He drank alone.

Which was odd since he didn't have any trouble with ponies. He had always managed to make acquaintances without much effort. and, despite what had happened, he still liked ponies. recently, he hand grown to miss them again. Yet here he was, drinking alone. Maybe I'm just shy, he thought to him self and then laughed at such a feeble attempt at self-delusion. For he know what it was.

From his place at the end of the log bar he examined the other in the crowded lounge. He recognized a handful from training. Training was where it had begun. Where he had felt that odd sensation descending upon him like a mist, separating him from all those thousands of others around him in the mess hall. It was a dull kind of temporal shock at first, a reaction reverberating from somewhere deep within him. He had somehow felt...No, he had somehow known that they all would die.
he shook his head, lifting the glass with his telekinesis and draining it. If he was in the mood for honesty he would have to admit that his chances where no better. No better at all....

He paid the bits for the full bottle and then paid the extra bits to take it out of the lounge. It was strictly against orders on the battle cruiser to have a bottle in one's personal possession. But on that night before the drop a lot of things were possible. And as the hour fro the drop grew nearer, he noticed that his fellows were beginning to take their drinking more seriously.

Outside the lounge wasn't much better. Lots of bottles had been smuggled out tonight. The ship wasn't exactly a giant party, but there were enough get together here and there and enough legitimate crew business here and there, to make it almost impossible to find a quite place to sit and think. After a while he hand settled into the idle rhythm of walking, sipping ,smoking, and hunting.

After most of an hour of wandering about the corridors of the immense ship he found himself standing beside the center template strut of Drop Bay One. Drop Bay One was the largest single room in the ship and, since the Luna was the largest warship, the largest single room in space. It was over a hundred meters long and sixty wide. Around him in a checkerboard style were the little square spaes for the drop assignment. From here it all began. Thousands of stallions and mares would go into battle from this room. At the same moment, if necessary. The overhead was ten stories above him, criss-crossed with the immense cranes that lowered the equipment of war into position. A hell of a big room, he thought. Bigger even than the Hall of Gold back home where he bad first stood at age ten beside the colts and fillies of the other nobles and watched the coronation. He and the other foals had a tendency to giggle, he remembered, and so had been placed at the far end of the Hall, away from the throne.

Enough of this, he said to himself. That's over for me now. It's far, far away...

He sighed, shook his head. He perched himself atop the center strut and lay down on his back and stared up at the distant overhead and didn't see it.

"Enough sentiment," he said aloud. "It's time for brainwork. Time, in fact, for a cold logical assessment of the situation." He took a sip from the bottle, lit a smoke, and laughed again. "Fact is, we haven't got a prayer."

Fact was, most everypony in Fleet nowadays was a rookie. Over sixty percent and rising. That meant six months of advanced training. Nine months tops in the military altogether. Not much hope there.

Still, the equipment was marvelous and many were surprisingly good with it. He remembered his astonishment at discovering clearly apparent aptitude for, of all things, the battle armor. Most found the power suits almost impossibly alien in practice and couldn't bring themselves to react in a sufficiently normal fashion. But he, and a few others, had taken to them easily, readily utilizing their potential as the long-sought key to a machine as extension of ponies own puny form.

How odd, he thought, that he should have such bizarre talents. He, of all ponies, had fit with Fleet's hopes...

And from there his drunken thoughts slipped into the past like most drunken thoughts of terrified ponies. He lay back on the template and blew smoke at the distant cranes. He sipped steadily from the bottle. He feared. The hours passed.

Lovers in niches surrounding the perimeter of the Bay took advantage of the sexually integrated warrior class. They rocked and moaned and grasped one another. It was a united, if unorganized, effort by each and all to push the tension-tant resent far ahead into the horrors of the future. After a while they would rest from their labors, draining the last of the bottles and lighting the last of the cigarettes. And before thoughts turned inward each and all would notice the glow of the cigarette coal coming from the lone figure who lay on the center template strut in the middle of the vastness of Drop Bay One. They would wonder what the hell it was he was doing there.

Snowflake, alone and unaware of their curiosity, wondered the very same thing.

