Out of every one hundred men, ten shouldn't even be there, eighty are just targets, nine are the real fighters, and we are lucky to have them, for they make the battle. Ah, but the one, one is a warrior, and he will bring the others back.
― Heraclitus

A red sun squeezed shut against the horizon, painting the Equestrian sky in a splash of orange and yellow hues. Shadows of the remaining towers of Canterlot loomed over the few surviving ponies after the initial onslaught; buildings unable to withstand their beatings cast their burning ruin upon the unevened streets below and the bricks from the road lay uprooted and scattered next to the craters that dotted the city. Reloading my battle saddle, I dared a glance across the darkening battlefield. The forms of fallen ponies and zebras alike littered the road like ants, coat upon coat of freshly shed blood splattered across the roads' naturally pristine ivory and the black-tinted brass of bullet casings blanketed the battlefield where the red could not reach. As the shadows slowly began to blacken the streets, the towers surrounding us grew taller and taller, threatening to give way to their battle scars and take us all down to the depths. But as I glanced to my sides, I beheld my comrades–the bravest soldiers in all of Equestria – standing beside me, rifles at the ready. Each one of them stood fast behind the sandbag barricade semi-circling the entrance of the royal palace courtyard, the last line of defense between the Zebra Empire and the dwelling place of our rulers. Brothers and sisters standing bravely against all odds, ready to make the ultimate sacrifice to keep Equestria safe for as long as there was one of us yet standing.

As my magazines clicked into place and the bolts of my twin assault carbines charged, I leaned forward towards a pony dressed in rugged power armor and tapped my front hoof against her back.

“Think we're gonna make it through this one?” I muttered into her helmet's earpiece.

“I'll make it with more kills than you, that's for sure,” replied a mare's tinny voice from behind the helmet.

“Big talk, smartass, but can you trot the trot?” I challenged playfully.

“I'll wipe the stripes right off of their pelts with these motherbuckers,” the mare's voice boasted, giving a slight motion to one of her twin mounted miniguns.

“Uh-huh, just be sure to exercise some trigger discipline this time, it'd be a pain to have to reload you again.”

“'Reload' me, huh? In your dreams.”

“In your dreams, maybe,” I retorted, giving a light thump to the back of her helmet before moving back to don one of my own. With a squeeze and a light whir, the helmet slid into place around my head and began powering up, cycling through normal, infrared and night vision before settling back to unassisted video. A row of power armored ponies quickly made their way against the back of the sandbags, a second row of light combat armored ponies, myself included, staggering ourselves directly behind the first row between the gaps they left.

“Gentlecolts, the enemy approaches!” shouted a stallion’s gravelly voice from behind the wall we formed. “Those striped bastards are gonna give us all they've got with this push, but whatever they do, they are NOT going to breach this line! They may have taken Manehattan, Fillydelphia and Cloudsdayle from us, but by Celestia they will NOT take Canterlot! Gentlecolts, the enemy will not stop until they have burned this sanctuary to the ground, but I say if they want this city so bad, they can have it over my cold, dead body! Soldiers of Equestria, what do YOU say?!”

“OVER OUR DEAD BODIES, SIR!” Shouted the entire defense line at once, a burning passion behind each and every voice.

“Then let's give them a fight their stars will not soon forget!” Every voice in our company roared a deafening battle cry into the twilight lit streets of what remained of the ivory city, our choir echoing far into the distance as we prepared ourselves for what was to come. We were going to die. We all knew it-every last one of us-but I would gladly die before I saw a striped hoof step inside of the royal palace, and I knew everypony around me felt exactly the same way. This was it.

Our cries eventually echoed away into the black of night, which slowly strangled the sun's last light out of the sky until there was nothing but the dark. Even the moon seemed to turn it's back on us, refusing the tiniest glimmer of light to shine down on our impending demise. My helmet flickered and reappeared night-vision-green a moment later, the broken streets once again visible...though something was different this time. Across from us, no more than two hundred meters away stood a swarm of monochrome forms. Their eyes shone like a sea of dulled white dots across my vision as their green silhouettes slowly approached. I leaned closer to the front lines and pressed my rifles between the gap of the power armored soldiers beside me, waiting with sharp eyes and clenched teeth for the moment they would come in range of my visor's automatic targeting spell and I could send them all back to the hell they crawled out of. Suddenly, their advance halted. Just in front of their lines, a figure sprawled out across the street gave a slight twitch. A pony, barely alive, armor torn to shreds and weapon broken in half across a fallen comrade slowly tried to raise himself to his hooves. He slipped, coming down hard on the unforgiving stone as a single zebra from the front line approached him; in its mouth, the unmistakable thin sliver of a zebra blade. Slowly, step by step, the zebra centered itself in front of the wounded pony as he tried so desperately to raise himself once more, but as his forehooves gradually found their strength, the zebra froze. The pony continued to try to lift himself, rear legs trembling and scrambling to find hold on the slippery crimson stone beneath, slipping again and again as the zebra shadowed idly over the dying soldier. Finally, after what seemed like hours of watching in painful silence, the pony succeeded in staggering shakily onto all fours. He turned to us, battered and bleeding, but with a hopeful smile and a subtle glimmer in his pale eyes; but once he saw our fortifications -- the direction our weapons were pointed, his smile melted. Slowly, he turned his head towards the zebra swarm, to the rows upon rows of striped soldiers amassed at his rear, to the lone zebra with its knife's edge hovering mere inches above his victim’s throat. Frozen in the purest of dread and ears folded flush against the back of his head, I swear I could see the hope ooze from every fiber of his being; whisked away like mist in the breeze as the zebra's knife descended upon him. Black crimson spilled freely from the gaping wound in his throat, his legs trembling violently from under him, fighting, desperately, vainly, to keep balance. The executioner watched with a grin as cold and sharp as winter's bite as the last of the soldier's life flickered and faded from his victim's eyes, the soldier's drained body falling with a wet thud into a pool of his own blood.

