Equestrian Dawn: Tiberium is Magic

Siege Stunners

As Shining Armor’s column of humvees rolled out of the mountains and into the valley, the captain noticed that Fort Cadance, which was placed in the middle of the valley, was under heavy fire from all sides. He could see explosions erupt throughout the fort and ripping into the concrete walls as well.

Tracer rounds from Nod buggies and rocket troopers, were giving the area an eerie orange, and yellow glow that cut through the dark, black smoke that billowed out of the garrison.

He scanned the area and saw Nod mobile artillery units pouring shell after shell onto the fort from ontop the small hills that surrounded the complex. He could see several Nod light tanks advancing towards the walls, firing as they moved. Behind the tanks, he could make out what looked like a few hundred small dots, which he guess were the infantry.

It was early morning and two days since the Captain of the Royal Guard left Canterlot. From his binoculars, he could see that on his way down the mountain, his Royal Guard column would run into the Nod artillery pieces first.

This was perfect.

The Royal Guards could attack them from the rear.

“Ok Twitch, I want you to gun it down the mountain and into those hills. I think I see one of those long-range shooting machines directly in our upcoming path. Private Dipper, get ready with that turret weapon!” Shining ordered, spooking the green unicorn into ripping off his headphones.

“Wha? Oh yeah!” Skinny replied frantically as he dropped his headphones into the backseat of the humvee and racked the chain gun with his teeth.

“So…I just slam on these two cute little baby-blue buttons on the back here and…point the big metal stick at the bad guys right?” Skinny Dipper asked with uncertainty and nervousness in his muffled voice, teeth grinding on the stabilization bar.

“That’s what the manuals said,” was all Shining Armor replied with.

“Ok. Here I go,” the green pony replied as he trained the barrel on the Nod artillery vehicle they had just snuck up on from behind.

PING PING PING PING PING!

PING PING PING PING PING!

Skinny Dipper’s hooves shook with convulsions as they slammed down on the two cyan fire buttons with full force. He looked up to make sure the barrel was pointing at the Nod unit and sighed in relief when he watched the rounds ripping into gray armor.

He craned his neck back and forth to see one humvee pull up on each side of Shining Armor’s and their gunners added their firepower to the fray.

PING PING PING PING PING!

PING PING PING PING PING!

Psycho Twitch was mesmerized at the scene in front of him. He watched the firepower of three humvee chain guns rip through the weak armor of the Nod artillery piece. He could swear he was seeing sparks and chunks of metal alike being thrown from the Nod unit’s surface as well as bullets ricocheting off the plates.

He watched an entire slab of metal plating just slide off the Nod unit as if it was melted off. The artillery piece exploded and the crew let out piercing screams as they were wiped from existence.

“Great shot Skinny Dipper!” the guard captain praised.

“Ok, now we’ve got to circle around all these hills and wipe out all of those long-range strike vehicles. As your captain, I will be personally leading this assault in the lead humvee. Follow me!” Shining Armor screamed into his helmet’s headset.

After some tampering from a team of Canterlot engineers and scientists, his mic was able to be connected to his convoy’s radio frequency. How that was done, he couldn’t tell. Magic? Psycho Twitch punched the gas with enthusiasm as he began shouting some random phrases that Shining Armor didn’t care enough about to listen.

The column of humvees starting to circle the entire chain of hills to systematically wipe out all Nod artillery pieces, and then the plan was to attack the enemy assault force from behind and push on towards the fort from there.

It wasn’t long before the convoy had run across another artillery vehicle. This time an entire row of at least a dozen humvees lined up and skewered the poor Nod unit, ripping its armor to pieces with an unnecessary amount of firepower. Like its comrade, it also exploded in a fireball, and with that, the Royal humvee convoy pushed on.

In the next few minutes, they had found and destroyed three more mobile artillery units. They kept rolling through hill after hill and using the sheer numbers of their humvees to overpower and destroy the Nod positions.

