Can't Take the Stars From Us

Near the edge of the murky forest which was the Everfree, a number of shadowy bipedal forms sat next to the rotten, woodland trees—some even laid on the dry but vegetation-filled floor. Watching, waiting.

“This sucks,” a voice whispered from within the foliage. As he said so, the ghostly figure angled himself from his prone position away from his suppressed marksman rifle and toward his intended recipient, causing him to scratch his ceramic plates against the forest floor and evidently garnering more dirt and grime onto his black suit.

“Sure does,” another voice nonchalantly replied back. However, he did not bother to return the gesture and instead continued to watch over the town through the lenses of his binoculars.

The forest heat had become a nuisance after they had landed and hidden themselves within the Everfree. For Mel more so, as he had donned a combination of a simple black light ballistic vest over his olive wooly pull-on sweater. But other than that, he was rather comfortable wearing dull brown combats which covered his lower body and a rather questionably bright red baseball cap.

People would normally question why he still wore the thing after many months, that is, under normal circumstances. The position these people were in, however, was not a normal one—not after all the sacrifices they had been through.

“Sure does, sir,” he repeated, emphasizing the words sir as best he could. After he said it, though, he could see his superior shudder. He did not know what that meant, but at least he knew it was something. It was not like he wanted to become a nuisance. All he wanted was to bring up small talk with his higher-up, get to know him better and hopefully cure humanity's most well-known mental illness: boredom.

“Any word from the Chief?” he continued.

In response, Mel sighed. “Classy’s complaining about Tux ruining his op.” He continued to observe the little hamlet as he said this.

“Admiral Tux?”

“Yeah, he’s planetside.”

“He’s here?” he whispered loudly this time, frankly surprised by the turn of events. “Wasn’t he supposed to stay on board his ship and assist us with the mission?”

“He, uh...” he paused for a moment before placing down his binoculars and turning toward him “...practically went rogue and jumped off from orbit, abandoning our initial plan and jeopardizing the entire operation.”

“And we didn’t?” Bastion said with a raised eyebrow.

“No Bastion, we haven’t gone rogue—” Mel bit his tongue, stopping himself from continuing. “Yet” is what he would have kept on saying, doubt crawling up the back of his mind. But he knew this wasn’t the time nor the place to say those things—think about those things.

“Us and everyone else who hasn’t wandered off to God-knows-where know what’s at stake. That especially goes for you, Bastion.” Mel couldn’t help but beam back at him.

Bastion returned the smile with his own. “Thanks, glad to be on board with you, sir.” He then returned to his former position and continued to scan the town. “What are we going to do with the ones who went AWOL?”

“I—” He hesitated to answer the question. All could say was, “... We’ll think of something.”

Angry, a few would have said. Outright furious, most would have agreed. But that wasn’t enough to describe the pent-up fury Classy had gathered within him. No, only the words he was uttering at the moment would have given at least a broad description of how he was feeling right now.

“That fucker took my job!” Classy shouted loud enough to be heard throughout Canterlot Castle. “It was supposed to be our mission, not his!”

Most of those in attendance, who were either standing around in the hall or just sitting on the floor, agreed with a simple nod or grunts of acknowledgement. Only some of them stayed silent. The Royal Guards who stood post near them wisely avoided interfering, choosing instead to take great interest in empty, crimson carpeted hall in front of them. Classy was totally oblivious to this and everything around him.

“Not only that, he just walked right in and turned into Mister Exposition, showing off like the dumbfuck he is.” Classy began to pace between the hall he was in, the sound of thunderous metal feet pounding against the hard marble floor echoing throughout the castle. “By the end of the whole thing, he’s already kissing those hairy Minotaur asses, agreeing to give them fucking military secrets! Right down to our goddamn tech! What a fucking shittard!”

“Sir?” one of his men asked as Classy passed him.

Classy suddenly made a complete one-eighty and went straight up to the man. “What?!” he shouted into the poor sap’s face.

“You forgot to mute your helmet’s speaker, sir.”

Classy gave out a long, exasperated sigh. “It seems so, Petty Officer.” And so, he continued to pace back and forth between the hall. At least, that was what he meant to do until the petty officer spoke up again.

“Uh, Chief, I’m a sergeant.”

When Classy did another one-eighty spin in cumbersome power armor, making it his second whirl in less than a minute, he would have been considered for a ribbon in a ballerina competition. “Come by that again?”

“I’m a sergeant, a noncommissioned officer of the fleet’s Security Forces.” He paused. “Well, that’s what they told me, anyways.” That last statement was more of a comment to himself than to Classy.

Before Classy could respond, one of his men rebutted, “Security Forces? Don’t you mean Security Teams?”