The next thing I knew, I had switched to manual aim and lined up that bastard's head in my crosshairs. To hell with automatic targeting, I didn't need a computer to tell me that I can't splatter this fucker's brains at two hundred meters. The sound of a thunderbolt rolled through the streets, eviscerating the silence as I cast down finality on the zebra scum. Its headless body hit the ground with an audible thud and I soon felt the burning stare of a hundred zebras bearing against me. They dug their hooves into the ground and swiped, readying their charge. I braced myself, lowering my stance and giving a soft growl as the enemy finally broke into an all out stampede.

Rumbling like an earthquake, the sound of my heartbeat in my ears. One hundred and seventy-five meters.

Brothers, all of us tucked closely against one another as a family should be, our unity an immovable object against this unstoppable force. One hundred and fifty meters.

The wild flash of the zebra's guns in their charge, my breath quickening as the pony beside me yelps, collapsing into a pool of fresh crimson. One hundred and twenty-five meters.

The row of miniguns spooling up, the hum of their motors setting the tone for the cacophony to follow. One hundred meters.

Target acquired.

Lead, blood and torn flesh downpoured like a horizontal rain. Muzzle flashes twinkled like stars across the battlefield, each new light illuminating another fallen foe, recoil slamming hard against my torso as I fire bullet after bullet into fresh zebra skulls, their bodies falling in broken, crimson-smeared piles against the unforgiving stone street. Closer and closer they came, trampling the bodies of their fallen with grim determinations in their eyes, knives clenched in their gritted teeth and guns slung loosely, bouncing against their sides. The wave of black and white charged closer still, but the miniguns held strong–tearing limb from striped limb even as the zebra's numbers continued to flood in like a river; but soon the miniguns began to silence and the monochrome sea hastened their advance. I abandoned my targeting spell once again and began firing as fast as I could into the mass approaching us, shell casings rattling at my hooves like wind chimes in a hurricane.

The noise from my carbines ceased almost at once and instinctively, I gave my reloading lever a sharp tug with my mouth. The motors on my battle saddle chugged as I stood counting the seconds until I could continue to slaughter these intruders.

“I'M DRY! RELOAD ME!” cried the mare flanking me just as the bolts on my carbines charged once again.

“FUCK!” I screamed in response over the roar of the fire just as my carbines had finished reloading, instantly dropping my head to the ground behind me and snatching up a case of minigun rounds. I whipped my head back around and slammed it into the ammunition socket on the gun closest to me and reached back around for the second, quickly leaning over her and jamming it into the second and final gun.

“OPEN FIRE!” I yelled to her, tapping her armor on the side in reaffirmation, but as I my hoof made contact, she toppled like a tipped chess piece, collapsing in a metal heap against the pony next to her--three fresh holes burrowed into her chest, oozing out streams of deep crimson.

It was right at that instant that something clicked inside of me: some missing piece of my focus snapping snugly into place that transformed the noisiness and the chaos into rhythm and tempo. The advancing stampede, a decrement of time--seconds until the enemy closed the distance. The strangled gasping, the fading life of the soldier lying before me, my objective.

Without a moment’s hesitation, I leaned down and scooped the wounded pony off of the ground and across my back, drawing my sidearm from its leg holster as I rose and firing into the fast-approaching fray with lethal precision. Squeeze after squeeze of the trigger sent lead soaring into zebra flesh, stopping the chargers in their tracks as I calmly backpedaled in retreat, the swarm of attackers pouring over our barricade and making short work of anyone still left in its defense. The slide of my pistol locked back as I sent my last round piercing through a zebra's skull, but the unstoppable wave drew ever closer to my hooves and the bullets whizzing past me started to find purchase in my cracked and failing armor. They were so close to us; I could practically taste the blood and sweat on their coats. But I needed to survive--the soldier on my back was the only thing that mattered right now, and she had two loaded miniguns.

“...Am...am I dead?” The mare whispered softly into my ear, barely audible over the roar of the stampede and gunfire.

“Soldier, I need you to fire your weapon,” I replied calmly in response, reloading my sidearm and staring down a roaring zebra as he charged us in a blind fury, knife clenched in it’s teeth with grim determination. “I need you to fire your weapon now.”

“I can’t feel my legs,” the mare commented, evenly at first, but soon panting louder and harder with each breath she took, “W-why can’t I feel them? Where are my legs?!”

“Soldier, you’re still in one piece! Fire your weapon!” I could see the greenish tint of a zebra’s eyes clearly, just three meters in front of me in full sprint.

“I-I can’t--” I felt her heart skip a beat as the slide of my pistol slammed shut over a fresh round and fired it directly between the zebra’s eyes, knife dropping from its teeth in a metallic clamor as the rest of its body toppled forward with it.

“NOW!” I screamed out, twisting to to my side and pointing the mare over my back face to face with the enemy. Almost instantly I heard the miniguns spool and roar out in deafening gunfire, blood erupting from hundreds of newly formed orifices on the zebra chargers, painting our armors in layer after thick layer of red with each second of her volley. The wave of advancing zebras dropped like bricks on top of one another as I continued to sidestep in retreat, inching us closer and closer to the gates of the royal castle where I could make my stand. Spent casings from the mare’s minigun bounced along the back of my armor like drops of brass rain in our storm of death. At last, I felt the iron bars of the gate press up against me just as the miniguns whirring died out. Instantly, I summoned every ounce of strength in my body to leap and buck the heavily armored mare off of my back, sending her airborne and flinging her just high enough to graze over the tips of the thorned bars and land with an earth-shaking thud on the opposite side.

“RUN!” I cried out to her as I turned to face inevitability, firing as fast as I could pull the trigger into the encroaching mass of zebra forms before their fire took it’s toll. Searing pain in my forelegs as I watched the flesh beneath the armor shred like paper. I tried to scream, but all I seemed capable of was short gasps as I caved under the weight of my own body and toppled to my knees. Bullets punched into my chest and sides like miniature trains, burning lines of scorching heat inside of me and gnawing away at my perception until all I could hear was the sound of my failing heartbeat. The last thing I felt was cold steel burying itself deep into my throat, my attacker surely inches away from me, but all but invisible to me through my dimming eyesight. My lungs burned and screamed desperately for sustenance as each breath I drew failed to satisfy their demand. At last, as the ensuing numbness crept over my body like a cockatrice’s stare and my senses slipped away from me on a crimson tide, I swore I could barely make out a hazed, gray figure through the gate bars slowly crawling towards the Princess’ castle.

