce their return and arrange debriefing.

Needless to say, that confusion grew exponentially as the vehicles came close enough for visual contact.

The crowd being transported had grown significantly since leaving Ponyville as ponies had met up with the convoy along the way from nearby settlements. A second deck had been bolted into place in the Gorgon super-heavy transport to take advantage of the ponies' shorter profile and double its capacity, and then another set of plates and makeshift railings had been added over the top to make a third deck. The Chimeras had eventually been obliged to stuff themselves full of ponies, and even hitch on additional trailers behind the first set to carry more ponies and bushels of refreshments.

Above the transports flew a great flock of pegasi, the winged ponies in general needing no vehicles to travel with the convoy at speed.

It was quite a sight to take in for the pair of hapless mercenaries that stopped the Gorgon at the first guard bunker.

"Ah... hello?" shouted one of the men as he scanned the faces of ponies crammed together like the livestock they technically weren't. Some of them were even wearing glass fish bowl helmets, fake visors, and bizarre alien masks. There wasn't a single aspect of the situation that wasn't patently silly.

"Is... Is there anyone in charge of this... convoy?" the other man asked hesitantly, trying to get a look at the raised cab behind the transport. "When the fortress established a vox link all they heard was some kind of music! Much like the music that's playing from the rear Chimera! Did you actually link that up to the network?"

As the soldiers looked about at the colorfully decorated war machine, a lone figure dropped from the cab and onto the ground. The pony was wearing a hard plastic suit made to resemble that of the Iron Warriors, only designed around the pony's quadrupedal anatomy. The mercenaries had to admit that it was a pretty good costume, aside from the bunches of poofy pink hair coming out of the top of the helmet crest and the rear of the suit.

The pony dressed as an Iron Warrior strolled up to the two men and then stopped about a meter away, snapping one foreleg up to her helmet in an awkward salute.

"Party Bus checking in for entry clearance!" Pinkie said, her cheery voice partially muffled by the horned helmet.

The soldiers glanced in tandem at the pink text on the Gorgon's prow, helpfully identifying it as the Party Bus in question.

"Um... why are you here, exactly? What is all this?" one of the men asked as he gestured to the balloon clusters.

"Why are we here?" Pinkie repeated. "We're here to..."

"PAAAAAAAAAAAARTAAAAAAAAAAAY!!!" The combined shout of hundreds of ponies - and a few humans on active vox casters - nearly bowled the men over, and it took several seconds for the pair to gather their wits in order to continue the basic admittance procedures.

As the vehicles idled, a unicorn wearing a dark brown hood and robe leapt down from the cab behind Pinkie, its hood hiding much of its face with shadows.

"Okay, look, we're going to have to call this in, and all these vehicles are going to have to be searched," one of the mercenaries explained, pointing to the Chimeras, "I'm not sure what's going on, but I don't think there are any parties happening in Ferrous Dominus any time soon."

Pinkie snorted as the unidentified unicorn walked up behind her. "Don't worry about all that! Just switch your vox to the Company-wide channel and announce that 'the Pie is ready'. This will all get cleared up."

The soldiers glanced at each other, and then one of them took a step forward. "Who are you, exactly? Let's see some kind of identification, xeno."

The pony with the hood suddenly raised a hoof and made a slow arc through the air with it while his horn glowed. "You don't need to see our identification."

The mercenary paused. "I don't need to see your identification," he agreed.

The hooded pony waved his hoof again. "These aren't the ponies you're looking for."

"These aren't the ponies we're looking for," the other man repeated.

"Move along," said the unicorn as he waved his hoof yet again.

"Move along!" commanded the mercenaries as they backed out of the way, beckoning the transports down a corridor road between numerous turrets and dug-in battle tanks. "Move along!"

Pinkie snickered as she and the unicorn rushed back to the Gorgon cab, and soon the vehicles were shifting into a long, single-file line toward the gates of the fortress.

The mercenaries stepped back into their bunker, and one of them moved up to the vox unit, pausing briefly as his hand reached for the receiver.

"Were we looking for ponies?" he asked his compatriot, turning around.

"I don't even know anymore, mate. Let's just send that message over the vox and kick this one back to the main gates."

"Aye, good idea."

As the vehicles rumbled past the first lines of defense, Pinkie chuckled and sat down next to Dest in the Gorgon cab, her hooded friend seated next to her.

"I told you I had it all worked out! You just trust me! Nothing's going to stop us now!"

Dest couldn't help but chuckle as he guided the super-heavy vehicle past the barricades. "That was very clever. But even so, you got lucky."

The unicorn interjected, "In my experience, there's no such thing as-"

"Shut up," Dest interrupted.

"Okay," the unicorn said quickly, ducking his head down.

"In any case, avoiding an inspection that would take most of the day is a good first step, but how exactly do you expect to get this past the main gates?" Dest asked. "They will not allow the transport through on my say-so."

Pinkie grinned, and Dest was surprised and slightly unnerved to see the grill of her plastic helmet curl into a smile as well.

"Easy peasy! We have a reservation!"

****

Ferrous Dominus - gate complex primarus

"Are you fragging serious?" snarled a heavily tattooed Captain at the crew manning the sensor stations. "Ponies? There is a horde of PONIES requesting entrance to the fortress?"

The sensorium crews all glanced back at the various monitors, needing to briefly confirm it themselves.

"Yes, Sir. That's... That's exactly what's happening here. And... And they're in our transports, Sir," muttered a man as he quintuple-checked the IFF signatures.

"Except for the pegasi," mumbled another as he checked the pict captures, "they're all just hovering up there. They seem to be waiting with the others, though..."

"Well, let them wait," the Captain snarled, "this is absurd! How did they get past the perimeter?"

"Do you think it had anything to do with that vox message about pie?" asked another sensorium tech.

"I don't care," the Captain snapped, "you know the procedures, and more importantly, so do the Iron Warriors manning the palisade. Without an extensive inspection and a good reason, we're not letting any xenos into Ferrous Dominus. So unless they have a bloody appointment to be here, they're not getting inside!"

Another tech briefly checked his monitor. "They do."

The Captain had to take several seconds to try to process that, and even then, he failed. "What?"

"They have an appointment. Convoy 218-P, command vehicle 'Party Bus'. Which is apparently what the Gorgon is called now, I guess. They've all been scheduled for entry at this time."

The Captain strode over to the console, glaring down at the man. "How the hell did we have a convoy scheduled for arrival today and I didn't know about it?"

"No idea Sir, but there it is," the hapless crewman said, pointing accusingly at the monitor.

"On whose authority was that entered?" the Captain asked, his eyes narrowing.

The sensorium tech turned back to his console and hit a few keys to expand the data entry.

Then he cringed. "Lord Tellis, Sir."

The Captain was silent for several more seconds, his lips pursed and his face turning red.

"So then. WHY are you not opening the gates? Are you TRYING to get us all killed?"

"N-No Sir! I'm sending down the confirmation right away! All clear!"

****

Ferrous Dominus - sector 4, central data core secundus

"Annnd... we're clear," Lenna said before yanking several neural cables from their sockets, "everything should be in place now. If they stop Miss Pie, it will be because of common sense, not security procedure."

"Good. Then we're done here," Geth said as he peeked down the hall, checking for any intrusion, "are you sure Lord Tellis won't mind us 'borrowing' his security clearance?"

"I'm sure Lord Tellis isn't precisely sure what his security clearance is, exactly," Lenna snorted. "He would probably admit to doing it if he saw the data himself, just because he couldn't remember differently. We're fine."

Geth nodded and then grabbed the rail of the anti-gravity lifter that Lenna was currently placed on. Then he started pushing it and her back toward the technology repository in the heart of the Dark Mechanicus temple.

"You know, I never realized it before," Geth admitted, "but you're pretty useful outside the cockpit, too."

"Aw, thanks!" the Mechanicus pilot said, whipping a few tendrils coyly in his direction as her visor glimmered. "Wanna be my date to the party?"

"That's a designation used for the wasteful and useless mating rituals of our unenlightened peers," the Scavurel Core said sharply. "... But sure, why not?"

****

Canterlot - balcony gardens

Dozens of royal guard ponies stood in unmoving rows at the edge of the gardens, arranged in a kind of parade formation that separated them by species. Unicorns were lined up on one side and pegasi on the other, while the earth pony guards formed a barrier that blocked the entrance to the now-evacuated gardens.

It was hardly an impressive show of force to the humans, but it was the first sign of military presence and awareness they had seen so far despite the battles already fought on Equestrian territory.

Off behind the line of earth ponies, Twilight was talking to Shining Armor and Cadence in hushed tones, making sure not to be overheard by their two-legged guests.

"Everything's all set, Twily!" Shining Armor said with a proud grin. "After he lands, we're going to march that creep right to the Princess and watch him answer for his crimes!"

Cadence nodded. "Between twenty unicorns plus us three, we should be able to smother any magic this 'Serith' fellow tries to use against us."

Twilight nodded grimly. "All right. But like I said, BE CAREFUL. This man is powerful, dangerous, and above all, clever. He can turn enemies against each other in an instant before they even know what's happening."

Shining nodded. "Yes, I remember. Don't worry about it. It's time for the Equestrian Royal Guard to show what they're made of!"

Cadence shivered, smiling. "I'm getting a little excited! Facing down a real evil Sorcerer from a fleet of space pirates! It's like something out of a novel!"

Twilight chuckled humorlessly. "Yeah, it's... thrilling..." she had read those sorts of novels too, and she had to admit that dealing with the real thing was generally unpleasant.

Well, that, and the "dashing pirate captain" in this case was a heavily mechanized super-soldier cloaked in fear and toxins. It COMPLETELY ruined the prospect of a romantic sub-plot between him and the lonely, sheltered princess. Such a waste.

The roar of jet engines approaching drew Twilight out of her memories of books read long ago, and she joined the other ponies in searching the skies for the approaching gunship.

Then it appeared. Not from behind a building or by dropping through the clouds, but rather it just faded into view, as if it had been there all along but they had somehow missed it. Several of the guards yelped in shock, and even Twilight blinked in stunned surprise. The transport craft was as big as a house, almost the size of a Thunderhawk, but with its vehicle carriage replaced with enclosed storage space for foot troops.

"They can turn INVISIBLE? You didn't mention that!" Shining Armor complained as the gunship slowly hovered over to the balcony.

"Because I didn't know. We've only really scratched the surface of what the humans' technology can do, really," Twilight answered. She could see Gaela in the gardens, speaking into her vox unit to guide the gunship in. "Never mind. Let's get in position."

The three royals moved into the gardens, taking up position in front of the line of earth ponies. Gaela, Delgan, Rarity and Spike all stood off to the side, in front of the pegasi, and they all waited patiently as the airborne transport slowly brought itself down.

Stone planters were knocked over and carefully-trimmed plants were smashed into pulp as the gunship lowered itself onto the platform, its jetwash blasting into the faces of the various creatures waiting to greet its passenger. Further away, many Canterlot citizens were crowding around windows and standing in the plaza outside the gardens, extremely interested in the sudden commotion and the arrival of the strange vehicle.

Steam blasted from pistons as the embarkation ramp on the rear of the gunship was slowly lowered to the ground, revealing a pair of blast doors that further protected the passenger hold. The hammering of metal on metal from within the hold alerted everyone present to its occupants, and many of the guards visibly steeled themselves as they prepared to meet a Chaos Space Marine for the first - and hopefully last - time.

Twilight figured out something was wrong almost immediately. The clanging footsteps within the transport were too heavy, and there were too many of them falling in a rhythmic sequence. She recognized it immediately, and it was not Serith. "No, wait! What's HE doing here?!"

Gaela and Delgan likewise recognized the noise, and both of them pushed aside their initial surprise and dropped to one knee before the blast doors slid open.

Warsmith Solon clambered down the embarkation ramp, his optics swirling and his helmet turning from side to side as he took in the surroundings casually. Once he stepped off onto the ground, he turned his gaze down to the slack-jawed ponies arranged to greet him.

"Sho thish ish your capital! Lovely!" the Chaos Lord proclaimed, his mechatendrils whipping about behind him and eyeing the lines of soldiers.

His greeting seemed to break the surrounding equines out of their stunned stupor, and they reacted more or less as expected.

"EEEEEEEEEYAAAAAAAAAH!!"

"What IS that thing?!"

"It's a monster! Tactical retreat!"

"EVERYPONY FOR HIMSELF!!"

The pegasi bolted into the air like a flock of spooked pigeons, scattering every which way. The unicorns made an immediate rush after the earth ponies, who had already sprinted toward the loose crowds of Canterlot citizens fleeing in horror from the gardens.

Before long there were only seven individuals remaining.

Rarity hung her head and groaned as she removed a handkerchief from her saddlebag to drape over her nose.

Spike also looked exasperated, but this had more to do with the howling laughter in the back of his mind.

Shining Armor had not fled, to his credit. He was, however, quivering silently, and he remained rooted in place as if his hooves were made of stone. Cadence was crouched behind him, her face frozen in an expression of absolute terror.

Twilight settled for slapping a hoof against her face.

"Why didn't you tell me that the Warsmith was coming?" Gaela hissed as she stood back up.

"Because I didn't KNOW the Warsmith was coming," Delgan hissed back while he did the same.

Solon's torso swiveled about slightly, and his optics zoomed in on a group of fleeing pegasi that had almost rammed into a tower in their haste to escape.

"Huh. From my experience with the resht of you, I'd come to think you were made of shterner shtuff than that," the Warsmith said, turning back to Twilight, "ah, well. Greetingsh, Mish Shparkle."

"Greetings, Warsmith Solon," Twilight said after a heavy sigh, "may I ask why you're here?"

"Well, you did ashk to shpeak to the Company leadership," Solon noted.

"True... but we were told to expect Lord Serith," Rarity countered.

"Oh, he'sh here too," Solon confirmed, crab-walking to the side.

Twilight and Rarity's eyes narrowed as a heavy, echoing chuckle came from within the gunship, and even Spike snarled something under his breath as the Sorcerer stepped up to the ramp.

"I simply could not depart quickly enough after receiving your invitation," Serith said as he descended the ramp, carrying some sort of cylinder-shaped case, "why, for a while I wondered if we had parted on poor terms, Lady Sparkle."

