Warriors

Chapters

WARRIORS
“This is why we can’t have nice things.”
“It’s a Spartan’s life for us.”
“I am not humping anything!”
“Keep your head down, this is gonna suck!”
“Just like Christmas!”
“Sorry, I’m still getting the hang of the landings.”

WARRIORS

By PseudoFiction

She was falling.

Plummeting through the frightening darkness that enveloped her whole world. The gnarly, knotty branches of the Everfree trees reached in like twisted fingers trying to catch her as she spiralled out of control in her endless free fall.

Trying to catch her? Or trying to flay her?

One of them whacked her in the face as she plummeted past, sending blinding pain searing across Twilight Sparkle’s face. She screamed while whirling around, kicking her legs as if trying to grasp the very air rushing around her. Her heart was beating faster than she thought it could and neither her wings nor her magic would obey her commands. The young alicorn princess was tugging at the muscles in her shoulder-blades, willing her wings to spread and somehow slow her descent. But they just remained glued to her sides. Her magic was just as non-conforming – it wouldn’t even splutter, not even an aura surrounding her faithful horn as she fell.

So Princess Twilight Sparkle fell, through a tunnel of whiplash branches snapping against her body before she gave the ground a fond greeting. It replied with a merry ‘thud!’

Nothing moved. There was no sound.

Moments turned to minutes, and minutes seemingly turned to hours as she just lay there, eyes clamped shut with her chest rising and falling erratically with every ragged, winded breath. One of her front legs twitched, and she slowly cracked her eyelids. Through the woozy blur of shapes dancing around in her field of vision, she expected to be laying in a ‘Twilight Sparkle shaped’ crater, much like she’d found the Spartan who’d fallen out of the sky some time ago.

No such luck. The sight would have been mildly amusing. What she saw however wasn’t the slightest bit comforting.

Lifting her head, Twilight looked around the Everfree Forest stretching in all directions around her. Darkness swallowed the woods like an inky fog that hid everything behind the first line of trees surrounding the alicorn. Angling her gaze up she saw a star-less sky stretch above the clearing she’d fallen into, a tunnel of knotted branches partially blocking out the magnificent pale eye of the moon.

Finding her hooves, she slowly propped herself up on her front legs, sitting back on one thigh. She tested her limbs and joints slowly, finding little soreness from the fall. She hadn’t broken anything, some good news at least. But that was about the extent of her good fortune.

Straightening up on all fours, the lavender pony turned on the spot, inspecting every tree surrounding her. As she was trying to figure out where she was it felt like the woods were closing in on her. She felt claustrophobic, like the leaf-less branches were sucking the air right out of her lungs. Paranoia set in as she remembered the horrible plunder-weed infestation earlier in the year. It was like the foliage was creeping in to snatch up her limbs and hold her down.

So it was only natural that when Twilight caught movement in the corner of her eye she whipped around to face it with a brave face… but she stumbled backwards a step out of fear.

It materialised out of the darkness, as if gathering shadows to give itself a towering, sinister figure. Long powerful limbs with glowing red eyes. And flaring venomously in one hand a ball of sickly green energy. The darkness shrouding the figure seemed to recede, peeling back like the cocoon of a caterpillar. Only the form underneath was no butterfly.

It was death.

The towering Covenant warrior snarled, the fierce alien mandibles exposing rows of jagged tusks with lines of drool dribbling past the scant lips. With an easy motion the device in the carnivore’s hand raised, and the ball of hot energy was held level with Twilight Sparkle’s terrified expression.

Intense heat blasted her face as white light filled her eyes. And the cold touch of death on her shoulder caused her to scream…

Nearly leaping up and out of her cocoon of warm blankets, Twilight Sparkle nearly shattered the glass in the chandelier with the pitch of her cries. Tearing open her eyelids with the realisation that the heat of the weapon was gone, Twilight’s bloodshot and tear-brimmed eyes darted from side to side to look around her room.

It took her a few moments to realise she wasn’t in the Everfree Forest. That she had been in bed the whole time; surrounded by walls built to stave off sieges, protected by royal guardsponies trained to stave off danger and under a blanket stuffed to stave off the winter chill.

Across the room in the hearth crackled a small magical fire Twilight had lit the previous night, but still frost clung to the tower window caked on the outside with powdery white snow. Beyond the glass panes she could make out the farthest Equestria mountains, hazy thanks to the moisture misting the window, but definitely dusted with snow. The sky was grey and gloomy with only sporadic patches of blue sky shining through the canopy of clouds.

It was winter. Decemare to be exact, only a week until Hearth’s Warming Eve.

Seven more days until the family gatherings, the friendly dinners, the warm greetings and general festivities.

But for the first time in Twilight Sparkle’s life, she wasn’t looking forward to it. It was unlike her not to get excited about spending time with her friends and family. But she hadn’t been like herself since a few months ago. A few months ago everything had changed.

On that faithful night in the Everfree Forest she had leaned ponykind were not alone in the universe. That there were treasure troves of knowledge and learning out there – a galaxy full of wonders to sate desires both subtle and gross. But it wasn’t for the timid. As for every wondrous privilege, there was an equally terrifying danger.

Twilight sighed as she dropped back into her bed. “What’s wrong with me?” she groaned tiredly rubbing one eye with her hoof.

She thought back on that night in the Everfree Forest. That night she’d met the Spartan headhunters; foulmouthed and aggressive warrior Marko and his charming and empathetic friend Ishmir, aliens from another world. They had been sincere enough in their mission to get home. But unfortunately their landing in Equestria had brought something from their life into Twilight’s.

The Covenant. A race of violent aliens supposedly systematically wiping out Marko and Ishmir’s people. And had it not been for the headhunters taking care of her, they would have wiped out Princess Twilight Sparkle and probably the rest of Equestria.

The young princess had been having nightmares about it for months. Every time the same one. She’d fall into the Everfree Forest and then be attacked by a Covenant elite, the same kind Marko and Ishmir had saved her from several months ago. Was she suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder?

Or was it something else?

It was that feeling of the Everfree Forest closing in on her as if it wanted to choke the life out of her. It was a familiar feeling, much like the terror she’d felt when standing face to face with an elite training a weapon on her face. But the events were unrelated. Her fear of the Everfree Forest closing around her was from something that had happened before she met Marko and Ishmir. Back when she was in the forest alone with Spike and she’d been overwhelmed by plunder-weed. It had been a sense of helplessness as she had nearly been cocooned alive and Celestia only knows what after.

That had been the day they had sacrificed the Elements of Harmony to save Equestria. The most powerful force of magic that had protected Equestria since the dawn of the land was gone. Twilight had nothing with which to protect Equestria, besides her sharp wits.

And that would hardly do against the murderous terrors that filled the galaxy.

Twilight had been helpless against less than a dozen aliens. So what happened if the Covenant returned with an army? What happened if Twilight Sparkle was unable to contact the Spartan headhunters who had saved her life the first time?

Twilight shivered just thinking about it. If aliens as advanced and violent as Marko and Ishmir were barely holding their own against the Covenant; Equestria’s odds of surviving an encounter were not promising.

But something good had come of the alien ordeal. Twilight’s interest in the galaxy around them had been piqued. She’d bought a brand new telescope – one much more powerful than her first. She’d clocked many hours in the Canterlot Royal Observatory as well, scouring the stars and planets for life beyond their little Horsehead System.

Perhaps she was looking for signs of life. Perhaps she was making sure there wasn’t a Covenant fleet coming to conquer Equestria. Or perhaps she was just hoping to catch a glimpse of her Spartan friends out there protecting worlds from monsters.

Speaking of protection from monsters, Marko and Ishmir weren’t around to protect her anymore. But she had something to stave off the fear at least. Reaching into the pillows piled up against the headboard, Twilight produced a small stuffed toy.

It wasn’t a fluffy teddy-bear, a stuffed doggy or anything like her raggedy old Smarty-Pants doll. It was a small bipedal thing with a pair of stumpy, dangly arms and legs. The body was a fairly basic shape, rounded and plump almost like that of a baby dragon. The head was equally simple, featureless with just a pair of buttons sewn on to the bobble-head visor to represent a pair of eyes, and a simple embroidered smile where the mouth would usually go.

The doll was the spitting caricature of Marko. If the Spartan knew he’d be livid!

The stuffed image of the Spartan headhunter was the only one she had to comfort her in Canterlot. Spike hadn’t come with her, staying in Ponyville to take care of the library while the young princess had business in Equestria’s capitol. Twilight Sparkle’s friends had stayed behind in Ponyville too. They had their own lives to lead. Rarity had a big order of gowns to fill for the annual Hearth’s Warming Eve Ball in Manehattan. Applejack had plenty of chores on the farm all through winter. Rainbow Dash was filling in for an injured Wonderbolt for the Cloudsdale air show counting down the week to the festivities. Pinkie Pie had plenty of parties to plan and bakery orders to fill. And as per usual Fluttershy was hard at work taking care of the Ponyville critters through the winter.

As a princess of Equestria, Twilight was just as busy as her friends. Although, her busy schedule as of late followed by the royal court hearing was her own doing.

Twilight’s eyes bugged as she realised the weak sun was piercing the frost clinging to the window.

It was morning. The hearing!

Realising she’d slept in, Twilight suddenly cared little for the chill of her room and the nightmare that had left her bathing in a pool of cold sweat. She threw herself from bed and sprinted into the bathroom. At one minute and thirty seconds it was the fastest she’d ever washed, brushing her teeth and splashing herself down with water at the same time. As soon as she was done she stumbled back into her palace lodgings, pulling off her leg-warmers at the same time as she levitated a brush through her hair.

Tossing the brush to the ground much like the rest of the sleeping attire, Twilight Sparkle heaved her saddle bags onto her back and ran out of the tower-room and into the snow.

The palace was waking up around her as her hooves crunched through the layers of snow encrusting the paths and bridges that ran along the exterior of Canterlot Castle. The royal guard were changing from night to day watch, thestral ponies squinting like hung-over stallions in the early rays of sunlight while stalking off to the barracks. Below in the streets of Canterlot Princess Sparkle spotted a few early risers. Bakers opening up their stores to let the sweet scent of the morning goods drift on the cold winter air. The cafes and coffee shops were opening too, despite the chill air outdoor tables were made under enchanted heat-generating canopies.

