Operation: Supernova
0600 hours
The light rain did little to impede me or my partner's steady progress or even distract us at that as we moved low in a crouch through the damp shrubbery. Our mission was clear, our minds set, our bodies focused. We couldn't have been far from our objective point now. Operation Supernova by now was in full effect, and my partner and I were the only people needed for it. Our ghillie suits were so well camouflaged for our surroundings it would've been very hard to see my spotter if he wasn't moving even though he was right behind me.
Only after about another two minutes of sneaking through the woods, we emerged on our mark--a high peak on a small mountainside covered in trees. The mountain we were on neighbored that which supported the great city known as Canterlot. Even with my objective in mind and knowing full well what we were sent here to do, the distant sight was magnificent. Every detail seemed to stand out in some unavoidable way, and the lights gave it a celestial effect in the very early-morning.
I laid down on in a spot next to a large bush, and my spotter joined next to me, taking out his high-powered rangefinder and dialing it in. I reached for my back and brought fourth my camouflaged CheyTac M200 Intervention and got comfortable. Meanwhile my spotter went for his radio and quietly called to our supervisor, code named Castle. Our call sign was Javelin. After a few seconds of waiting, we got the go for our real mission. My spotter took a look through the rangefinder and fed me adjustments for my scope. Lucky for us there was absolutely no wind. Apparently those weather crews were unaware of our intent.
Another few moments later I saw what we were looking for; Operation: Supernova walked onto one of the tallest balconies and looked up towards the sky before the long appendage on its head glowed. This was my mark. I chambered a round, flipped the safety off, carefully took aim, and grazed my finger over the trigger.
You're probably wondering by now why I was going to assassinate an HVT (high value target), like the being of Princess Celestia. Well it's a long story, but that's exactly why I'm sitting here with plenty of time on my hands. Great detail is required so that's exactly what I'm going to make sure of. Man... It was a shitstorm to say the least. We had been in this place, Equestria I think it was, for... pst, I don't know, little under a year? Heh heh heh, let's just say the locals were very eager about our presence and that we weren't hostile aliens, but a few months after our first command post was set up, hospitality between our races dropped like the Hindenburg.
Three months, twenty-one days earlier
For it being the middle of July the weather was surprisingly endurable. Usually it was a good ninety to a hundred degrees outside, but now it felt like a mid-spring afternoon--warm but cool at the same time. I was standing guard in one of six watchtowers near the outside of our foreign base, my slightly battle-worn and extremely reliable M39 MOD 0 in hand. Our base was named Castle E, for extra terrestrial. Even though part of my career in the Navy as a marksmen put me in plenty of guard posts in bases around the world, this just felt so fucking weird, being on a planet that wasn't actually Earth itself. I would tell you how Earth came to find out about, and travel to this place, but that's classified beyond classified. Literally the only people that know any of the details is the President himself and the Secretary of Defense, as well as the people who proposed and executed the project itself obviously.
So back to me being in the watch tower, forgive me, I was getting off subject. The base was set up in a large clearing near what we heard was called the Everfree forest, an apparently very dangerous place to the local populace. The side of the base I was on faced to forest so the other guard tower man and myself had to keep a very watchful eye for anything out of the ordinary. It didn't happen very often, but every now and then some mythological creature would come too close for comfort and we'd have to put it down. Precautionary measures were mandatory. We actually had a decently sized laboratory building in the base for studying them after we killed them.
However, on this day I'm talking about, something happened that would strike worrying thoughts to us and the government. It was approximately 1300 hours and I was at my post as usual, when I caught movement to my two o' clock. I turned and trained my rifle towards it and looked through my 7x FLIR (Forward Looking Infra-Red) scope. When the movement stopped momentarily I inhaled and reported the situation to the H.Q. building. They told me to proceed with caution as usual. Just when I was about to turn away a grey-ish pony with a green mane & tail stamped out of the shrubbery. This part I remember word for word. Here's how it went...
It was a male, that much was for sure from its voice as it yelled angrily at me (or just the whole base in general if you want to look at it that way...).
"Who do you gorillas think you are, marching onto our precious land and setting up your kingdom as you wish?!" He yelled, now aimed at me.