Just before I slipped away into death’s sullen embrace, for a single moment, time seemed to stammer--tripping over its own feet, or perhaps the piles of corpses now polluting the streets of a once serene city in a nation defeated by it’s own avarice and bloodlust. In that one final instant, I saw the blood of pony and zebra alike flow united in a single shade of red, and the corpses from which they flow lying as cold and lifeless as the bricks beneath them.

War. War never changes.

* * * *

My eyes shot open as sensation flooded over my body like a gallon of ice water, reeling and gasping for air. Frenzy pumped through my veins at two hundred beats per minute, the screen in front of me blaring out sirens and flashing alarms as I desperately fight to control my breathing. I was alive, by Celestia I was alive! I could feel my hooves and my neck and my head again--everything was going to be alright, so long as I didn’t have a heart attack inside the pod. The jagged lines on the monitor slowly spaced themselves apart and became decreasingly acute, the flashing red fading out and the screen returning to it’s healthy green glow.

“Holy Celestia, Iron, are you trying to make us look bad?!” a mare's voice cried out from beyond the chamber. High Yield, no doubt. Calm, Iron Sights, calm...you're still here. You don't want your friends to see the ‘brave’ soldier slaughtered by ten different enemies shaking like a foal in his crib.

“Hey Iron, you alive in there?” a stallion's voice called out, Splint, by the sound of it. I opened my mouth to respond, but was cut off by High Yield.

“Of course he's alive! Iron! Get your ass out here, you crazy buck!” Yup, that's her: lively as always. It seemed to do the trick though, a confident smile quickly replacing any previous expression I held.

“Yeah, yeah, keep your jumpsuit on, Miss Impatient,” I called out as I gave a sharp kick to the front of my VR pod. The pod’s door swung wide open, releasing a puff of white fog from the inside of my chamber as I rolled out of my chair and landed on my hooves beside it. Thankfully, that the pain surrounding my legs was gone as well. Not missing a beat, I strode through the veil of fog and found Splint and High Yield staring at the large monitor attached to a pillar in the center of the room. It was showing a looping video of my last few minutes in the fight, starting with my retreat away from the front lines and ending in my violent destruction. How...pleasant.

“You know the point of that sim was just to fight until death, right?” Splint said with a wince, turning away from the screen as my bullets and knives tore away at me like meat to a shredder, “You didn't have to go and make a statement.”

“What he means is that you didn't have to go be a Luna-damned showoff!” Yield interrupted, turning to me and punching her hoof into my shoulder as I walked to them.

“Well hey, after you got turned into swiss cheese I figured somepony had to save your sorry ass.” I replied smugly, ignoring the punch. High Yield snickered and turned back to the monitor.

“Come on, come on...when's the kill count gonna show up?” she muttered impatiently.

“That was very stallion-like and all, Iron, but please promise me you won't do anything that rash in the field,” Splint said quietly, “do you have any idea how many medical supplies it takes to stop that much bleeding?”

“I'd be a bit more concerned about how you plan to sew me back together,” I pointed out with a smug grin, “You’re good, Splint, but I don’t think you’re any kind of Doctor Flankenstein.” Splint grimaced and lowered his eyes, clearly disgusted by the thought.

“Please, Iron, just...” Splint trailed.

“Hey, hey, hey, chin up, buddy!” I encouraged, wrapping my hoof around his neck and giving a playful squeeze. “We don't ever have to go through that again, and I don't think anything on the surface is ever gonna be tough enough to take any one of us down, am I right?”

“You're damned right, Corporal!” An earth pony stallion shouted from across the room, emerging from a door leading to the VR pods' control center. The shoulders of his uniform bore the silver phoenix emblem of a colonel, and at once the three of us snapped to attention, forming a row. “At ease!” he commanded promptly as he centered himself in front of us, our stances loosening slightly. “Soldiers, that was some of the finest displays of heroism I've seen in a long time from this sim! Each and every one of you has something to be proud of today, something that not everypony can truly understand. Today you have stared down the barrel of our enemies, and instead of cowering and accepting defeat, you pressed your blade to their throats and dared them to pull the trigger. From today henceforth, you may consider yourselves true soldiers of the Equestrian Military and the Surface Recon Team. Our Ministry Mares would be proud of your valor.” I felt a growing pride deep in my gut as my stance straightened in correspondence.

“Thank you, sir!” the three of us replied in unison.

“Iron Sights!” barked the stallion, positioning himself no more than a three inchesfrom my face, “How dare you retreat from the front lines you spineless coward?! That has to be one of the single most shameful displays I’ve seen in my entire career!” I gulped, any sense of pride being swept away and replaced with looming fear. He paused as his deep green eyes stared into my own, a bit of sweat beginning to form around my forehead. After what seemed like an eternity, he finally continued.

“...it was also one of the bravest, most selfless acts of valor I’ve had the privilege of witnessing ever since your father and mother went through this very same simulation. You traded your own life for another’s without hesitation or fear and gave hope to somepony who had none for herself. If this battle had actually taken place and you had been on the front lines with those ponies, even in death you would have received the highest honors our nation has to bestow. As such, I am hereby promoting you to the rank of Sergeant, effective immediately. It's been long overdue, son, you've earned it.”

In his hoof he held the three chevron patches, my initiation into leadership. At first I had almost thought he was just playing me, but seeing those emblems...this was no joke. A promotion, just after our squad faced down the final test to become a part of the most prestigious military division in the whole Stable! The notion hit me harder than any bullet ever could; I felt my heart fluttering in my chest and my mouth motioning words that never breathed into fruition. If the colonel hadn't been keeping that deadlock stare with me, I might have remained a stuttering statue for the rest of the day.

“Th-thank you sir! It's an honor.” I finally replied with as much restraint as I could exhibit, carefully taking the patches from his hoof.

“The honor is mine, soldier.” He replied coolly, turning to face Splint and Yield, “The two of you are dismissed--but not you, Iron, I want a word with you.”

“Yes, si--” Splint answered, though he was cut short by Yield.