“I know what I said,” retorted the Sergeant.

“Fuck, can someone show where the STs are at then?” said another as he stood up. “I think I'm in the wrong unit.”

Then a new voice was added into the fray. “Oh sit down, you! There’s no need for that.” She pulled him down. “Clearly the sergeant knows we’re SF. Right, Sarge?”

“How in the hell do you know he’s a sergeant anyways?!” someone else spoke up before the sergeant could reply.

And this when on and on, people asserting themselves left to right. Some of them stayed away from the squabble, however, not wanting to add more fuel into the fire. But eventually things went out of hand when even the previously stoic, unmoving Royal Guards were somehow sucked into the argument.

However, unbeknownst to them, Classy stood there, watching the growing uneasiness of the ponies as the arguments continued. He watched as civilians and guards alike became anxious and nervous, most of them backing off further and taking a lower stance, eyes flicking about in a fashion similar to cornered prey. This ultimately disrupted the evacuation, which was unacceptable. If Classy only had to have one job, then dammit, he was going to do it. Finally, Classy turned his external speaker back on and bellowed, “Stop fucking arguing, you fucking idiots!”

That seemed to have gotten the attention of both the Security Forces and the Security Teams, so he continued, “ We’re here to do a job, not argue like fucking children! Get! Them! On! The! SHUTTLES!”

Classy turned to the stunned crowd of humans and ponies, and threw his arms up in the air.

“FUCK!”

Crowds. It was always the crowds that set Martian on edge. Before he had been military, he might not have minded crowds so much, but now?

It was not merely that it represented a gathered mass of individuals, or the fact that the more parts there were to a crowd, the less easily controlled it was and the more unruly it could easily become. Nor was it that if there was someone who meant harm, that crowds could make a serviceable cover, either.

It was all of those things and more, but Martian had a job to do. Ever since the Summit of Haycate at Canterlot (which he suspected would be the last political function in Canterlot ever), the evacuations of Haycate had begun in proper. He had been deployed to Ponyville, the first stop and the comparatively least-populated town in Equestria to be evacuated.

Now, if only the Guards would make the civilians move faster.

“Move along, now.”

Droning on like that the past few hours, the Royal Guardsponies assigned to Martian’s detachment of lightly armed and armored security personnel almost mimicked the monotonous roar of the engines as the shuttles arrived empty and departed full. Martian looked about the crowd of uneasy ponies with what little possessions they had on their backs. They all looked to the guards, and to the humans, including Martian. Their eyes begged and asked, yet he hadn’t any answer for any of their unspoken questions.

“Keep going.”

The whole affair was sombre, and the slow pace of the crowds into lines and onto the shuttles felt almost unreal to Martian. He knew more than many here about the importance of expediency: every second wasted was another human ship that could be lost, more time for the hunger of the Tal’zarians to near Haycate and the populations that the Human Flotilla sought ever to protect.

“Move along, now.”

Rechecking his weapon, Martian sought to break the monotony of the operation. He tapped the side of his armored helmet to double-check that his comms were still working and got nothing but clear airwaves. He almost knew what to make of that. On one hand, it could mean that all was proceeding according to plan and according to schedule. On another, it could mean that more of the Human Flotilla was lost than was acceptable and that the Tal’zarians were bearing down on this defenseless world. Shaking off this sense of dread, Martian rescanned the crowd for any sign of trouble. But as usual, the ponies were all too scared of the humans and the Royal Guard to try anything defiant.

“Keep moving. Don’t hold up the crowd.”

Martian adjusted the kevlar plates on his shoulders and back. How much longer was this going to take? Surely, there must have been something to break up the maddening stillness and the almost funeral-like procession. Martian didn’t like that such an air of uneasiness existed. From ponies to humans to cattle, a crowd set on edge could turn dangerous on the flip of a coin.

The town of Griffonia was buzzing with defiant energy. As Classy strode from his gunship, crimson armour glinting in the wan light of the sun, beam-katana swinging from his belt, he was struck full force by the roar of the crowd. Through his black face mask, he glowered at all those gathered. For the most part, they glowered back despite their inability to see his face, but those at the front of the line shrank back from the howling madness that his mask seemed to exude even through the armour. His darkened visual sensors seemed to give off blackness and emptiness, and they were terrifying to behold, precisely what Classy was going for.

“Status report,” Classy said.

“Well, sir,” his sergeant replied, “they are not only refusing to get on the evac ships, but they also came out with pikes, and are threatening to use force against us.”

Classy guffawed. When the sergeant failed to respond similarly, Classy turned to look at him, his recessed optical sensors seeming to swallow the light.