Slipping and sliding, Twilight dashed with a spray of snow kicked up in her wake and mist bellowing from her mouth like smoke spat from the chimney of a locomotive. She burst through the door at the end of the bridge connecting her guest-tower with the main castle and slid with wet hooves over the polished marble floor of the castle’s interior hallways.

With every heart burning full power, the inside of the castle was warm to nearly immediately melt the specks of snow dotting Twilight’s lavender coat and straight mane. She shook out the feathers of her wings awkwardly around her saddle bags as she ran with purpose. She only slowed to a canter when the royal conference chamber came into sight.

The polished wood doors were set on a crack, hearth-light spilling out into the dim hallway. Approaching slowly, she gently pushed open the door and peeked inside.

“Twilight. Good of you to join us.”

Twilight Sparkle scanned the room breathlessly, her wide eyes taking in the various faces positioned around a long conference table in the centre of the cavernous chamber. Royal servants were pouring cups of steaming tea and serving buttered scones for all those seated. There weren’t many. Three alicorn and two other ponies to be exact.

Her eyes finally fell upon the warm motherly figure who had greeted her. Princess Celestia, the ruler of Equestria matched only by her sister, Luna, was levitating a plate with a scone in front of her face. The golden glow around her half-munched breakfast faded as the tall porcelain white alicorn set down the dish. She was seated near the head of the table, her sister seated just opposite her, and her niece and ruler of the Crystal Kingdom just beside.

Beside Princess Cadence sat a colt, a simple unicorn diminutive in comparison to the three grand, slender alicorn seated beside him. Twilight Sparkle recognised him as Starry Sky, a consultant astro-physicist she’d requested attend the hearing.

Opposite him sat another unicorn, equally diminutive as Twilight sometimes felt in the presence of other alicorn, but familiar none the less – Celestia’s nephew Prince Blueblood looked tired and bored, fidgeting with a scone and a butter-knife.

“Come in, Twilight,” Celestia beckoned, noting the nervousness on Twilight Sparkle’s face. The young alicorn had called this hearing after all, it was a first for her. She had every right to be skittish.

Walking in, Twilight spotted her requested equipment had been set up already. A long blackboard set on a sturdy easel upon which she’d make her presentation.

Levitating the saddle bags off her back, Twilight Sparkle lumped all her research into a corner before opening up the flaps and producing a series of scrolls. An awkward silence persisted as she started pinning images and charts over the blackboard.

One in particular, a diagram of the solar system refused to be hung and flopped to the ground twice before Twilight managed to stick it in place properly. She could feel sweat prickling her spine and was pretty sure her face was red as a beet by the time she’d hung up all her material.

Turning to the waiting princes and princesses though, Twilight Sparkle was met by a few patient grins. One in particular coming from the ever pragmatic Princess Celestia. Twilight sometimes surprised herself with deep dark thoughts of how sickly sweet her old mentor had been, and still was! Thanks to fairly recent events Twilight was aware of the down-sides to a sweet existence.

Clearing her throat, she turned to the watching ponies. “Good morning, everypony. I’m sorry I’m late.” She rubbed a little bit of sleep she’d missed out of her eye, then indicated the star charts she’d hung up.

They were high quality images of the Horsehead System, their very own little slice of the universe. The third dot from the Horsehead sun was a pale blue and green dot, Equis hanging unfazed in space, orbited by a single moon and sharing the system with eight other planets seemingly randomly placed in orbit of the sun.

Just on the edge of the chart was an object. It was unlike anything else in the system, a bright flaring ball of purple dragging a glowing blue-ish tail in its wake, almost like an oddly coloured comet with an under-sized trail.

Reaching out with a hoof, Twilight tapped the object. “The past two days I have been tracking an object. I believe it entered the Horsehead System only a few hours before I detected it. All evidence seems to indicate it is heading straight for Equis. Here is an image of the night sky before I detected the anomaly.” – Twilight Sparkle indicated one of her telescope images of the night sky above Ponyville, then pointed to the next slide beside it – “And here is an image after. Note how this cluster of stars are blocked, indicating that this object is extremely large.”

There was indeed a large void of black where a certain cluster of stars should have been. Checking her audience, she noted they were all silent, watching expectantly for an explanation of her findings.

Taking a breath, Twilight began to say, “It is my professional opinion that this object is…” But she stopped, rubbing her neck sheepishly. She felt light-headed as her heart hammered her ribs nervously. She knew the explanation sounded ludicrous, and she’d had her fair share of odd looks from the royals since she’d told her story of the aliens in the Everfree Forest.

She had to admit, even to her, knowing what was out there in the big-bad-universe, the explanation was quite unbelievable. But what else could it be?

Twilight swallowed her fear and said, “It is a ship. An alien war ship of unimaginable, terrible power.”

The room was silent for a full second before a howl of laughter pierced the air. Prince Blueblood, clutching his sides with his forehooves slumped sideways out of his cushion and hit the ground. Twilight secretly hoped he’d hurt himself.

Celestia, Luna nor Cadence said anything and just glared at their nephew – either they didn’t want to add more interruptions to Twilight Sparkle’s presentation, or deep down inside they felt Blueblood was justified. Even they had turned up a nose to Twilight’s story of what had happened to her in the Everfree Forest.

Starry Sky sighed at the prince’s outburst and slowly shook his head. “And you are sure this is an object?” he asked Twilight.

Blueblood, having caught his breath, scoffed. “No she is not.”

“I am, actually!” Twilight Sparkle retorted almost offended. “I used the reflector dish we launched in the eighties to map our solar system in real time and saw this.” She tapped the unidentified object on the star chart again. “Note the shape. The tail. The trajectory. It has our planet in its sights and is heading straight for us.”

Starry Sky was once again on the ball with intelligent questions. “In its sights? You’re suggesting this is not a comet?” he inquired.

Twilight nodded. “I know what you’re all thinking. Everypony is still having trouble comprehending my story about the Spartan headhunters and the alien bodies found in the Everfree Forest. A few years ago, before I met the aliens from another world, even then I would have said this wasn’t a normal piece of space debris. Look at the trajectory. Look at the current position. This object should be caught in the gravity of Maires. But it is not. It remains on a perfect collision course with Equis. And it will collide in just twenty-four hours.”

Starry Sky considered Twilight’s notes and charts a few times before he sighed with an agreeable nod. “Meaning...”

“It’s correcting course.” Twilight finished for him in his pause to comprehend it all.

The following silence was broken nearly as immediately as it had begun.

“Puh-lease!” Blueblood moaned. “Auntie, must we really listen to this tripe? Twilight Sparkle has been stargazing ever since she’s been infatuated by her so-called ‘alien’ friend.”

“That is Princess Twilight Sparkle, Prince Blueblood. Do not let me correct you again,” Princess Celestia snapped harshly before her features softened and she considered the other regal mares seated at the table. “I see you all have some doubt about the findings of our newest member of the royal family. But should I remind you of the countless times Twilight Sparkle has warned us of danger and every time we chose to ignore her, putting Equestria in even more dire danger?”

There were sorrowful nods from Luna and Cadence, though Blueblood didn’t react with his straight-face that was the bane of poker games across Canterlot. Even Starry Sky gave a firm nod.

He declared, “I say Princess Twilight Sparkle’s visual evidence is enough to safely say something fishy is going on. Be it a simple comet or actual alien invaders, we can’t just sit here and wait for it to hit us. Something must be done.”

Cadence rose from her seat. “I agree.”

“As do I,” Celestia concurred as Luna too rose.

“Any action taken has our support.”

Celestia gave a satisfied nod and locked gazes with a relieved looking Twilight. “Then the decision is unanimous. We investigate the object.”

Blueblood coughed and spluttered, nearly falling out his seat again. “Unanimous? I agreed to no such action!”

“Because nopony asked you,” Princess Cadence sneered.

Blueblood gave an almighty ‘harumph!’ as Twilight Sparkle took the floor again. “Excellent. I’ve been working on a design. It’s only in the early stages, but with help from the unicorns in the Rogal Guard I can finish it in a few hours.”

Delving into her saddle bags again, Twilight produced a new roll of paper and magically unfurled it across the blackboard. It was a complicated schematic of some sort, annotated with a variety of spells and what looked like circuit diagrams.

“What is it?” Starry Sky asked looking over the schematic. On the whole it was a cylindrical object that stood on a fairly stable but simple tripod.

Everypony thought for a moment it may be some sort of space-faring recon satellite for exploring the incoming object. Unfortunately, when Twilight Sparkle clarified what it really was, everypony went a little pale.

“An explosive,” she explained. “If we can somehow teleport it aboard the alien vessel we could wipe it out in one strike.”

The court fell deathly silent. Looking proud of herself, Twilight Sparkle glanced around the chamber, only to feel her smile fade. Nopony else looked remotely impressed with her statement. Clearly they weren’t as excited about her developing a weapon of destruction as she was. Unfortunately, Twilight knew that they didn’t know of the dangers festering in the galaxy like she did. If only they’d met the headhunters, then maybe they would understand.

“It’s the only way,” she began to explain, hoping she could make them understand.

“No, Twilight Sparkle,” Celestia suddenly announced, and Twilight felt her expression sag, ears pinned down against the sides of her head. The princess’ tone had turned stern all of a sudden, reminding her of the time Celestia had reprimanded her for the Ponyville debacle with the want-it-need-it spell. “Luna and I will handle this personally. We will meet these visitors once they enter orbit and extend friendly greetings. Once a peaceful parlay has been established we will discern their intent.”

Twilight Sparkle gaped furiously, stepping forward to argue. “But, Cele-…”

“The decision has been made,” Celestia snapped sharply, and Twilight felt like she’d just been punched in the gut. “This hearing is now dismissed.”

Everypony bar Twilight Sparkle rose to their hooves and filed out of the room. Blueblood was the first to flounder out. Twilight looked expectantly to her sister-in-law, but to her disappointment Princess Cadence did not meet her gaze as the pink alicorn briskly trotted out with Luna.