After they blew up their seventh Nod unit, Shining Armor looked through his binoculars at the five remaining artillery pieces positioned on hills across the valley from his view. He noticed that the Nod artillery units were adjusting their sights.

Shining’s eyes nearly popped out of his skull as he realized that the artillery was now attempting to aim at his convoy.

“They’re finally directing their fire at us. This is good; it’ll take some pressure off of General Shepherd,”

“Yeah! Good for the fort! Not us man! We’re gonna get blasted!” the red pegasus humvee driver complained.

“Oh shut up, and quit your whining. These humvees are too fast to hit and even so we’ll be flanking them anyways. Keep driving, we need to hurry up and I don’t know how long Fort Cadance can hold out after taking that level of pummeling for the past few days,”

The humvees sped towards the artillery position, traversing hill after hill in an attempt to get close enough to pelt the remaining long-range weapons with bullets. The humvees agileness allowed them to swerve and dodge incoming shells as they sped around trees and the black clouds of dust and shrapnel that the shells created as they impacted the ground.

As the humvees weaved through trees, artillery shells and other obstacles, an unlucky humvee was hit and exploded, killing all six of the Royal Guards inside. Shining Armor frowned at the burning wreckage that remained.

“Guess I better to get used to watching my Guards die…” he thought solemnly, as he threw up a little in his mouth at the thought.

“Not now. These colts need a leader they can look up to. Not feel sorry for,”

Fortunately, it wasn’t long before the Equestrian humvees closed the gap between them and the Nod artillery units. The humvees rolled up to them in a wide staggered formation, allowing for maximum Equestrian firepower.

That’s when the immense formation of forty-five humvees figuratively dumped lead on the fort attackers, all five Nod positions silenced in quick succession. When the shooting finally stopped, all the Equestrians could see were five pits of burning metal surrounded by sandbags.

Behind them, the other half of the humvee strike force flooded into the formation and seeped in by osmosis.

When another humvee on the far right flank exploded, Shining Armor turned to watch as apparently, a group of eight Nod light tanks had broken off from the fortress assault to deal with this new humvee threat. He watched them menacingly advance towards his position.

“Alright Private Dipper, prepare to fire!” he yelled in a commanding tone.

The humvee group began to rain bullets on the tank unit. One tank took a little too many rounds as it stopped abruptly and caught fire from the inside out, cooking the crew alive. Still, there were seven light tanks continuing to get closer and closer. By the looks of it, the humvees’ firepower may not be enough.

Shining Armor needed a new tactic.

“DUDE! Check out this metal tube thing I found in the backseat!” a distracted Skinny Dipper droned, enticed by the big silver tube he now had in his hooves.

“Private Dipper! Stop fooling around and stay on that turret! Now’s not the time for this!” the Captain of the Guard reprimanded, annoyed at his underling’s stupidity.

He cursed under his breath as he got up from his and seat and proceeded to join his young recruit up in the gun turret. As he and his subordinate’s heads where sticking out of the turret, the white unicorn glared at Skinny, looking angry enough to want to  literally rip his green horn off his forehead.

“I swear! The attention span of a squirrel!” Shining Armor mused as he facehoofed.

“Hey look a button! Is this a weapon too?” Skinny looked at the button in pure wonder.

He heaved the tube over his shoulder with his back to the enemy tanks.

…He was pointing one side of the barrel directly at Shining Armor.

“Hey! What are you doing?! Don’t point that at me! The enemy is behind you!” Shining Armor panicked, staring down the tube opening that was staring right back.

Skinny Dipper let out a giddy giggle as he pressed the button underneath the tube and the result was a loud CLICK…

SWOOSH!

“Wait, you idiot!” the Captain of the Royal Guard cried.

A rocket fired out of the back end of the tube and rocketed towards the enemy tank behind the green unicorn and blew it up immediately. Shining Armor eyed the occurrence with complete surprise, mouth agape. The gray vapor trail went from the end of the tube behind Skinny and revealed the rocket’s flight path, leading to the tank.