“Fucking…” Classy groaned. “You serious?”

The sergeant nodded.

He opened a bead to Tux.

“Tux, this is Shogun. The evacuation of the griffons has hit a snag. The fucking civilians are refusing to board the evac ships.”

There was a brief pause before Tux responded, “Admiral Tux to Security Chief Classy. You are hereby authorized to escalate area control. Get those civvies in the ships.”

“You’re not going to fucking bitch about it if I use my brand of intimidation tactics? Because I’m going to use my brand of intimidation tactics.”

There was another pause.

“Fine, you’re authorized. Minimize casualties. Tux out.”

“That’s what I fucking thought,” Classy muttered, resolving to bring up the ridiculousness of placing a support admiral in charge of ground operations.

Classy muted his comm and turned back to his sergeant.

“Fuck it,” Classy growled as he racked the action of his carbine. “We’ll have to show these fuckheads that if they can’t get through us, they’ll never get through the Tal. And there’s no way I’m going to lose to a bunch of pricks with pikes today. Let’s show them our boomsticks.”

The meaning of Classy’s statement was not lost on the rest of his squad. As one, they all racked the actions on their own weapons, the synchronized movements creating a miasma of clacking noises from both the weapons and the Japanese-style armour that the squad donned. The griffons quieted down and gazed at the humans, small inklings of fear showing in their faces. In quick, disciplined movements, the squad took up firing positions in front of the crowd, power armour buzzing with each movement, hardened plates clattering together.

The crowd roared again.

“We don’t care what you do, we won’t let our children go with monsters!”

“We will never submit to slavers!”

“You don’t have the right to do this!”

A squad of griffons in plate armour took up positions in front of the crowd, pikes lowered towards Classy and his comrades, attempting to look intimidating. In front of the towering, armoured humans, they were anything but. They still had that glint of defiance in their eyes, despite staring into what to them must have seemed like an empty, malevolent void. Classy was almost impressed.

“Go, now,” a golden armoured griffon, clearly an officer tried, rather unconvincingly, to order the humans to do.

Classy raised his carbine and emptied a clip into the air. The rest of his squad did the same. The thunderous roar of the weapons nearly deafened the crowd and sent them sprawling in panic to the ground, foreclaws clamped firmly over their tiny avian ears. Classy and his squad ejected their magazines, slamming home fresh ones. They racked the actions back and forward again, chambering fresh rounds. Classy tapped the side of his kabuto, amplifying his voice tenfold.

“Alright, listen up, and listen good! This fucking magnificent beauty in my hands here has the capability to not only fucking kill every single one of you assholes in under half a minute, but also at a distance which would render your own fucking piece of shit weapons worthless.” He raised his rifle and fired another burst into the air. “You fuckers hear me?! Worthless!”

After a few shrieks and yelps from the griffons, Classy continued. “And guess what? We’ve just wasted precious fucking ammunition for these fine motherfucking weapons of destruction just to calm you chucklefucks down. Why? Because we found shit for brains on this fucking rock with value, worthy even.”

Pausing, Classy then strapped his weapon onto his back, turned his back to them and started to walk back to the shuttle. “Worthy to wield such fucking glorious technology in your grasp and using them against the fucking forces of evil. Be it as fucking soldiers or pilots, workers or scientists, it doesn’t fucking matter as long as you’re fucking standing.”

The security personnel moved aside for Classy as he walked on through. “Personally, I don’t give two fucking shits about any of you, but it seems you’ve got the entire fucking fleet’s attention somehow. Congrats, you goddamn cunts.”

Classy then stopped beside the shuttle and pounded on its metallic door with a balled fist. On cue, the large doors opened with a hiss and revealed itself for all to see.

“So what is going to be, fucktards? Do any of you fucks have what it fucking takes to be fucking worthy, you imbecilic shitfaces?” Classy said in a rather mocking tone. And quickly as that, it turned into something more sinister. “Or would you rather die here on this goddamn fucking shit-stain of a planet?”

The crowd whimpered. Classy sighed.

“Fucking...”

The machine strained, hydraulics working as it pulled up the glowing crystal topiary. The Tree had been firmly anchored into the earth, through methods almost supernatural, as if it had been placed there, machined into place. As it was, it took a total of fifteen minutes for the machine to fully uproot the Artifact.  As the tree left the ground, a singular, lonesome howl sounded, echoing slightly as it entered the cavern. The security personnel tensed, preparing for the worst as they emerged from the cave, the excavator loitering behind them.