Twilight's face threatened to turn red, but she took a deep breath and forced down the litany of anger that threatened to escape. "Well, we did have some 'unfinished business' to take care of, didn't we? Not that I knew that until after we left..."

"Indeed! But given the import of our negotiations concerning the Company presence upon Equestrian soil, I thought it would be prudent to have an even higher authority present. As such, I invited the Warsmith."

"That'sh not a problem, ish it?" the Nurglite asked, his helmet scanning the surroundings and taking pict-captures.

"Not at all, Warsmith," Gaela replied quickly, saving the ponies from having to lie to the Iron Warriors, "we were simply unprepared. We would have made further preparations had we been informed."

"Like maybe found a less jittery welcoming committee," Delgan remarked, sniffing as he glanced over to Shining Armor. The guard captain and his wife still hadn't moved, their eyes locked upon the behemoth of oily metal.

"Oh, that'sh fine," Solon said dismissively, stomping up to Twilight and the quivering pair, "I jusht wanted to get out of the fortresh for a while. That, and I thought it might be nice to obsherve your city. It'sh sho rare that I get to shee alien shettlementsh before they're reduced to ruinsh."

Twilight glanced over at her brother, and then resigned herself to the diplomatic process. "Warsmith Solon, this is my brother, Shining Armor, and his wife, Princess Cadence. Shining, Cadence, this is Warsmith Solon, the high commander of the 38th Company."

Shining Armor made a squeaking noise as he craned his neck upward to make eyes contact with the many glowering optics set around Solon's helmet.

"Warsmith Solon uses a sort of magical aura effect to incite intense, paralyzing fear on sight," Twilight explained further, "the effect fades as you spend more time around him."

"Why does he smell like burning rubber?!" Cadence demanded, still crouched behind Shining Armor's flank.

"Oh, that'sh shimply the rusht-eater fungal growthsh conshuming oxidesh over my armor. Don't worry though, the fumesh aren't very toxic. And I've shtoppered my exhausht portsh," Solon reassured them.

There were, in fact, great iron caps on the Chaos Lord's smokestacks, and his augmetic limb was a massive, armored arm that ended with four fingers with a glassy white lens set in the palm. Twilight had to admit that it was far less intimidating than the rotary cannon, although it still looked a great deal more dangerous that his other, "normal" arm.

"Do we have time before we're to meet the Equeshtrian officialsh?" Solon asked, stomping past the terrified ponies.

"Oh, certainly," Delgan said, "I know! Why don't I show you the area I've chosen for my storefront in this city? I'd like a recommendation on the best kind of reactor for it, my lord."

"Oh, that shoundsh good! Lead the way!"

"Wouldn't that frighten every pedestrian pony out in the streets into a stampede?" Rarity asked as she and Gaela followed behind Delgan, her handkerchief still shielding her nose.

"Oh, they'll be fine. Beshidesh, it wouldn't hurt them to toughen up a little. I don't even have my gunsh deployed," Solon said as he stomped after them.

Twilight grimaced as they left, and then she felt an itch around her horn.

Not a bad opening move, Sparkle. But as always, I'm too far ahead of you. Serith's voice whispered in Twilight's ear as if he were leaning in right next to her, even though she could see him walking after Solon.

I wonder if I'm too far ahead, really. Can you even see where you're headed?

Twilight's horn flared briefly, and the voice disappeared.

"So... are we going to follow them?" Spike asked, walking up to Twilight cautiously.

"Yes. Eventually. I just... need a moment," the alicorn said, gathering her thoughts.

"Does this mean the plan's failed?" the young dragon asked nervously. He could already hear ponies screaming and shouting about monsters further down the street. Shining Armor was taking deep breaths, his chest heaving from being so close to Solon.

"No, actually. This is going about as well as I'd hoped," Twilight admitted, "Serith is here. He's walked into the middle of our territory, and what's more, the Iron Warrior he's chosen for a 'bodyguard' isn't even someone who takes orders from him. I can't be surprised that he doesn't just hand the Elements right to us."

Then she turned toward Shining and Cadence. "Are you two okay? We need to get moving soon."

"That... That was..." Shining shook his head. "I can't even describe it. I faced Sombra before, and that was terrifying, but..."

The unicorn stallion turned his head slightly to look at his sister. Even considering that Twilight was the Element of Magic and heroine of Equestria, it was hard for him to contemplate his little sister facing something like that. And that was purely his first impression. The Iron Warriors were supposed to be military paragons without peer. Who knows what kind of destruction he was actually capable of?

"Twilight, I don't like this," Cadence warned, shuddering, "Gaela and Delgan were bad enough, but this is beyond the pale! Why are we allies with these people?"

Twilight looked away, wincing. "Well, we're not TECHNICALLY, allies, but to answer your question: circumstances, ultimately."

"Circumstances nothing!" Cadence shouted firmly, her eyes narrowing as Twilight recoiled from the shout. "You saw that... that THING that they call their master! I say we get the troops, the Princesses, the other Elements, even Discord if need be, and we get rid of them! Now!"

"Cadence, dear, calm down," Shining Armor pleaded.

"Why should I?" the pink alicorn snapped back. "I don't understand why we haven't tracked down these 'Tau' people and helped them to wipe out these monsters! Princess Celestia said they're evil! They admit to being evil themselves! And now that I've met them in person, I can say with all confidence that yes, they are in fact evil!"

Twilight and Spike cringed as Cadence finished, her chest heaving.

"That's all true," Spike allowed, seeing how Twilight was still thinking of a way to answer that, "but they're not evil at US. I think we need to give the Iron Warriors credit for that."

Also, her plan would get you all killed, mentioned the voice in his head.

"Also, Cadence, your plan would get us all killed," Spike added.

We make a great team!

The pink alicorn didn't seem mollified by the excuse. "So that's it? We're okay with murder and slavery and... and whatever that Warsmith is as long as it's not turned on us?" she demanded angrily.

"Not necessarily," Spike said, pointing a claw in the air, "but we should probably still do what we can to keep it 'not turned on us'."

Twilight stared at the ground in thought, having fallen silent since Cadence's original outburst.

"Have you seen that article? The one in the Cloudsdale Times about Ferrous Dominus?" Twilight asked suddenly.

Cadence blinked. "Yes. What about it?"

"Having been there for a few days at a time, the fortress is actually a pretty awful place," Twilight admitted, sitting down next to her brother, "it's a reflection of the 38th Company itself: a joyless, brutal, labor-intensive fort where happiness is sacrificed for efficiency and everything is done in aid, ultimately, of waging war."

Shining and Cadence shared a confused glance.

"But I'd still go back there again. The place is packed full of amazing technology! They have carts that defy gravity! Wireless communications devices that can fit in a helmet! A data core the size of a tree, complete with more information than every library in Equestria put together! And whenever a human loses a limb, they just build a metal one and plug it in the socket!"

"So what? Isn't all of it used in aid of warfare?" Shining Armor asked. He wasn't as eager to lash out at the Iron Warriors as Cadence, but he couldn't see where his sister was going with this.

"Yes. But those technologies aren't evil themselves. They've been built into a massive war factory and put toward the ultimate goal of destruction, but they could just as easily be put toward a more peaceful goal."

The purple alicorn took a deep breath. "I think the humans are the same way. They're not somehow born evil, and they're not irredeemable. Chaos is a corrosive, destructive influence on them, but as far as I can tell it hasn't totally dominated their free will. The humans and Chaos Space Marines we've met happen to be a part of or are employed by a band of space pirates, but if we give them a reason to they can still do good deeds. The Dark Mechanicus rebuilt Applejack's farm. Trademaster Delgan put up a market to trade rather than ransacking houses to get what he wanted. Even Tellis took enough time out of his fighting to rescue Zecora. And Solon, terrifying as he is, backed off from a fight because he saw that it was mostly pointless."

Cadence frowned. "So you're saying... we can change them?"

"Maybe. Or perhaps we can at least guide their destructive talents toward more useful ends," Twilight stood up again, and then started to walk along the trail of cracked holes in the ground that marked Solon's path across Canterlot's streets, "either way, to make an enemy out of them when we don't need to will hurt us more than it will hurt them. That's why I'm doing this. Where it's possible, friendship is always a better choice than violence."

Cadence shared another long look with her husband, and then followed her sister-in-law down the street. "I hope you're right, Twilight. It's hard to put much faith in friendship when we were called here to help you recover the Elements of Harmony from one of their soldiers who stole them."

Come on, that was totally legit!

"Oh, it is not!" Spike countered angrily.

The ponies almost jumped in surprise, and Spike reddened as he realized that he had responded to the voice out loud.

"Uh... that is to say... friendship will... prevail?" the young dragon said awkwardly.

You know, you don't have to answer me verbally. I can't even hear your actual voice, you know?

I hate you so much. Spike thought.

Yeah, just like that! You're golden!

****

Ferrous Dominus - sector 10 mining quarters

The first indications that something strange was happening was when the vox casters all started crackling with static simultaneously.

It wasn't odd for many casters in a sector to all activate at once, but the constant, noisy hum coming from the communications towers started raising alarm as no message followed it.

The slaves trudging into and out of the mining lifts paused as the static disruption stretched into a full minute, and even the overseers turned toward the communication towers rather than correcting them, allowing for the possibility that there may be a situation more dire than the possibility of failing to meet their immediate production quota.

After another minute of empty noise, suddenly the static cut out and a surprisingly enthusiastic voice rang from the tower.

"Heeeeeeey Ferrous Dominites! How ya all doin' out there?! This is DJ-PON3 givin' a shout-out to all my hominid brothers and sisters visiting our fine planet!"

The slaves that hadn't stopped working before halted at the voice.

"What in the Second Sphere is this about?" growled Jerriha as she dropped a load of ore into a processor tank. She was wearing a white jumpsuit, dirtied by heavy labor in the mine, and a set of iron manacles just like the rest of the chain gang.

"We settin' up in sector 6 to ROCK this rock! Fun, games, refreshments, and beats so sick even Nurgle will be feeling dizzy! Come one, come all, and prepare to get down with the pones! HI-YAH!!"

Several Dark Techpriest overseers were talking rapidly to each other in Binaric Cant, and Jerriha blinked in surprise as dubstep music suddenly boomed from the vox casters, staggering the cyborg clergy.

The black-robed slavemasters got to their feet slowly, swaying slightly as if in thrall to the heavy, obnoxiously loud beat coming from the vox tower.

*Fireblade, what's happening?* gasped one of the other Tau slaves, his hands clamped over his ear-holes. *What is that terrible noise? More of the humans' cruel and primitive rituals?*

Jerriha frowned as she stared at the other slaves, most of them human. They looked just as bewildered as anyone else, and were whispering to each other quietly as they watched the writhing overseers.

*If it is, then it's a fairly new one,* Jerriha answered in T'au.

"Uh-oh," mumbled a human man nearby, "here comes another overseer team."

Indeed, there were several more Dark Techpriests approaching, but most of the laborers noticed something was off right away. Most of them were connected to the vox network and had the volume turned up so high on their transmitters that echoes of the same beat coming from the vox casters could be heard coming from within the black hoods that obscured their heavily modified faces.

A few of them also had little colorful paper hats on top of their hoods as well, which was definitely the stranger of the two irregularities.

"Presenting explanation," barked the Dark Techpriest at the front, his numerous servo limbs twitching to the thumping beat in his aural receptors, "all quotas within the current solar cycle have been suspended."

The slaves glanced about at each other, perplexed.

"Extrapolation: for the current duration of PARTEE TAIM all prisoners are free to rest." The Dark Techpriest twitched and sparks blasted out of his hood mid-sentence as he spoke, and the various claws and drills on his servo limbs started spinning wildly.

"Addendum," added another Dark Techpriest, his mechatendrils bobbing in time with the beat flowing around them, "all human prisoners are hereby invited to GET FUN-KAY with all regular Company personnel and the native civilians in sector 6."

Dozens of beeping noises joined the cacophony from the vox casters, and all at once the chains linking the manacles on all the human prisoners disconnected one shackle from the other.

The xeno prisoners watched the humans start expressing surprise and cautious joy, and one of the Tau Fire Warriors tugged on his own bonds.

*Wait, why are the humans going loose? What about us?*

"Terribly sorry," barked a Dark Techpriest, emitting a static buzz that sounded distantly like chuckling, "I am not proficient in your useless babbling."

More electronic laughter came from the Dark Techpriests, and the spasming overseers joined the other Mechanicus priests as they turned away and started walking down the avenue. Plenty of human slaves, bewildered and curious at being suddenly offered any kind of recreation, followed after them at a respectful distance.

*What is this? The humans get to go free? What do we get?* demanded a Tau pilot bitterly.

*We get the day off,* Jerriha murmured, watching as huge spotlight beams swept the skies over one section of the fortress.

*That's all? Where are the humans going, then?* asked another.

*Racism is the least you should expect from these savages by now,* the Fireblade mumbled, staring at the palisade, *besides... they may have also given us an opportunity.*

****

Ferrous Dominus - sector 3, Astartes barracks beta

"Perturabo's hammer, what IS that?"

The heavy tread of dozens of armored boots mixed with the thumping techno beat as the first Iron Warriors emerged from the barracks and into the streets of the fortress proper.

The vox casters in the buildings weren't blaring dubstep, as they had been deliberately excluded from the network commands, but it hadn't taken long for the fortress's more militant denizens to determine that something odd was happening throughout much of the rest of the base.

"Sstep asside, foolss," snarled a thick, phlegm-slurred voice.

The gathered Iron Warriors did so, moving out of the way as the hulking mass of Sliver's terminator armor stomped out of the barracks.

Sliver stepped past his men, and then slowly raised his visor toward the nearest vox caster, listening intently to the heavy pound of music pouring from it.

"What is this, Lord Sliver? Some sort of xeno trick?" asked a Marine, his boltgun already aimed at the vox caster.

The Nurglite snorted through his vox grille. "Ssurely even the graysskinss haven't ressorted to ssuch feeble methodss. Thiss interference iss not ssome plot of theirss."

"My lord," barked another Iron Warrior as he approached, "I was just speaking to Tearas. He was outside when the disturbance began."

"Sspeak," Sliver slurred, his visor pulsing slightly.

"Someone designated DJ-PON3 invited the base personnel to sector 6. It was stated that many of the native xenos would be there."