Skinny Dipper had the tube pointing the wrong way.

It was backwards…

No other explanation for why Shining Armor wasn’t the one ending up with a rocket to the face.

Skinny Dipper heard the explosion and looked over his shoulder. He saw his handiwork as the fireball from the explosion was still visible.  He had just destroyed a Nod light tank without even looking. He gazed at the explosion with awe.

“Awesome…” he whispered.

Shining Armor blinked a few times to snap himself back into reality. He grabbed a radio mic with his magic and spoke into the aura-covered device.

“Everypony! Have one of your team members grab a silver tube out of the backseat and fire it at the enemy. Please don’t ask me how this works, because honestly it sounds ridiculous to me too, but just do it!”

It wasn’t long before a salvo of shoulder-fired rockets was launched at the Nod tank formation. Some rockets whizzed by the tanks and missed but thanks to a little homing spell that some of the Royal Guard unicorns cast, the majority of the missiles managed hit their mark. Judging by the seven fireballs that erupted in the grassy valley below them, they had destroyed the entire formation.

“Ok! Now’s the time! Enemy formation silenced! Charge!” he screamed into the radio once more.

“GO! GO! GO!” a humvee driver from a different humvee yelled over the radio.

Vehicle engines let off a synchronized hum as the entire Royal Guard unit sped towards the valley below. They were careening down the hill at a frightening pace, zooming towards the Nod force’s rear flank.

Twilight’s brother eyed the valley below as it grew in size as drew closer. The green grassy valley that was usually beautiful was stained with impact craters, rubble, flames and smoke. Also, the sight of Royal Guard and Nod pony bodies littering the field along with weapons and equipment, didn’t help the scenery much either.

It looked like a real hell.

“Hell…in Equestria. Can you imagine it? It would have sounded unbelievable half a week ago…but now it just sounds like the punch line to a cruel joke,” he sighed momentarily at his pessimistic thinking.

Once they got within range of the Nod troops surrounding the besieged fort Cadance, they opened fire. The surprised Nod ponies attacking the weakened fortress were already getting shot in the back before they even had a chance to turn around. The Royal convoy immediately gunned down an entire group of forty infantry and two Nod buggies before the enemy could react.

At this point, the humvee convoy was viciously assaulting Nod’s right flank, the part of the Nod force attacking the fortress’s weakest wall. The wall was on the verge of crumbling, battered by artillery and tank fire. Shining Armor was just in time. This part of the Nod force was about to break through. By attacking the right flank of the Nod attack formation, Shining Armor was now forcing the enemy to commit troops to stop him.

Half of Nod’s right flank of the formation had no choice but to turn around and engage the Captain and his faithful Royal Guards. Nod rocket ponies began to fire anti-tank launchers at them and Shining Armor watched as a magic-guided rocket slammed into the humvee next to him and turned it into scrap metal. As he looked back towards the frontlines, what he saw sent a gloomy sense of dread throughout his entire body.

A magic-guided rocket was heading right towards his humvee.

He leaned toward the direction of the missile, his horn pointing straight at it. He tried to conjure up a spell to make the rocket freeze in midair but for some reason he couldn’t do it. His stamina failed him as he had to stop to catch his breath. The rocket was now free to continue blaring towards his vehicle menacingly.

“But I don’t understa-wait…

The shield I erected over Canterlot! It had to sap all of my power to keep it running for three days! I still need to recover before I can cast again!”

Shining Armor gazed at the incoming missile with sorrow, watching it curve in its flight path, still heading right to him.

“So this is how it ends…” he said, stoic in his appearance.

In a split second, the rocket abruptly stopped in mid-air when it was six inches from the humvee’s surface. A green magical aura had enveloped the rocket and stopped it cold. Shining Armor sighed in relief when he noticed that he wasn’t going to die just yet. When he looked behind him, he saw Skinny Dipper’s horn wrapped in the same green aura as the rocket. The carefree unicorn had a superior smirk on his face.