The forest was conscious, they had been told, of the Tree’s presence. It hated the Tree of Harmony. The Tree enslaved it, bound it, and rendered it inert. The Tree forced acquiescence on the forest, pressured it to go against nature itself. Now that the Tree was vulnerable, the forest would waste no time in attempting to devour it. Mel craned his neck, scanning the dense treeline for any sign of movement. The brush ahead rustled.

“Safeties off,” Mel whispered into his comms as he leveled his weapon, racking back the action.

The movement sensor displayed on his helmet was now declaring multiple contacts, pinging violently in the stillness. Crimson movement icons, representing targets not flagged with IFF signatures, flooded the localized radar. Damn, what he would give for the APC at this moment. From what he had heard from the locals with regards to the forest, it was not a thing to be trifled with. Violent and deadly, Mel suspected that only Australia could compare in terms of sheer horror to the stories he had heard out of the Everfree. It was too bad, in hindsight, that the excavator took up all the space on the VTOL.

The rustling stopped, though the radar was still picking up slight blurs of movement.

Ping. Ping. Ping. The sensor beeped incessantly. There was a brief pause. This was it; it was coming. Surely, this was the wildlife tensing before the charge. The underbrush suddenly exploded into a violent cacophony of roaring and the thunderous sound of a stampede. Through the greyish lenses of his helmet, Mel saw a veritable wall of monstrous hybrids barrelling towards his squad. They were grotesque in their bastardization of Terran animals, and Mel was once again struck by the miraculous nature of this world’s flora and fauna.

Leading the horde was a vanguard of manticores, stingers held at the ready. Mel did not want to be on the receiving end of that cruel-looking barb, which glistened in the sun with venom. Considering the deathworld-esque nature of this forest, it was safe to say that at best, the venom would incapacitate him. The stinger looked as though it could penetrate his armour. He wanted those monsters nowhere near himself or the squad.

“Open fire!” Mel called into the comm.

Next to him, Bastion depressed the trigger on his shotgun. A spray of pellets peppered the first of the manticores, penetrating its shoulders and blowing an eye out of its socket in a crimson spray of blood and ichor. The creature growled in inarticulate pain and quickly lost momentum, the sudden blinding agony that afflicted it toppling it to the ground. It tried to struggle to its feet; a quick round through the head from Mel’s assault rifle put an end to that. Its brains splattered violently against the green grass, tinting the earth a sickening greyish-pink.

As one, the squad opened fire against the creatures of the forest. Another manticore fell as a round took it through the throat, ricocheting against the spine and deflecting out the back of the skull in a burst of ivory bone and reddish gristle. A wall of creatures behind the manticores toppled as the withering fire found its mark. With how closely packed the targets were, the squad didn’t even need to aim.

A group of wolves that appeared to be constructed of timber tried to attack on the flanks, displaying malignant intelligence that Mel couldn’t believe he was witnessing in animals.

“Right flank, damn it! On the right!” he cried as he waved with his free hand.

Mel turned and sprayed a burst of automatic fire into the creatures. The rifle bucked against his shoulder, but the Timberwolves seemed to ignore the bullets impacting them. The weapon clicked dry. Discarding the magazine, Mel slammed a fresh one home. This time, he focused in on one of the Timberwolves’ joints, firing bursts into the articulation between the wood that seemed to form its body. This had greater effect. The wood shattered, and the timberwolf clattered helplessly to the ground, stripped of its legs. Soon, it was also stripped of its life, sap-like blood draining from its body. The greenish light that glowed hellishly where its eyes should have been faded. Taking note of this, the squad pounded accurate automatic fire into the creatures, destroying them with shocking rapidity.

Mel saw no way out of the enclosure except through the forest life. But these creatures were too thick in number for the excavator to safely pass through. He reached to his belt, grabbing a grenade. His armour, detecting the weapon that he held in his hand, calculated the trajectory of the throw based on the angle of his arm. Mel pulled the pin. Allowing the explosive to cook off briefly, he lobbed it into the heart of the swarm.

The grenade exploded, sending body parts flying in all directions. Shrapnel fragments punctured arteries, split limbs and penetrated organs. The outskirts of the swarm had been protected from the worst of the blast by the bodies of their compatriots, but sprayed by the organic matter of their fellows and shocked by the crumping thud of the detonation, their animal instincts took over, and they fled into the forest. Mel sighed, discharging his magazine and checking to see if it had any rounds left. The magazine had less than half of its nominal thirty rounds left. Mel replaced the magazine.

He prepared to signal the excavator forward, only for the forest to explode once more into activity. Next to him, Bastion groaned as he loaded shells into his shotgun.

He then muttered quietly, “Wave two...”