Sliver turned his gaze back toward the vox caster. "Why?"

"It was implied that it was for the purposes of... revelry and merriment," the Iron Warrior spat with distaste.

Sliver turned back to his soldier. "We shall ssee. Everyone, ready yoursselvess for riot ssuppresssion. Follow me."

Sliver stomped across the avenue toward the train platform, the Iron Warriors behind him breaking into groups for transit and checking their weapons.

Within minutes the soldiers were waiting to board, nearly sixty Chaos Space Marines arranged behind the toxic Iron Warrior as warning lumens informed them that the train was on approach.

The magna-rail transport turned around the bend and started slowing to a stop, coming into full view of the soldiers.

There were a few things that immediately struck them as odd about it.

Speakers had been bolted to the exterior of the train and linked to the primary vox net, such that it blasted the same music as the vox towers. The entire outer hull of the train had been splashed over with brown paint in an attempt to make the frame armor look like wood grain. Finally, a large flag had been attached near the front. The flag had clearly been an ordinary Iron Skull emblem at first, but additional painting had added a pair of crossbones and an eye patch.

"Yar! You'll never take me vessel, ya planetlubbers! I'll make ye walk the space plank right into an asteroid field!" shouted a small white and brown pony waving a wooden sword and wearing a black pirate hat.

"Hoh hoh hoh hoh!" laughed Diamond Tiara from the next car, standing on top of a table with Silver Spoon sitting in front of her in a tricorn hat. "Sorry to disappoint you, Captain NObeard, but I'll be taking your precious ship! And your life!"

"Nevarrr! Snips, Snails, full broadside!"

Party cannons mounted at the windows of the transport - having evidently replaced the train's autocannons - blasted confetti and clouds of glitter into the air as a pair of colts lit the fuses, incidentally getting much of it on the phalanx of Iron Warriors standing on the platform in absolute silence.

"Prepare yourself, Silver Hook! I won't go down without a fight!" shouted Pipsqueak, advancing on the fillies with his wooden sword.

"I wouldn't have it any other way," Silver Spoon laughed before taking up a short length of rope to proxy a whip.

Then the automatic doors to the train slid shut and the train started moving again, its flag whipping about in the air.

The ranks of Iron Warriors watched it go, dozens of blood-red visors staring dumbly at the departing vehicle.

"The train... uh, the train is... er... leaving..." one of the Chaos Space Marines spoke, stumbling over his own words.

Sliver wiped a hand over his greasy breastplate, removing some portion of the colorful paper confetti that had stuck to him. Then he turned on his massive heel and began trudging back toward the streets.

"We'll walk," grumbled the Chaos Lord.

****

Canterlot Castle - main courtyard

"Yeeeeeek!"

"Run away!"

"A monster is terrorizing the city!"

"Guards! Guards! Where are the guards?!"

Solon walked through the courtyard at a leisurely pace, steam hissing from the joints of his chassis. Delgan and Gaela followed close behind, the former rather frustrated about how many ponies they had sent away shrieking in horror. Having learned to ignore the fear aura long ago, he really was surprised by how potent it was against peaceable citizens who had never encountered anything like the Warsmith before.

"You know, I don't remember Mish Hoovesh reacting like thish when she firsht met me," Solon remarked as he tracked a trio of pegasi darting into a high window and into a sixth-story apartment. Their forced entry elicited a shocked scream, presumably from the resident, but it was somewhat blunted by their own fearful howls.

"Well, Derpy is... special," Rarity admitted, following behind him in front of Serith, "she WAS the one that took a good look at Ferrous Dominus and decided that she wanted to deliver mail there."

"Hm. Point," Solon allowed, slowing his pace as a fleeing mare tripped on her dress and stumbled into a heap in front of him.

"NOOOOO!! Please! Spare me!" the unicorn begged, tears pouring down her face as she turned her gaze away from the armored monstrosity.

"Okay," Solon said, his legs stepping over the prone equine without difficulty.

"Get up. You're embarrassing yourself," Gaela muttered to the stunned mare as she followed after her master.

Twilight, Cadence, Shining and Spike were all following a fair distance behind, all of them looking exasperated by the entirely needless panic the followed in Solon's wake. Even Cadence and Shining Armor, who still couldn't look at the Chaos Lord without shuddering, had to admit that the pandemonium was getting ridiculous considering that Solon wasn't doing anything more destructive than leaving little holes in the ground from his immense weight.

"Okay, so, I should probably head in and let the Princess know we're here," Twilight said, her ears pinned to the sides of her head. She really hadn't meant to cause so much havoc just by walking through Canterlot with the Company "dignitaries".

Delgan glanced back. "Me and the Dark Acolyte shall attend you. I believe your officials may react more favorably if you meet us first."

Solon swiveled his torso around. "That'sh probably a good idea. I'll shtay here for-"

"HALT, VILLAIN!! THY REIGN OF TERROR ENDS HERE!!"

Everyone present jumped in surprise at the shout, and Serith's helmet snapped about with unusual urgency.

"That psionic signature! Impossible!"

Solon's torso swiveled back around, and he looked up to see a dark shape silhouetted against the sun as it flew over the tower.

"You..."

Princess Luna hovered high above the courtyard, her horn crackling with power as she glared down at the Chaos Lord. "Indeed, We hast come to vanquish thee, monster of Chaos! Feel the wrath of the night!"

The ponies' eyes widened as Luna's horn flashed with energy.

"Sherith," Solon said calmly.

The Sorcerer bolted in front of the Warsmith, raising his left arm toward Luna and spreading his palm open. The vambrace glowed with unnatural light as dispersal rods split away from the main plating, and an onyx black lens set in the palm of the armor gleamed as Luna unleashed a sizzling lance of blue lightning.

A thundercrack shook every mortal present as the lance of magic met Serith's hand. The searing energies were immediately sucked into the absorption lens, and the Sorcerer's arm trembled as whips of blue power lashed about his armor.

"This is your plan B?!" Shining shouted to Twilight as his teeth rattled in his head from the noise.

"No!" Twilight shouted back. "This is a little like plan F, but I'm pretty sure Luna is acting on her own, here!"

"Delgan! Prepare to support!" Gaela snapped as she engaged her helmet.

"Negative," Solon said calmly, instantly causing the humans to halt, "shtand by, both of you."

Luna grunted as her spell reached the limits of her endurance, and she finally let the torrent of lightning cease. Serith likewise released an aggravated grunt before he staggered backward, smoke pouring from his left arm.

"My turn," Solon said simply. Then he raised his augmetic arm toward the Princess.

Luna made ready to dodge, but as the lens set in Solon's palm pulsed, she suddenly felt the strain on her wings lift, as if the effects of gravity had been completely negated around her.

Then Solon pulled his arm down.

Twilight gaped as she watched Luna plummet into the ground, her wings completely useless against the force applied by Solon's tractor beam. She smashed into an abandoned hay cart that had been set up at the edge of the courtyard, throwing up a veritable cloud of debris as the wood and flagstones shattered underneath her.

"Wait! Stop!" Several of the ponies cried out as Solon's heavy bolter mounts clicked into place on the sides of his chassis. Serith quickly moved out of the way, still clutching his smoking arm.

Any further protests were drowned out by the roar of heavy bolter fire. Flames bloomed from the muzzles of the guns, ammunition belts snaked through the mess of devices mounted on Solon's chassis, and the fallen Princess was further obscured from view as small explosions rippled through the dust and debris.

"I'll stop him!" Shining Armor volunteered, gritting his teeth as his horn flared.

It promptly fizzled when Gaela's power axe swung down in front of him, very nearly touching his muzzle. The Dark Acolyte said nothing, her eyes focused on the waves of mass-reactive bursts, but the crackle of the disruption field along the axe's edge said enough.

The heavy bolter bursts suddenly stopped, the rattling thunder replaced by the gentle ring of ammo casings bouncing across the stone ground.

The ponies gaped. At the edge of the courtyard, where the cart had been, a column of dust, smoke, and blasted hay parted around a shimmering bubble of light, its rippling surface still reverberating from the bolter impacts.

Luna let the barrier fall before she stepped away from the shredded remains of the hay cart and walked across the courtyard, her mane flowing in a great dark pool behind her. There was a deep crack in one of her shoes and her jeweled peytral from her impact with the ground, but the dark Princess seemed largely unharmed, and had clearly avoided any damage from the heavy bolter barrage. Still, most of those present thought her calm pace and slightly bemused expression seemed inappropriate for someone who had just been subjected to so much ordnance. On the other hand, Solon seemed equally collected, waiting patiently as the blue alicorn walked up to him.

Luna finally stopped in front of the Chaos Lord, her head craning upward to meet the gaze of his optics array.

"Warsmith Solon," Luna said flatly.

"Princesh Luna," Solon replied.

"Thou art much uglier in the waking world," Luna noted with a raised eyebrow.

"And you are shlightly more impertinent," Solon grumbled, his mechatendrils hissing angrily.

Twilight suddenly realized that everyone besides the alicorn and Chaos Lord was staring at her, apparently waiting for an explanation. Even Serith seemed to be completely lost.

"Okay, just to be clear, I have NO IDEA what's going on here," Twilight explained.

"I don't expect you would," Solon mused, "my contact with the Princesh took place under... unushual conditionsh." His heavy bolters clicked noisily as they snapped up and then retreated back into armored munitions sheathes near the front of the chassis.

"Speaking of which, thou didst not sleep last night," Luna said, a hint of reproach in her voice. The dark blue alicorn was now inspecting Solon's armor in detail, staring closely at the various components and marks as she spoke.

"I wash bushy. Sherith needed a new arm," the Warsmith explained, rather annoyed that he felt the need to excuse his absence to the Princess, "I hope you didn't break it; I put a lot of work into that."

Serith held up the vambrace, inspecting the wisps of smoke leaking from the seams. "No permanent damage has been done. The psykant occulus is still functional."

Gaela cleared her throat, the noise converted by her vox grille into an ear-grating grinding noise. "I would like an explanation of why were attacked, if it is not too much to ask of the Princess." It was hard not to notice that Gaela had her plasma pistol in hand now.

"We heard word that there was a monster roaming the streets of our fair city," Luna explained as she poked a hoof at one of the mechatendrils, watching it flinch back, "We moved at once to vanquish the beast and restore order. We did not notice at first that there were ponies of good standing accompanying the fiend."

"Well, the important thing is that nopony got hurt!" Twilight said in a somewhat desperate tone of voice, her eyes darting between all the heavy bolter cases and the shattered hay cart. "Much."

"Why art thou here?" Luna asked, having moved on from the torso armor. She ducked under the first of Solon's right-hand legs, staring closely at his oil-stained chassis.

The quiet hiss of steam came from the mechanoid legs as they pulled up one after another to let the Princess underneath them. "We're here for a diplomatic engagement, actually," Solon replied, "with your government."

"Shouldn't you have known about this, your highness?" Shining Armor asked as Luna circled around the rear of the Warsmith, her eyes fixed on the large servo claw that hung over Solon's head.

Luna snorted. "We art never told ANYTHING. Had a pair of guards not burst into our quarters begging for sanctuary, We would not even know of thy disturbance."

The Princess of the Night finally pulled her gaze away from Solon and glanced at the other humans and post-human in attendance. "Art these thine attendants, Warsmith?"

"They are. Thish ish Gaela, a Dark Acolyte of my army. Thish man ish Norrish Delgan, the Trademashter. And the Iron Warrior ish Sherith, my mosht powerful pshyker."

Both Gaela and Delgan held off from greeting the dark alicorn, still quite annoyed at being attacked.

Serith wasn't so easily shaken, and he bowed deeply to the Princess. "It is my deepest pleasure to make your acquaintance, my lady. I was quite impressed with your entrance as well. I have not felt such power in a long time. It was quite... exhilarating."

Luna nodded sharply, approving of his compliments. "Well met, Lord Sherith."

Serith stumbled at the mispronunciation of his name, and every pony other than Luna chortled openly at the mistake.

"My... My name is SERITH, Lady Luna," the Sorcerer said firmly, "and as entertaining as this diversion has been, I wonder if you may yet inform your ministers and other leaders as to our presence so that we may get under way. I am most interested in meeting your sovereign."

This immediately raised alarm bells in Twilight's mind, although she firmly resisted the urge to panic and change the plan; this was all too likely to be another of Serith's mind games.

"It would alsho help if you informed your enforcersh that we are not here to harm any of you," Solon pointed out, "at leasht, not unlesh more of you shtart bombarding ush without provocation."

"Right! Follow me!" Twilight shouted suddenly, trying to seize control of the situation.

She rushed toward the main gates to the castle, which had been left open by the guards fleeing inside. "You can wait in the entry hall while I inform the Princess you're here. Just... please keep from shooting anymore," Twilight said, cringing.

"I can't promishe anything if we're attacked again," Solon warned as he let Gaela and Delgan move on ahead, "but go ahead. I'll wait here for now."

The other ponies and Spike likewise hurried into the castle, and Serith hesitated only long enough to give Luna a lingering stare before he too moved toward the gates.

Luna watched the others go, and then looked up at Solon. "So, why dost thou speak as if thou art inebriated?"

Solon tilted his head down to look at the dark blue alicorn. "I don't know; why do you shpeak like an actor from a period play? Sherioushly, nobody'sh talked like that for forty thoushand yearsh. And a royal 'We'? Really?"

Luna wrinkled her muzzle. "At least We do not send helpless ponies fleeing for their lives with our mere presence," she said indignantly.

Then she paused. "Not anymore, at least."

Another pause. "Well, not much."

"It shoundsh like we have a shurprishing amount in common," Solon admitted.

Luna just grunted irritably.

****

Ferrous Dominus - sector 6, PARTY CENTRAL

Speakers the size of upturned Rhinos stood next to Vinyl Scratch as she bobbed her head to the thumping beat. She was positioned atop a grand pyramid of metal scaffolding covered in wire bundles and jutting platforms, and numerous Dark Acolytes jerked and spasmed in bizarre in surprisingly well-choreographed dances atop the pyramid's steps.

Below her perch were hundreds of humans and ponies moving in vast, gyrating crowds to the beat. Many of the soldiers had arrived armed and in their usual uniforms, but they had been easily welcomed by the throngs of equines wearing alien masks, tinfoil vests, and the occasional cyber-pirate helmet.