Drop was just under four hours away when Snowflake rested the crewline. The turnout was sparse this morning. Not surprising considering the night before. He watched several ponies back out as the line advanced toward the food. As the smell grew stronger, their faces grew greener until at last they couldn't take it anymore. A broad-shouldered filly wearing a warrior patch and red eyes got so far as to actually have a plate of the heaping whatever placed in front of her before she vomited loudly onto the floor.

She looked around, wildly embarrassed, to apologize at all others in the line, but found only Snowflake left. Puzzled, she nodded to him and rushed out the door with her wing clamped firmly over her lips. Snowflake looked around and laughed. He was indeed alone in the chow line. The young filly had actually emptied the place out.

He wasn't surprised, but neither was he affected. He stewed over the crumbling clean-up crew and, to the cooks' amazement, ordered them to heap whatever it was onto his tray.

"I'm hungry," was the only response he would make to their pale faces.

Actually, he was just lucky. Two hours before the rest of the ship had reveille, be had been rudely awakened by the chief of Drop Bay One who had wanted to know just what the hell he was doing sleeping on the center strut. That early start had allowed him to miss the long lines at Medical for a little something for his stomach.

After be found an empty table a fellow from his squad bay, whose name might have been Dusk, appeared beside him. "Snowflake , right?" the stallion asked.

Snowflake nodded without interrupting his eating. That foamy something the meditechs had given him made him ravenous.

"Well, I'd be careful with all that food if I were you," said Dusk as be sat down. "It's supposed to be real bad for you if you're wounded. Like in the stomach, you know?"

Snowflake nodded that he knew and continued eating. He didn't want to say that he thought the idea of not eating before this battle was incredibly naive. As far as stomach wounds were concerned... Anything that could tear through battle armor would leave not a wound but a tunnel.

It wasn't that he didn't appreciate doctors. He did. He was impressed by their knowledge, dutifully in awe of their equipment. But doctors didn't make drops. Doctors didn't have to fight for days at a time without eating anything but what they could carry. Come to think of it, neither did he. Or at least he hadn't until today.

He looked over at Dusk's nervous face and at the hunched shoulders of the hoofful of others who sat about him in the mess.

None of us have had to fight yet, he thought. But maybe that part was not so bad. What was bad was that they weren't ready.

Something in his face must have made Dusk uneasy. He mumbled something and left the table. Snowflake realized he had never said a word to the guy. He had a sudden urge to get up and catch him, to ask him if his name really was Dusk after all...

But he didn't. He sat where he was and finished the plate and lit a cigarette and watched the silken plumes rise and twist.

A few minutes later his thoughts rose to him out of the daze of smoke and fear. "We're not ready. We're not even close." Then he started, looking around to see if anypony was nearby. To see if anypony else had heard him. For he wasn't at all sure that he hadn't said it out loud.

Snowflake stared at the black scout suit with the unsurprised attitude of one whose emotional spectrum has retreated to just two colors: frustration and disgust. Fear at this point could no longer be thought of as an emotion. It had more the consistency of gravity.

He sat down on the bench across from the now-gaping maintenance chamber that served as long-term lockers. When sealed, an elaborate testing system would commence. An amazingly varied series of forces-from hydro-thermal to magnetically directed laser probing-would come into play. The testing would continue on a more or less constant basis until the chamber was reopened. Most of it was to find a leak. Which was silly for a scout suit, thought Snowflake. After all, plassteel doesn't leak. You could vaporize it, warp it, tear it even (if sufficient forces were applied just right). But it didn't leak. And scout suit outer armor was 100 percent plassteel.

He snorted. Scout suits. A damn scout?

"Shit," he said out loud. No one could hear him inside his cubicle, so no one could appreciate his display of disgust.

From his saddle bag he took a wad of crumpled writ he had taped there before drop inspection. They still held inspection, even though everypony already knew it was suicide to carry personal belongings inside the perfect fit of battle armor. They had shown that one to the troops over and over, always dwelling on the scenes of the surgical teams trying to remove religious medals crammed halfway through some idiot's rib cage. Of course one could wear jewelry on one's nose and such where there was some freedom of movement. And many did. But Snowflakes's interest in a nose ring was the same as it was for a religious medal-none at all.