“Colonel!” she cried out at the stallion, who turned to face her in response.

“Corporal?” The colonel replied sharply.

“The kill counts, sir. How many did we get?”

“Ah, yes, I'd almost forgotten. Splint!” Splint jerked in place, snapping his gaze to meet that of the major's. “Thirty-five confirmed kills. Not bad. High Yield!” Her eyes narrowed, “One hundred and fourteen confirmed kills. Decent, considering you were operating miniguns. Iron Sights!” I braced myself, knowing that if my count was any lower that Yields', I wouldn't hear the end of it for weeks, “Forty-one confirmed kills with rifles...” I could already see a grin slowly spreading over Yield's face. I rolled my eyes in exasperation, “...and seventy-three confirmed kills with Corporal Yield’s weapon for a total of one hundred and fourteen confirmed kills. Outstanding.” I watched as Yield's grin faded into a reluctant frown, stealing the grin for myself as the colonel continued to read out our statistics, “...all in all, your squad killed two hundred and sixty-three enemies, your platoon of eighty soldiers neutralizing a grand total of four thousand, two hundred and thirty-seven enemies. Congratulations, now get the hell out of here before the next group shows up.”

“Yes, sir!” my comrades exclaimed, making their way towards the exit. The colonel shifted his gaze back to me, his authoritative posture waning.

“Son, your performance in the pod isn’t the only reason we’ve decided to raise you up the chain.”

“...Sir?” I replied, slightly puzzled,

“You’ve shown that you have what it takes to be a leader, Iron, and that’s not a distinction we’re able to make often around here. With this promotion, we’re giving you command of the squad for any and all future missions. You’re the ranking soldier now and your responsibilities are going to reflect it.” My heart stopped. Me, in command of the squad?! I’d always thought someone smart like Splint would get to be squad leader, but...me? As if I didn’t already have enough to worry about, now I suddenly had the entire weight of the squad’s success on my shoulders!

“Now don’t worry, son, we wouldn’t have given you this if we didn’t think you could handle it. You’ve proven your ability to think clearly in battle and to motivate your squad’s performance to that of true excellence. If you simply perform like you have up until now, you’ll do fine...just try not to think too hard on it. I’ve granted you and your squad five weeks leave to rest up for your first official mission as part of Surface Recon.” The colonel, turned and trotted away down the corridor back towards the direction he came, stopping and turning over his shoulder to me one last time before disappearing into the whitewashed hallway. “Do me proud, Iron. I know you have it in you.”

* * * *

That was the day my life finally took on purpose. I'm Iron Sights, by the way, that teal stallion with the white and cyan mane standing alone in the VR room. My two squadmates, the aquamarine unicorn mare with the freckles and short, purple mane is High Yield, our explosives expert, and the white unicorn stallion with the solid crimson mane is Splint, our resident medic. We're a squad, as you have most likely gathered, and a proud part of the Stable 70 MWT Military.

When everypony goes through primary school, we're told that Stable 70 is a special place. They tell us of a Great War that took place nearly two centuries ago between two equally great nations, Equestria, and the Zebra Homeland. It's said that the zebras won the war by launching massive bombs of radiation and balefire across all of Equestria, smothering all of her surface metropolises with a blanket of fire and radiation and forcing the remaining survivors into underground shelters known as Stables. But this Stable, they say, is unique. They tell us of the six ministries that were founded to defend Equestria during it's new era of crisis and that one of them, the Ministry of Wartime Technology, was responsible for engineering armaments for Equestria's military. Despite this, however, they say the zebras possessed a level of technology far superior to that of our own and because of that, were able to launch the balefire missiles that ruined our once peaceful nation. Stable 70 exists as the last remaining extension of that ministry; an ongoing effort to develop advanced weapons, impregnable armors and to train deadly soldiers so that we might one day be able to reclaim our land from the zebra invaders who now scour our once great nation for the remnants of our civilization--to eradicate it.

So far, it seems, we've been lucky. Around fifteen years ago, the zebras managed to locate our Stable, but were not able to defeat the security systems we have in place around our entrance. Ever since then, our Stable has been sending out Surface Reconnaissance teams with the express goal of assessing the zebra invasion and determining what our Stable's next course of action is. To date, there have been five teams sent out into the wastes above, but none have returned. All attempts to establish radio contact with them failed and their tracking signals went dark just as soon as they left the Stable.

My parents were among the first teams to get deployed to the outside world . I didn't want them to go, of course, but they told me that it was their duty as soldiers to protect Equestria and every one of it's citizens, especially me. They promised me I'd see them again, that nothing would keep them from coming back home. That was over ten years ago.

That promise has been my driving force for nearly a decade. Ever since we lost touch with the first recon teams, I made it my life's goal to become an elite soldier, the best of the best, so that I could have the honor of being placed on the Surface Recon team and finally see my parents again, no matter what. Before their squad was deployed, High Yield, my friend who I had only just met in Primary School, asked if her parents would be willing to look after me while mine were away and, after a brief exchange, they decided it would be for the best. When their squad failed to make contact after two months, Yield's family officially took me in and made me their godson. I've been living with them ever since.

Yield’s always been right by my side even through foalhood; once she heard that I wanted to be a soldier, she vowed to become one as well so she could help me search for my parents. I tried to dissuade her, saying that it would be too dangerous and that she should find her own path instead of blindly following me, but she was just as stubborn then as she was now and she had made up her mind. 'Nopony should have to live without their mommy and daddy,' she'd said to me. 'Nopony.'

It was during our enlistment that we met Splint, medical prodigy and one of the most tenderhearted ponies there ever was. Splint had originally wanted to be a part of the MWT Post-Apocalyptic Research Team, (PART for short) the branch of Stable 70 that aimed to advance pony wartime technology above and beyond that of the zebra’s, but quickly began to have trouble accepting the ethics of making weapons designed primarily to kill. He claimed that even the armor they were developing was too aggressive for his tastes. Instead, he devoted himself to practicing medicine, working as an apprentice for the Stable clinic. It didn't take long for him or his supervisors to realize that he had quite the knack for patching ponies up, but once again, his conscience got the better of him. He couldn't keep himself from thinking that there were far more ponies outside of the Stable that needed his help--and though he despised the thought of being apart of an organization dedicated to war, it was his only chance to gain the opportunity to follow his calling. I look up to him in a way. Even though he doesn't believe in violence, he's still willing to sacrifice that part of himself to do what he feels is ultimately right. I don't think anyone else in the whole Stable, let alone myself, could stand to give up that much of ourselves, no matter the reason.