“This day is freakin’ sweet! First, I blow up a tank without even looking and then I save Cap’s life with my kickass magic. I am on a roll baby!” the green pony cried triumphantly.

‘Cap’ just smiled and shook his head. As much as he wanted to badger Skinny for his incompetence, he really didn’t have the grounds to do that anymore due to what the young Guard accomplished today. He watched as the rocket was reversed in direction by Private Dipper and fired right back at the sender, causing the surprised Nod unicorn to drop his rocket launcher and gallop away in fear.

The new arrival of the Royal Guard humvee column had evened out odds. Instead of General Shepherd and what was left of his garrison trying to fend off an attack with only spears, magic, and swords against guns, magic, and explosives, the battle now had an even playing field with Shining Armor’s arrival.

Humvees and Nod infantry were exchanging gunfire and flashes of magic. Royal Guards passengers were starting to exit their humvees, leaving only the driver and the gunner in each. Shining Armor did the same and hopped out of the passenger side door, shouldering his black assault rifle.

Pointing at an enemy earth pony in gray camouflage, he squeezed the trigger button, letting out a short burst of lead. Then he saw three small red geysers pop out of the Nod pony’s armor. The enemy pony shrieked in surprise and died before she hit the floor.

Shining Armor was shocked.

“These weapons…I…I don’t even know what to think about them right now. Who could have designed an instrument so cruel and vile? These are worse than spears!” he thought with dread.

Being the soldier that he was, he collected himself and forced himself to focus on the battle at hoof. Some Royal Guards advanced on the Noddies on hoof while others wreaked havoc on the enemy ranks with the humvees’ chain guns. Screams and explosions drowned out the sounds of gunfire and deadly magical spells being cast.

Shining Armor advanced with his guards, using his assault rifle to mow down individual enemies while he moved. Humvees sped past Shining Armor’s charging infantry. The vehicles were shredding apart the Nod battle lines with their chain guns.

A non-magical, unguided rocket slammed into the ground a dozen yards from the guard captain’s position, causing him to dive to the ground and crawl towards a destroyed Nod buggy a few feet in front of him. Once he found cover, he began to scan the battlefield to examine the situation with randomly colored spells whizzing by his helmet.

He gazed towards the fort and recognized about one or two hundred ponies in gold plated armor, charge out of the fort’s front door with spears poised. These were the surviving Equestrian soldiers within Fort Cadance. Shining Armor watched as they bravely rammed into Nod lines, goring unsuspecting Nod ponies with their spears. A few of the unicorns in the group began to cast assault spells onto the enemy.

The Nod army had been so distracted with Shining Armor’s attack, that they had forgotten that the fort’s garrison troops could still counterattack them. The fortress survivors were heavily outnumbered on their own but with Shining Armor’s battalion supporting them on the other side; the odds were a little more even now.

“C’mon! We’ve got to reach them!” Shining Armor yelled, rallying his troops to advance through the Nod lines.

His ultimate goal now was to get his battalion to link up with the Equestrian defenders. That way, the Equestrians could fight as one large force.

Shining Armor popped up, leaning over the hood of the buggy. He propped up his rifle in his shoulder and gently rested his right hoof over the red trigger button. When he looked through the iron sights, he was mystified.

“How are we even supposed to aim this thing?” he thought, jerking his head back in bewilderment.

“Don’t worry about that right now, just point and shoot,” he told himself as he concentrated on doing just that.

So instead of trying to precisely aim the weapon, he settled for just pointing the barrel in the general direction of the enemy and firing. As a Nod pony charged towards him, Shining Armor panicked and squeezed the trigger button with all his might.

A three-round burst erupted from his weapon and launched three metal bullets through the air. All three rounds connected and the enemy shrieked in surprise briefly before dropping dead only a few feet from where Shining was standing.