He produced five cigarettes from the writ and lit one and stared at the suit and thought about why he wasn't surprised he had drawn scout duty.

Training again, he decided, the source of many first clues. He recalled their excitement at his scores, at his times. They had made him run the tight course twice more before they were convinced.

"Sure got the reflexes for this... uh,Snowflake, is it?" He had nodded. He should have caught on then. And later, when that same officer had called him into his own quarters and talked to him about "natural leadership abilities." Cigarettes were offered him. And something cool to drink for the first time in many days. He had accepted both and refused everything else.

He was furious with himself for not having been more careful.

The officer kept trying, kept spouting garbage, but Snowflake wouldn't budge. He knew it wasn't for him. Though capable of giving orders and probably having them obeyed, he was, of late, an uninspiring pony. Not at all what a leader, a real leader, should be.

He sighed and puffed on the cigarette. Looking around he had seen several such stallions and fillies, he supposed. But though admiring of their energy, he had little faith in the potential effectiveness. With such a bunch, that kind of leader could likely get chewed in a battle long before decoration time.

And Snowflake wanted to at least try to live. No blaze of glory. No blaze at all.

So of course they had gone and made him a lousy scout anyway!

He sighed, resting his face in his hoofs.

His world shrank toward him. He panicked, as he always had before. Sweat poured down his face. His lips trembled. It was completely, terribly, dark.

He keyed the master switch with a dry tongue. Air, heat, light... life began again. For a moment he paused as he always did and simply breathed and stared. It was a foolish fear, he knew. But it was very real to him. Each time he felt the suit close about him, felt the armor seal itself about him, he also felt a deep inner terror that no amount of training could prevent. For with the simple fright of claustrophobia came something else: he feared the suit.

It was a machine. It did not care. It would work if told to. It would not if not. It was no serpent. It would not crush him. It did not crave his flesh.

But still he feared. And later simply breathed and stared and felt relief. This time, as at other times, the suit had chosen to obey him.

He examined the holos on both sides of the faceplate. They seemed far away, deep and wide in their illusion of three dimensions. Thousands of bits of information could be displayed on them. Maps of terrain. Known enemy locations. Distances and probable routes to Retrieval points. Many, many facts. They were blank now.

He worked the keys on the inside of his foreleg and the holos showed him where he was: Starship Luna, Deck AA12, Warrior Section, Armor Vault One. He ran through the Function series. He matte exaggerated gestures with his legs and head. Everything worked.

He made Connection and watched the gauge swell as he and his suit drew from the very heart of the ship the thing that seemed in awesome abundance everywhere: Power. Power throughout the ship for thousands and thousands of different uses. And more Power in the combined form of Fleet. And even more from home. Power. Everywhere, sheer Power. Force. Might.

He thought of the tiny sparks that moved and thought and eased more sparks together to form and ease even more sparks, the strength of which would ease together still more, timer, sparks which, in proper conjunction, made Power. The tiny sparks would then ease beside Power. And together, with awesome brute force and intricate silken precision, wonders could be created. Wonders like the Starship Luna, whose marvelous stature and beauty could serve as man's ultimate loving gesture to the darkness which surrounded him-We are good. We are hopeful. We have built this. See her, the Starship Luna, the jewel of our being.

But jewels did not long shine when Power was still about. Not when any fool could reach it. Felix, deep within the jewel already, could rend and tear her. He could grind her workings to nibble, blight her glowing entrails. He could disembowel this jewel of Ponies. For he had Power.

Inside these layers of plassteel armor even a fool such as he, a dumb broken sonuvabitch with no future and a past he refused, could stomp the idol to clay.

Such power had thrilled him at first. Later, he was appalled. Now... now, he didn't care. Snowflake read a dial. It was time. He left.

The Briefing Room mirror created what was termed "Positive Psychological Feedback." It allowed a simple soldier to see what a monster he was in battle armor. Some psyches had felt it would have a negative effect on some warriors, particularly the females. It was a stupid notion, immediately overruled. All killers like to look the part.