The three of us had entered Basic Training at a very young age, and it was around that time that we all got our cutie marks. Mine, as you probably have guessed, is a rifle's iron sights. Well, not exactly--the rear sight picture is your average, everyday peephole, but the front aperture seems to resemble some sort of bird whose wings and head form the sight posts. I’ve never quite understood why that was...but regardless, Yield's is a pair of thrown grenades and Splint's, a crossed crutch and hypodermic needle. It was also then that we chose our callsigns. You see, in Stable 70, or more specifically our military, birth names are regarded as a soldier's only true possession. To maintain the security of your birth name is to maintain your sense of self. We are taught to understand that war can take many things from us: our friends, our families, our lives, and even our nation–but the one thing it cannot take from you is your own identity, so long as you guard it with your life. Once the enemy has your name, your identity, you have lost everything. Birth names, after your enlistment in the military, are only to be shared with those whom you would trust your life and your individuality to; that is to say, not a lot of ponies. For everyone else, friends and squadmates included, you are known by your callsign. Iron Sights, High Yield and Splint. Those are our callsigns–the names by which the world will know us by.

To make a nearly decade-long story short, the three of us worked very, very hard to get to where we are today. One of the technological advancements that our Stable has achieved since the Great War is our advanced Virtual Reality pods. We have been able to perfect the pre-war VR technology, allowing us to fully immerse soldiers into a virtual world, where computers can scan our minds and interpret our brain waves as movement, speech, pain, and just about anything else one can think of. For nearly seven years, we have trained both in VR pods with custom made scenarios for every imaginable type of situation a soldier could possibly be thrown into, as well as physically inside our Stable's combat training sections. Today, after all those long years, our squad successfully passed the final test for exclusive admission into SuRec, facing down a no-win scenario, and in doing so, our own deaths. Even though it was merely a simulation, all of the safeguards except the ones preventing us from dying were deactivated. The pain, the tension and indeed our final moments were all very much real to us.

And in that death I am reborn. Today, my life truly begins.

* * * *

One month later...

“Hey! Wake up, featherbrain!” Yield yelled from behind my bedroom door, pounding loudly on it's metal frame. “It's the last day of our leave and I, for one, am not gonna miss a second of it!”

I cracked my eyes open with a heavy sigh and dared a glance at my clock. 0900 hours on the nose. Cripes, what's the point of not setting an alarm if she's going to wake me up anyways? What a pain.

“Cool it, Yield...” I replied as loudly as my grogginess would allow, my voice muffled by the pillow I hugged. “Just...give me five more minutes, alright?”

“Don't make me come in there Iron, you know I will!” She threatened, that familiar hoof-slapping tone in her voice again.

“Luna damn it Yield, who died and made you the Overmare?”

“That's it, I'm coming in.” As if on cue, memories of previous painful mornings flashed before my eyes: being dragged by the legs onto the floor with that damned magical horn of hers, my head slamming into the cold metal--the headaches, oh Celestia the headaches. Suffocating on my own uniform as she tries to force it onto my body...I could already feel myself shaking. Yep, that's me, rough n' tough soldier boy, ready to charge into harm's way at a moments notice, but scared to death of my own god-sister. I swear, someday she will be the fear of every living being in Equestria.

“I'm up, I'm up, I'm up!” I yelled desperately as I ejected the sheets from my bed and scrambled to my hooves–or, at least that's what my brain wanted to do. My legs slipped out from under me as I dismounted the bed and I quickly found my face buried in the steel floor. Yield’s giggling outside as her hoofsteps fell into the middle distance clearly indicated that she had effected the desired outcome.

Damn it all, if this was going to be the story of my life for the duration of our mission I should save the zebras the trouble and shoot myself now...the option was certainly available, my pistol was right on the nightstand. Tempting, but if I were to kill myself now, I wouldn't be able to make it to our briefing later today – and Celestia knows what Yield would do to me if I even considered missing out on the moment we've worked our flanks off for over the last decade. I sighed that heavy sigh once again, carefully lifting myself to my hooves as I resigned to endure whatever torments today had in store for me.

* * * *

It always surprises me how full the mess hall seemed when our squad was on leave. Even though several of the tables remained empty, it still felt like every pony in the entire Stable had rushed down here at exactly that moment to get their morning grub. Though, I suppose when it was only our squad and the other hundred ponies that were either going through Basic Training or were on security rotation chowing on morning meals at precisely 0730 hours, a room designed to seat five times that amount could feel a bit empty. Stable maintenance workers, technicians, orchard caretakers, scientists and even some of the cooks sat scattered around the room, the air abuzz with their chatter. Yield, Splint and I managed to secure a spot at our usual table and tried our best to enjoy the meal we'd been eating since the day we were born: dehydrated fruit, more dehydrated fruit and one whole apple–fully hydrated. Outstanding.

“You guys ever wonder what the other Stables have for breakfast?” I asked as I dipped my head down to my plate for another bite. Unlike my unicorn pals, instead of being able to raise the food to my mouth in a dignified manner, I have to bury my face into my plate and hope for the best; not only that, but they can levitate weaponry, cast spells--hell, even stab ponies with their horn if they wanted to. It's a miracle I got this far in the Stable military without a horn of my own to wave around.

“I've heard they've got huge orchards in some of the other Stables.” Yield replied, chewing on a dried peach.

“Bigger than ours, you mean?” Splint chimed in. “That seems rather unlikely.”

“Well, maybe not bigger,” Yield began, “but I've heard rumors that they grew orchards with...you know...different plants. Wheat, wildflowers, you name it.”

“I guess that doesn't seem entirely out of the realm of possibility,” Splint replied, taking a chomp into his apple, “but they still would have to be pretty big to accommodate that type of crop.”

