Pilot's Story

Chapter 24: One Night Stand: Part 1

"Giant Killer, This is Interloper Two; Interloper flight is in the A.O. Airspace is clear, proceeding on run."

Eva blinked, her eyes stung from the sweat running down her brow, the stick vibrated in her hand. The twin engines droned out their one note song as she cruised through the sky, high above the desert 'What am I doing here again?'

"Three you're drifting."

It was happening again? Her head turned slowly, like she was sunk in cold molasses. The helmet was heavy on her head. She looked up to the mirror, he was still back there. He was alive.

"Snap-on, you see that?" She said into her radio. I didn't... what's going on?'

"Missile plume? SAM launches! Gypsy, break left!"

Her hand clenched around the throttle and threw it forward to the locks as she stood the aircraft on its left wing and hauled back on the stick. The strike eagle slammed her back in the seat as it tore through the sky, screaming as it ejected flares, lighting up the sky like the Forth of July as it fought for speed and distance. The missile couldn't track all of them, and if they were very lucky the missile would track one of the countermeasures instead.

But that's not how it happened this time. She knew the inevitable, and she couldn't stop it this time, not any more than she could change the past.

~~

She sucked in a greedy lungful of air as her eyes snapped open. The scent of burning oil and gasoline assaulted her senses, the smoke burnt her eyes. She forced herself off the hard cobblestone and blinked away the sting in her eyes, took in the wreckage around her and the sound of weapons-fire in the distance.

Some of it wasn't distant enough, as evidenced by her crash. "Ugh... Head wounds are never fun," she muttered as she felt the knot growing on her head with the side of her fetlock. Her rifle hung heavily on her back.

"Miss, are you alright? We've got to get out of here!" A feminine voice called over to her.

Her ears swiveled and she turned to face the speaker, a soot stained mare, she couldn't see what color she was under all the marring. There must have been more than one fire, or maybe she was out longer than she thought and it spread. "H-hey! Uh..." she stumbled as the thoughts slowly clicked into place in her head, the reason why she'd come in the first place. "Hey, is the library still standing?"

The other pony blinked and looked off towards the direction of the library, the sound of fighting and the smell of fire thick on the air. "It.. It was, a few minutes ago. Listen you can't go there, it's not safe, we've got to get out of here before they get us!"

Eva pushed herself onto her hooves and shook her head, a slight smirk creeping onto her face as she looked off in the direction of the conflict, "No, I'm afraid not. I came here with a clear goal in mind. No running for this old mare, I'm here to fight." Her wings spread out with a slight shudder and gave a few experimental flaps.

She started towards the library and hesitated, turned back to face the other mare, "Head west to sweet apple acres, tell anyone you find to go with you, you'll find help there."

~~

Rainbow Dash gritted her teeth against the pain as the wind whipped through her fur and feathers, exhaustion and blood-loss added up to a struggle to stay in the air. Adrenaline kept her awake, obligation and duty gave her strength. Her friends would need to know, would need to be warned.

She hadn't saved them. She hadn't been strong enough, hadn't been fast enough... and she'd surrendered to dark impulses. Rage, hate, revenge. And it... hadn't felt bad. It gave her a measure of satisfaction to end the abominations that had taken those ponies, each swing, each kick, had relieved the anger she felt. 'Is that what I should become?' she thought as she descended below the clouds, seeing the dim glow of the town below. 'I should be better than revenge... but maybe that's part of loyalty.'

She let out a sigh of relief when she saw the dim glow separate out into individual pinpricks, the light of street lamps and windows. Thatched rooftops and cobblestone streets, soon she'd be back, and she could rest--

"Those aren't street lights... that's--oh no!" she yelled as her heart rate jumped, adrenaline flowed through her bruised and battered body and her wings gave a mighty pump as she accelerated towards the town. She grit her teeth harder, not from the pain that suddenly seemed less important, but in a growing rage building deep inside of her. Her fears about becoming something dark had evaporated in the instant that she saw what was happening to ponyville.

She might not have enough left in her for another rainboom, but that didn't mean that she was out of the fight... not when her friends needed her.

~~

"Damnit..." Eva muttered under her breath as she popped the quick release and dropped the shattered scope into the dirt, then raised the rifle back to her shoulder and lined up the irons, rapidly firing off three shots into one of the spheroid drones. Sparks and fire exited from the 'wounds' as it shuddered and dropped to the ground. And then she advanced.