They did. Two meters tall, they weighed six times their norm. Their armored powered legs could crush steel, stone, bone. Armored legs could propel the fastest around 100 kilometers per standard hour. The suit protected them as well, automatically and instantly distributing most concussions in an evenly expanding pattern from the point of impact to the entire surface of the armor. Standard warrior armor carried blaze-rifles on each shoulder. Even plassteel would boil before it. The blaze-bombs clipped on racks on their backs provided not only an explosion, but spherical delivery of blazerfire in a single heartbeat.

And there were other gifts. They were, for example, complete. They carried with them all air, food, etc. Deepest ocean or vacuum. They needed no help from home for five standard days. Three, with a major battle a day. Only one, if always fighting.

The mirror helped. They were monsters, they could see that.

Snowflake took the blaze-rifle, the blazer, from the slot in the long row which had a number to match the one pulsing inside his helmet. He checked it for charge, attached it to his back. Scout suits, much smaller than standard issue, had no blazer capacity built in. Scouts carried rifles used by open-air troops for thirty years. Also, they had fewer blaze-bombs-only nine as opposed to the two dozen the warriors carried. Scouts must be fleet, must be able to realize their much greater potential for speed and agility. And, where warrior suits bore different colors for rank and group, all scouts were black. Flat black. Dull, non-shiny, space black.

Death black, Snowflake thought as he watched the five other scouts collect and attach their rifles. Then be followed them out of the armory alcove into the Briefing Room proper. The room held twenty-one warriors, group leaders representing two thousand line warriors and one assault commander. Each bore the broad colored stripings of rank and its attendant responsibility. As scouts had no effective rank, they likewise possessed no real niche in the line of command-Warrant Officers technically, but with no command in standard situations. Many enlisted personnel requested scout duty. They sought the partial privileges of officer rank and the chance for rapid advancement much-heralded by the grapevine. In truth, no scout advanced more than a step or two. Instead, they died. Even Snowflakes's paranoid fatalism had not considered this. Though he had heard, as bad all, that the scouts' survival rate was considerably less than line warriors'.

"A lousy scout," he mumbled disgustedly.

The Briefing Officer's helmeted head glanced up at the muffled sound. He surveyed the ranks. There was no way to tell who had spoken. All were on Proximity Band. He returned to his briefing.

Paying attention at last, Snowflake was surprised to hear that the man had not yet begun to discuss details of the assault. Instead, it was a pep talk. Snowflake realized this alarmed him.

It wasn't the pep talk itself which made him uneasy. It wasn't the Briefing Officer. It was something in that positive, no-nonsense tone of his. Something...

He doesn't believe, thought Snowflake suddenly. He doesn't believe in the plan. He doesn't believe in us. But he'll be damned if he'll let us carry that. So he's trying to make us believe instead of him.

Snowflake admired the officer for his concern and for his effort. He also hated him for failing. The pep talk mercifully ended.

All right," snarled the Briefing Officer in his best Drillmaster manner, "it's time to get down to it."

On the wall behind him a large screen warped into light with a holo display of the target area. Snowflake noted the code on the tower corner of the image and keyed it onto his own holos. The map showed a peninsula some forty kilometers long jutting due north into a vast expanse of ocean. The peninsula terminated in a formation the shape of a large, three-clawed, paw splayed flat over the surface of the water. A choice spot, thought Snowflake , on Equestria or Golden or any other pony planet. Loads of sunshine and beach. The ocean frontage would supply fresh sea air to sweep leisurely across sculptured terraces where happy vacationers would collapse contentedly after along day of water sports and laughter. A choice spot.

Except it wasn't Equestria and it wasn't Golden. It wasn't a pony place at all.

It was A-9.

And the water wasn't water. It was poison. And the fresh sea air would kill an unsuited pony in a second. And the sunlight did little pony good in a place where the average temperature was -20 at high noon. And the breezes were a near-constant hurricane that drove the noxious atmosphere deep into the sandy soil, carving vast furrows into the land, forging riverbeds overnight, toppling mountainous formations in handfuls of years, and giving this nightmare place its name: Goros.