Ponyville was a den of chattering activity, even as evacuation procedures continued. Armed humans guarded a series of shuttles that had been lined up neatly in the town square. Every now and then, a shuttle’s engines would roar as it lifted up in a cloud of smoke and dust, seemingly by magic to the native inhabitants, and launched off into the air, to disappear into the clouds and past the mesosphere. Clad in camouflage fatigues and hardened combat vests, the security personnel were easily distinguishable as Martian’s band of misfits. Rowdy, independent, and somewhat rude outside of an official status, they were nevertheless dependable, loyal, and above all, efficient.

Martian himself did not much like the fleet’s policy of only “taking the useful ones and their families”. He found it cold, murderous, and ultimately, detestable, even though he understood the rationale. Martian would have argued the point against the admirals if he had thought there was any point. He saw none. The Admirals were very clear that only those capable of helping the fleet function, or those who would maintain native culture, would be brought aboard. To debate the point with them would only serve to delay the Armada.

Thus, it became Martian’s unsavory duty to reject families that had no members of value to the fleet. Knowing that he was effectively consigning them to death, there was an almost riotous mood in Ponyville, which had become a central hub for the evacuation. Next to him,  Princess Twilight Sparkle attempted to placate the crowd.

“Please,” she pleaded, “Don’t do this! Give the humans a chance. They’re doing everything they can.”

“That’s easy for you to say, Princess!” came the shouted reply, alongside some hurled debris. “You’re going with them. Not here to die with us.”

Hearing this, the crowd roared and attempted to force its way into the shuttles. The Guard tensed, bracing their spears against the ground. Martian growled to himself. He understood the sentiment. He even agreed with it. But it made his job no easier, and he had no desire to deal with any more of the crowd’s anger. By force of habit, he ran his finger over the scar tissue that lay over his right eyebrow. A Neq had struck a glancing blow to his face during a Tal boarding operation. Martian had barely escaped with his life by emptying a sub-machinegun clip into the crab demon’s weak under-carapace. The wound was still deep enough to deprive the scarred area of feeling. It also left that eyebrow capable of only limited movement.

“Alright,” he shouted, voice tinged slightly with ebonics, “This is getting ridiculous. Stand down.”

The crowd was briefly brought to stillness by the sight of the black human towering over them, a stubby malformed box with cylinders and rectangles coming off of it clutched in his hands. While he seemed shorter than many others, that made no a speck of difference to a pony. He was still taller than them by far. The momentary trepidation was short-lived, however, as the crowd once again began to respond with anger.

“What right have you to play God with our lives?” A muscle-bound construction worker cried from the back of the mob.

“Listen,” Martian snapped, “We don’t have much of a choice in doing this. The fleet needs those that can help it. I’m gonna be honest with you, if we don’t do this, many more will die. More than we are sacrificing now.”

“You liars!” one of them screamed. “You’re not here to save our lives at all! You’re here to take the most important parts of our society for yourselves!”

Martian sighed and rubbed his forehead.

The crowd rushed forward again, only to be stunned to silence by inconceivably loud banging noises. The loud cracking sounds were interspersed with a throaty roaring sound that Martian identified as a light machine gun. Heavy thudding added to the cacophony, marking the usage of a shotgun. A massive blast and the sound of animal screams sounded, before silence fell again. Martian’s mind immediately went to the task team in the Everfree.

“Son of a bitch,” he snapped, opening a comm feed to Mel. “War King, do you hear me?”

Martian still wasn’t quite used to callsign usage, but he was beginning to get the gist of it. In fact, he preferred his callsign to his own name. It gave him a sense of security. While not as advanced or as complex as official Earth military terminology, flotilla callsigns were impressive enough for the natives, and official-sounding enough for the more hardcore members of the flotilla. Nevertheless, the security forces still hadn’t broken away from the informality that punctuated their regular speech.

“I hear you, Martian. Sorry, but this isn’t the best time to talk—break left!”

There was a pause before more loud cracks came from the outside.

“War King?”

“The Everfree just came to life, and we’re being assaulted by hundreds of these bastards in waves. We’re holding, though.”

“Do you need vehicle support?”

“That would be—I said keep your eyes on the flanks, damn you!”

Martian winced as the static filled sound of heavy automatic gunfire overwhelmed the speaker. Playing around the sounds of weaponry were the agonized screams of the Everfree Forest. The gathered natives blanched at the horrifying racket emanating from the handheld comm’s speakers. Martian heard a magazine being ejected, a new one being rammed in, a gun action being pulled back.

Mel’s voice crackled through again. “Yes, Martian, vehicle support would be great right about now.”

“Okay, we’re sending armour to you. It’ll be there in...” Martian paused. “Five minutes, tops. G’luck, bro.”