“Aren't all Stables as big as this one?” I offered, taking a break from my food, “I mean, Stables were made to save ponies, right? They probably built them as large as possible to ensure minimum casualties from the bombs.”

“One would think,” Splint conceded, pausing from his breakfast as well, “though I don't think the other Stables would've gotten nearly the amount of resources that we have. Research Team's got entire floors dedicated to weapons R&D, our basement is a giant raw materials mining platform for crying out loud and we've got at least four entire levels dedicated to either residencies or military training. Who's to say that we're not living like kings compared to the other Stables?”

Yield and I shared a sour look. I don't think either of us wanted to imagine Stable life being anything less than what it was for us right now, not at the expense of other ponies and especially not today, only a couple of days away from our surface mission.

“See, Splint, this is why you're the thinker of the squad,” I said with a playful grin. Splint frowned and narrowed his emerald green eyes at me. Clearly my lightened perspective wasn’t rubbing off the way I’d intended. The remainder of the meal carried on in silence.

* * * *

After breakfast, the three of us decided to stop by the shooting range and get some shots in. None of us really needed the extra practice, we'd spent the majority of our lives running mission after mission, bullet for bullet in the VR pods and in the training grounds, but it was something of a pastime for us, one of the few things we could do in the Stable to relax, and I knew that that was exactly what all of us needed to do today. Our first real mission was less than two days away, our briefing mere hours from now.

The range was eerily quiet; the usual batch of privates performing their qualifications or the odd security pony touching up on their marksmanship all notably absent. Perhaps it was the timing as it was in the mess hall; things always seemed to run on so much of a schedule while on active duty that I really hadn't noticed when areas of the Stable got less traffic than usual. The normally relentless array of gunshots was so bizarrely absent that I almost neglected to put on my shooting muffs as we received our gear from the quartermaster and took our places on the firing line.

“This feels so...strange,” Splint remarked, loading his pistol magazines.

“What does?” I asked, readying my own weaponry.

“This silence,” answered Splint, his magic clicking the last few rounds into place. “It's almost as if someone heard we were coming and cleared everypony out for us.”

“Yeah, I was just thinking the same thing. Though I doubt anyone would actually go that far on our account.”

“I wouldn't be so sure,” Yield offered, levitating up her now fully loaded assault carbine. “The better part of the Stable knows what's going to happen tomorrow, maybe someone put in a good word for us.”

“Could be, considering how fast 'confidential' information tends to spread around here.”

“Are you kidding? Nothing here is secret anymore, not except for what they have going on down in R&D,” Splint added, levitating his pistol and firing a few rounds downrange. I picked up my own sidearm, a .45 auto pistol with extended magazines and aimed at the zebra-shaped target on the large sheet of paper twenty-five meters away.

“Shpeaking of whish, ou never really tol' ush what eshactly 'ou ‘id in PART,” I mumbled through the pistol grip in my mouth.

Where should I aim this time? Scoring headshots on zebras was too easy, maybe I should try for something more crippling...the shoulders, perhaps? Why not. I quickly lined up my sights with the black outline of the forelegs in the distance and squeezed off a double tap, feeling that all-too familiar recoil course through my conditioned teeth as two new holes appeared in the target's left foreleg.

“I worked on armor development, that's all I can say. I'm sorry I can't be any more specific, the Stable keeps a tight lid on everything that goes on down there. If I said any more, I would probably be ejected from the military as a start, and I don't think my family would especially appreciate a dishonor of that caliber.” A few bangs later, Splint had emptied his magazine and began to reload, “Not to mention that I wouldn't be able to help anyone on the surface who needs it.”

“Geez Splint, don't you ever think about yourself?” Yield asked, spitting three-round bursts into her target, “I mean, how do you even know there are ponies up there to help? Doesn't your future in the Stable concern you a little bit more than ponies you could maybe help, if there even are any left alive out there?” Splint paused, turning to face Yield,

“Implying there's a future to be had in this cave. Two hundred years we've been trapped in this pocket of air, and for what? What have we accomplished? Building weapons to fight an ancient war, when we could be inventing new medicines and ways to heal the world rather than destroy it further? Ponykind has already accomplished appocalypse, what sense is there in killing what little that remains?”

For Celestia’s sake, Splint, now is not the time to become a pacifist! 'What little that remains' up there swallowed four squads of the best soldiers in the history of Equestria, not the least among them, my parents. If those zebras have so much as laid one hoof on them, I'll see to it that every last one of those striped bastards dies slowly...and if they've taken them into the next life, may Celestia have mercy on their souls, because I'll be sending their bodies to Her in sticky little pieces.

As I finished that thought, the dry clicking of the trigger informed me that I'd emptied my entire magazine, the outline of the zebra’s head shredded so thoroughly that only scraps of paper dangling loosely from it’s edges remained.

“My parents are still up there, Splint,” I said, placing my sidearm on the table next to me, making no attempt to mask my disdain. “They've never gone back on a promise to me in my entire life, not once. Something up there is keeping them from coming back here, something more powerful than their word and deadlier than a few irradiated ponies. That's why we train for eight hours a day, seven days a week, Splint, that’s why we use the highest speed gear we could ever dream of–to stand a chance at fighting the enemy who have so ruthlessly reduced us to cowering in bunkers while they plant their flag in our nation, on our soil! I don't know about you, but I for one am going to fight whatever is out there to my last breath!”

Splint and Yield had both ceased fire and turned their heads to face me, a flicker of fear swimming behind their surprised expressions. So much for relaxation. I sighed and shifted my gaze to the decapitated cutout far in front of me. If I looked at it just right, I could see it's fresh corpse sprawled atop an executed pony soldier on the reddened roads of Canterlot.

“I'm sorry. You didn't deserve that.”

“No, Iron, I'm sorry,” Splint quickly responded. “I shouldn't have said that–I was way out of line.”

Damn it Splint, why do you always have to take the fall for someone else's fuck-ups?

“You've got nothing to be sorry for,” I replied, taking a deep breath, “You have the best reasons for being in this squad out of all of us, so don't let me or anypony else tell you different, you got that?” The faintest whisper of a smile trickled across his face, giving a light chuckle before floating rounds into his rifle's empty magazine.