"Hey! Hey, hey hey!! Sir, you need to turn around now and leave; this is a restricted area!" I ordered as I heard my partner on the opposite tower reporting in over the radio.
"Restricted my ass! I oughta' wreck this little excuse for a castle right now!" He replied, and at this time I noticed he was a unicorn.
"Sir, leave now! You will be fired upon if you do not comply!!" The other guard shouted.
Then in about one and a half seconds, shit hit the fan. The unicorn fired a small bolt of magic which struck just below the opening of the guard's tower, leaving a black burn mark. Me, having already been aiming at the pony, dropped him before the other guard even registered he had been fired upon, with a 7.62x51mm bullet to the front on his cranium.
As soon as Celestia got wind of the incident she was livid. She sent warning after warning, and soon they turned to threats. Eventually tired of it, the chief in command of the base and his second-in-command arranged a press conference to try and smooth things out. The thing that really started this eve-of-war deal though was when a report came in that both chiefs went missing, last seen heading into the castle. Now it was our turn to be furious. We try to apologize and they capture and most likely kill our chiefs? Fucking unbelievable. Now under our third-in-command, we launched a small covert team, Marine Recon I think it was, to rescue our potential hostages. It just goes to show how brave these guys are; rushing into a now hostile complex the size of a city and crawling with guards to rescue two men who might not even be alive... I'm proud of our military, to say the least.
I'm also proud of the fact our guys were able to bring both chiefs back to base where they assumed rightful command again, and his orders were firm.
If they want a war, we'll give them a war.
After about three months of planning by them and the rest of the government, a verdict was found. A very precise and hard-hitting operation, codenamed Supernova was to commence in exactly four weeks. No later.
About two weeks after the operation was confirmed, and the men required hand picked by the Secretary of Defense himself, something happened that we did not expect at all.
Fifteen days earlier
This wasn't going well.
"You are in a restricted area! Turn back now are you will be fired upon!" I nearly screamed at the large crowd of ponies in armor massing at the edge of the clearing, who weren't moving.
After a moment I spoke to the guard in the other guard tower over the radio.
"I suggest we fire off a couple warning shots." I said sternly.
"I hear ya. I'll take left side you take right. Three rounds sound good?" He replied, and I could see him with his Modified SR-25 DMR still aimed at them.
"Affirmative, open fire." I ordered.
I discharged three rounds to the right of the crowd, while the other guy took the left. It seemed to work a little as most of the ponies closest to the impacts backed up or scurried off, but the majority of them remained.
"Fuck..." I hissed to myself. "Castle, I suggest we roll out a HUMVEE out here. These fuckers don't want to leave and I don't want to kill them."
"Let's see if we can just scare them off." The other guard added.
"Solid copy, one HUMVEE had been loaded and his heading to the gates. Stand by." Came the reply.
I turned briefly and saw a single HUMVEE with a shielded MK-47 Striker (an automatic grenade launcher) on top and a gunner manning it, before turning back to the now slowly advancing division of pony soldiers.
"Lethal force will be used if you do not turn around now!!" The other guard said. (I'm just gonna call him "Other Guy" from now on, okay?)
A moment later all the ponies froze as the massive gates to the base started opening and the HUMVEE rolled out, blaring its horn. Almost immediately the crowd dispersed and fled back into the forest and the HUMVEE waited before rolling back into the base where the massive gates closed behind it.
After that happened the operation was moved to two days instead of the remaining week. Enough was enough. These ponies sought to destroy our order on this planet. So we sought to destroy theirs.
This is the eve of what would come to be known as the Foreign Order War,
and I started it with the single pull of a trigger.
Author's Note
This is a simple one-shot to rid me of writer's block, so sorry if it's not written too well.
Hope you enjoyed!
Operation: Supernova
Ten months, twenty-one days after Foreign Order War
It's been... Quite a while now since the Foreign Order War broke out between us humans and the equines of Equestria. I've been off-duty for about eight months now I think, so I thought I'd record this little extra thing so smooth out some roughs on my last recording, when I was on-duty on Equis. Now keep in mind, the last recording, I had to leave out a good chunk of what I really knew regarding stuff like how we first found out about Equis, how we actually got there... So on and so fourth. The government had a pretty damn big eye on me when I made the first recording to make sure I didn't spill any of the more secretive intel, but about seven months after the conflict ended, they decided they were in the clear I guess and finally declassified a lot of the goods. Now since it had been so secret, there are still a lot of people who don't know about it. Well, time to get the word out.