Crestfallen, the young princess sighed. Turning on the spot she slowly began taking down her charts and notes and rolled them into her saddle bags.

“Princess Twilight Sparkle, a word please?”

Twilight’s ears perked up a little as she turned to realise Celestia had not left with the others.

“Yes, princess?”

But even as she asked, Princess Twilight Sparkle was sure she already knew what was concerning Princess Celestia. It was written all over the taller alicorn’s face. And usually wearing a kind expression, Celestia was notoriously difficult to read. Not this morning it seemed.

Her concern was as easy to spot as a sangheili going shopping for hats.

“Twilight, all this speak of ending life and destruction,” Celestia began, voicing her concerns with no deviation. “You were the same at the crisis meeting concerning the diamond dog raiders.”

“Princess, those diamond dogs were a danger to…”

“This isn’t you,” Princess Celestia interrupted rather ungracefully. But with the concern permeating her expression it was only understandable. “You haven’t been the same since we found you in the Everfree Forest. Something in you changed after you told us the story of these ‘headhunters’ you met. I’m worried, Twilight.”

Twilight didn’t say anything, hanging her head a little with what seemed like shame. Though she’d never tell Celestia, she wasn’t ashamed. Not for wanting to protect her home, her family and her friends. She was disappointed. Disappointed at Princess Celestia’s naivety. At her complete disregard for the severity of the situation.

Maintaining her motherly tone, Celestia said, “The royal psychologist has always been there for all of us in our times of need. Being a princess of Equestria is a stressful position. Sometimes even an alicorn needs somepony to talk to.”

“I don’t need a fucking psychologist,” Twilight murmured under her breath.

Looking on with some confusion as she tried to decipher what it was the young alicorn had said, Celestia dipped her head closer to Twilight’s. “What was that?”

Twilight didn’t have to fake a smile. Simply thinking of how Marko might explain the use and meaning of his coarse language to one like Princess Celestia was enough to cheer her up. “Nothing, princess. It’s nothing. I’m fine.”

Celestia refused to accept that answer. “Doctor Sound Pound is expecting you later this afternoon, Twilight. Do not let me hear you missed another appointment.”

“Yes, Princess Celestia.”

Twilight was still hanging her head, watching from the corner of her eye as the taller princess left. She hated herself for thinking it, but she was glad Celestia was leaving. Standing in her shadow Twilight couldn’t help feel upset. Not like a child feeling guilty over having upset a parent.

She felt like she’d discovered her lifelong hero was a massive plot-hole.

All her life she’d looked up to Princess Celestia. But now? Now that she had looked death in the face and seen what other horrors the universe could throw at ponies – horrors the likes of Nightmare Moon or Lord Tirek couldn’t hold a candle to.

That grand, all-powerful alicorn matriarch who could move suns with her magic was suddenly no comfort.

When the door fell shut leaving Twilight alone her expression lifted to her saddle bags. Sticking out from under one of the flaps was a little aerial connected to the tell-tale bulge of the headhunter radio within.

She had been trying to contact Marko and Ishmir for weeks on the radio they had given her. Unfortunately nothing had worked. She was running out of ideas and was all out of spells. There was one more thing she could try. It was dangerous.

But for the good of Equestria, she had to do it. She had to get help.

She was going to have to miss Sound Pound’s appointment…

“This is why we can’t have nice things.”

Marko-G301 was a headhunter incarnate. A trophy hunter. A predator.

It wasn’t just the armour he wore that gave it away – olive green semi-powered infiltrator MJOLNIR with sleek impact plating slotted over key sections of his body. His wrists and collar were adorned with a mixture of trophies, canine teeth he’d bashed from the faces of elites, finger-bones from the jackals who’d particularly annoyed him, shards of glassed hunter armour and shreds of grunt respirator piping tying the whole ensemble together.

It wasn’t even his eyes, orbs of pale blue that betrayed the teenager’s lethal instinct. It wasn’t even the tribal tattoos stretched over his clean shaven head.

It was the state of mind.

To be a Spartan-III commando of Earth’s UNSC was to be an emotionally detached killing machine. To be a ‘headhunter’ was to be a full-fledged angel of death. Headhunters were essentially armies of two, individuals plucked from the Spartan-III super soldier programme and shrouded in secret and mystery to be deployed on high risk missions far behind enemy lines. The average Spartan-III usually racked up at least twenty kills on a single suicide run.

The headhunter pairs were expected to rack up body counts in the thousands… each. Spartan-III commandos were by no means the most sane of the bunch, volunteering into service at age six and deployed into the field by early teens. But to be a headhunter and excel at it – orbital drop shock troopers eat your heart out – that took a whole fresh kind of bat-shit-insane.

Though just because he was an unstable murderous maniac didn’t mean he didn’t get to be artistic about it though. Where he sat, Marko kept the finger bone of his most recent kill clutched between an armoured thumb and index finger. Holding the bone high to catch the sunlight, he held the blade of his combat dagger like an artist carefully cradling a brush or stylus and ran the tip over the finger bone, leaving delicate little etchings.

The intricate scrimshaw decorated most of his trophies, either honouring those who had fallen before him or re-enforcing the fact he was better than them and fucking owned them.

Ishmir knew Marko well enough to put his money on the latter.

Headhunters operated in pairs, two being the magical number. And of course despite rank, which of them was the leader and which was the sidekick was always up for debate. Though whenever he was dragged into debate over which one of them was Robin and who was Batman, Ishmir-G314 would usually argue that because the UNSC issued him the fancy gear, he got to be Batman.

It made sense.

Ishmir was the more reserved of the two. He had the cool head, the moral compass that always pointed north and the brains that came up with the plans that prevented the duo from getting their faces fuck-started on every engagement with the Covenant.

His armour was distinctly different from Marko’s, and not just in aesthetics. Ishmir didn’t collect trophies or personalise his SPI MJOLNIR much. He wasn’t one to care about looks. Just function. With improved armour interfacing, sensors, stealth systems and highly advanced head’s up threat analysers, Ishmir’s MJOLNIR certainly had plenty of function.

Together they were the pinnacle of UNSC warfare; the best equipment, training, tenacity and conviction.

Lifting his eye from the scope of the sniper rifle, Ishmir averted his attention from the active warzone for just a split second. Enough time for him to look across the rooftop and spot Marko prettifying his armour with a new finger bone.

The Spartan-III was peering back through his scope before Marko even knew Ishmir had looked. In the next street the headhunter watched a cluster of marines pack up their gear. Word had come down from the FOB for the small expeditionary force to pack up shop and report to the carrier in orbit. Scenes of marines packing their bags onto the run down ‘warthog’ jeeps standing idle were happening all across the planet as the UNSC evacuated in lieu of a Covenant assault.

In the distance were the war-drums of plasma fire bombarding cities, turning villages, countryside and everything else in their wake to glass. Sporadic rattles of gunfire and whine of energy weapons indicated there were still firefights on ground level as human forces struggled to stave off the advance of alien shock troops.

The planet was already lost. The UNSC just refused to let the Covenant have this world and the resources so easy. It was the main reason Marko and Ishmir were planetside. Asset denial.

But first things first.

“You about done prettying yourself up?” Ishmir asked softly. Even in an active warzone, voices carried. And he didn’t want to give away their cosy little over-watch position. “Dirty-coy is almost packed up and ready to move.”

“Almost is not ready.” Tucking away his latest art-project, Marko reached over and hefted the large drum-fed machine gun he’d been lugging around with him. “Want me to give ‘em some incentive to move faster?”

Ishmir slowly shook his head and pinged the marines down the road on the radio. “Flintlock-one to dirty-coy, you ready to roll yet? My partner is getting… shooty.” For Spartan-III’s, fourteen was the new thirty. And shooty was the new antsy.

“Solid copy, flintlock. Thirtieth-company is almost ready. Give us five.”

Both Spartans grinned at the good news. “Music to my fuckin’ ears,” Marko sighed as he retrieved his helmet and crawled into position beside Ishmir.

Marko’s helmet was another lavish boast of his artistic flair – he’d scratched a face of death right into the domed gold tinted visor. Etched in a tarnished white as if it had been left by an explosive blast to the face was a distinct smiley-shape, big round eyes of gold with a long ear-to-ear smile pulled shut with gruesome looking cross-stich.

“The sooner we’re off this rooftop the better, Ish,” Marko admitted as he tucked his SAW under himself.

Ishmir didn’t move, prone behind his sniper rifle. “Don’t jinx it, Marko.”

“I mean, we’re all exposed up here.”

“Don’t jinx it.”

“You have a contingency plan in case a Covenant banshee shows up and spots us fucking about up here?”

Ishmir sighed. “Please stop trying to jinx it.”

Unfortunately it was far too late for that. Over the thrum of battle raging in the distance they could hear it. The distinct wail of a Covenant multi-purpose fighter’s engines. As per the craft’s namesake, it sounded exactly like the wail of a banshee; terror incarnate, airborne with twin-linked plasma cannons and a fuel-rod launcher ready to deal out indiscriminate death.

Rolling onto their sides the Spartans looked up and spotted the craft in an instant. It hung above them, bobbing slightly from side to side in a zig-zagging motion as it scanned the rooftops below. The fighter was a sleek model with a rounded nose and an elegantly back-swept tail. The ‘wings’ for lack of better term were stubby little appendages on either side of the smooth fuselage.

As if detecting the movement of the headhunters, the banshee pulled a tight turn that would have torn any other UNSC fighter in half while flying in-atmosphere. With a spiralling motion, the wingtips tracing vapour trails through the air, the banshee bore down on their position, guns glowing hungry for the consummation of souls.

“Okay, that one’s on me,” Marko commented.

“This is why we can’t have nice things.” Ishmir wasted no time in forcing his helmet onto his head and scooping up his rifle. “JUMP!”

The winged demon hurled white hot death down upon the duo, and they were launched from their perch as if they had grown a pair of wings of their own, propelled by a flaring explosion of crackling blue energy flashing through billowing clouds of dust. The banshee raked its fire from the rooftop down to the street and strafed the line of Marine Corps warthogs without pause.