The comm feed snapped shut with a hiss.

Gesturing to his squad, Martian signalled them to deploy the APC. With a roar, a titanic metal beast that the equines had previously assumed to be an evac vehicle roared into life. It was blocky, with a slanted front. Beneath it, catepillar tracks sank into the earth. Atop it, an angular block of metal with a long, thin cylinder rotated back and forth. The metal beast leapt forward through the streets, gouging long marks into the ground as it made for the Everfree.

“At least take the children!” cried one of the mob. “Surely you have space for them!”

Martian sighed.

To say that the clearing was a mess would be an understatement. Vegetation had been sliced up and ground under a fusillade of bullets. Chewed up and decimated bodies were littered left and right, covering the ground in an almost solid layer of viscera and meat. Puddles of gore soaked into the earth, giving the earth the appearance of a gash, an ugly wound left by a brutal weapon. The sweet smell of death was overwhelming; offal, the scent of burst internal organs wafted on the breeze. The bodies formed miniature hills that the enemy now had to crawl over to get at the security personnel. Still they came.

Mel had switched his rifle to semi-automatic in an attempt to preserve ammunition. As the horde continued, he was certain that the entire forest was dead set on killing him and his men. One round. Bang. A manticore crashed to the earth, head split open by the bullet, spilling a whole brain onto the grass. A second round. Bang. A cockatrice was blown open, its tail twitching despite the utter non-existence of a body. While the squad had initially laughed at the appearance of the bastard spawn that took the form of a chicken and serpent, they had quickly learned that it was wise to kill it first. One of the squad members had been stoned, and even now, his helmeted, statued form loomed in the entrance of the cavern. Mel pulled the trigger again. The gun clicked dry.

“I’m out!” Mel said. “How’s the ammo coming along?”

“Not good! A majority of us have run dry, sir!” Bastion responded.

Suddenly, and to the shock of everyone there, a manticore had manage to punch its way through the lead storm and came barrelling at Mel. Next to him, one of the squad members twisted to aim at the animal. Too late. It was already just about on top of Mel. Behind the lenses of his helmet, Mel’s eyes widened with horror.

“Wha-”

The manticore plowed into Mel, knocking the air from his lungs and sending jolts of pain in his ribs. Mel cried in agony, only for the sound to choke in his throat as the pain threatened to overwhelm him. Some distant, analytical portion of his mind determined that he had some bruised ribs at the very least. The armor had stopped the impact from doing more damage, but did it hurt!

Mel gasped, scrabbling frantically for the knife on his belt. The manticore struck him with its paw, claws extended, simultaneously going for the throat with its jaws. Mel’s helmet was specially hardened against penetrative damage, but the force behind the blow sent his head snapping to the side, bringing stars to his vision and tears to his eyes. Part of the helmet tore away, exposing his face to assault. Mel felt hot pain across the side of his head as the claws raked his temple. Frantically, he punched upwards, even as the squad member who had tried to take down this very animal came up behind it and forced his combat knife through the back of the animal’s head. The animal fell. Wincing in agony, Mel rolled away from it. The pain left him almost unable to breathe.

“Minor injury detected,” the armour exclaimed in monotone, “administering adrenaline.”

Mel felt a jab in his chest, followed by the pain receding to tolerable levels. He slowly got up, still wincing slightly, and blinded in his right eye from the blood dribbling down his face. The manticore was still struggling with the knife embedded in the back of its head, although it was growing weaker. Nevertheless, Mel struck it with his fist. The animal’s head jerked back, but it continued trying to get up and kill. Mel pinned it with his knee and struck it again. The manticore yowled as its skull caved in slightly, driving into the brain matter below. Mel struck again. This time, the manticore’s head burst into a spray of organic matter, which thoroughly coated the ivory armour that Mel wore. Looking down, he saw that his entire torso was covered in crimson matter, and that the joints of armour were now encased with quick-drying internal fluids.

Mel could taste copper in his mouth, and an unidentifiable piece of meat. He spat it out to find that it was in fact a bit of brain matter. He doubled over and vomited, the action of regurgitation driving a spike of pain through his ribs.

“Command!” he heard Bastion through the comm. “This is Bastion, Warking is down! We’re being overrun. Could we get some support here?”

“Bloopbloopbloopbloop,” the comm announced, signalling an incoming fire support mission.

“Tide of Progress hears you, Bastion,” Hood’s calm voice responded. “We’ll have a flyby overhead in five, ten minutes.”

“We can’t hold for five to ten minutes, sir,” Bastion responded evenly.

“It’s the best I can do, Tide of Progress out.”

The comm feed snapped shut.