Let me start with how we first discovered the planet Equestria. It was actually completely unintentional from what I've heard. For those of you who don't know what the Voyager 1 satellite is, it was a little bot with a couple of cameras, a big ol' radar dish and a transmitter about as powerful as a regular ceiling lamp that was sent into space to observe a rare geometric arrangement some of the outer planets had gone into. My memory's a little vague, but you get the idea. It was a small satellite that after about 36 years entered what's called interstellar space, basically meaning it left our solar system. It still runs too, and has been sending back data ever since it was launched. It takes a good few months for the data to actually reach Earth now, but some of the stuff we got back was pretty incredible. Now here's how Equis was discovered.
Now you're probably think something along the lines of simply the satellite just turned and there the planet was, but that's only sort of how it went down. It was going by really slowly when we got feedback that the satellite was actually turning. We later found that it was actually spinning on an axis, or an orbit around a planet. That planet, as you can probably guess, was Equestria. Almost immedeatly another probe was launched with the intention of rendezvousing with the Voyager and analyzing the Earthly planet. It got there in just under month since it went to fast and with a few scans, what'da you know, it's pretty much identical to earth. Now here's when things got pretty sketchy for the U.S. government. They wanted to send a man (or men) all the way across the solar system onto a foreign planet. There were a few problems... One: it was going to be insanely expensive, two: by the time a human got there they'd be either really old or dead, and three: if the planet is habitable then there could very well be life there. Hostile life.
Finally the government found a rather cheap, reliable, and quick way to actually send someone to Equis, and they wanted not just to send one person, but a small military force. It was a sort of sign-up thing for people who are nominated to choose if they wanted to lay their life down for the evolution of human advancement. I was one of the three hundred and twelve to sign up. They did some pretty insane body tests on us to see if we were making the right choice, mentally and physically. We had about two hundred and sixty left by the time testing was over. Not a lot is declassified about how they did it, but basically we were all put into some sort of stasis and loaded onto these military shuttles for the quick ride. There were three shuttles total that were set to land in the same part of the planet, a part that the locals had called the Echo or some shit like that. Basically a big dessert where we wouldn't interrupt anything. The shuttles were all loaded with large parts to assemble small outposts as well as several vehicles to move them to the two specified locations for deployment. I forget exactly where the second base was set up and I think I remember telling you where the mine was in the last recording.
When word got back to Earth that we had successfully deployed there was a bit of a stalemate on what to do next. Begin global colonization? Mine the planet for it's abundance or resources? Then word of a first contact scenario got to the governments ears and a new idea was proposed; an inter-species alliance. It would be perfect for trading, and best of all, humanity had finally advanced to the stars. Boy was everyone proud of that, and the alliance worked. The species that called themselves Ponies was also pretty baffled about our technological advances, so we thought about trading. We gave them simple technologies such as the telephone, the ability to harness electricity, basically the stuff you'd keep in a house (and that couldn't be physically weaponized). In return we were given mining rights in the more blank regions of the planet where native life wasn't present. Pretty soon we had more shuttles coming in with parts for assembling mining and construction equipment. However, our colonization came to a standstill when we found out that not only where there numerous semi-dominant species on the planet, but they all had found out about us. None of the leaders showed but I'm pretty sure they got the impression that we weren't there to hurt anyone, so neutral relationships with the other species formed.
Then came along these little fucks called the Changelings. They absolutely hated us, but never tried any head-on attacks as they has seen our miniature military might. Still, we still didn't screw with their ranks. One thing that set these bugs aside with the fact that their leader did actually show up personally to the base I wasn't at. They didn't give us details but I heard it was an ugly little argument. Once the ponies found out we were also a match for the Changelings, they were pretty happy. With the amount of money the government was getting from selling the trade they got they were actually paying off little bits of the national debt, as well as sending more supplies and equipment to Equestria. The mining plant we had dramatically grew but we were still careful not to step on any toes of the locals.