The blazing stream of death from the banshee cascaded over the marines of dirty-coy. Thirtieth-Company scrambled for cover immediately as the warthogs caught in the plasma fire jolted and rocked from side to side with the impacts. Burning projectiles scorched, buckled and melted armour. Paint bubbled and liquefied. The heat caused the pavement to crack and pop. One of the vehicles took a full salvo to the bonnet, windscreen shattering before the front end popped like a frag grenade.

As the first warthog burst into flames the headhunter pair hit the deck hard enough for them to bounce on flashing shields. Their personal force fields popped out of existence from the trauma and instead of skating, the scraped to a halt on the asphalt.

Ishmir ground to a halt on one shoulder, feeling the joint pop as he tried his best to cushion the fall of his sniper rifle. Smoothly shouldering the weapon he swung the muzzle around and rolled onto his back, legs spread for stability as he scanned the sky. But all he caught was the vapour trails of the banshee’s stubby wings against the grey cloudcover.

Letting the butt of the rifle slide off his shoulder, Ishmir sat up only partially with the sniper rifle cradled diagonally across his chest plate, giving him enough space to sight where Marko lay on his back, SAW scanning the sky with unfaltering resolve to return fire.

“Marko, get to hard cover!” Ishmir ordered as he scrambled over on two legs and one hand.

“Oh yeah! Genius idea! Why didn’t I think of that?” Marko snapped back, but didn’t move.

Sitting up, he sighted that flying bastard and squared the banshee in his weapon’s iron-sights. Dipping the front sight post a little low, Marko squeezed the trigger. In response the weapon chugged, a heavy rat-tat-tat drowned out only by the headhunter’s quickfire profanities matching the cyclic rate.

Tracers were slung into the sky, scything through the air around the banshee with only a handful of lucky hits sparking against the hull. As the vehicle dropped and rolled evasively, Ishmir dropped his gaze from the flier and grabbed Marko by the back of his armour.

With his sniper rifle cradled protectively across his chest like a newborn child in one arm, Ishmir pumped his legs. The seat of Marko’s armour scraped loudly, paint peeling away as his buddy dragged the shooting Spartan back to the building they’d jumped from. The roof was on fire, but the walls were still sturdy enough to provide some cover.

Dragging Marko into the shadow of an alcove, they ducked down low as the banshee came around. But even though Marko’s fire didn’t damage the vehicle, the evasive roll had dropped it to the deck, so too low on the next pass the banshee didn’t get an angle to fire on the marines or Spartans. It merely shot overhead, screaming as it fought against gravity for altitude before making another pass.

Marko was screaming at the top of his lungs as he checked the machine gun’s drum magazine. “GrrAAAAAAAGHH!”

“Better?” Ishmir asked a little tartly.

Marko threw the weapon to the ground like a child throwing a tantrum. In contrast his voice was very calm. “Better.”

“Here, let me try.” Leaning out, Ishmir shouldered his rifle and took a knee.

“Cursed by the ground for our sake.” He angled the barrel upward and took a few long, calming breaths. “Both thorns and thistles it shall bring forth for us.” He squeezed an eye shut and peered through his scope. With an electronic whir the small silhouette of the banshee sprang closer and sharpened. “For out of the ground we were taken, for the dust we are…” He placed the reticule square over the nose, then anticipating the side to side drift of the target, settled his aim on a tiny slot where the cockpit canopy left a small gap on the side of the fuselage.

He squeezed the trigger back to the first pressure point and froze like a statue. “And to the dust we shall return.”

The sniper rifle kicked violently. His aim rose enough for the banshee to vanish from his sights, and opening his off-eye he peered through the clouds of smoke that erupted from the muzzle brake. A tracer slashed through the sky, showing Ishmir the exact path the bullet took. Bu the stabilised armour piercing round did not meet the intended mark.

Ishmir’s heightened sense of sight picked up the miniscule spark of metal on metal as the bullet pinged off the top of the banshee’s canopy and was sent careening off at an oblique angle. Cursing, Ishmir dropped the sniper rifle and scooted back into cover.

“Well that didn’t exactly go to plan! I feel kinda silly now.”

Rising to a knee beside his buddy, Marko scoffed. “Where the fuck is this ‘God’ fellow you keep praying to, eh?”

Almost as if to answer him, the column of warthogs was lit up. Another explosion ripped into the marines’ ranks, throwing an already gutted chasse of a burnt out vehicle straight up into the air. It toppled over the rear bumper and landed roof down on top of the warthog positioned behind it.

The crunch of armour and glass resulted in a munitions explosion chaining from the flames within the burning wreckage. Rounds popped in the fire sending projectiles zipping this way and that. A moment later a grenade exploded with enough force for Marko to feel it through layers of shielding and armour.

Looking down he saw something skid to a halt nearby. A single tube like device with a series of handles and controls, a bulky built in tracking computer and a shaped, rocket propelled explosive device nestled safely in the firing tube.

The Spartan blinked, turning his gaze from the rocket launcher to Ishmir. Marko couldn’t see it, but he just knew that Ishmir was smirking somewhere behind his visor.

“There He is.”

Marko rolled his eyes. “Smartass.”

Both of them jetted from cover at the same time, but Ishmir got there first. Picking the launcher up by the carry handle he lifted it high as Marko dropped to a knee and slid into position. Ishmir placed the launcher on his fellow Spartan’s shoulder then stepped around behind him to inspect the weapon.

As Ishmir ran the usual pre-fire checks to make sure the launcher was in good enough condition to launch a rocket without exploding in their faces, Marko kept his eyes locked on the enemy craft. He brought the sights to his field of view letting the tracker lens obscure his view of the banshee’s tail end with a washy green hue. And in seconds, green turned to red as the tracking computer locked on to the flier’s heat signature and programmed the garget into the rocket’s guidance package. A high pitched tone filled the air.

“Sweet lock!”

“Back blast clear!” Ishmir patted Marko on the top of the helmet. “Ready!”

“On the way!” Marko’s finger yanked the trigger back and the weapon fired.

In training and in the field of combat, shooting any kind of shoulder mounted weapon was one of the most exhilarating feelings Marko had ever experienced and he looked forward to it on every deployment. The warmth of fire and flame engulfing his body, the dust and rocks swirling around after the back-blast explodes into the most powerful noise human hearing had ever experienced.

The rocket launcher was a good time… every time.

And today it was made all the more satisfying by the ‘boom’ of the rocket hitting the banshee’s flank. The enemy fighter wobbled in the air, spitting smoke once the curtain of flame had waned. And screaming with emulated agony, the banshee dropped like a rock. It went down on the roof of a nearby hotel throwing dust and debris into the air as it vanished from sight.

Marko was on his feet to see the banshee go down, and as the pillar of dust settled in the wake of the crash, he happily dropped the spent launcher to smack a high-five with Ishmir. “Gravity’s a bitch, ain’t she?”

In the absence of the banshee’s wailing assaults, the soft hum of far off firefights and ship-to-surface bombing returned to the street. The flash-boiled tarmac hit by the plasma attack bubbled and hissed. The warped frames of the gutted warthogs clicked and groaned as their structures cooled in the breeze.

Marines were shouting to corpsmen, pointing any who could help to those that needed help. One or two screamed in pain clutching stumps where limbs were once affixed. Others lay still and silent, their flesh still smouldering and smoking. It was a gruesome mess generated in just a few minutes and some quick strafing runs.

Among the wounded was a hard-ass staff sergeant. The way he shrugged off the charred fatigues melted into his left arm and proudly strode through the banks of thick smoke to meet the approaching headhunters spoke in volumes of how many scars he already had. Despite the fact he must have been in considerable pain, the man kept his assault rifle clutched in his good arm and walked like he was on parade.

“Staff,” greeted both Spartans as they came to a halt in front of the man. It was standing next to that mountain of a sergeant that the full extent of their physical augmentation showed.

Only fourteen years old and they towered over the staff sergeant at six-foot-ten and one-hundred-and-ten kilos bone dry. They were as per their namesake, legendary warriors through and through. Bred for battle, tempered for war and outfitted to win at any cost.

“Good kill, flintlock. Sure am glad you’re on our side!” The staff sergeant gave a satisfied nod, observing the plume of smoke spitting from the roof of the hotel the banshee smashed into. “This area needs to be locked down for cas-evac. My marines can handle the street. Get in that building and double check the pilot didn’t survive that crash.”

“We’re all over it, staff.” Ishmir reached down and tugged his pistol from the mag-holster on his hip. “Marko, let’s go hunting.”

Readying his own sidearm, Marko enthusiastically racked the slide. “I’m so excited I peed a little.”

“It’s a Spartan’s life for us.”

It didn’t feel right. But that kind of made sense. This wasn’t like teleporting out of the bathroom so Spike wouldn’t catch her being ‘experimental’ – with a different mane-do, of course. This was a wholly different spell; a precise, extreme long range teleport. A wholly different experience.

And a difficult one to be sure. Twilight Sparkle figured the easiest way to describe the difficulty of the spell was like throwing a dart into the air and trying to hit a target surrounded by magnets trying to pull your dart off course, all hidden behind a mountain, while blindfolded, dizzy and possibly off your face on some sort of horse-tranquiliser.

Experiencing the transition went along the same lines. It didn’t hurt, but it was a whole new level of disorienting. She couldn’t see anything for a moment, like she was dazzled by a burst of sunlight. Though when she managed to clear away the flares in her eyes with a few hard blinks, she realised why her stomach felt like it was flipping and why the blood was rushing to her head.

Twilight had a split second to realise her predicament as she looked up at the floor before the laws of physics brought the gavel of justice down upon her. She wondered how cartoonish she looked, a lavender alicorn princess appearing in a burst of purple light and hanging upside down in the air for a few moments before collapsing in a heap.

Her head broke most of the fall, the impact blurring her vision as she tumbled over and lay spawned out on her side for a while, catching her breath and figuring out what had gone wrong. It didn’t take long as she pondered the spell instructions and went over how she had set about casting it.

“Oh, I see,” the princess sighed as she picked herself up, rubbing her head. “The co-ordinate data needs to take the plane of rotation into account too.”