Around the swirling crowds was a conga line of Dark Mechanicus priests and Scavurel, all of them moving in perfect coordination as if locked in a cybernetic trance. High above the crowds, suspended from nearby structures or raised on heavy iron columns, were metal cages where mares danced in scandalously sparse skirts or tight-fitting silver bodysuits.

Around the street nexus that had served as a dance floor were tables and the occasional scavenged vehicle wreck piled high with food and drinks. The human mercenaries and particularly the slaves utterly dominated these areas, as many of them hadn't had a tasty meal in months. Food made of hay and flowers were left alone for the ponies, obviously, but the baked goods and fruit dishes had been decimated by mercenaries and laborers desperate for sweet food.

Beyond that were the games, which were mostly martial tests of skill and card games, the latter at least being something the ponies could compete in. There were also more unique games that had been set up for the cultists, but they mostly attracted attention for their novelty: neither the ponies nor humans had ever seen a Khornate pillow fight before.

"Pinkie! Got your mug!" Rainbow Dash shouted as she soared low over the dancing crowd, holding a mug of cider on each hoof.

She slowed to a hover in front of the plastic-armored pony, and then landed on her back hooves as Pinkie tossed her helmet up to expose her face.

"Thankyee, Dashee!" Pinkie shouted back, taking her mug and then tapping it against Rainbow's drink.

The two of them took deep swigs of their cider, gasping in satisfaction as the smooth, sweet beverage cooled them down from their exertions.

"Gotta admit Pinkie, you outdid yourself this time! This party is awesome!" Rainbow Dash grinned. "I didn't think you'd get the humans into it at all!"

"I forgive you for doubting me," Pinkie said brightly, sticking out her tongue, "and it's only going to get better from here! We have a firework display in store when it gets a little darker, thanks to a certain Great and Powerful somepony! Are you ready to LIGHT UP THIS TOWN?!" she shouted, spreading her forelegs into the air.

"YEEEEAAAAH!!" screamed a huge, white, muscular pegasus, veins bulging around his neck.

"YEEEEEEEEAAAAAAAH!!!" screeched Tellis a moment later, almost knocking over Bulk Biceps.

"Hey, Tellis!" Rainbow shouted, practically diving at the Raptor Lord with a hoof outstretched.

Tellis clapped a metal palm against the incoming hoof. "Heya Blue! Welcome back! This is a pretty nice setup you got here!"

"Well, take a load off and party, dude!" Rainbow shouted, spinning in the air.

"Also, I hope you don't mind, but we basically pinned all of this on you!" Pinkie said with a grin.

"Okay, sure, whatever," Tellis dismissed the pink pony without really listening and started gyrating about in tune to the music.

Rainbow Dash glanced up at the floodlights sweeping through the air. "You thinking what I'm thinking?" she asked the Iron Warrior.

"Aerial dancing?" Tellis replied.

"Aerial dancing," Rainbow confirmed with a smirk.

Pinkie had to turn her head away from the blast of Tellis's flight pack igniting as the pair took off into the air, curling around each other to form a double helix trail of smoke and rainbows.

"Hey, look, it's more of those legless people!"

Much of the crowd parted for Big Macintosh - dressed in a tinfoil mask and saddle to look something like a cyborg and bobbing his head to the beat of the music - and the large wagon he was towing. It had been emptied of its party supplies and now carried several Dark Mechanicus pilots, their bodies all in varying states of extreme amputation and augmentation. Mechatendrils lashed about in the air and hips gyrated and spun in the bulky life-support pods as they were carted through the dancing throng.

Pinkie finished off her mug of cider and then slipped her helmet back on as she prepared to re-join the dancing.

And that was when a bolter salvo fired over the crowd.

A loud record scratch shrieked through the vox network as the music cut out, and a great many people and ponies fell prone in fear and confusion.

The confusion didn't last very long; it quickly became obvious what was happening. Advancing on the party grounds was a wall of gleaming armor and glowing visors, boltguns at the ready.

Party-goers quickly started backing away, stumbling into each other as they pressed into a wall of their own.

The advancing Astartes slowed, their gazes taking in the trappings of the festivities with cold contempt.

Sliver took up the lead, his larger terminator armor giving him a higher vantage point to scan the crowds.

He was most displeased to see a considerable number of human soldiers among them, and even worse, many of them were fully suited up as if they had arrived straight from their guard and patrol details. He had no doubt that there a lot of new holes in their defenses with this many gunmen wasting time away from their posts. Bizarrely, the Dark Mechanicus had also made a good showing, and he quickly stopped trying to count and identify all the Dark Techpriests and Acolytes present. Only the Iron Warriors themselves had largely stayed away, and he barely counted a dozen Chaos Space Marines among the throng.

"Hey there! Are you here to join in?!" Pinkie asked brightly, bringing the line of advancing Marines to a halt as she squeezed out of the crowd.

Sliver's Cyclops-style visor dipped down to glare at the pony dressed in mock armor.

"We'll have the music going back up in a minute, but until then, we have drinks and snacks over there, there's some target shooting over on the side, and behind us the Nurgle cultists are bobbing for rotten apples!"

Sliver was large, bloated, and his armor resembled a heap of glued-together scrap more than a proper combat suit like the other Iron Warriors wore.

As such, Pinkie was quite surprised by the speed and dexterity with which the Chaos Lord's huge, grubby hands seized the horn of her costume helmet and hauled her up to face level.

"You. Are you ressponssible for thiss... dissorder?" Sliver demanded, his huge glowing lens pulsing.

"So party games aren't your thing. Food, then? Or are you one those guys with the armor you can't take off?" Pinkie asked, hanging limply before the Nurglite Lord. "You don't look like much of a dancer to me. No offense. I mean, you can dance if you want to, of course."

Sliver waited for the earth pony to finish babbling, and then he held the arm grasping Pinkie out to the side, away from his face.

Pinkie Pie gulped as several boltguns were aimed at her from nearby Marines, their hammers clicking back into place in preparation to fire.

"Hey! Whadda y'all think yer doing?!" Applejack shouted as she and Big Macintosh pushed through the crowd toward the Iron Warriors, the latter shouldering a path for him and his sister.

Sliver glanced down at the angry-looking ponies in disinterest. "Everyone and everyTHING here iss to disspersse immediately. Every member of the Company iss to return to their dutiess, and every xeno will be ejected from the premissess."

"What? Why?" demanded a voice from the air as Rainbow Dash swooped in. "We were just having a party! What's the problem?!"

Sliver wasn't especially averse to putting a bolter round through the winged blue thing rather than answering its stupid questions, but she wasn't the only winged reveler to swoop down from above to complain.

And unfortunately, Tellis wasn't quite so easy to dismiss.

"What the bleeding heresy is your problem, Tubby?" the Raptor Lord growled as he landed heavily in front of the Apple siblings. "Bitter you didn't get an invite? Maybe if you losers actually left your damn barracks once in a while..."

A rumbling sigh escaped Sliver's vox grille, and he dropped Pinkie Pie onto the ground, dismissing her. "Thiss... ill disscipline will not be tolerated. All of thiss will be-"

"'Ill discipline'? What do you think we fight for, Fatty?!" Tellis shrieked, stomping up to the Nurglite Lord while his flight pack puffed flame and smoke. The other Chaos Space Marines started backing up to give the Raptor Lord some space in imitation of the crowd of party-goers on the opposite side.

"We are CHAOS!! That doesn't just mean we get to wear skulls and spikes, it means that we DO WHAT WE WANT!!"

"YEEEEEAAAAAH!!" Bulk Biceps probably made up the loudest portion of the shouted support that roared from the crowd of partygoers, but there were plenty of humans that joined in, some of them waving Chaos Star pendants in the air.

Another sigh came from the Lord in terminator armor. "If that wass the casse, Telliss, I would have sslain you long ago for my own ssatissfaction."

He gestured to the crowd of ponies and humans. "Thesse xenoss do not belong here, and thesse men have other dutiess. I will not tolerate ssuch a flagrant violation of military order in my fortresss."

Sliver looked up at the scaffolding tower and the various other structures that had apparently been built to accommodate the festivities. "Bessidess... thiss foolishnesss ssmackss of Sslaaneshi worship."

The cracking noise that followed that statement promptly silenced the stray mumbling and irritated growling coming from both sides of the standoff.

Sliver hit the ground on his side and then tumbled over further onto his belly, his armor shrieking against the ferrocrete ground. His giant fisheye visor lens was cracked, having taken the brunt of a power-armored sucker punch.

Even then, every Chaos Space Marine was stunned that Tellis had actually managed to knock the bulky Chaos Lord over with a single blow. On the other side, the mortals seemed mostly shocked at the sudden outbreak of violence.

"Say that again," Tellis hissed, stepping up to his superior officer and planting a foot on the back of his suit.

"WELL?! Accuse me of Slaaneshi worship again, you fat, filthy, worm-eaten piece of scrap!" the Raptor Lord screeched. "I'll cut you open like a can of expired lard! SAY IT, FATASS!!"

The hum of Sliver's teleporter activating caused Tellis to quickly step back, taking his foot off the heavily armored Marine.

Sliver's body was consumed by a teleport flare, and Tellis was quite surprised when the Nurglite rematerialized in the same spot, only standing upright. He hadn't known a teleporter could be used like that.

He was honestly much less surprised when a hefty, grimy fist slammed into his abdominal plate, lifting him off the ground and throwing him back. His flight pack activated on its own as he threatened to fall onto his back, keeping him upright as he landed unsteadily on his feet.

Sliver's next punch came with enough warning for Tellis to dodge to the side, his flight pack flaring and his armor boots scraping across the ferrocrete ground in a stream of sparks.

Sliver was already positioning for another blow when music again started up on the vox network; this time it was a faster, even more intense tune that could easily be characterized as "battle music".

"Fight! Fight! Fight!" the crowd of party-goers started to chant.

"Kick his butt, Tellis!" shouted Rainbow Dash.

"Blood for the Blood God!" howled a hooded man covered in scars and loose pillow feathers.

"YEEEEEAAAAAH!!"

On the other side of the divide, the bitter grumbling of the Iron Warriors began to pour into the open as well.

"He's gone too far, Lord Sliver!"

"Dispatch the fool!"

"Kill the Mad Angel! Let his corpse feed Nurgle's rotting gardens!"

Sliver tapped the lens of his helmet, listening to the scrape of armorglass along the cracks that Tellis had made.

"I'm going to take you apart, you inssubordinate worm," he hissed. Sliver was unarmed, at least to the extent that a Chaos Space Marine in terminator armor ever could be considered unarmed, but his opponent likewise seemed to be content fighting with his claws retracted.

Tellis just laughed, pounding his armored fists together. "NOW it's a party! HRAAAAUGH!!"

Pinkie staggered away from the escalating conflict as the heavy clang of metal was followed by a raucous cheering from the crowds.

Not that she wasn't interested in how the sudden fist fight would turn out, but she currently had a more pressing issue. Light was pouring from the visor of her costume's helmet like a pair of floodlights, and besides completely blinding her, it also served as a notice that she suddenly had more important things to do.

"Scroll in the helmet: not one of my better ideas," Pinkie admitted as she took the helmet off and blinked her eyes rapidly.

Then she retrieved the scroll Twilight had left her and rolled it open to read it.

"Pinkie, if you're reading this then hopefully things have gone as planned, or close enough as planned, and Serith is stuck in Canterlot for the moment. Blah blah blah, spells and trickery, yadda yadda," Pinkie read aloud, skimming most of her orders, "the Elements are probably in Serith's room." Pinkie promptly crumpled up the parchment and tossed it away. "Groovy! Time for some Pinkie Spy action!"

The earth pony quickly sprinted away, the sound of metal grinding against metal far behind her.

****

Ferrous Dominus - sector 2 ground battery docks

"Be very careful with that! Trixie spent a long time preparing that shell!"

A team of a half-dozen servitors lumbered toward the super-heavy ground-to-air cannons, hauling a car-sized cannon shell between them that was stamped with Trixie's cutie mark on the side.

Suuna was guiding the servitors toward the ammunition feed, which had already been opened and awaited loading.

"Hi Trixie!"

The blue unicorn jumped when she heard an unnecessarily loud greeting from behind her, but she hardly needed to turn around to confirm who it was.

"Hello, Pinkie Pie," Trixie said evenly, "Trixie got the fireworks ready on time, barely. Trixie will fire it off as soon as it is loaded."

"Neato!" Pinkie cheered, bouncing in place. "Oh! By the way, I just wanted to check: you and Serith are super-special best friends, right?"

This time Trixie did turn to look at Pinkie, her eyebrow arched. "... Sure. You could say that. Why?"

"Oh, no reason!" Pinkie said, grinning as she held her helmet under her foreleg.

"Mistress Trixie, shouldn't we have a Dark Techpriest on hand to fire the batteries?" Suuna asked as the servitors slowly pushed the firework shell into place. "You won't be able to access the firing controls, I don't think."

Trixie chuckled, turning away from Pinkie. "Oh Suuna, how you underestimate the Great and Powerful Trixie! Trixie has that taken care of!"

The unicorn's hat floated off her head and then turned upside-down.

With a burst of magic, Trixie levitated a large, entirely augmetic, and mysteriously dismembered arm out of the hat and into the air.

"Is... that..."

"A Dark Acolyte's arm, yes. He assured Trixie that it contained his security clearance key when Trixie borrowed it from him. Trixie has all the angles covered."

"Not quite all of them!" Pinkie disagreed loudly. "You don't have a costume!"

Trixie's triumphant expression soured. "Well Trixie WOULD have the greatest and most powerful costume of all the ponies in attendance, but Trixie was only invited an hour ago!" she growled. "Trixie couldn't even use that hour to come up with something, since you demanded a firework display!"

"Oopsie! Hey, I have an idea!" Pinkie shouted.

Before Trixie could ask what the idea was, Pinkie had slammed her helmet down over the unicorn's head, incidentally puncturing the forehead plate with her horn.

"There! Now you have a costume!" Pinkie said brightly.

"Lovely," Trixie grumbled, shifting the helmet so that she could see clearly through the visor, "can Trixie get back to work now? Trixie wants to finish in time to get a decent hayburger for supper."

"Aye aye Captain Ego!" Pinkie snapped a salute and then galloped off.