“Goddammit!” Bastion hissed while clearing his weapon of a malfunction.

Mel sank to his knees, dazed by pain.

Bastion turned to him. “We’ll get you out of here, sir.”

Bastion then patted his tactical rigging, then shouted into the comm, “Ammo count!”

Then came the chorus of voices.

“Dry!”

“I’m all out!”

“Diddly-squat, sir!”

The horde was drawing closer at a tremendous rate, a wall of teeth, claws, and poison. The ground shook, and the air seemed to tremble with the breath of the beasts and roars of the monsters. Drool ran in rivulets from open mouths that anticipated the kill. Madness seemed to glaze the eyes of the wildlife, as if some sort of malign intelligence was driving them collectively to kill.

The security personnel drew combat knives, preparing for the worst.

Bastion dragged Mel back into the cave, away from the front lines. A creature that had only barely managed to get behind the lines, and had had part of its face blown away suddenly reared up, claws going for Bastion throat. It was a mismatched creature with an elephantine head and the body of a lion. Its eye, the one that remained, was empty, as if it was already dead. Dropping Mel, Bastion quickly evaded the clumsy swiping of the dying beast before clubbing it with the butt of his shotgun. The animal recoiled, and made for another swipe. This time, Bastion had his knife out. He stabbed once, driving the blade into the monster’s remaining eye. Wrenching hard, he drove the blade into the cavity to the hilt. The creature cried in agony, a strange trumpeting roar. Blinded, it thrashed about with its trunk and paws briefly before falling in a pool of gore and lying still. Bastion, with some difficulty, pulled the blade out of the being’s socket in a welter of gore and with a sickening squelching noise.

There was an omnipresent, deep, droning roar in the air. It was steadily growing louder, gradually forming into the throaty roar of an armoured vehicle’s engine. The drone was interspersed with a cracking thud as a tree was suddenly plowed over. An APC burst through the canopy at speed, crushing undergrowth and grinding bodies. Crimson intestines greased the threads of the vehicle as its turret swiveled to face the wave of hostiles closing on the beleaguered squad.

“Surprise, motherfuckers,” a voice growled over the comm.

The APC immediately opened up with its turret-mounted 30mm cannon. The fire was steady, pulsing and hard-hitting. Each three-round burst of death tore open groups of tightly packed hostiles, smearing their cruor across the ground in swathes of crimson. Shrapnel opened up hostiles to the air, spilling internal organs across the ground in twisted streamers of red. The vehicle ground forward, grinding the earth into a crimson gouge.

The Everfree’s wildlife turned and fled into the forest.

The security forces cheered tiredly as the Bumerang APC trundled towards them. Bastion opened his comm to call off the airstrike. High-fives were passed about, with a few groans of exhaustion. For roughly fifteen minutes, the squad had held out, but it had been an eternity for them. They could finally relax.  A tree crashed nearby. Suddenly, everyone was alert again.

The APC’s turret swiveled to face the forest. A massive movement signature appeared on Bastion’s sensor. The ground trembled. Bastion put down his transmitter, staring intently into the forest. He flinched as an entire tree catapulted out of the forest canopy towards his squad. Three heads burst out of the forest, all reptilian, all roaring with the same fervent rage that had issued from the mouths of all the previous forest creatures.

“Oh shit...” Bastion groaned.

The hydra was advancing at a disconcertingly quick rate, when one considered its size. The APC opened up with its guns, spraying the massive reptile with withering fire. The beast growled in pain as each shot pinged from its armour, while another blew a chunk off the side of its central neck. The monster roared in pain as blood spilled from the wound, which took the form of an ugly, ragged tear. It charged forward with unbelievable speed, the Bumerang began to reverse, but to no avail as it was thrown bodily across the clearing into a tree by a flick of the monster’s head.

“Oh shit!” Bastion cried. “Fall back!”

The squad required no further prompting, falling back in short order.

Bastion snapped open the comm. “Tide of Progress, this is Bastion.”

“I hear you. Go ahead, Bastion.”

“We need an ETA on that fire support.”

There was a brief pause.

“The drones will be overhead in half a minute.” Hood’s voice hardened slightly. “What’s going on?”

“Position’s badly compromised,” Bastion choked out quickly, panicking slightly. “We have three people down and a massive hostile on our asses right now.”

“Define massive, Bastion.”

“It’s taller than the tree line, has three heads and is purple. It destroyed Martian’s APC. You can’t miss it.”

As if to prove the point, all three of the heads exploded through the cave entrance, snarling and snapping, coming just short of the Tree. Bastion and his squad congregated behind the excavator, out of the hydra’s sight. It went for the tree again, jamming part of its torso into the cave to give it better reach.