As she made a mental note to take that into account next time she looked around to figure out where she was. It definitely wasn’t Equestria anymore, but she’d expected that before casting her teleportation. She was going far beyond where any other pony had ever been. She had come to terms with that already. And whereas normally she’d stop and let that realisation really sink in, she was on a timeline. There was no telling when the Covenant would reach Equestria. She had to hurry.

In the short time it took her to take in the surrounds it had started raining. Soft at first, the torrent grew with every passing moment until a full blown monsoon swirled around the structure. Waterfalls poured through the sizeable holes punched through the roof and the wind howled in through the shattered windows lining the walls.

In moments it was hard to tell the creak of the structure and the battering of wind and rain from the shuffle of hooves on the cluttered floor. Twilight’s aural observation of the area failing, she tried to rely on her eyes. But with the cloudcover thickening it was dark enough to mistake the time for nightfall.

Lightning cracked the skyline nearby, throwing long flickering shadows through the rooms, giving the misperception of movement elsewhere in the apartment. Partition walls were in tattered ruins forming makeshift windows and doorways into the next rooms.

“The spell was homed in on Marko and Ishmir,” Twilight Sparkle explained to nobody but her own ego. “They should be nearby.”

She trotted casually through the abandoned apartments, completely unaware of the dangerous shadows flitting about. Her eyes barely adjusted to the darkness when she decided to cast a magical light.

She focused…

… nothing happened. Her magic rebelled like an angry teenager, refusing to budge or splutter. There wasn’t even a reassuring glow to indicate she even had the ability to conjure spells. Just nothing, like her horn had been transformed into nothing more than a facial ornament.

“Ugh,” she groaned, rubbing her head as a throbbing headache came on. “I must have overloaded my magic with that teleport.” She’d need time to recharge. And in the meantime she’d be vulnerable.

She had to find Marko and Ishmir as quickly as possible.

A crash put her fur on end and she recoiled from the sound. Turning to the source she carefully flanked to one side and stooped to crawl through a rat-hole in the dry-wall separating rooms. Eventually she found the source of the sound.

A vehicle half hung through the ceiling of the building. A tangle of electrical wiring and steel re-enforcement bars exposed through the crumbling concrete held the craft up in a makeshift hammock. The design was bulbous with a sleek purple hull reminiscent of the ship her Spartan friends had used to leave Equestria. It was definitely of Covenant design.

The cockpit hung open revealing the unoccupied pilot seat. Twilight’s blood ran cold as she cast a paranoid glance around the room. There was no blood and no body.

The Covenant pilot was around here somewhere!

Teeth gritted, Twilight Sparkle made for the door. As she moved she hissed over the clip-clop of her hooves on the hollow floor.

“Marko!? Ishmir, are you here!?” her voice grew strained and desperate. They had to be around here somewhere. The spell she had cast had been right.

Or had it? A terrible thought raced through the princess’ brain. What if she had cast it wrong? What if the radio hadn’t been enough to lock on to her friends in this massive universe? What if she’d accidentally teleported herself to an alien world without any way back home?

Her train of thought derailed as she smacked into a brick wall. She’d rounded a corner in a blind sprint of terror only to crash headlong into a pair of armoured shins. Snorting, Twilight rubbed her nose and blinked away stars to look up.

Sleek blue armour gave way to a muscular mid-riff that widened into a barrel chest. And finally Twilight Sparkle found herself staring into the fierce predatory smile of a Covenant elite. It was exactly like the split faced monster from her dream.

Wicked smile and glowing weapon in hand and everything.

When Twilight Sparkle saw the familiar alien and the all too familiar weapon, she stepped back and prepared her magic. She knew exactly where this was going. Fool me once, shame on me; she thought to herself remembering the ordeal in the Everfree Forest a few months back. Fool me twice, shame on you!

…

She jerked her eyes open remembering her magic wasn’t working. Her horn didn’t even give a threatening spark. The elite levelled the pistol in his hand and she was transported way back to that moment she’d first laid sight on the aliens in the Everfree Forest.

I’m going to die, she thought tearfully to herself as the globule of sickly energy on the elite’s weapon flared. In those few split seconds her mind raced. She thought about her friends, about her family. None of them would know. None of them believed her about the aliens in the Everfree Forest.

And now they’d never see her again and have no idea why.

But just as she thought the world was all going dark, Twilight realised the change in lighting was because of the shadow looming over her. An olive green bullet blurred through her peripheral vision and slammed into the elite’s mid-riff. Her saviour and the alien tumbled to the floor, the plasma round discharging into the ceiling and showing Twilight with smouldering plaster. She winced, jumping aside, and when she’d blinked away the dust and grit she saw it.

“Marko!” she cried with a smile on her face.

The headhunter had the elite pinned down, both hands forcing the alien’s face into the ground. Although as he turned his mirrored golden gaze to her the smile carved into his visor was very deceptive about his current mood.

“Move!” he yelled at the princess while his hand went for his knife.

Twilight bolted as she was told to, making a b-line for the nearest doorway. As she ran she looked back in time to see the elite shrimp out of Marko’s grip. Uncoiling one leg, the elite kicked the Spartan square in the chest and launched him through the remnants of a crumbling wall. With Marko out of sight the elite went for his weapon again.

While she lowered her head to escalate her sprint Twilight suddenly saw a dark red clad knight step into the doorway in front of her. Ishmir didn’t hesitate at the sight of the alicorn princess and fired his pistol over her head. Bullets struck the elite but he barely faltered, returning fire.

A barrier of golden light became visible around Ishmir’s body as he took the incoming volley, fired off a few more shots, then pulled Twilight Sparkle into cover.

His armoured hand pushing her to the ground, Ishmir had his pistol hooked around the doorframe, furiously slinging lead into the sangheili as fast as his trigger finger would let him. Tucked into cover and providing blind covering fire, neither of them would have had any idea if any of the bullets were meeting their mark were it not for the ping of rounds hitting the bare walls and the splash of projectiles flattening against energy shields.

The gun clicked empty and Ishmir’s muscles jerked into a well memorised action. His wielding hand ejected the empty mag while his other hand was already pulling a fresh one from his gear. The new magazine slid into place without touching the sides, and with minimal resistance clicked into place before the spent mag even hit the ground. The slide had slammed shut and Ishmir was searching for targets again by the time that happened.

Unfortunately the target came to Ishmir.

The elite ploughed through the plasterboard right next to the doorway. The lunge clipped Ishmir and he went sprawling, his gun skittering across the floor. Twilight stood frozen as the human and elite exchanged blows and kicks, scrambling over each other for possession of the plasma pistol still in the alien’s possession.

Ishmir managed to twist the alien weapon away and gave it a kick, sliding the weapon to Twilight’s hooves. She didn’t move, even as Ishmir scrambled on hands and knees for his own pistol. She stared with terror when the elite grabbed the young Spartan by the ankle and pulled him back. Ishmir screamed with frustration, his fingers falling just short of the pistol before he was dragged back by the elite.

The alien in the meantime raised one gauntlet and in a flash of eldritch light a fearsome blade appeared on the elite’s knuckle plate. Ishmir saw it and held up his forearms pre-emptively, kicking and thrashing violently to get the alien off him.

The Covenant elite let out a triumphant howl before turning the blade’s point to the headhunter…

A blur of olive green collided with the elite again. Marko rammed into the elite full sprint from behind. Only this time he had his bayonet drawn already. The moment the elite hit the deck, face grinding awkwardly across the floor with the distinct snap of mandibles being broken, Marko raised his knife high.

“Here! Lemme make some more space for your brain!”

The weapon crashed down and slammed straight through the elite’s helmet with a thud and a squelch. Gripping the hilt in both hands, Marko kept his weight on the twitching alien and gave the weapon a sharp twist before extracting it.

The elite convulsed, but made no attempt to get up.

Breathing hard, both headhunters found their feet and their weapons. Ishmir snatched up his side arm and gave the room one last sweep. Marko flicked the gore from his knife and sheathed it before going for his own sidearm. As he went to draw he held out his fist.

Ishmir met his buddy’s knuckles with his own and they both made an explosion sound with their mouths.

“Like a baws,” he chuckled.

Twilight managed to shake off her frozen state and stepped with trembling hooves around the plasma pistol that had landed in front of her. She did her best smile and was able to hide the tremble from her voice.

“Hello, Ishmir,” she greeted.

Satisfied the area was clear, Ishmir holstered his princess and de-polarised his visor to reveal his smile. “Hi princess,” he greeted with a respectful bow befitting a royal greeting.

“Hey! Bitchpants!”

“Hey, vag-face mc-superfucker!” Twilight suddenly blurted out, earning a sharp laugh from Marko and a shake of his head from Ishmir.

“Oh, ho! Someone’s been practicing!”

Twilight smirked. “It’s good to see you boys are still as exciting as ever.”

“What can we say?” Marko cocked his helmet, arms folded across his chest. “It’s a Spartan’s life for us.”

“I am not humping anything!”

From the window Ishmir had a clear view of the nearest alien warship; a purple pear-shaped blot in the sky above the rooftops to the northwest of the city. Even behind the gold tint of his visor Ishmir had to squint as white-hot plasma erupted from the warhip’s prow. A waterfall of ionised gasses splashed down in a boiling veil. Then the ship inched forward, leaving a blackening plume of smoke and steam.

There were hundreds of inky plumes drifting in the first ship’s wake, framing the dozens of other Covenant ships joining in the systematic slaughter of the colony’s citizens. Ishmir had witnessed the same event all across the galaxy. When the Covenant started glassing, it never ended well for the humans on the receiving end.

But there was no point weeping over those who fell. There were too many to count, too many to fathom. Ishmir had to keep his head. He had to keep fighting for those still breathing. He had to fight to keep them in that state.

A pair of bulky olive green blots blocked the view for a moment. The heat of the air pushed from the pelicans’ VTOL thrusters washed through the broken window for a moment and Ishmir gave the tinted canopies of the drop ships a brief wave. The marines from dirty-coy were on their way out with so many forces like them.

But the Spartan pair from flintlock still had some business planet-side. Their extraction would come soon enough. Or then perhaps maybe it would not. It didn’t matter really. So long as Ishmir and Marko could finish their mission.