Trixie sniffed irritably and then stepped up to the manual control platform built into the base of the towering cannon.

"All right, just give Trixie a minute to figure out how to work this thing," the unicorn murmured, swiping the mechanical arm over the access scanner and watching as the console flickered to life.

Suuna frowned as she watched the hatch to the ordnance feed grind closed, and then she glanced over at the control platform. Then she turned to look about at the area where Pinkie had appeared.

"Where did Mistress Trixie's hat go?"

****

Canterlot Castle - residency halls

Twilight trotted uneasily through the halls of the castle, her head twisting back and forth. Spike followed behind her at a fair distance, looking distracted with a hand on his forehead.

She was increasingly perplexed as to the state of the castle as she searched for Princess Celestia.

Aside from the guards that Shining Armor had summoned for their first attempt at restraining Serith, there was no indication of any unusual activity around Canterlot Castle. The throne room had been almost empty when she had led Delgan and Gaela inside, and Cadence had left to round up ministers just so there was somepony of relevance for the Trademaster to talk to. Shining had left as well to round up the guards that had fled in order to set up another detail to receive the Iron Warriors. Hopefully one that wouldn't retreat at the first sight of the Warsmith. Twilight had quickly found a secluded spot to cast her spell to activate the scroll she had given Pinkie, but after completing that she hadn't had any luck in finding the single most important pony in Canterlot. Which was strange, because she was a pretty central part of the plan to get the Elements back.

Where was Celestia? It was clear that nopony that worked in the castle had been prepared for the Company arrivals. It was almost as if her teacher had never received her letter.

Spike suddenly felt a totally inexplicable twinge of guilt.

So who's this Celestia chick that you're so afraid of, anyway? asked the amulet in his head.

She's kind of this super-powerful sun goddess that seems to really, REALLY dislike Chaos, Spike answered, his pace lagging considerably behind Twilight.

That's religious persecution! She's oppressing your freedom to turn into an awesome, unstoppable monster and murder people you don't like! Let's talk rebellion.

Spike clenched his teeth. There has to be a way to shut you up, and I'm going to find it!

Twilight eventually reached Celestia's personal study, and she knocked a hoof on the door before calling out.

"Princess? Are you here?" Twilight called.

A thumping noise immediately came from the room, as if furniture was being knocked over. Then the sound of somepony galloping quickly to the door.

Twilight wisely stepped back from the door, and that was the only thing that saved her from having her face bashed in when it was flung open in front of her.

"Twilight! You're here already?" Princess Celestia asked, an ink quill floating next to her head. Her expression was an odd mix of apprehension and relief.

"Uh... yes. Are you okay, Princess?" the smaller alicorn asked.

"For the moment, yes. But we must hurry! There's some sort of monster attacking Canterlot! I was just writing you a letter to request your aid!"

Twilight's expression fell. "Oh. THAT. No, that's okay. He's not a monster." She frowned as she thought over that statement. "Well, maybe he is, actually, but at least he's the sort of monster that can be reasoned with. That's worth a lot, in my opinion."

Princess Celestia stared down at her student in total incomprehension.

"Well, never mind. We need to go now. The others are waiting," Twilight said, pointing a hoof down the hall.

Twilight started to trot away, but it was several seconds before Princess Celestia moved to follow her down the hall.

"Wait, Twilight, who's waiting for me? You mean the other Elements of Harmony?"

Twilight gave the Princess a quizzical look as she glanced back. "No... Well, actually, Rarity's there, but she only came along to accompany Mister Delgan. More importantly, Serith is here too."

Celestia looked more confused the more Twilight explained things. "Delgan? Serith? Who are they?"

Twilight felt a surge of irritation that Celestia hadn't even remembered the names of the two most important actors in the so-called "negotiations" to take place, but quashed it immediately. The Princess was ruler of the entire nation, and probably met a dozen new people every day; was it so much to ask that she get a refresher course on who was who among the humans she had never met?

Spike's progress in following them had already slowed to a crawl, and upon hearing the confused meeting ahead of him he decided that it was really in his best interest to not be around for questioning.

"Delgan is the Trademaster for the 38th Company fleet. His role usually involves bartering the less useful stolen goods from the Company's pirate raids for supplies," Twilight explained as they reached the door leading to the throne room. Her expression darkened as she considered the other name. "Serith is the Iron Warrior Sorcerer. I think you know which one I'm talking about."

Celestia glanced at the double doors leading to the next room. "No, I don't. Why are these humans here?"

Twilight gave the Princess a confused look. "They're here for the conference."

"What conference?"

Twilight was starting to get the feeling that something was wrong here. "The conference I set up for my plan."

"What plan?"

Yes, something was definitely wrong. "The one I explained in my letter."

"WHAT LETTER?"

The alicorns stared at each other in confounded silence for several seconds.

"Uh oh," Twilight mumbled. "Spike?" She glanced behind her, but to her increasing alarm she couldn't see her assistant anywhere.

"Twilight, this is the first I've seen or heard from you since you left for the human fortress!" Princess Celestia said, clearly exasperated. "I tried sending letters, using scrying spells, sent Luna to enter your dreams, left you a note at home... nothing has worked! I wouldn't even have known if you were still alive if it weren't for that absurd article in the newspaper!"

The gears in Twilight's head slowly ground to a halt as she suffered the intellectual equivalent of having the rug pulled out from under her.

"That's... uh... I don't..." Twilight swallowed deeply, trying to come to terms with the her new understanding of the situation. "I have to admit, a whole lot of my planning for this kind of rested on the assumption that you knew what was going on."

"Well I DON'T! Why are the humans still on our planet? Luna said that the 'War Blacksmith' or whatever he's called said the matter was resolved, but I'm not about to trust HIM. Especially not with them causing havoc and pandemonium throughout Canterlot!"

"Okay... this is... this is bad," Twilight admitted, cringing, "well, I probably have time to explain before we head in there. I mean, there are a lot of important details that you should be aware of, but the most important thing is-"

"HELP!" shouted a voice from the throne room. "No! Stop! Not the drill!"

Celestia gasped and her horn lit up, prompting the doors to burst open as she rushed to assist.

There was little Twilight could do other than slap a hoof against her face.

****

Canterlot Castle - throne room (several minutes earlier)

"Ah, the face," Delgan said somberly as he touched the metal plates that made up nearly a third of his head, "that's quite a story, actually. It came about from a laspistol wound. Bio-therapy was an option to repair the damage, but given the specializations of our fleet, augmetic repairs are always the better option."

"Well, they certainly did a remarkable job," commented a unicorn mare, one of several ponies that had surrounded the Trademaster.

"Your medical technology must be astounding," remarked a pegasus boasting a pipe and monocle.

All the ponies that had assembled so far to meet with the Company leadership were wearing fine suits and dresses, in stark contrast with the ponies he had encountered in Ponyville. Whenever they spoke it was in a tone of general disinterest, and they also boasted an assortment of accessories and hats. A few even had attendant ponies of clearly inferior class waiting behind them.

They were precisely the sorts of characters Delgan was hoping to meet, although he had a sneaking suspicion that they were acting out some sort of unconscious parody of the human elite. They did look quite silly in their fancy clothes, and he simply couldn't fathom how pony mustaches were a thing.

Rarity was likewise engaged in conversation with a few of the Equestrian ministers. Unsurprisingly, however, Delgan had attracted more attention as the commercial agent of an alien space fleet.

Even less surprisingly, Gaela stood off to the side of the room by herself, leaning against a column as she cataloged the stained-glass windows that decorated the throne room. The fact that she still had her power axe gripped in her bionic hand and her helmet closed over head probably had something to do with her isolation.

"I'm sure our medical technology, useful as it is, would be hard-pressed to compete with healing magic," Delgan said with a small smile.

"Oh, I don't know about that. Trying to see a decent magic healer in this country is quite the chore," an earth mare snorted, "the discipline is evidently just as complicated and difficult as the conventional sort. When I sprained my foreleg I had to wait nearly a whole day to have it cured!"

"A sprain? Are you sure the doctor didn't want to resort to magic for something so petty?" giggled another mare.

"Petty? It's a sight more than you've ever suffered, I'm sure!"

The pegasus coughed meaningfully to get the two mares to stop bickering. "I'm still quite curious as to how you suffered the facial wound, actually."

"Ah, very well," Delgan said as he traced his jaw line with his finger, "it happened roughly four standard Terran years ago, on Lionaas Six. The fleet had taken up position in orbit and ambushed the primary defense ships and their support platform. After the planetary governor was made aware of the threat, she was given an ultimatum to surrender a substantial store of supplies or have her cities assaulted and ransacked. She capitulated rather quickly."

"Scandalous," murmured one of the mares.

"Cowardly, more like," snorted another.

"Either way, with no need to deploy serious military force, I attempted to do some heavy trading in the planet's industrial sectors, something like what I've done here. Alas, one prominent industrialist refused to deal with me, insisting that he would not allow the piratical sacking of his facilities," Delgan continued.

"Such nerve."

"Indeed, nerve he had in abundance," the Trademaster agreed, "I'd guess he traded most of his wisdom for it. To illustrate the difference between piracy and trade, as well as make clear that I am accomplished at both, I had a team of men burn his factories and loot his warehouses. Then I enslaved his family and had many of his employees fed to our ship's reactor core for good measure."

The ponies didn't immediately respond this time, and their haughty, vaguely disinterested expressions grew far more attentive.

"As you said, the man had nerve though," Delgan admitted, brushing a stray hair off of the breast of his coat, "he somehow got past my guards at the shuttle landing bays and charged me with a pistol while I was taking stock of our 'earnings'."

Delgan smirked and chuckled. "He fired first, but missed his mark. When I returned fire, I was more accurate."

The ponies remained dumbstruck, some of their jaws agape as he finished the tale.

"So!" Delgan said suddenly, aware that the silence was starting to become awkward. "I hear gems are quite the abundant resource in Equestria!"

"I... uh, I have to go," the unicorn stuttered uncomfortably, stepping away, "I have to... do... things..."

"Y-Yes, quite. Me too," said another minister, cringing as he backed up.

As Delgan utterly botched his attempt to make friends, Gaela took note of a squad of royal guard ponies entering from the front halls, being led by Shining Armor. They looked badly shaken, no doubt because Solon was waiting in that area with Serith and Luna to be called in.

"We're not seriously going to let... THAT in here with the Princess, are we?" asked one of the soldiers, his ears flat against his head.

"Yes. And I'd feel much better about it if you could look at the humans' leader without shaking like a leaf," Shining said with a grimace. Of course, he hadn't fared much better when he had first met the Warsmith, but he had still been one of the few ponies that didn't actually flee.

"Just take your post here. The Princess should be in soon," Shining commanded, turning around and heading back out.

As the guards lined up along the path heading up to the empty throne, one of the unicorns noticed Gaela. Or rather, all the guards noticed Gaela, but only one of them took a look at her power axe and decided that something needed to be done about it.

"Pardon me Sir or Madam," the guard said grimly, his head held high as he stepped up to the Dark Acolyte, "I'll have to ask you to relinquish your weapons to me for safe-keeping."

"No," Gaela said simply, her optics locked on the window featuring Discord surrounded by the Elements of Harmony. She didn't even spare him a glance.

"Sir or Madam," the stallion said more forcefully, his horn lighting up with magic, "I'm afraid I must insist."

Gaela detected the buildup of psionic energy, and she turned her helmet to face the guard. "Whatever you're doing, stop it. I will not surrender my weapons."

Several of the other guards winced, wondering if they should intervene. On the one hand, their compatriot was certainly acting within the interests and authority of his post to insist that the human disarm. On the other hand, she was armed, armored, had more limbs than they did, and was associated with the hulking cyber-monstrosity in the next room. This was definitely one of those moments where discretion might be the better part of valor.

The unicorn didn't seem so easily cowed, though. "Fine. If you want to do this the hard way..."

The moment that Gaela's power axe started to glow from a levitation spell, she twisted her hips and her servo arm lashed out to clamp tight around the surprised guard's neck.

Gasps came from all around (along with a tired groan from Rarity) as the servo limb hauled the terrified stallion up into the air.

"I warned you," Gaela said flatly as the spell broke around her axe.

"HELP!!" cried the guard, batting at the claw with his hooves as the other servo limb levered into position. "No! Stop! Not the drill!"

"Acolyte, what are you doing?" Delgan growled, turning around.

"I warned him," Gaela repeated, keeping an eye on the other guards in case they moved to assist.

Then the doors burst open.

Delgan and Gaela snapped their heads around as Celestia stepped into the throne room, her eyes narrowed and her horn already aglow.

"Tch! About time you showed up," Gaela grumbled. She promptly dropped the unicorn onto the floor, leaving him in a gasping heap.

Delgan noted the horrified looks on the ponies' faces, and then took another look at Celestia, noting her similarities to Luna in form and clothing.

"Oh, wonderful. A fine first impression, Acolyte," Delgan snapped, turning on Gaela, "I just can't take you anywhere, can I?!"

"This was not the first time we've met," Gaela pointed out as her servo claw clanked shut.

"It is not," Celestia said through clenched teeth, "and every meeting is more unpleasant than the last."

Delgan could only pinch the bridge of his nose in frustration. "You didn't tell me that, Acolyte."

"You never asked," Gaela deadpanned, "and if I might remind you, your sole reason for bringing me along was my having met more ponies than anyone other than Dagger."

"Daniels. The man's name was Daniels," Delgan corrected.

Twilight stepped past Celestia gingerly, well aware that she was walking into a proverbial minefield.

"Well then, why don't we start with some formal introductions!" the purple alicorn said desperately.

Princess Celestia cast a sharp glance downward, but let the magic surrounding her horn dim. She was really in no mood for this, but at the very least she trusted that Twilight had Equestria's best interests in mind when she arranged... whatever this was.

"Princess Celestia, this is Norris Delgan, Trademaster of the 38th Company, as I explained before. This is Gaela, Dark Acolyte of the Dark Mechanicus. She was the one who first fought off the Tau from Sweet Apple Acres and then from Ponyville."

Delgan fell to one knee and bowed deeply. "It is my deepest honor to make your acquaintance, Sovereign."

Gaela, recognizing that her allies were putting considerable effort into their diplomatic postures, decided to give it her best as well. She said and did nothing.