“Yes, Sergeant.”

Good. The last thing this squad needed was to forget why we do what we do and exactly what's at stake...though I doubt any of us would be having trouble with that last part. We'd been reminded of the gravity of the situation so often in this last month that I was about ready to ‘volunteer’ the next pony who brought it up as a live test subject for those less-lethal rounds the quartermaster had been stockpiling.

As my squadmates once again resumed rattling off rounds, I picked up my assault rifle and slung it around my neck, raising myself onto my aft legs and wielding the rifle with my forelegs. Not exactly a comfortable stance, or one that's easy to keep balance in, but it's the only way to fire a rifle without magic or a battle saddle–and as an earth pony SuRec operator, I am required to be able to operate in any condition imaginable. So on my back legs I stood, shouldering the rifle firmly and peering through the sights at another zebra cutout one hundred meters away. Once I had it's torso lined up, I gently squeezed my hoof against the trigger until I felt the rifle jump and slap against me. One more squeeze, one more slap, one more 5.56 millimeter hole in the target.

“So what do you think's gonna be out there, you know, besides zebras and pony survivors?” I asked to no one in particular.

“Who knows?” Yield said as she quickly clicked another magazine into place on her rifle, “Maybe there'll be mutant parasprites, or cows with two heads!”

“Oh please, Yield,” Splint quickly retorted, “that kind of stuff only happens in children's comic books. Anything not in a Stable by the time the bombs fell would have been irradiated to the moon and back. There's no chance that any creature could have survived that. My guess is that zebras and ponies are the only thing up there now...though whether they've managed to reestablish civilization is another matter entirely.”

“Pff, buzzkill...” Yield mumbled as she resumed firing once again.

“What do you mean by that? Reestablishing civilization, that is.” I asked loudly over the gunshots.

“Well, think about it,” Splint began, setting down his rifle in favor of a shotgun. “Even if the zebras have migrated over to our land, I doubt they'd be able to effectively civilize ponies who have been geographically isolated and kept underground for as long as they've lived. My guess is that ponies by now are either mostly enslaved to the zebras, or, if they're not, survivors from each vault have formed their own tribes.”

Well that certainly wasn't the shining, optimistic response I'd come to expect. Enslavement under the zebras or warring as rogue tribes sounded like two equally undesirable possibilities, both of which were quickly becoming eerily plausible in my wandering imagination.

“You don't think there's any chance of ponies defeating the zebras or reestablishing the old Equestria as it was?”

“To be honest, no, it's not likely at all. Too much time has passed since the radiation dispersed. I'd say the most we could reasonably hope for is some semblance of a town or other settlement under martial law. If places like those exist, they won't be marked on Equestria's pre-war map, so we'll need to be careful to keep an eye out for them.”

“Hey, Splint?” I asked, doing my utmost to keep myself from imagining my parents as zebra slaves or some sort of ritualistic sacrifice for a bunch of drooling savages. “Has anyone ever told you that you think too much?” A torrent of shotgun blasts suddenly ripped out from Splint's weapon,utterly annihilated the target in front of him and sending tiny scraps of paper flying in every direction.

“I get it all the time.”

* * * *

At last, several hours after we had finished at the range and eaten our suppers, the time had finally come to attend our debriefing in the Overmare's office. This was it, the moment we had been working up to for the majority of our lives, and I could feel the weight of that fact slowing my legs as the three of us marched to the elevators in nervous anticipation. No one spoke, not in the elevator as we ascended to the Overmare's operation center, not as our escort showed us the way to the debriefing room and not as the Overmare herself welcomed us in and bade us sit.

“Welcome, SuRec operatives,” the Overmare said, turning to us. “Please be seated.” The three of us quickly sat ourselves in the folding chairs facing her and the white projection screen behind her. The Overmare was dressed in formal pre-war clothes, levitating a small laser pointer in her magic’s grasp as she positioned herself between us and the projection screen.

“I'm not going to waste any time here, gentlecolts, so let's get right down to business. As of this moment, you are the fifth and final Surface Recon team to be deployed from this Stable.” Behind her, the white screen lit up with a very colorful, pre-war map of the surrounding surface area with Stable 70 in the center. The very same map our squad had been ordered to study since our admission into SuRec, “Your primary objective is to exit the Stable, scout out the surrounding environments, assess the status of the zebra infiltration to the best of your abilities and return back here.” The slide switched to an image of several scattered dots which overlaid onto the previous map. “You will be independently assessing several points of interest in our Stable’s surrounding areas: Ponyville,” the Overmare flashed her laser pointer over one of the dots centered in a small village, “the Everfree Forest,” her laser indicated towards a dot centered in a large green section next to the previous town, “Fillydelphia, Manehattan and finally, Canterlot,” she said, pointing to the last three locations. Somehow I doubted that any of these places would look as majestic as they do on this map after two centuries of radiation and decay. “Your secondary objective is to locate and assess the status of the four previous SuRec teams that have been deployed. Unfortunately, we have no intelligence as to their locations at this time and cannot assist you in locating their squads. That will be entirely up to you.” Great, just what I didn’t want to hear. I guess it’s too much to hope for even a slight hint at where to begin searching for them, isn’t it?

“You have all received VR training for these environments,” the Overmare continued, “and should be adequately prepared for any situation you are confronted with. As such, your rules of engagement are as follows: use of deadly force is authorized, but stealth is paramount. Unless the enemy has surrounded the Stable entrance, you are to avoid all contact with anyone outside of your squad at all costs. If the Stable is in fact surrounded, you are to eliminate any opposing elements and return to base for reinforcements. Understood?”

“Yes, ma’am,” the three of us replied in unison. Behind the monotone, I could tell that none of us were particularly confident in our responses.

“Excellent. Let’s move on to the details. Your squad has a two month deadline from mission launch to establish communication with the vault and present your findings. Radio communication to and from this Stable will be impossible due to the physical depth of this facility and the inoperability of our surface communications tower, with one exception. This Stable was built with a direct hardline to the Ministry of Wartime Technology headquarters on Ministry Walk in Canterlot. After you have completed your primary mission objectives, you are to report there and access the secure terminal to confer with us. Any questions?”