Thankfully the extracting pelicans of dirty-coy had left the headhunters a little care-package to help them on their way into hell’s gate. A top-up of ammunition, newly polished sidearms on their hips and brand new rifles, one of which hung diagonally across Ishmir’s back.

Patting the front end of his assault rifle, Ishmir went to join Marko and Twilight Sparkle sitting by the equipment crates they had lugged in. The small purple horse had elicited a few odd looks from the marines helping the Spartans set up their gear, but they had kept their questions to themselves. She was chilling with Spartans. If that didn’t make the alien equine kosher in the eyes of a human, nothing would.

Spotting Ishmir approached over the standard issue marine infantryman helmet he was fiddling with, Marko glanced to Twilight. “So sparkle-butt! What bring you to our violent little corner of the galaxy?”

“Well, turd-blossom,” Twilight retorted humorously before her tone went more serious, “I came looking for you because I have reason to believe the Covenant are coming to Equis.”

Ishmir visibly flinched at the news. “That sounds bad.”

“It is! Princess Celestia won’t believe me when I say they’re dangerous! She’s planning to open a parlay with them when they arrive,” Twilight said desperately. “Nopony believes me about the Covenant bodies in the Everfree Forest. They don’t know we’ll be slaughtered on sight!”

“Fuck me, are your world leaders retarded or something?” Marko commended earning a light cuff over the helmet from Ishmir.

“We’re partially responsible for this, you know that right?”

“What!? Fuck that! How are we responcible?”

Ishmir counted off reasons on his fingers. “We destroyed the Covenant orbital station in the system. Of course they’re going to come investigating. Then we slaughter a bunch of their guys on Equestria soil. And finally we banged out before Twilight Sparkle’s friends arrived. In retrospect we should have stuck around and offered an explanation.”

Marko huffed. “Oh, you and your logic. Hey, princess twinkle-nuts. Don’t you pansy ponies do magic and shit?”

“I doubt that’ll be much of a game-changer,” Ishmir reasoned. “Especially if the Covenant catch them on unawares.”

“So what are we going to do about?”

Ishmir thought, then shrugged. There was only one thing they could do about it. “Let’s finish up here and head back to Equestria. We should have a talk with this Princess Celestia and maybe show her recordings of the Covenant glassing worlds.”

“Betcha thirty credits she cries like a baby.”

“… make it forty.”

It took Twilight Sparkle a few moments of translating to realise what they were saying. “So you’ll come back to Equestria with me?”

“As soon as we finish our shit here, yeah.” Marko nodded, adding, “We’ll have to find you transport off-planet with the marines while we complete our mission.”

Twilight’s expression dropped at that revelation. “What? No! I’m staying with you!”

Nodding in agreement with the pony princess, Ishmir added, “It’s probably better if she does.”

“I dunno, Ish. It’s probably not safe.”

“And leaving her with command and the likes of ONI is safer?”

“Point taken. But you’re not going to be able to kill, are you Sparkle-Horse?”

Twilight laughed carelessly. “I could! If I had to!”

“Yeah, not really buying that. Ishy, she won’t be able to cover a sector,” Marko said, not so much arguing and more wondering what the hell he was going to do with her. He didn’t need to be babysitting in the midst of conducting a firefight.

Ishmir nodded, agreeing with that. But she didn’t need to be a killer to be useful. “She has a pair of eyes to keep watch and she can hump ammo and gear.”

Twilight scoffed at that idea. “I am not humping anything!”

“He means carry.”

Twilight blinked a few times, processing that before her gaze fell sheepishly. “Oh.”

Marko finally nodded, settling the discussion. “Alright, but she stays behind me. How does that sound?”

“Sounds good,” Ishmir agreed.

“It’s settled then.” Marko paused for a second as he thought of something. He wondered what kind of callsign to give the pony, and it didn’t take long to come up with one.

The way he angled his helmet in the light, it seemed like the grin of his visor broadened to match that on his face hidden within. Turning over the helmet he had in his hands he revealed he’d used his knife to punch a hole in the forehead.

He slipped the headgear over Twilight’s head so it fitted snugly around her horn and said, “Welcome to the team, Warlock.”

“Keep your head down, this is gonna suck!”

Twilight sat quietly, shifting the added weight on her head from side to side with some amusement. Marko had assured her the helmet would keep her grape mostly intact should the plasma and bullets start flying. The princess wasn’t entirely sure how though. She’d worn her brother Shining Armor’s helmet a few times when he got into the Royal Guard and it was three times the weight of Twilight Sparkle’s headgear. She expected the light helmet now on her head to peel away like tissue paper should a plasma round strike it.

And what if she got shot somewhere else? Wouldn’t that be bad as well? Shouldn’t she be wearing full body armour?

All she had was a few web-belts modified to fit over her back like a set of saddle-bags. Pouches were weaved along her sides so she could carry some extra ammo packs for Marko and Ishmir.

Speaking of whom, the Spartans sat nearby. Marko was a few metres to her left, down on one knee and keeping his weapon cradled across his chest as he scanned one way down the street. Twilight Sparkle was supposed to be watching the other way while Ishmir fussed with some sort of vehicle behind them.

He slammed down the hood of the strange looking four-wheeled chariot then moved around the side to press a button in the cockpit. A chugging whine rang out before Ishmir gave a frustrated sigh and slid underneath the vehicle to check something else.

“What’s Ishmir doing?” Twilight asked.

“Keep those eyes on that sector,” Marko warned and the princess quickly watched in the direction she was supposed to be looking. “He’s trying to get that warthog running.”

Twilight Sparkle felt her eyes drawn back to Ishmir and the vehicle. “What’s a ‘warthog’?”

“Eyes.” Twilight quickly righted her gaze again. “It’s a light reconnaissance vehicle. It’ll get us to our objective faster,” Marko explained.

“Are we in a hurry?”

“We sure are!” Ishmir called from under the vehicle.

Twilight looked at Marko this time. “Why are we in a hurry?”

“Keep your eyes on target, Warlock,” Marko was starting to sound like a cracked record. “We need to de-ass this area with a quickness. Last word from the fob before it was overrun was that the Covenant are glassing the planet sector by sector. We only have a matter of hours before we’re caught in that hellstorm.”

“Fob?”

“Forward operating base. It’s where the guys with the higher pay-grade hang out and tell us what to do.”

“And what’s glassing?”

Marko snorted. “You know, of all your traits, this is the one I missed the least. Glassing is when the Covenant bomb a planet from orbit.”

“With enough force to crack the planet’s crust open and turn dirt to glass. Hence, glassing,” Ishmir added as he slid out from under the warthog and twisted the ignition.

“Oh… that sounds bad.” Twilight paused to listen to the engine of the vehicle whine and choke. “Do you think they’ll do that to Equestria if they reach the planet?”

“They won’t get that far,” Marko assured her.

Ishmir added, “They won’t get that close.”

In the brief moment of comfort their ears were exposed to the comforting tones of the petrol engine roaring to life and purring happily under the battered bonnet. Satisfied all systems were coming up green, Ishmir beckoned his watchers over and climbed into the back of the vehicle. Marko helped Twilight Sparkle flutter into the passenger seat and slid himself behind the wheel.

The transmission clicked into action and they took off. Twilight was dazzled for a moment as the force of the acceleration sucked her into the cushions of her seat. But soon her racing heartbeat settled and she gave in to the swooping rollercoaster feeling in her stomach as they went racing through the abandoned streets of the city. The shattered buildings suddenly didn’t seem so scary anymore. They were just a blur of motion as twilight stuck her head out the side of the vehicle and let the wind whip at her mane.

“Wooo-hoooo!” she cried at the top of her lungs. “This is amazing!”

Looking down, Ishmir caught Marko looking sideways at the princess and noted the subtle bob of his helmet indicating a chuckle. Marko may have been a government sanctioned sociopath, but that didn’t mean he was full psycho. There was something fiercely protective in him whenever he was around Twilight Sparkle. He’d noticed it when they had been fighting Covenant in Equestria, and the way he’d rushed into tackle the elite that threatened Twilight’s well-being earlier.

Despite their close relationship, Ishmir knew nothing of Marko’s life from before the Spartan-III programme, and vice versa. This was the first time Ishmir actually wondered about Marko’s pre-Spartan life. He was pretty sure Marko must have had siblings, probably a younger sister.

The joy of their ride was very suddenly, and very rudely interrupted why the whine of anti-gravity engines. Ishmir immediately cast his eyes to the sky and brought the heavy mounted gun to bear, the spooling of the barrels matching the sound of the Covenant drop-ship’s engines.

Gliding through the air in their wake was a ship about the average size of a pelican drop-ship, but with all the typical Covenant aesthetics. It had a two pronged hull facing forward with the swivelling gun mounted bar back on the tail giving it a tuning-fork silhouette against the sky.

“Marko, pedal faster!” Ishmir reported as he tracked the enemy craft banking low over the rooftops to their flank for cover. “Incoming drop-ship!”

Marko didn’t take his eyes off the road, weaving around parked vehicles and obstacles. “Beetle or tuning-fork?”

“Tuning-fork!” Ishmir replied to describe the spirit drop-ship.

“What is that?” Twilight cried when she caught sight of the craft pulling up alongside them.

“Covenant drop-ship!” Marko reached over and pushed the princess down into the footwell. “Keep your head down, this is gonna suck!”

“That’s like the ship you used to leave Equestria!” she added as she was pushed into cover.

Ishmir nodded. “Yeah! But unfortunately this is the un-killable big-brother!”

Twilight felt her teeth rattle in her skull as the heavy machine gun manned by the red clad Spartan belted out a heavy boom-boom-boom, the armoured belt rattling and shaking as it fed rounds in one side and bits of brass and metal out the other side. Empty shells rattled in the bed around Ishmir’s boots forming a carpet of brass. But not one of the titanium tipped rounds designed to turn hard-targets to swiss-cheese and soft ones to pain punched through the spirit.

They flattened or sparked harmlessly against the sleek hull. The return fire was a wash of crimson plasma that heated Twilight’s face like she was standing in front of a raging hearth. Enemy projectiles raced from the drop-ship’s cannon and splashed the road. The heat melted the parked cars Marko weaved them between causing windows to blow out and gas tanks to pop like firecrackers.