Princess Celestia didn't seem especially impressed by Delgan's gesture, but then her attention was mostly fixed on the Dark Acolyte as she stepped up to her throne and sat down. "Twilight? Is this all of them?"

"No, Princess!" Twilight said a little too loudly, reacting badly to the high tension in the room. "There are two more waiting in the halls!"

"Then bring them in," Celestia commanded, doing her best to keep her calm even as her glare was fixed on the optics sensors of Gaela's helmet, "let's get this over with."

Twilight winced at her words. This wasn't how the meeting was supposed to go at all. Aside from undermining Serith specifically, she was hoping that Celestia and the 38th Company really could reach an accord. But now Celestia was unaware of the importance of the first matter and didn't seem too keen on the second.

She supposed she could tell the Princess then and there about Serith's theft of the Elements of Harmony, but then the punishment was likely to fall on all the humans present. To say nothing of how Solon and Serith might fare against Celestia's wrath, having already fended off one Princess today.

Twilight's thoughts were interrupted by the creaking of hinges, and her head snapped up as the main doors to the entry hall started to slide open.

"Finally! We thought that we would have to leave to raise the moon before you would call thy guests!" Luna complained, walking into the throne room as she magicked the doors open.

"Oh, it's no trouble. We have all night," Serith assured her, following the dark-colored alicorn into the room.

Celestia's attention was hardly focused on her sister and the Sorcerer, however.

It was devoted entirely to the monster of oily fleshmetal that stomped in behind them, its every step leaving deep cracks in the floor tiling.

"Introductionsh, Mish Shparkle?"

****

Ferrous Dominus - sector 6 psyker dorms

Pinkie crept through the halls of the psyker dorms on her tip-hooves, her back sliding against the metal wall.

At some earlier point she had ditched her power armor costume and was now wearing her skin-tight black spy suit, complete with a tri-optics mask. The effect was pretty much ruined, however, thanks to Trixie's wizard hat sitting on her head as well.

Pinkie raised her foreleg to her mouth, tapping the watch that was strapped to it and then speaking into the face.

"Command, this is Spy Pie Tri, reporting in. I have eyes on the prize and the bad guys are not wise. Over."

A brief burst of static came from the watch.

"Who are you, and how did you get this vox frequency?"

"I will be observing vox silence from here on out to prevent alerting the enemy. Over and out, Command," Pinkie said grimly.

"What enemy? Who is-" the voice was cut off as Pinkie tapped her wristwatch again.

Then she crept up to the door to Serith's quarters.

Pinkie took Trixie's hat off and then placed the card pinned to the rim against the scanner next to the door.

There was a brief pause, and then Pinkie grinned as the indicator lumen flashed green.

"Awww, they must be really good friends if he lets her drop into his secret evil magic lab whenever she wants!" Pinkie said brightly as the door opened. "I'm so happy for her! I almost feel bad that she might get blamed for this!"

She tip-hooved into the room.

Serith's room was mostly empty on account of the recent explosions to come from his experiments and the subsequent repairs. In the main room there was little more than a cabinet, a few chairs, and a desk stacked with weapons. Notably absent was any sort of sleeping area.

Pinkie quickly rummaged through the cabinets, but as expected, Serith didn't keep his all-important filched artifacts in unlocked cupboards. They were mostly full of books written in languages Pinkie didn't recognize.

Turning away, the earth pony rubbed a hoof against her chin as she looked around the room.

Her eyes eventually settled on a panel of the wall that seemed to be dressed up in writing and runic circles. There were several passages written in uneven lines, and in each one was a gap.

"In darkest night swim the blank," Pinkie murmured, running a hoof below each line, "blood within blank flows through the tributary that feeds the galaxy. The vortex of blank that seals the secret whispers off the void. The beast hunts, the scent of blank seething through the veins of unreality."

Pinkie narrowed her eyes at the holes in the strange passages, and then she glanced over at the desk with the munitions. There was a small pile of polished stones laying on top of it, each one marked with a strange and unique rune.

"I've got it!" the party pony said brightly, galloping over to the desk.

Then she pushed aside the pile of runes and picked up the melta bomb laying behind them.

She promptly affixed the explosive to the mysterious door and then twisted the fuse grip before bolting away.

"I am the bestest spy EVER!" the pink pony cheered as the melta bomb went off.

The explosive did its work with far less noise and collateral damage than Pinkie had guessed, blasting a hole through the arcane door with a jet of directed melta gas rather than a simple detonation. Toxic smoke boiled up to the ceiling from the vaporized metals, and Pinkie slipped her mask down to protect her eyes and lungs from the fumes as she approached the breach.

That's when she noticed that some parts of the door still seemed to be intact. Specifically, the part with all the glowing, indecipherable sigils and arcane patterns. Even without the metal backing that it had been placed on, the runic text hung in the air in the exact same place, its lettering glowing even brighter than before.

"That's not good," Pinkie Pie declared.

A bare second later, black chains burst from the pall of smoke and darted straight for her, curling through the air like eels swimming through water.

Pinkie tried to dodge away, but the chains simply followed her movements and then wrapped around her legs and throat, twisting and tangling together until she was wrapped in a veritable web of black, otherworldly metal.

"Okay... this isn't... THAT bad," Pinkie admitted, grunting as she tried to wriggle free.

Then the glyphs that made up the sorcerous trap rotated in an uneven sequence. Crackling green energy leaked from the haze of smoke and heat, and then coalesced into the form of a pair of fanged serpents that hung over the arcane chains.

"Okay, yeah, now this is pretty bad," Pinkie admitted as the daemonic snakes started slithering up the chains, "not to mention kind of genre inappropriate. Electronic security gates and magic snake traps in the same building? Really?"

The serpents didn't seem concerned with the issue, and continued creeping toward the trapped pony as the chains held her firm.

Pinkie tried to reached for a hidden pocket on the stomach region of her suit, but the chains refused to give as she struggled to reach it with any one of her legs.

"Must... get to... secret... countermeasure!" Pinkie growled as she twisted and squirmed. All it did was rattle the dark chains around her, however.

One of the serpents came within leg's reach, and it reared its head back as some dark, gloomy substance leaked from its fangs.

"Ah-ha!" Realizing the one limb she possessed that hadn't been bound, Pinkie's tail curled down over her flank and the tufts of pink hair slipped into the pocket of her spy suit to grasp the item she needed.

"Success!" she shouted in the face of the arcane serpent as the object was yanked from her pocket and promptly fell down onto the floor beneath her.

A small cube bounced several times against the metal flooring before finally coming to rest, causing the snakes and the chains to freeze in place, as if stunned.

On the top facing of the cube was the number six.

The snakes vanished in an instant, turning into puffs of smoke. The chains around Pinkie were next, going slack and falling apart link by link before she was dropped safely onto the floor.

"Phew! That was close!" Pinkie said with a heavy breath, picking up the six-sided die and slipping it back into her pocket.

Then she bounced into the next room, bounding over the still-warm remains of the door.

The next room, while also having been damaged in the lab explosions, was much closer to what Pinkie Pie expected to see in an evil Sorcerer's room. She still couldn't help but notice there were none of the basic facilities for living such as a bed, bathroom, or kitchen, however. Weird.

Cages were stacked in one corner while a desk next to it was piled with shattered pieces of some bizarre machine. Inactive servo skulls lay on an upper shelf, while bookcases dominated one wall entirely.

But most important was clearly a single large case next to the cages that was helpfully labeled "Artifact cache 3719: Elements H. Warning: objects are to be considered highly reactive!"

"Jackpot," Pinkie said with a grin as she advanced on the case.

****

Canterlot Castle - throne room

Celestia was able to work out right away that the Warsmith slowly advancing on her throne had some sort of fear aura about him that instilled terror just to behold his form.

She steeled herself against the irrational sense of panic with ease, dispelling the effect that threatened to unsettle her.

The more rational sense of panic that she felt while looking upon the hulking Astartes was not so easily dealt with. The creature of metal fused with flesh seethed with energies both arcane and conventional and was ancient beyond even her formidable experience. His body hummed with devices whose purpose she could only guess at, and his bulk moved with a casual, efficient strength that could tear down the castle's walls like so much paper.

The Warsmith needed no aura to send chills down Celestia's spine, and the fur on the back of her neck tickled uncomfortably as Twilight cleared her throat.

"Princess Celestia, this is Warsmith Solon, high commander of the 38th Company," Twilight began, gesturing to the Chaos Lord.

Her voice took on an unsubtle edge of irritation as she then jabbed a hoof at Serith. "And THIS one is Serith, Sorcerer of the Iron Warriors. Warsmith Solon, Mister Serith, you stand before Princess Celestia, Sovereign of all of Equestria."

"It is a great honor, Princess," Serith said, bowing deeply just as he had done for Luna. He was still carrying the metal case he had come in with, gripping it with both hands as if to protect it.

"Well met, Princesh," Solon said, his back-mounted mechatendrils hissing quietly at the white alicorn.

Celestia glanced around the throne room, noting that aside from herself, Luna, Twilight and Rarity, every other pony was quivering in terror from the presence of the Warsmith.

"Let's get this over with, then," Celestia said, her eyes narrowed as she stared down at the Iron Warriors, "what are you doing in Equestrian lands, and how can I get rid of you?"

Twilight smiled and resisted the urge to beat her head against the wall.

Serith made a coughing noise immediately. "Although I understand your haste, my lady, there are yet formalities to be observed."

The Sorcerer stepped forward past the other ponies with the case in his hands, walking up the stairs to the throne even as Twilight and Rarity fixed him with glares that threatened to strip the paint from his armor.

"As... unfamiliar as we are in the conduct of diplomacy, it is well-recognized that one should offer a gift when meeting foreign powers about matters of peace."

He laid the case down before Celestia's throne, and then passed his hand over it.

The locks on the case snapped open, and a gentle squeak came from the container as the lid slowly opened upward.

Twilight ground her teeth irritably as she fought to stay still. She couldn't see what was in the case from her current angle, and judging from the surprised yet nonplussed expression on Celestia's face, it was probably something she'd want to issue an opinion on before Celestia accepted it.

"Twilight?" Princess Celestia said, turning her gaze on the purple alicorn.

"Yes, Princess Celestia?" Twilight answered eagerly, glad that she was apparently being consulted anyway.

"Why does this man have the Elements of Harmony?"

****

Ferrous Dominus - Serith's laboratory

Pinkie stared pensively into the empty case, blinking repeatedly.

There was no clever little note, no substitute item, no trap, no anything. The case was simply empty of the contents it was indicated to have.

"Twilight is NOT going to be happy about this," Pinkie mumbled, grimacing.

****

Canterlot Castle - throne room

As Twilight and Rarity gaped in surprise, Serith stood up and shook his head.

"My lady, I do not possess the Elements of Harmony. You do," Serith confessed, walking back down the steps to re-join the Company delegation, "after confiscating these dangerous devices from your servants, it occurred to me that they may possess some import to your people. As such, I thought it would make a fine gift to mark our meeting."

Absolute silence answered the Chaos Sorcerer, broken only by the sound of Twilight smacking her face into the wall repeatedly.

Solon leaned over on his chassis to speak to Serith. "I don't think she likesh it. I told you we should have brought a shervitor inshtead!"

Serith grunted. "Ugh. That's so impersonal, though."

"Thou hast a point," Luna said obliviously, "if the Elements of Harmony were lost, t'would be of great value to return them in good order." The dark-furred alicorn nodded. "We believe Sister's dismay originates from being unaware that they were lost in the first place."

"Well, that's hardly our fault," Gaela pointed out.

"Agreed. You would think Miss Sparkle would have mentioned something this important to all of you," Delgan said, snorting contemptuously.

Rarity winced as the sound of a face meeting a stone wall grew more frequent.

Celestia's lip twitched as she spoke again. "It's fine. Twilight, stop that."

Twilight froze immediately, her muzzle quivering mere millimeters from the stone wall.

"Now I would like to proceed. Your fortress 'Ferrous Dominus' is in our lands. We want you all gone, and preferably off our planet."

Solon waved his smaller arm dismissively. "No, no, we've already worked that out with Mish Shparkle. We're going to leave when our Warp enginesh are finished."

Celestia raised an eyebrow. "And how long will that take?"

"Two monthsh or sho," Solon answered breezily.

Princess Celestia grit her teeth. "That's not acceptable."

"It will sheem a lot more acceptable two monthsh from now," the Warsmith countered with a chuckle, "but sherioushly, we're only here becaushe it'sh the besht place to build what we need to leave. We're not departing without our Warp enginesh."

"Then I'm not sure what there is to discuss," Celestia admitted, her eyes narrowed.

"There is the matter of the Tau stragglers," Serith interjected, "according to what we've observed-"

"I don't CARE about the Tau," Celestia interjected harshly, "they're YOUR problem that you've brought upon us! I have firefights breaking out in my villages and the remains of your weapons littering my fields!"

Serith grunted in irritation. He knew by now that the Iron Warriors weren't what brought the Tau to Centaur III, but without a better explanation for their presence he wasn't going to try to convince the Princess that the aliens had more sinister intentions than they did.

"Your people are raiders, slavers, and butchers, and you come to me asking for permission to stay to make it easier to hunt down your victims?" Celestia asked, her voice turning more shrill.

"Well, technically I think we've already concluded that bushinesh," Solon pointed out, "you won't give ush permission, and we don't care."

Delgan groaned as he hung his head. "Not helping, Lord," he mumbled under his breath.

"And THIS!" Celestia shouted, her horn flaring with magic.

Delgan yelped as the Chaos Star badge that was pinned to his jacket was ripped off of his chest to float between the two parties.

"I know what this is! Did you think I would give you free reign to spread your hatred and rot among my people?" Celestia demanded, her wings rising half-way open in irritation. "We will not invite your darkness into our lands or abet your atrocities!"

Delgan seemed increasingly uncomfortable with the confrontation, although Solon just leaned over to speak to Serith.

"Ish thish the agenda we were shupposhed to dishcush? I thought it wash moshtly to be about commercial issuesh."

Serith sighed and then addressed Celestia again. "Obviously our servitude to Chaos is not negotiable. But we might address your... other concerns?"