Confidence built within Shining Armor as he grew more and more comfortable with his weapon as he started to advance and shoot down any enemy soldier that had gotten too close. All of his guards moved with him, shooting and galloping at the same time, mowing down any Nod soldiers that got in their path.

“We’ve got to reach that cut off garrison unit and General Shepherd!” the Captain of the Royal Guard thought urgently.

Despite still being outnumbered by almost two hundred ponies, the Royal Guards were beginning to turn the tables by cutting the Nod regiment down to size.

Skinny Dipper stood inside the humvee turret with a rocket launcher over his shoulder, his hooves cradling the silver tube. He fired, letting out a trail of white smoke that blew out of both sides of the tube, and the explosive zoomed towards an advancing Nod light tank. The rocket slammed into the side of the tank, causing a massive explosion, making the Nod army another light tank short.

Psycho Twitch was driving the humvee, erratically turning and dodging incoming rockets and small arms fire. He discovered the sadistic joy of running enemy soldiers over with his humvee. He realized that every time he hit one, blood would spatter all over the windshield and he would hear a sickening but satisfying Squish!

“Dude! THIS IS COMBAT?! I could get use to this,” the red pegasus told his green unicorn friend in the turret.

Right after he said that he noticed a squad of five Nod soldiers attempting to shoot at another humvee. He laughed manically as he blindsided them by driving in behind them and smashed the front of the vehicle into them at full speed, turning the squad into roadkill.

A Nod earth pony wearing a gray cameo helmet with a Nod symbol on the front, attempted to charge at Shining Armor. The pony was swinging his rifle wildly, but Shining’s reflexes and guard training guided his body to dodge them flawlessly.

He brought his own rifle to bear and while holding the barrel in his mouth, he jerked his head back to gain momentum and then smacked the Nod pony in the face with the stock of the rifle. The melee attack cracked the enemy’s skull and killed him instantly.

Shining Armor stood there, staring at the body as it dropped with a thud.

Dumbstruck.

Apparently, he wasn’t aware of his own physical strength.  He numbly and mindlessly watched as his victim’s nose and forehead started dripping blood.

Shooting something a mile or even yards away was one thing…

But…

Killing another pony in close hoof-to-hoof combat was completely different.

An explosion in front of him snapped his out of his stupor. He turned towards the fortress and watched as his humvees charged towards the Nod forces, gunning down entire squads with chain guns and running over as many Nod infantry as they could.

Seeing this, Shining Armor was glad that his battalion had wiped out most of the enemy vehicles by now and Nod had mostly infantry left, or this battle might not be going his way. He advanced on hoof with the other Royal Guards that left their humvees and galloped to catch up to them.

He looked to his right and saw a Nod pony with a stolen Royal Guard spear about to deliver a final blow to a Royal Guard lying on the ground in front of him. The pony in gray camouflage wielded the spear with both hooves over his head, ready to plunge the sharp weapon into the guard’s chest. The white unicorn guard looked helpless without his helmet, which was rolled off to the side, and he also appeared to be losing consciousness.

Shining Armor pointed his rifle at the Noddie coolly and rested his hoof on the red button in the grip. He walked up behind him and tapped the pony on the shoulder.

“Hi there,” he said causally.

As the Nod pony turned around, he noticed a black barrel pointing at his face at point-blank range. Right then, Shining Armor squeezed the grip and blasted the Noddie in the face with a single shot.

Shining Armor watched the Nod pony drop and then averted his attention to the stricken Royal Guard in front of him. He noticed that the unicorn’s eyes were closed and a thin line of blood trickling out of his mouth.

“Hmm…this isn’t one of my Royal Guards; this is a garrison soldier. We must be getting closer to rescuing them! We’ve gotta keep pushing forward!” Shining Armor thought, determination burning into his mind.

“I’ll come back for you later! I promise!” he said to the unconscious garrison soldier as he continued to move closer and closer to the fortress.