One car exploded up onto its front bumper and balanced there for a moment as Marko swung them around. His side mirror clipped the monument, causing it to slowly spin before crashing back down to the deck.

Ishmir paused his bursts and ducked down as heat caused his shields to shimmer. As they were recharging the side panels of the Covenant ship swung open and looking up past Marko, the pony princess saw the familiar faces of the Covenant soldiers.

Jackals and grunts hung out of their crash seats yelling a war cry. The jackals, hateful as ever looking saurians with slight avian features swung their carbines in challenge as the short little hard-suit clad grunts chittered and hissed excitedly, their plasma pistols letting off stray flashes of light that left streaks in Twilight’s eyes.

Ishmir swung the anti-aircraft gun around and raked them with rounds. Torsos and heads exploded, painting the interior of the spirit with alien gore. But in the mess of blood and bone was a spark of light. It tumble down from the very front of the ‘troop prong’ and hit the front of the warthog with a heavy enough thud to buckle the hood.

The Covenant elite had timed his jump well, escaping Ishmir’s deadly funnel of fire and landing right on their speeding vehicle. The rear wheels popped off the asphalt for a moment as the roaring alien held on tight partially obscuring Marko’s view.

“Hey, no hitchikers!” the driver yelled as he tugged the wheel sideways.

They veered off the road and slammed headlong into a solid wall. The sudden stop forced the racing spirit to overshoot and the crushing impact pinning the elite’s legs in place made the alien howl with agony.

Marko bounced off the steering wheel with the impact, Twilight sucked down deeper into the foot well of the side-seat where she was pretty sure she’d been turned upside down. Even Ishmir recoiled, slipping from the gun and slumping heavily over the warthog’s roll-cage.

But even though the alien was pinned his hand went down for his sidearm.

Ishmir scrambled for the gun, but he knew he wouldn’t be fast enough. And even if he was he wouldn’t be able to angle the machine gun into the elite. “Pop that hinge-head in the chin!”

As if Marko even needed telling. His sidearm cleared the holster faster than the elite’s and he clapped the motherfucker straight through the warthog windscreen. Holes punched through the glass as spiderwebs spread through the surface. On the other side rounds peppered the elite, working a bloody line of dots up the chest before the alien’s head snapped back and he slumped dead over the bonnet.

Marko dropped his pistol on the dashboard and flipped the warthog into reverse. They backed out, peeling the dead elite from the bonnet then sped off again before the spirit came around.

In fact, the ship didn’t even have to come around really. Further up the road the spirit pivoted on a central axis and raced directly at them. Ishmir brought the gun around and opened fire at the same time as the drop ship.

Marko weaved hard right around a stationary lorry. Enemy fire was blocked by the cargo compartment, shielding them as they raced by and opening a new angle of attack for Ishmir. But the moment his line of sight cleared, Marko was dodging again to keep that swivelling plasma cannon guessing.

“Stop moving you son-of-a-bitch!” Ishmir yelled as his shots went wide to one side.

“Fuck you!”

“Not you! Him!”

Heat washed over Twilight Sparkle again and looking up she saw the tuning-fork silhouette slash past them.

The drop-ship had over-shot them again, giving the warthog crew some breathing room. Enough for Marko to re-orient himself and navigate in the direction of the objective. He pulled them into a side road and started an ascent into the outer city built up along the mountainside. Streets and alleys tightened. The amount of abandoned vehicles were replaced by market stalls and piles of rubble for them to plough through.

Before long they were racing up the streets of a favela, the poorest district in the city hidden by the skyline, and ironically the least ravaged by the Covenant thus far. The aliens had focused their efforts on the better defended parts of the planet so far, but it would only be a matter of time before the favela was too turned to glass.

The ride didn’t stay easy.

“Here he comes! Go-go-go!”

“Hang on!” Marko yelled as he rotated the steering wheel to the right, cranking it as far as it would go one-handed. At the same time he reached down to the column between the driver and passenger seat, yanking up the emergency-brake with a ‘cr-i-i-i-ikkk!’

The warthog’s front wheels locked but the rear swung out to the left, whipping the vehicle around a corner and into the next street. At the same time he dropped the brake and pounded his boot into the floor-board, quickly turning the wheel two-handed to counter-steer out of the sudden, sharp drift.

All four wheels spun, belching up smoke as they were yanked forward, completing the ninety-degree veer.

“How’s it look?”

“Good for now!” Ishmir grimaced as the dropship sped past the warthog, moving too quickly to match its fishtail turn. The spirit splashed the street with angry, errant blasts, then disappeared around a cluster of satellite dishes and aerials sprouting from a rooftop. “Probably about thirty seconds of breathing room!”

The dishes and aerials suddenly bent and broke as the hull of the spirit smashed clean through them. The drop-ship backed up to the junction again then swivelled to resume its pursuit.

“Fuck! Make that five seconds! Incoming!”

Plasma smashed the roadside, traced up along the building and cut just over Ishmir’s head as he unloaded everything the M41 LAAG had left into the drop-ship. Twilight’s ears throbbed with pain and she wanted to scream, for whatever good it would have done.

“Fuck, Ish!” Marko screamed for her. “Would you just kill that-…?”

Marko didn’t get to finish, cut off by an enormous boom. Looking in his rear-view mirror he caught the edge of the fiery explosion that sheared the spirit drop-ship in two. One of the long pronged bays dropped to the deck and slammed into the street behind them, spinning into a cartwheel that sprayed debris and bodies of the crew still scrambling to escape.

The other half fell somewhere into a cluster of rooftops.

“Go it!” Ishmir called off-handedly like it was just another thing.

As the spirit blossomed into a fiery explosion of twisted metal behind them the party raced over the ridge marking the top of the favela and moved beyond the city limits.

Marko steered the warthog off the tarmac, bouncing lightly onto a dirt track. The vehicle took to the new road sideways for a good dozen metres before the worn tyres got some purchase and Marko was able to straighten them out.

Within a matter of seconds the terrifying chase had once again turned into a joyride as Marko sent them careening down the winding dirt path leading away from the city and deeper into the country side. Instead of curling up in her seat with fear, Twilight was sat up again, leaning out the side of the vehicle to feel the wind whip at her face and watch the billowing clouds of brown dust kicked up in their wake.

Looking back she saw Ishmir seemingly nod to himself before he leaned over the roll cage and patted Marko on the helmet.

“I just let orbital know we’re out of the city and approaching our objective,” Ishmir said. “They’ve got major contact and are bugging out. We’re the last official boots on the ground.”

“Ah, that familiar old feeling.”

“It also means our extraction window is closing,” Ishmir reminded. “Can’t this thing go any faster?”

Marko answered as he slammed the warthog into the next gear and threw the vehicle into a fresh sprint. “Let’s find out.”

“Just like Christmas!”

They pulled up to the target compound and parked in the lot among several abandoned ‘hogs and trucks. From there they approached the front door on foot and hoof.

Twilight Sparkle was following in the rear as the headhunters cleared every inch of the concrete plaza. The sprawling compound was an enormous building, as big as the Canterlot palace and Twilight was pretty sure just as high. There was a single chimney like structure at the heart of the building, flanked by ridges of re-enforced concrete and complex looking arrays of comms-dishes and antennae.

The front doors were like a set of blast doors striped with brightly highlighted warnings about the fate that awaits trespassers and vandals. They hung ajar and the trio slipped in boldly without a care. After all, those who had forced the doors opened had not heeded any of the UNSC warnings. So it was up to the Spartan-III warriors to learn the intruders some manners.

The way into the heart of the facility was clear, and Marko and Ishmir would sometimes separate to branch off and make sure adjacent rooms were unoccupied. They moved with silenced sidearms until they reached a set of sliding double doors at the end of the main corridor. They hung ajar just like the front door and while the headhunters took up positions and drew their primary weapons Twilight managed a sneaky peek inside.

She saw movement. Sleek blue armour, short orange clad figures and glowing round energy shields. The Covenant were inside. She looked to the Spartans.

Ishmir was checking the sign above the door that read “control room” and slipped a pair of cylindrical objects from a pouch on his thigh. At the same time Marko worked the front grip of his shotgun back and forth with a quiet ‘cha-chick.’

He held up a hand to the princess, the universal signal for wait. Going prone under the weight of the gear she was carrying the alicorn gratefully caught her breath, watching intently from the shadows as the Spartans prepped to breach.

Ishmir popped the pins from his 9-bangers and gave Marko a preparatory nod before slipping the devices into the control room. Their helmet visors polarised and external audio muted in anticipation for the blinding twin flashes and rapid fire crackle of deafening bangs that followed.

Over the inter-headhunter comm came Ishmir’s single order. “Bust ‘em.”

Marko rushed the aliens inside. Still reeling from the effects of the flash bang, the lot of them were essentially helpless. Not being one to waste the upper hand, Marko pressed the issue, driven by a terrible motivation that sat at the source of his hatred for the Covenant.

Following his shotgun in, he fired, pumped then fired again. Enemy shields flared and faltered. Blood sprayed and elites toppled with clean close range hits delivered by the CQC weapon.

As he entered his eyes did a quick sweep of the control room. Marko took in the contacts, prioritising aliens from the Covenant pecking order in order of most important down to metaphorical shit-stains. He also sub-divided in order of those effected by flash bangs and considered those facing him and those blind firing.

A plasma bolt winged his shield and Marko let his shotgun turn the offending grunt inside out before returning his attention to the bigger baddies. As he did though he swept past one of the terminals and noticed a picture. Some of the staff who had been working here had decorated their workstations with pictures of family, friends and loved ones.

It reminded him of his own family. The one the Covenant had killed in the sacking of Marko’s home world. Only he and a select few had made it off world during the evacuation. Everyone else had perished, his mother, father and two sisters included – vaporised into dust and ash when the aliens glassed the planet without a moment’s consideration of the innocent lives they were ravaging.

Marko lined his sights up and squeezed the trigger, all too eager to return the favour.

As the buckshot peppered the nearest elite, ragged holes in the sangheili armour spitting clotted strings of blood and flesh like strings of saliva from the maw of a ravenous beast, the momentary sadness brought on by the memory of his family’s smiling faces dissipated. It was replaced by a simple, comforting thought that was more than a little malicious.