"Other concerns?" Celestia said sharply. "Which ones? The pollution your fortress is spewing into our air and water? The crossfire from your battles in and around our settlements? The disruption from your landing ships, guns, and buildings in our territory?"

"Wash our negotiating poshition thish bad when we came in?" Solon asked Gaela. "I feel like we had a much better cashe when we arrived."

"I hardly think such petty concerns warrant our attention," Gaela noted, forgetting that her most useful contribution to the diplomatic process was to remain silent, "as far as I know, there haven't even been any ponies killed yet from our operations here."

Celestia slowly forced her wings back into their resting position and took a deep, cleansing breath before she spoke again. "Get out."

"What? Already?" Solon asked, surprised.

"I have nothing more to say to you, and you're all beyond redemption. Get OUT of my castle," Princess Celestia demanded.

"Sister, dost thou not think it best that we at least hear them out?" Luna asked with a frown. She didn't mean to side with the humans in this matter, but she did feel SLIGHTLY guilty about assaulting them earlier.

"As far as I'm concerned, that's what I just did," the white alicorn replied coldly, "in recognition of your... 'attempt' at peaceful engagement, you have twenty-four hours to leave Canterlot. After that, I never want to see any human here ever again." Then her eyes narrowed. "That extends to whatever YOU are, and any more such monsters that bear the eight-pointed star."

Delgan chewed his lip anxiously. "Ah, is there a chance I can get that badge back? Your highness?"

The Trademaster winced as his floating Chaos Star flashed with magic, and then it vanished into a puff of ashes.

"That would be a 'no', then," Delgan sighed.

Princess Celestia stepped down from her throne and headed for the doors leading back to her study, the case containing the Elements off Harmony floating behind her. "This meeting is over. Twilight, I wish to speak with you before you leave for Ponyville again."

Nobody said anything as she walked out, each of them stewing silently in their own thoughts while the double doors slammed shut.

Rarity was the first to breach the silence, turning toward Twilight and whispering into her ear. "You know, technically, your plan was STILL a success since we got the Elements back."

"Yeah. Great," the purple alicorn mumbled.

****

Ferrous Dominus - sector 6 PARTY CENTRAL

"Go for the face!"

"Crush the traitor!"

"Look out for that pipe, dude!"

"Iron within! Iron without!"

Tellis leapt into the air, his flight pack spewing flames as Sliver swung a hefty length of pipe under him.

"Hah! Even with a weapon you're too slow for me, loser!" Tellis howled as he flew a circle around the Nurglite, hovering just out of pipe range.

The hum of Sliver's teleporter engine filled the air before he vanished, and Tellis grunted as he brought up his HUD to try to mark Sliver's new location.

Before he could manage that, the length of pipe Sliver had found struck him in the back like a thrown javelin. The pipe didn't stand a chance of penetrating power armor, of course, but nonetheless the sheer force was enough to knock him out of the air and slam Tellis onto the ferrocrete avenue.

Cheers and cruel laughter came from the block of Iron Warrior spectators, while the party-goers shouted at him to get up.

In a moment Sliver was bearing down on the Khornate Lord, puffs of foul gas blasting from the exhaust vents of his terminator armor.

"Die, maggot!"

Tellis blasted off into the air again from the prone position, evading the larger Chaos Lord just before Sliver stomped onto his back.

"Man, you really are slow, you know that?" Tellis asked as he spun around in mid-air. "If we didn't have that nerd Solon around to figure out ways to move your fat ass, how would you get ANYWHERE? That guy really is a genius!"

"To be certain, he blesssed me with better toolss than you," Sliver agreed as he slowly moved toward the Raptor Lord, "your daemon mail iss a paltry thing compared to my weaponss."

"Eh, I dunno about that. I can do some pretty nifty stuff in this thing. Let me show you!"

Tellis burst forward straight toward Sliver, his jets screaming as he turned the boost into a rocket-powered kick.

Sliver took the blow on his shoulder pauldron, grunting as the force slid him back across the ground.

Tellis hovered back away from a grasping hand. "Too slow again! Are you even trying, man?"

Sliver charged forward, his momentum building dangerously as he accelerated toward the Raptor Lord.

Rather than dodging, Tellis blasted forward instead to meet his superior officer head-on. His blood-forged gauntlets slammed into Sliver's slimy, diseased ones as their fingers interlocked, and his flight pack screamed furiously as it fought off the terminator suit's inertia.

"Go! Go! Go!"

"Crush him, Lord!"

"Come on, Tellis!"

"Grind the whelp to nothing!"

"The horror! The horror!"

The two combatants remained locked in their grapple, mini-servos squealing and rocket boosters roaring for dominance. Sparks blasted from armor joints and power cabling, and cracks started to break open in the ferrocrete underneath them.

The sound of a distant cannon shot gave both Chaos Marines pause. Tellis wondered if Sliver had been so intent on ending the party that he had actually fielded armored support, while Sliver, aware that he did no such thing, was concerned about who was firing heavy ordnance without his orders or permission.

"Hey, look up there!" said Rainbow Dash with a hoof pointed toward the sky.

A flare of light was shooting up into the air, and as Sliver risked a glance upward he quickly determined that it had come from the ground batteries.

Then the firework shell exploded.

The ponies, humans, and even Chaos Space Marines that were loudly cheering on the fight stared upward, and the soot-stained skies were suddenly painted with bursts of color. Clusters of bright lights bloomed like flowers and then crackled noisily as they fell, only to be followed by new chains of bursting light.

Tellis, noting that Sliver wasn't paying attention to their grappling any longer, reluctantly turned his visor up as well.

A particularly large explosion went off, encircling the other color bursts with a ring of white sparks. Eight other bursts along the circumference of the circle generated outward-facing arrows around it, and murmurs of reluctant approval came from the gathered Iron Warriors as the mortals and ponies cheered loudly.

Two more clusters of fireworks detonated to the sides of the enormous Chaos Star; one red, and the other green. As the fireworks expended themselves the humans started cheering and whistling even louder to see the marks of Khorne and Nurgle illuminating the night sky.

"Shouldn't there be a mark of Tzeentch, too?" Tellis said suddenly, his gaze locked on the display. "I mean, obviously the whore-God's symbol is a no-go, but I thought we were cool with Tzeentch."

Sliver turned to look at the Raptor Lord silently for several seconds, and then he grunted in irritation, letting his arms drop. "Devoteess of Nurgle rule thiss army, Telliss. The Lord of Liess findss few victimss among our number." Then he snorted noisily. "Bessidess, thiss iss likely the creation of that blue pony witch of Sserith'ss. She likely doess not even know of the entire pantheon."

Tellis let his arms drop as well, his flight pack sputtering. "So, you wanna take a break or something before we get back to me pounding your helmet flat?"

A throaty hiss came from Sliver's vox grille. "I do not. I tire of thiss foolishnesss. Trading blowss over carnival gamess and dancing..."

"Sounds like a perfectly good reason to me..." the Raptor said with a shrug.

"I'm ssure. And I should know better than to lower mysself to your level," Sliver grumbled, walking away toward his men. "Thiss command goes for all of you ass well ass the Mad Angel: for the duration of thiss fesstival, you may do what you want. I'll hammer you foolss back into worthy ssoldierss upon the ssunrisse."

Sliver stomped off down the avenue, the other Iron Warriors parting before him to make way. Many of them turned around with him and followed the Chaos Lord despite his orders, but about two dozen of the Chaos Space Marines took a long look at the resuming celebrations and cautiously started approaching the dance space or the target range.

Tellis cracked his neck to one side and then the other as Rainbow Dash flew over to land on top of one of his pack turbines.

"Man, that guy's a jerk," the pegasus scowled after the hulking Marine, "and he smells even worse than Solon."

"He's also ugly. Don't forget ugly," Tellis added.

"How can you tell? He had that mask on."

"Well, if he wasn't before, he is now that I've punched all that armorglass into his face!"

A screeching belly laugh came from Tellis as Rainbow Dash snickered.

As the laughter tailed off, Rainbow jabbed a hoof toward the party. "You wanna go dance?"

"I shall party in the name Chaos!" Tellis replied enthusiastically. "Let's go!"

****

Canterlot Castle - courtyard gardens

"Well THAT went atrociously," Delgan grumbled bitterly as he strode into the gardens surrounding the castle.

He had separated from his allies almost immediately after Celestia had dismissed them. In part because he had planning to do that didn't necessarily involve them, but mostly because he really didn't want to have to be around the fools right now.

It would have been much easier to deal with the Princess alone, he decided. A single human merchant tagging along with the fleet of slavers and bandits would not have been seen as a threat, and he would have been able to steer the conversation quickly from what the Company had done in Equestria to what he could offer its citizens.

But instead, he had been talked into letting SERITH of all people make an appearance. And then HE had brought along the Warsmith himself! It was absolutely no surprise that things had come undone so quickly.

He was just glad that he had a backup plan in the form of Rarity opening a storefront for him. After today he wasn't even going to be allowed in the city, never mind allowed to do business.

"I suppose I should be thankful that she didn't banish us from her nation entirely," the Trademaster muttered, "although I suppose that if she could manage that, then she would have done so already."

"Excuse me? You're Mister Delgan, right? The merchant?"

Delgan looked behind him, and his lips pressed into a thin line as he spotted a guard approaching. The guard didn't appear hostile, however, and behind him was an earth pony with a tan coat and slicked-back, black mane.

Delgan composed himself. Whether or not he had the blessings of Equestria's ruler, there was still much that could still be achieved here. "I am Norris Delgan of the 38th Company, yes. How may I assist you?"

The earth pony quickly cleared his throat and then gestured to the pegasus guard. "I'll take it from here. You may go."

The guard seemed uncertain, glancing uneasily at the human. "Are you sure? I thought that the humans-"

"I'm quite sure. Thank you," the tan-colored pony said with a note of finality.

Delgan had to admire the casual ease with which the xeno commanded a royal guardspony, and he watched the pegasus take off into the air.

Then he observed his new guest. "I don't believe we've met before, Sir. Am I mistaken?" The pony had a trio of money sacks for a cutie mark, and a collar and tie that resembled a harness. He looked absolutely ridiculous, to be sure, but Delgan appreciated the lack of subtlety in bringing attention to his wealth.

"We haven't met. You can call me Mister Rich," the earth pony said, looking the human over like one would observe a dog while wondering if it might bite, "I was looking to meet a merchant from that army of slavers down near the badlands."

"You know, the slavery thing is really starting to get old," the Trademaster noted dryly, "between the Iron Warriors, the worship of dark gods, and the fleet of space craft floating in orbit, you'd think we'd be known for something other than forced labor."

Filthy Rich rolled his eyes. "Yes, what a tragedy for you to be saddled with such an awful, clearly undeserved reputation," he said snidely, "now see here: I wouldn't normally countenance dealing with something like you, but I have no other options."

Delgan's annoyance at the sarcasm was countered significantly by the admission of need. "I'm listening..."

Filthy Rich sighed, his expression softening somewhat. "I... I have a daughter. The most adorable, loveliest filly in the country, if I do say so myself." His voice was thick with a father's pride, but there was definitely an air of frustration hanging over it. "But she can be quite a handful, and VERY demanding. She's asked me for something that would be impossible for me to get, under normal circumstances."

Delgan nodded grimly. "I see. Well, beautiful or not, the important thing is whether she's healthy. And even then, I can't guarantee you a good price for a mere child."

Filthy Rich was silent for several seconds, and then he tilted his head to the side. "What?"

"Sorry, never mind," Delgan said quickly, "I misread some signals, there. Go on."

Filthy Rich hesitated for a moment, but then continued. "ANYWAY, my daughter apparently saw one of your mechanical walking gizmos, and now she wants one for herself. Obviously, there's no way I can pick up one of these things at the local market, you understand."

Delgan briefly considered informing him that there WAS now a market which sold such things, but decided against it. Since Mister Rich had decided to come to him, he could stand to give the wealthy pony his personal attention.

"I believe what you're looking for is an automata," Delgan said as he clasped his arms behind his back, "they're robots that are completely self-motivated, and usually lack any sophisticated intelligence. There are numerous models and functions to choose from, as well."

Filthy Rich nodded slowly. "Good... and what will one of these cost me, exactly? I'd say money is no object, but dealing with space men probably puts a different spin on things."

"Well, that is the thing," Delgan admitted with a smirk, "our currency and yours have yet to be properly evaluated for exchange. Without that being officially established, it becomes a challenge to do business, you know?"

The human stepped around the earth pony, gesturing casually to his cutie mark. "That brand of yours marks you as a man... erm, a pony of wealth. If you're not a banker yourself, I presume you know several. Once I can purchase your bits with my credits, I'd be more than happy to provide a cutting-edge automata of your choice. There's a deposit I'll need to make on a new storefront, you see. This would be a tremendous help."

Filthy Rich chewed his lip anxiously. It was a very good deal for him personally, but the economic ramifications of what he was asking for were quite serious. "We'll need some time to work out the details..."

"I was given all day to leave the city," Delgan said, him smirk growing, "know any good restaurants?"

****

Canterlot Castle - main hall

Yeesh, did you see the way she went off on those guys? And when they came here for the express purpose of NOT murdering you all and burning down your nation! Not cool.

Spike was huddled in a corner of the hall, nervously looking over his shoulder for any sign of guards or Twilight. "Well, there has to be a better chance of her getting rid of you than getting rid of me. Maybe I should come clean."

WOAH. Did you not catch the part of the "meeting" where she disintegrated that guy's little badge thing? And that wasn't even an actual Chaos artifact, just a symbol! Don't go doing anything I'll regret, buddy.

Spike grasped the sides of his head, his thoughts torn. He was responsible for Celestia not being prompted on the conference Twilight had arranged, but he hadn't burnt ALL the letters. So was this really his fault?

Naw, it's not your fault! Responsibility is for chumps! insisted the voice in his head.

Responsibility and blame are two very different things, my friend. Responsibility is the sword we choose to fall on; blame the weapon held over us by others.

Spike blinked as another voice answered the first.

Oh, don't get all preachy on... wait, who said that?

Spike's eyes darted left and right, and then he glanced up.

"Hello!" said Discord, grinning as he stared down.

"Aaaaaaah!" yelped Spike.

Aaaaaaah! yelped the voice.

"You don't have to be that frightened," Discord said, his face shifting into a pained frown as his long, serpentine tail curled around Spike's feet, "I thought we were friends!"