Only the enemy thrived here. Still another reason, thought Snowflake, not to go.

"B-team," began the Briefing Officer, "will drop here on the western edge. They will drive northward in a clockwise manner to rendezvous with C-team, who will drive due south to meet them from the northernmost section, the tip.

"The B-team, C-team, rendezvous will take place here, four kilometers due north of the Knuckel." A tiny arrow appeared on the holo showing first the rendezvous point, then the Knuckle itself, a steep crag one thousand meters high in the exact center of the splayed hand.

"We expect only moderate resistance during this stage of the assault. The bulk of the enemy is concentrated around the Knuckle. Nevertheless, there is more here to cover on the western edge than the eastern. And for that reason both B and C teams will carry nine full groups and two scouts apiece."

A flood of hatred rose within Snowflake as the A-team insignia appeared on his ID screen. Simple arithmetic left only two groups for A-team. Only two hundred warriors for half the area.

"Now before you members of A-team get too excited-" too late in Snowflake's case--"we want you to know that there has been absolutely no evidence of enemy activity on the eastern side. None at all. Your job will be mostly sightseeing.

"So... you will be split up to cover the eastern half. One group, with scout, will drop here, on the far eastern edge. The other group, with scout, will drop here, ten kilometers south. The two groups will converge here, due east of the Knuckle, to await rendezvous with Assault Main, driving northward up the peninsula.

"Don't worry about the lack of back-up. As I have already stated, there is nothing there. You should spend a boring few hours simply waiting."

It was then, for Snowflake, it began. The hatred for the Briefing Officer had expanded to include his superiors, the Captain of the ship, the commanders of Fleet itself, and finally the thick-headed idiot ponies who had undertaken something as asinine as interplanetary war in the first place. The hatred blazed brightly, then vanished. From somewhere inside came then a shock of all-consuming rage, the nova-like intensity of which startled even him. But then the rage was gone, too. It seemed to shoot away like a comet or a torch dropped flickering and shrinking into a bottomless well. What replaced the loathing and fury was something very different, something cold and distant and... only impersonally attentive. It was an odd being which rose from Snowflake and through him. It was, in fact, a remarkable creature. It was a wartime creature and a surviving creature. A killing creature.

From a distant place, the frightened Snowflake scanned himself. He recognized little. Still, what he saw was a comfort of sorts and he concentrated himself toward it, toward the coldness, the callous machine-like... The engine, he thought. It's not me. it's my Engine. It will work when I cannot. It will examine and determine and choose and, at last, act. It will do all this while I cower inside.

With furious concentration, that which kept him Snowflake gave itself as fuel to that which could keep him alive.

There was more to the briefing. More figures of time and distance, more numbers of ponies and probabilities of enemy. The Engine heard and made note.Snowflake, watching himself, fueling himself, psyching himself, felt disgust at all that was about to happen and all who had caused it. And once more felt the distance between himself and those about him. Again, as he briefly scanned their armored forms filling the chamber, he thought: They're all going to die.

It stood two meters tall and weighed, on average, four times more than a pony being-damn near as much as a suited warrior. It had six limbs, two for walking upright and erect, four for work. The upper limbs, call them arms, were incredibly massive, hanging down one and a half meters from two titanic shoulder joints. The arms ended in huge, hulking, two-pronged claws twice the size of an armored pony hoof. The middle arms were smaller, approximately pony size. Curved, two-pronged pincers here for delicate work. The legs were the size of tree trunks, ending with semicircular pads splayed flat to the ground. There were two knarled knobs on each. Each limb, upper, middle, and lower, had three joints.

The body had three sections: shoulder, abdomen, pelvis. Each was covered with coarse, hairlike fibers spaced widely apart

The head, half again larger than a warrior's helmet, bore a dull globular eye on each side. The mandible-mouth opened in three vertical sections of varying width and shape. Closed, it resembled nothing so much as a smooth-sheened, toothless, pony skull. The skin was not skin at all, but bone. Ectoskeleton. The muscles were inside. It was awesomely powerful.

It was the Enemy.

It was a changeling.

Author's Note

I'm changing the way changelings look in this story to fit my needs.