Progress had been slow going, as she had to stop to fire due to her quadrupedal locomotion, yet progress was still being made. 'Being able to fly would make this a lot easier... but right now that would just make me an easier target.'

And the library was close, two hundred, two hundred fifty yards ahead. A few branches were broken, scorch marks on the trunk, small fires here and there, but it was still standing. She pushed forward, gritting her teeth against the wounds she'd taken over the last few days, some having healed more than she would have thought possible, while others were still fresh, the ache and sting still fresh with each movement of her skin.

Her ears snapped forward automatically, tracking a new unfamiliar sound up ahead. A hash metallic squeal and a deep low frequency thrumming sound trickled into her ears, her eyes scanned the road looking for the source. "What the he--" she started as the sound of a diesel engine interrupted her thoughts. Her ears rotated again, behind her, and she turned to see a truck turning a corner and approaching, trailing smoke and the dust kicked up from the cobblestone road.

The engine dropped in pitch as the driver slowed the truck to a stop, the brakes engaging with a soft hiss as the suspension settled. The engine finally wound down into silence as the driver killed the fuel and the lights.

Eva grinned and waved a hoof at the driver as he came into focus through the windshield, the glare from the lights having died down, "Hey, took you long enough! Thought you got lost!"

The door clicked open and the truck rocked to the side as the driver climbed down out of the cab, leaving the door conspicuously open as he hit the stone road, "Ah well, you know how it is. Took a left at Memphis instead of a right, had to go the long way around."

"Yeah, I know how that is," she answered, keeping the joke going. She paused, and her voice turned serious, "still, good of you to make it. Resistance has been light so far, not sure if the attackers are somewhere else, or if we're too late. Found a few survivors and sent them out to meet your brother. We need to get to the guns and mount a defense or... a counter offensive. If we can't push them back, we'll have to evacuate who we can and try to hold out for reinforcements or..." she paused, her ears pivoting over towards the truck again as the sound of hooves on steel reached her.

Trixie hopped down out of the cab with a sharp click of her hooves hitting the cobblestone, she hauled a bag out of the truck behind her and dropped it on her back, "or, we all can run or die fighting? Is that what you were going to say?"

Eva nodded her head, "That's about the size of it, yeah. Unless you've got a better idea; I'm all ears."

The cornflower unicorn raised her head and stepped to the front of the crowd, in front of the truck and facing deeper into the town, "I had some time to think, about what I've done, and what you've said about it, and about me... and about all the ponies here. Maybe, Trixie, maybe I am not the best most powerful unicorn in Equestria... but you know what?" she paused as she shuffled the bag off her back and onto the ground, the sound of metal clanking against metal came through the thick canvas as her magenta magic lit up and unzipped it.

A Dozen or so metal fence posts rolled out onto the cobblestone, each one plucked up in her magical grasp as they formed an array above her, suspended in her magical field "I can always learn a new trick."

Eva whistled, impressed with the mare's control and her courage. It might not be much, but if her time with and as a pony had taught her anything, it was that every little bit, no matter how inconsequential, could do more than you'd imagine.

"Walkers!" Tommy yelled out, "up ahead, look like infantry or something, nothing like the probes before!"

The two ponies turned, Eva raised her rifle and fired the first shot, catching what appeared to be a man-sized walked in center mass, stunning it and shooting sparks everywhere but not stopping it cold. "Not good, find the vitals!" she yelled as she readied another shot.

Trixie's eyes lit up as her makeshift spears started to let fly, each tracking an independent target and punching through their chest armor, some had even been nailed to the structures behind them, however temporarily.

Eva fired another shot into the next shot into the center of a pinned robots neck and was rewarded with the automaton shaking and twitching violently before falling still. She sighed as she scanned for other targets to fire on, "Looks like zombie rules, aim for the head and neck, that seems to work!"

From the corner of her eye she saw Trixie's head drop, her fur standing on end as her eyes turned white, her horn lighting up with another intense burst of magic. She looked down at the row of robots that had been impaled and watched with wide eyes as the fence posts exploded into thousands of fragments, explosively shredding their targets from the inside.

And then she watched Trixie fall, and saw Tommy running to her side. Eva fired a few more rounds into the broken machines and turned to the truck, "Get her out of the road, let's push for the library and load up, we... well we won't be fine but we'll be better off when we get there. I don't like this new development at all, either way.

Author's Note

Couldn't deal with leaving it hanging for any longer, more soon, i hope.