Spike might have objected to that idea, but he was suddenly very aware and intrigued that the voice he had been hearing seemed surprised too.

Hey, back off brosef! This is a private line! The voice of the Chaos amulet was clearly agitated, and even seemed somewhat frightened.

"I see you made a new friend," Discord said, his face shifting into a grin again, "but I don't think he's the sort of fellow our dear Princess Twilight would approve of. Chaos spirits can be SUCH a bad influence."

Takes one to know one, jackass!

"Yes," Discord agreed, "precisely."

... Oh. Huh.

"Can you get rid of this thing?" Spike asked eagerly. "All I did was put on the amulet for a second! I didn't know this was going to happen!"

"Can I get rid of it?" Discord said, tilting his head to the side and quirking an eyebrow. "Hardly. My powers aren't exactly suitable for cleansing souls of dark influences. Not my style." At seeing Spike wilt, Discord tapped the tip of his bearded chin. "If you can't stop the disease, though, you can sometimes treat the symptoms. I'm sure it would help you keep this little mess hidden if you didn't have that annoying, pestering voice clamoring in your mind."

Spike brightened instantly. "YES!"

NO! Come on man, this is hard enough on us already; a lack of communication is not going to make this relationship any easier!

"The evil artifact has a point," Discord allowed.

"No it doesn't! Get rid of it!" Spike demanded, before reluctantly adding, "PLEASE."

"Oh, very well," the draconequus sighed, raising his bird-like claw into the air.

No! Don't snap me, bro! Don't snap me!

A snap of Discord's finger caused a surge of intense, if brief, pain to shoot through Spike's head, and the young dragon clutched at the sides of his skull.

After a few seconds though, the pain was gone, and Spike slowly opened his eyes.

"It... It's gone. It's finally gone!" the young dragon cheered, almost crying in relief.

"Full disclosure, Spikey-Wikey," Discord said, poking him on the head, "it is NOT gone. Just silenced. Which will do wonders for keeping your sanity intact, but it won't reverse those nifty night-vision peepers of yours."

Spike winced as he considered the changes that had already affected him. "So what do I do to cure it?"

"You can't CURE a contract, my little purple friend," Discord said with a smile, "you can only break it. And that comes with... consequences."

Spike blinked up at the arcane chimera. "Contract? What contract?"

"The deal you made with the Chaos spirit, obviously," Discord said with a chuckle, "power overwhelming, yes?"

Spike shook his head.

Discord's smile faded. "No? Not power? Love, then? Your wildest dreams realized? Your fondest wish? At the low, low price of your immortal soul?"

Spike kept shaking his head.

After several seconds, Discord slapped his lion's palm over his face and sighed.

"Great. This guy must be new or something. Hold on..."

Spike adopted an incredulous expression when a book appeared in Discord's hands, and the Chaos spirit started flipping through it as his tail twitched irritably.

"I hate working with the daemons of today, really. They have a total lack of professionalism. And don't even get me STARTED about their taste in music. I blame Slaanesh." Discord stopped on one page and then unfolded a pair of reading glasses from nowhere before putting them on.

"Hmmmm... Vel, is it? A young one. No contract, and he's already going for full-blown mutation. Bleagh. This has 'lawsuit' written all over it."

"Do I even want to know what you're talking about?" Spike asked of the much larger creature.

Discord slammed the book shut - and out of existence, incidentally - and then lowered his glasses down his snout to look down at the young dragon. "Long story short: you've got a decent case here for a full dismissal of Chaos corruption. I'm going to go run this by the Big Four, see what they think. Don't call me, I'll call you."

Spike was soon looking at nothing but a puff of smoke as Discord vanished, his reading glasses bouncing onto the floor.

Then the door at the end of the hall opened.

"You know, I never undershtood until today why the Tau have an entire cashte dedicated to diplomacy," Solon said as he stomped through the doors, "it sheemsh sho shimple! Meet with the other shide, don't shoot anyone, and then agree to continue not shooting anyone! But it'sh actually really hard!"

"Well, she didn't make it easy on us," Serith opined somewhat bitterly, "I really did think she'd give us SOME credit for me returning the Elements."

Gaela followed behind the two Iron Warriors. "The failure of Delgan's venture is ultimately irrelevant to us. On balance, the Equestrian nation is still completely outmatched militarily by our standing forces. They have no choice but to bide until our own objectives are complete and we take back to the void."

"I shupposhe. It wash shtill an embarashing meeting."

As the three armored humanoids walked by Spike's hiding place, Serith halted and stared at the young dragon.

"Really? It got you?" the Iron Warrior said with a clear tone of annoyance as his colleagues walked on without him. "These things never seem to work out as I planned."

Spike growled at the armored Sorcerer towering over him even as he braced himself in the corner against the wall. "Back off! My fire breath is a lot more dangerous now!"

"I'm sure," Serith drawled. Then he reached to his belt and detached a small iron box from where it was hanging against his hip.

"Here, slave. I brought gifts for Lady Sparkle as well. Take this to your mistress."

"I'm not Twilight's slave!" Spike barked angrily, a puff of dark fire escaping from his lips.

"No. You are mine," Serith chuckled.

Within seconds Spike's angry expression had been replaced by a dazed one, and he stiffly held his arms out for the container.

"Good boy," Serith said as he handed the box over, "really, if Lady Sparkle doesn't keep track of her things, she shouldn't be surprised if others use them as they wish. Scurry off now, lizard."

Spike quickly dashed off down the hall, and Serith left in the opposite direction to follow his own master.

****

Canterlot Castle - residency halls

Twilight looked absolutely miserable as she stepped out of Celestia's study, and the purple alicorn sighed weakly when she saw Rarity and Gaela waiting for her.

"So? How did it go?" Rarity asked pensively.

"Oh, it went well enough," Twilight admitted, "Princess Celestia understands what's going on now, at least. She didn't really change her mind as far as the humans are concerned, though."

Twilight looked up at Gaela. "She especially doesn't seem to like you, Gaela."

The Dark Acolyte shrugged, perfectly indifferent.

"Still, I managed to convince her that fighting the humans is both futile and easily avoidable, so it won't be a problem for Gaela and Delgan to stay in Ponyville."

"Such a font of wisdom and benevolence," Gaela noted dryly.

Twilight cast an annoyed glare at the armored woman, but was distracted from the topic when she saw Spike walking through the halls carrying a metal box.

"Spike, there you are! We're going home soon," the alicorn explained as she walked over to the young dragon.

Spike halted about a meter away from Twilight, and then held out the box. "This is for you, Princess Twilight Sparkle."

Twilight quirked an eyebrow at the curiously formal method of address. "And who is this from? This looks like one of the humans' containers."

Rather than answering, Spike blinked rapidly and twisted his head from side to side. "Where am I? How did I get here?"

"Ah. It's from Serith," Gaela surmised.

The temperature in the room immediately dipped several degrees as the ponies scowled.

"Great. And what has that slimeball given me now?" Twilight asked, levitating the box away from Spike and opening it up.

She went completely silent as she beheld a small pile of rolled-up parchments in the box.

Spike still wasn't completely sure what was going on, but he pointed to the scrolls immediately. "Hey, those look like the letters we sent to the Princess!"

Rarity grimaced. "Wait, you don't suppose that he..."

She trailed off as she noticed that Twilight was quivering like a teapot at a dangerously high boil, and the unicorn took a cautious step back.

Gaela and Spike weren't quite so perceptive, and both of them were almost knocked over as Twilight's coat suddenly erupted into flames and her eyes turned a solid glowing white.

"SEEEEEEEEERRRRRIIIIIIIIIIIIIITTTTTTTTTH!!!"

****

Ferrous Dominus - landing platform tertius, two hours later

The Warsmith's gunship slowly lowered itself onto the landing platform as its cloak disengaged, coming to a much easier stop than it had within the gardens of Canterlot.

As the ramp lowered itself to the ground, there was already a small collection of Iron Warriors gathered to receive the occupants of the craft.

Sliver stood at the head of the group, his hammer resting on the ground on its head. His visor lens was still cracked from his earlier fight with Tellis, and would probably have to be repaired while he wore it; it had been many long millennia since he could actually remove his helmet like lesser wargear.

The blast doors opened, and the Iron Warriors watched their commander descend the ramp on his many legs, followed by Serith.

"Okay, fine, it'sh a little funny. But I shtill think you have too much fun antagonizing them. If you want shomething dead, then kill it. If you don't, then leave it alone."

Sliver suppressed a groan from hearing the tail end of one of Solon's tiresome lectures. Not that he had any sympathy for Serith; in all likelihood the Sorcerer deserved it.

"Warssmith Ssolon," Sliver said loudly, causing Solon to halt suddenly.

"Uh, yesh? Shomething wrong?" Solon asked warily, his optics swinging around to regard his second-in-command.

Serith snickered at the Warsmith's sudden nervousness. There were several good reasons that Solon deferred to Sliver so readily, but even so their relationship was absurd.

Sliver slowly shook his head. "No, Warssmith. I am ssimply here to ssee you back to the manufactorum."

"Oh. Okay, fine," Solon said as he began moving again, "uhm... did shomething happen to your helmet?"

Sliver turned around and started to head away from the platform, and the other Iron Warriors followed immediately. "Yess... there wass a great celebration while you were out, Warssmith. It got a little... out of hand at one point."

Solon tilted his head up to scan the darkened night sky. "A celebration? Well, that explainsh the balloon clushtersh tied to all the shmokeshtacksh. I thought that wash shtrange."

"What a shame that we missed it," Serith said, scratching the chin of his helmet, "when exactly did it take place?"

Sliver made a gurgling growl from behind his vox grille. "The xeno filth left very recently. The sservitorss are sstill cleaning up the ssite."

Solon and Serith paused.

"The ponies put it on? Well, that was nice of them," Serith decided, "I'm surprised you let them in."

"I didn't," Sliver spat, "ass far ass I can tell, Telliss sset up thiss messs."

Solon noticed another delegation coming to meet them, this one comprised of General Gnoss and several other officers from the mortal branches of the Company. "And what'sh thish, then?"

The humans stopped a respectful - and semi-healthy - distance away from Sliver as General Gnoss saluted.

"Warsmith Solon, Lord Sliver," the General said, bowing immediately as his attendants did the same.

"At eashe, General," Solon slurred, "what bringsh you here?"

Gnoss stood upright, his hands clasped behind his back. "I was asked to give a full report on the state of the fortress after the... 'revelers' left, my lord. We've completed our security evaluations and already corrected for the errors."

Then the General took a long, rasping breath from behind his rebreather mask. "But there were... losses."

Solon quickly glanced over to Sliver, trying to gauge the other Nurglite's reaction.

"Losshesh... from the party?" Solon asked.

"In a way, Warsmith," Gnoss said, steeling his nerves, "it would seem that forty-seven Tau slaves escaped over the palisade wall during the party. Nobody noticed until there were new guard details assigned, but apparently they rappelled down the side while there were still gaps in our watch."

A shrieking grind came from Sliver's hand as his grip on his hammer tightened past the stress point that his gauntlet was designed to tolerate, and both Gnoss and Solon flinched.

The Nurgle Lord made no other move or indication of distress, however, and the Warsmith quickly stomped closer to Gnoss and bent down toward him.

"All right, jusht to be absholutely clear about thish... it'sh not my fault, right?"

General Gnoss blinked. "No, Warsmith. Not at all. You weren't even present when the party was underway."

"Phew! That'sh a relief!" Solon said, eliciting another chuckle from Serith as the Sorcerer felt Sliver's temper boil.

"In any case, Lord, we may yet recover the lost slaves," Gnoss continued, "they're still shackled, and we have locator beacons attached to their manacles. If we dispatch a team to-"

"Oh, no, that'sh okay," Solon said quickly, eyeing Sliver as the terminator armor around him started to leak hot, poisonous vapors, "a few dozen Tau shlavesh are nothing to ush. And they're headed right for the xeno bashe, no doubt. No reashon to throw good men after bad."

"Ah. I... I see, Warsmith," Gnoss allowed, glancing at the trembling mass of armor off to the side, "well then, there's also this."

He took out a rolled-up piece of paper and held it out to the massive Iron Warrior.

Solon snapped up the parchment in the mouth of a mechatendril, and then unrolled it between the semi-sentient appendage and his flesh-arm.

"... What ish thish?"

"It's an invoice, Warsmith," the General said with irritation, "they billed us for the party, apparently."

There was an almost perceptible snapping noise as Sliver's restraint broke, and every other person present - Iron Warrior or mortal - leapt away as the Chaos Lord of Nurgle furiously slammed his hammer into the ground. The ferrocrete under his feet buckled instantly, folding into a shattered crater as the shock wave blasted over the prone bodies of the others.

Then Sliver pitched his head back, his cracked visor lens spewing toxic smoke as it glowed a furious crimson.

"TEEEEEEEEEELLLLLLLLLLISSSSSSSSSSSSS!!!"

End Book 2

Epilogue

*The prisoners have all been debriefed and cared for, Shas'el. Yet if the gue'la didn't know where we resided before, they do now.*

*But if these reports are accurate, they DID know. And yet they've done nothing, simply sitting behind their great walls and waiting.*

*These gue'la are very strange, Shas'el. The prisoners reported many curious things about the enemy that seem unusual for their military forces and even pirates. And their military aggression has weakened considerably since they destroyed our field base. Nothing about their behavior makes sense to us.*

*To say nothing of their military discipline. Much as I respect her skill, I still find it difficult to believe Jerriha escaped with so many prisoners so easily.*

*It is true. And still, the enemy does not pursue. Our traps are useless before prey that will not emerge from its shelter.*

*True... but there ARE advantages in facing an enemy that does not wish to fight.*

*Your orders, Shas'el?*

*Have the components to the device brought here piece by piece in small detachments. Maximum stealth. If they're not running patrols outside their defense perimeter, they can't intercept transports that are invisible to their local scanners.*

*We will not fail, Shas'el. For Sept Lamman! For the Tau Empire!*

*No, Shas'vre. We do this for the Greater Good.*

Author's Note

And Book 2 is a wrap.
Don't forget to add me to your Watch list, since the arbitrary and pointless way I divide up groups of chapters means that you might not get a notice otherwise when Book 3 is up!