As he moved, he noticed the bodies of Nod soldiers that were either ripped up from chain gun fire and just run over, littering his path. He looked up and spotted a Nod light tank destroy a humvee, the force of the tank shell making the humvee catch air as it exploded. Right as this happened, a Royal Guard on hoof in front of Shining Armor, had a rocket launcher tube over his shoulder and was aiming at the tank.

Per-klunk!

The rocket ejected from the tube and blew up the tank, leaving a white vapor trail in its path. Shining Armor continued to advance, running into a group of three Nod ponies that were charging right back at him. Firing from the hip, he sprayed the Noddies with continuous three-round bursts. He could see the dirt kick up around them were some of the bullets were missing, but he managed to get enough to hit all three of them.

All three dropped to the ground in unison, falling on their backs like they got tripped. The three wounded ponies began to cry out and groan in pain as they started rolling back and forth on the ground. One of them lost his helmet.

Shining Armor moved up on him and stared into the helmetless pony’s face.

What he saw…was a colt…

A young one.

Too young.

This colt didn’t look any older than the Cutie Mark Crusaders.

Shock enveloped Shining Armor’s face. He couldn’t believe what he was seeing.

“What has the world come to? Children in combat!? What twisted pony would authorize this!?”

The colt looked up at the Captain of the Guard and had started crying softly. He was gripping his stomach with both hooves, tearing rolling down his face. Shining Armor kneeled down and got a closer look. He noticed that the spot on the colt’s stomach were his hooves were, was very bloody.

Shining Armor moved the colt’s hooves with a stroke of his snout and noticed that the underside of the hooves were bloody as hell. Then the stomach, which had a huge gaping hole in it thanks to Shining Armor’s assault rifle, was leaking blood like a volcano, or an overfilled glass of water.

“Please don’t hurt me,” the little colt begged softly, huffing from his tears.

“They promised that they wouldn’t hurt mommy if I came with them,”

Shining Armor was at a loss for words. He didn’t know what to do expect stare at him with his mouth agape and a couple tears slowly going down his face as well. He grabbed the colt's helmet and slapped it back onto his head for no particular reason.What else was he supposed to do! He was no medic!

Then the colt said something Shining Armor wouldn’t forget for the rest of his life.

“I want my momma…” the little colt whined while shivering and coughing up blood.

Then the youth’s head fell back onto the ground as his gray helmet rolled off his head once more. His eyes were still open, filled with a gaze that could be interpreted as a look of fear and peace mixed together.

The colt lay still.

Right as death’s embrace gripped the young pony, Shining Armor realized something.

“I killed him…” he whispered to himself.

“I-I killed a foal,” his eyes were red with tears as stared down at the child’s body.

When he understood this, he noticed that the gunfire and explosions stopped. This caused him to stand up and observe the razed, smoking, and crater-gutted battlefield. He looked towards the fortress and saw his Royal Guard battalion meeting up with the defending fortress soldiers and surrounding what looked like one hundred to one-hundred and fifty Nod infantry and two Nod buggies.

When he noticed the shooting stopped, he squinted and galloped in that direction for a closer inspection. Every last Nod soldier was lying on the ground with their front-hooves thrown up in surrender. The Royal Guard battalion and the Equestrian regular garrison troops all had their weapons, whether it’d be M16s or spears, trained on the new prisoners of war.

The battle was over.

Equestria claimed victory today.

The sea of Equestrian military personnel parted to make way for a dark blue pony with brown eyes. He was a pegasus wearing the golden plate-armor of the Equestrian Army. It was pinned with countless medals and ribbons on each of his chest-plates.

He proudly stepped forward, and through his scorched and scraped face, he smiled brightly at the captured Nod soldiers.

“Get them out of here!” he ordered in a confident tone.

The blue pegasus turned towards the Captain of the Guard.

Shining Armor weakly smiled as he peered into the eyes of General Spark Shepherd.

Afterthought

Now that all of the preliminary chapters are done, now we can REALLY get into the story and it's plot! Yay?