“Tide of Progress has the flight overhead, we see the target. Laying waste to the goyim.” Hood announced flatly.

The comm snapped shut.

The three heads withdrew and surged forward once again. This time, the Tree seemed well within reach.

Not far distant, Ponyville was almost in full-scale panic. Having heard the thunderous cacophony in the distance die down, they had initially assumed that the fighting was over. The flighting of a tree and appearance of a hydra’s three heads over the forest canopy, as well as the gory damage inflicted to its neck dissuaded them of that notion. The crash of metal and glass only further hammered home the fact that things were not going well for the human security forces.

“The horror! The horror!” The flower sisters galloped about, screaming.

The rest of the population milled about aimlessly, breaking the sorting of individuals. The foals, so recently loaded onto the shuttles, were now running about, crying in fear. In the midst of it all, Martian stood with his palm firmly affixed to his forehead. His other hand felt for his gun, as he tried to choose between firing into the crowd or into the air.

A deep thundering roar broke that thought from his mind. Looking up, he saw the distant silver shapes of aerospace drones. With squared sensor modules flanked by frontal weapon mounts, the drones had an aspect reminiscent of a manta. A large pair of forward swept wings flanked a pair of massive engines mounted to an almost oval shaped main body. The air seemed to vibrate with the force of the thrust.

The crowd stopped.

“Mister Martian?” a foal asked. “What is that sound?”

“The sound of victory, my friend,” he responded.

The first drone broke off into a steep dive towards an unseen enemy. A burst of fire sprayed from a pair of weapons mounted under the visual sensor. There was a thudding noise as the hydra’s back was chewed up by fifty-millimeter rounds, and the horrendously powerful shells penetrated straight to the other side, pulping organs. It roared in agony and pulled its heads from the cave. A mere millisecond later, the thunderous tearing sound of the twin rotary cannons firing nearly deafened those watching. The drone flew off to target some distant concentration of hostiles.

The cannons roared again.

Another pair of drones dove down. There was a brief, almost invisible flicker of energy, and a massive sonic blast that caused the earth to tremble. Seemingly spontaneously, the forest was set ablaze, and a number of trees fell into a new sinkhole that had been gouged into the earth by intense energetic fire. The Hydra screamed again as a head was carved clean off by the intense light-based weapons. The fighters pitched upwards and away into the distance.

The final drone had a bank of square pods affixed beneath its wings. As it dove in for the kill, a salvo of rockets pounded the earth, causing it to tremble. In Ponyville, a few kilometers distant, the tremors knocked china off their selves.. The hydra was blown apart. The sheer force of the detonations sent crimson, meaty chunks flying into the air, trailing massive droplets of gore. The drones roared off, quickly becoming mere specks on the horizon, and once again, silence reigned supreme.

The comm snapped open. “We have removed the hydra. Tide of Progress out.”

Martian turned and went back to organizing the crowd and loading the shuttles with foals.

Mel regained some semblance of consciousness as he felt himself being lifted up on a hover stretcher. He looked around, hazily seeing the aftermath of the battle through the sweat and blood in his eyes. Charred remains, as well as drying patches of blood, spotted the hell-blasted environment. Nothing survived. Flames licked at the trees’ trunks and branches. Ash floated about, seemingly looking for a place to deposit itself. The immolated remains of the hydra lay scattered in every direction: a limb here, a part of a head there. The ground in its entirety took on a charred and bloody colour. Ivory bone poked out of the earth where they had been ejected from bodies by the sheer force of weapons fire. It gave the impression that the world was some kind of dying eldritch beast.

With a turn of his head, Mel saw the ruins of the APC. With muted horror, he saw that bodies were being pulled out of it. They were shattered, broken things. The APC’s superstructure had a slight dent in it, but the impact had thrown the crew about. Mel saw a body with its head lolling about, skull completely lifted from its spine, functionally decapitated. There was a very palpable sense of nausea that struck him.

The looming, insectoid blackness of an evac ship engulfed him. With a hiss, the hatch lowered, showing a bay full of young foals. Martian was standing by the entrance, preparing to provide aid. The med personnel waved him away with brief words of thanks and briefer words of dismissal. The foals, for their part, seemed utterly horrified by the carnage that lay before them. Some cried. Mel was distantly struck by the stupidity in diverting an evac shuttle full of children as a medivac. He felt something poke his arm, and his senses dulled perceptible. He looked across to see a foal staring intently at him.

His mind, beginning to be clouded by synthesized hydromorphone, held on to a singular thought as he once again diverted his gaze to the bodies of his fallen comrades:

'That tree had better been worth it.'