Now I'm gonna skip ahead a bit, past when the ponies started hating us to the short war that broke out. The Foreign Order War. It consisted of two main battles between them and us before things came to a standstill. The first battle... well, it could have gone a lot better to say the least. You see, the earth ponies and pegasi as well as the seventh century weaponry they possessed hardly posed any sort of problem. It was the unicorns that made things more difficult. Their shields weren't the problem, or anything defensive at all, it was just the laser-like blasts they could fire at us extremely fast. We never lost any vehicles but we did loose a lot more men than we would've liked... Their body armor would just be melted by these blasts. Their guns would melt. Any damn thing unlucky enough to be touched by that plasma like substance was creamed, and while it was their only big advantage against us, it was a big one. We lost almost seventy men on just that one battle... It was a siege on a apparently very important village called Ponyville. We had heard it housed some powerful weapons of defense called the Amulets of Harmony or some shit, I don't remember exactly. We tried to get those from them but they had more of a defense there then we had anticipated.
We were taken aback by the outcome of the battle, and we imedeatly set out to try and find a way to compensate, to counter this power our enemy wielded. This is another section still buried a little but my guess was the wounds on our fallen ones were analyzed and the energy was studied. What it was is still locked up tight, but later on we did find a solution, and imedeatly hope was restored to the human colony. However, we didn't find the solution the way you'd think we did. It was actually the Changelings that gave it to us. They told us that they also loathed the equines we were fighting right now and were actually rather pleased we could stand up to them. So they told us their secret. Gold. The answer was gold. How this works is still a mystery but the magic, anything those damn unicorns launched from their horns, had absolutely no effect. The matter the magic is composed of simply is forced around the gold, and the gold is unharmed too. Thankfully the Changelings were generous enough to supply us with all the gold we needed. We had planned to try and study how gold did this later, but it was forgotten and we instantly started applying gold to everything. It wasn't just in big chunks though, we broke it down to a powdery sort of gold and literally coated everything in it. Layer after layer. Body armor, guns, armor, vehicles, everything. We then put a basic pain sealer over it to make the thick coats weather resistant and painted over it with standard military colors so that there weren't golden light-beacons everywhere. We even laced special bullets and shells with gold ingot to pierce any sort of magic as if it wasn't even there. It worked flawlessly in testing (the testing procedures are classified, so no info on that). Sure, everything was a little heavier, but the important thing was that we were ready.
During the month we took making our arsenal magic-proof, the ponies had been planning an end-game assault on our bases. This was going to be the second big battle. I'm starting to run short on time so I'm gonna be wrapping this up pretty fast. The ponies launched a large-scale attack on both bases. They had even brought heavy catapults loaded with massive rocks. They used those to try and take down our wall so their main element to infiltrate and capture our base. We were ready for them though. Their magic did nothing to us and we chopped them down after about an hour and a half. It was a massacre; there were equine bodies everywhere. We scavenged all of the gold armor they wore and kept it locked up just in case we needed it as a reserve.
Not much later the operation you already know about, Operation: Supernova, was discussed and devised. I didn't use a gold-implanted gun, but I was loaded with some experimental shield-piercers. A led .408 CheyTac bullet with a gold tip that would go through a force-field like nothing... The operation was a success. The princess was KIA at exactly 6:41a.m. Eastern Standard time. There was celebration, even a party was thrown at the bases, but I didn't join in on any fun, and neither did my partner. I had a feeling we were both going through the same thing. Guilt. Is this the definition of humanity? Killing? Conquest? We came to Equestria for resources because we already have enough trouble sustaining our own selves, but that's our own fault... Yet, sometime I feel like we still blame something other than ourselves for our struggles, and that somehow gives us this foreign freedom? We invade a new planet, rich with intelligent life, and as soon as we get a bad impression we declare war? End it by completely toppling their government? This may all just be me, and I can understand humanity still has a lot to learn, but still... I just wish there was another way. No one else tried anything with humanity after the result spread, and we didn't do anything there. We left out mining facility up and running, but there was a decision. As soon as that area was dry, we were all leaving Equestria.
That decision made me proud of us again.
Author's Note
I made this extra as mainly an explanation to those who were confused or angered by this story's lack of, well, a lot, but also just because I thought another chapter would be nice for those who wanted it. I hope you guys enjoyed, and sorry if it's a bit iffy in the writing.