“Where exactly is this terminal located inside of the HQ?” I asked.

“It’s Applejack’s personal terminal on the top floor of the building inside her office. There’s an elevator and a staircase that leads right to it, so accessing the room should not be difficult.” Easy for you to say, desk jockey.

“Understood. No further questions.”

“Now, as for your rationing, when you receive your gear tomorrow you will be issued one month’s supply of food and water in the form of dehydrated MRE’s and magically compressed water. You will also be provided with the means to purify a small amount of foodstuffs for safe consumption should you find anything that’s been irradiated. In theory, these should not be necessary as you have all been trained for survival in radioactive environments and are more than capable of scavenging purified food and water for yourselves. In addition, your mission should not take you more than three weeks to complete so long as you choose an efficient path with minimal friction, which leads me to my next item: movement.

“While the specifics of your route will be left to the discretion of your squadron leader, it would be ideal to assess the Everfree Forest and Ponyville first given their close proximity to the Stable and end with Canterlot for obvious reasons. Manehattan and Fillydelphia should be relatively easy to navigate to on foot but are geographically distanced from one another by a significant margin, but not as significant as the distance between either of them and the central region of Ponyville. Once your squad moves to the outlying regions of the coast, the likelihood of encountering zebra convoys will increase dramatically given the population density of those areas before the war. I once again remind you that it will be critical to not interfere with any operations conducted by the enemy. They must simply be observed and documented. Any action to the contrary will risk compromising you and your mission, and that simply cannot be allowed.

“Lastly is the rather lengthy detailings of your equipment and armaments, but I will leave that to the personnel from R&D to fill you in on those specs when you meet with them tomorrow. Understood?”

This entire plan had more holes in it than a paper target after a minigun volley. Despite that, we all nodded our heads slowly and said our yesses. I just wanted to get out of here as soon as possible, the majority of this briefing was either bad news or restating the obvious--and I’m losing valuable sleeping time by entertaining this mare with her crude attempt at a formal hearing.

“Excellent. I'll leave the map up on the projector so you can review the terrain, but there are a few more things I want to say to you before you go.” The Overmare took off her glasses, a hint of both sincerity and concern in her exposed eyes, “This mission means the difference between success and failure not only for our Stable, but for the nation of Equestria. If your team fails to report back to the Stable after those two months, we will be forced to assume the worst,” her tone lowered further, as did her gaze, “and as such, we will be forced to take extreme measures.” She paused, taking a breath and recomposing herself. “Equestria will survive this ordeal, no matter the cost. The only thing we have left to determine is how high that cost will be. If you miss the deadline...our Stable will be forced to pay the full price of Equestrian liberty.”

‘The full price of Equestrian liberaty’? What the hell is that supposed to mean? The outside is already nuked to shit, ponykind has been reduced to living in holes in the ground and life will likely never again be what it was before the war; what more could we possibly have to lose? Then again, if it’s as serious as this mare is making it sound, maybe I don’t want to know.

“If you fail your mission and are compromised to the enemy, do not let them take you alive. You and your Pipbucks possess extremely sensitive information that would destroy any remaining security we enjoy from the zebras. If they you are captured, they will torture you, they will interrogate you, and they will kill you. Do yourselves a favor and spare them the pleasure before it comes to that.”

Any lingering thoughts or distractions I had entertained were hushed as the Overmare spoke those last few words. It shouldn’t surprise me that those were the conditions we’re facing, it made sense after all-reveal nothing, keep the future of the Stable secured-so why did hearing it make me feel as if I’ve signed my own death warrant? SuRec operatives have no fear, we don’t succumb to cowardly impulses. Something was definitely amiss here, and that wasn’t sitting well with me one bit.

“Finally, I give you this word of warning. I'm telling you this not as your Overmare, but as another pony of Equestria struggling for survival. Expect the unexpected. We've been living in this pit for just over two entire centuries and our surface monitoring equipment has been dead for just as long. The VR programs we use to simulate surface contact are merely our best guesses on what is actually up there there based on data we received from the ministries of Wartime Technology and Arcane Science at the time this Stable was sealed. I cannot stress to you without enough undue emphasis the need to remain careful and cautious at all times. Four squads of the most highly trained soldiers in all of Equestria have gone missing in action up there; I am simply unable to believe that they went dark because of bad luck--no, something out there took down their units, and believe you me, that is no small feat. We're equipping you with the best technology our nation has ever developed in the hopes of overwhelming whatever it is that’s ghosting our ponies. This is our final endeavor to assess the unknown threat in the outside world, and to overcome it.” She paused, turning to the screen behind her. “Don’t force us to the alternative. Keep the price of freedom low, for everyone’s sake.

“From this moment forward, you are Echo Squad, the last of the MWT SuRec teams. You have twenty-four hours to familiarize yourself with your equipment and make yourselves battle ready. Good luck troopers, we have every confidence in you.”

Top-tech munitions and armor were suddenly small comforts against the sheer gravity our mission had taken on. I couldn’t even begin to guess at what this Stable planned to do if we suffered the same fate as our predecessors, but I had to assume that the safety of this Stable was at stake somehow. What else could it have been? As I pondered, the Overmare calmly exited the room, every clop of her hooves permeating the stagnant air in rhythmic succession. When the tapping finally echoed and faded out into the distance, the only thing left remaining in the briefing room were three motionless ponies, all equally immobilized by the cold reality of the weight now resting on their shoulders.

The growing silence quickly drew my attention to my squadmates, both of them looking at me expectantly.

“You heard her, Echo Squad,” I announced with as much enthusiasm I could muster, “Twenty-four hours to surface contact. Rest up and report to the armory tomorrow at 0900 for suit-up. Dismissed.”

Without another word, the three of us lifted ourselves from our seats and walked through the door in somber formation. The evening had only just turned and, while I hoped that we all sleep easy tonight, I had a nagging feeling that this would be the longest night of our lives.

Author's Note

Holy hell, I can't believe how long this took to will into existence. Hopefully it'll be worth the delay, it's my goal to make my first FimFiction posting enjoyable for everyone, and I sincerely hope that you guys take as much pleasure in reading this story and all future chapters as I do writing them. Enjoy!