Marko smiled with glee.

His muzzle swung right and let off another roar, dropping a stunned jackal. Ishmir swept around Marko’s back, firing a comparatively quiet pop-pop-pop into the Spartan’s blind vector. The chatter of MA5 fire matched by an alien wail of pain told Marko his buddy had met his mark.

With the heavy hitters down, Marko and Ishmir polished off the last of the enemy infantry before declaring the control room as Spartan turf.

“Clear,” Ishmir reported, and Marko echoed “Clear! Warlock, move up!” out the door so Twilight Sparkle could enter.

She did, timidly at first. Peeking around the door she checked left and right, then sidled in and observed some of the headhunters’ gory handiwork. They were ruthlessly efficient, but at the same time a little messy. Bodies were scattered, sprawled into odd poses like someone had gone around and purposely posed them as a joke. But Twilight imagined this was what a battlefield should look like.

Marko and Ishmir weren’t watching as they double checked the adjacent corridors and rooms for stragglers. Ishmir was paused over a console running along the front of the control room where a shutter was pulled down over the main observation window. Behind him Marko loitered looking out one of the side doors in case there was movement out there.

But there was movement right next to them. Or more precisely, right next to Twilight Sparkle.

She screamed, charging her horn on knee-jerk reaction but was rewarded with only a splutter. One of the elites she thought dead in a puddle of tar-scented blood suddenly gasped and scrambled to his full height.

The sudden swiftness of the elite’s transition from dead to alive startled the princess so she fell onto her side, stunned with eyes wide as saucers. But the elite was unarmed, hooking his fingers into claws that he needed to sink into flesh. He bore right over Twilight and stared for a second to assess this strange colourful creature before him.

But at the sight of the two demons who had such a short while ago filled him with bullets the elite’s priorities changed and with a roar he ignored Twilight completely.

With eight ragged holes pockmarking his torso, Marko thought him dead already. Must have been faking. Not something the Spartans had seen before, so Marko had to commend the ugly bastard for a sense of imagination.

That was all he gave the elite credit for though, as charging a pair of headhunters still riding an adrenaline high clearly put the alien far outside the brains department.

As if he were simply swatting a fly, Marko tapped the trigger of his pistol twice, putting a bullet in each of the sangheili’s kneecaps. The shots from his sidearm were whisper quiet – the sangheili may have seen Marko draw on him, but the only thing the alien bastard heard was his face hitting the floor.

The beast fell flat out, sliding to the deck at Marko’s feet. Struggling to stand, the sangheili only managed to press its hands to the ground and look up only to see the headhunter’s armoured boot-heel come crashing down.

Helmet and skull buckled as the elite’s brains were smooshed across the deck, Twilight wincing and looking away from the gory mess Marko had reduced the sangheili to. Ishmir walked over business-like though, unphased by the bloody mess he’d seen all too often before already.

“Overkill much?” Ishmir asked.

As if to answer, Marko levelled his M6C/SOCOM on the dead elite’s chest and fired four more rounds, each whispered ‘thwip’ of gunfire – thwip, thwip, thwip, thwip – answered by the kiss of punctured flesh and ventilated lung.

Looking up to Ishmir’s stare of disapproval, Marko gave a nonchalant shrug.

Ishmir moved to where Twilight Sparkle lay and helped her to her shaking hooves. “Are you okay, Warlock?”

Twilight swallowed and nodded, but she could tell by Ishmir’s stare that he knew she was lying. She was not okay. She was anything but okay. But this ordeal was far from over. She couldn’t break down now. Marko and Ishmir were counting on her to keep up.

Equestria was counting on her to be strong.

“I’ll be okay, Ishmir,” Twilight Sparkle promised quietly.

He locked his mirrored stare on her a second longer then nodded, giving her an affectionate pat on the shoulder-blade. Rising to his feet he stepped around the bodies and dead checked them with his pistol on his way out. They twitched with every puff of air from the silencer, but none of the corpses moved beyond that.

As Ishmir was inexplicably leaving, Twilight gingerly moved up to Marko’s side as he leaned against a console and checked his weapons.

“H-how do I do it?”

Marko didn’t seem to understand at first and looked down at the lavender pony. “Do what?” he asked blankly.

“You know what, Marko,” Twilight said more firmly with a nod to the pile of alien corpses.

“Kill?” Marko scoffed. He thought about it then shrugged, honestly not really remembering a time when he wasn’t prepared to kill every hostile motherfucker he came into contact with. “You won’t have to kill. Not while I’m around.”

“But what if you’re not around? My friends and I were the wielders of the Elements of Harmony. They were the source of the most powerful magic in Equestria. They protected us from all evil, but now the elements are gone! There are horrible things out in the galaxy. Problems that cannot be solved with the magic of friendship.”

Her voice suddenly grew desperate and her eyes watered. “I am a princess of Equestria. So how do I protect my friends, my family and my home from the likes of the Covenant if I can’t kill them when everpony else is unwilling to?”

Marko made a slashing motion with his hand to stop her there. “Hey, no crying.” Her lip trembled and Marko added, “And don’t pout! Look, we’ll figure something out, sparkle-butt. I promise.”

Twilight sniffed with a meek little grin, the friendly name-calling cheering her up a little. “Thanks, willy-muncher.”

The Spartan tousled her hair and he was pretty sure he saw some glitter sparkle in there. “Don’t thank me yet.”

As they stood in pause Ishmir walked back in. glancing between them he asked, “Hey. You two okay?”

“Great. How fucking else would we be?”

“Bad. Because there’s good news and bad news,” Ishmir said. “The bee-net is buzzing, but I can’t hail anybody. Not orbital, not fob, nobody. Our extraction window didn’t just close, someone boarded and bricked it up.”

“Fuck. So what’s the good news?”

“That was the good news,” Ishmir broke on them and Twilight cringed. “Bad news; Covenant ships are moving in. This base turns to glass in thirty mikes.”

Twilight interjected. “That means…?”

“It means that in thirty minutes we’d better be gone,” Marko explained, “or we will be goners.”

The princess was glancing between the headhunters. They were still standing, holding their weapons high and shoulders back like they were squared for a fight. Her hope hadn’t run out yet because evidently theirs hadn’t either. “But you have a plan right? We can get out of here… right?”

The Spartans shared a look, and by Ishmir’s nod she knew there was a way out.

He walked to the front of the control room and keyed the shutters. The metal slid upward over the glass panes and Twilight Sparkle found herself looking into the massive tower part of the facility she had seen on the outside. Nestled deep within layers of re-enforced structure was a ship, standing upright on its tail with the wings stretched out to the side, nose pointed at the heavens and rammed up its backside a long stack of bright orange fuel tanks and solid fuel rocket boosters.

Twilight stared, her brain slowly piecing together the escape plan Ishmir had in mind as a loading ramp craned out the parallel walkways and connected with the cockpit at the nose of the craft.

“Whoa.”

“Princess Twilight Sparkle, I’d like you to meet the XS-1000 Prototype Anti-Ship Spaceplane, codename: SCALPEL,” Ishmir introduced, not only for the pony but for Marko’s benefit as well. “Highly manoeuvrable and capable of breaking orbit un-assisted, she’s outfitted with the latest space-combat weaponry, stealth systems, e-warfare suites and even an experimental slip-space drive for interstellar jumps. That’s what we were sent to secure. And that’s our ticket off this planet.”

“Can you even fly this thing?” Marko asked.

“Does it even matter? We gotta bang out now or not at all.” Ishmir pointed the alicorn and his fellow Spartan in opposite directions. “Warlock, with me. Marko, grab everything you can carry from the armoury.”

“Fuck yeah. Just like Christmas!”

As Ishmir led Twilight Sparkle onto the gantries connecting with the spaceplane, Marko back tracked down the corridor they had followed into the facility. He turned off into an adjacent room he had cleared earlier and gave the armoury a once over before holstering his shotgun.

With lines upon lines of weapons, ammo and other gear still stacked up, Marko was spoilt for choice. But he contained his excitement and secured a pair of duffel bags

In one bag he packed a broken down sniper rifle system, pistols, assault rifles, submachine guns and battle-rifles with enough magazines and ammo boxes to liberate a small country. In the second he stuffed enough explosives grenades and ammo to nearly split the seams.

Hoisting the bags, one on each shoulder, Marko broke into a heavy jog and ran to the SCALPEL. Ishmir had taken the front seat and placed Twilight in the second where the RIO would sit. They were running pre-flight checks, Twilight reading off a clipboard and Ishmir checking gauges, switches and lights, answering “go-fly” for each question. If any one system was “no-fly” they’d be fucked.

Marko shoved the bags into the cargo compartment behind Twilight’s seat, then crawled into the cockpit, placing the relatively light pony in his lap.

“Ready for launch,” Ishmir announced as they strapped in. The cockpit canopy slid up from the nose and sealed over their heads with a click and a hiss. “Launching in five… four… ready… steady… go!”

The ignition switch clicked audibly. Twilight was nervously gripping the seat that was Marko’s lap with all four hooves. But the Spartan thought for a second that nothing had happened.

Then the engines kicked off.

Marko took back his opinion of the most powerful sound the human hearing could experience. The back-blast of a rocket launcher thumping out a round had nothing on ignition of the starfighter’s solid-fuel rocket boosters.

Fire and smoke flooded the launch chamber. Every panel, surface and pane rattled and shook. The whole of their world came alive with an earth-shattering quake. And then ever so slowly at first, picking up speed as they went, the SCALPEL began to rise.

Moving up at a crawl, Ishmir looked over each shoulder and rolled the control yolk from side to side, giving the flaps and control surfaces one last check before opening up the throttle. The commands keyed in, the roar of the SRBs loudened and they picked up speed. Both Marko and Twilight were sucked into their seat and they shot into the sky on a pillar of smoke.

“Brace for gravity roll,” Ishmir reported having gone full astronaut on them. Marko would have thought his buddy was just living out a childhood fantasy if it weren’t for the fact they’d done stuff like this in the Spartan version of kindergarten on Onyx.

The world pivoted and whirled, and Marko was sucked into his seat so hard he wouldn’t have even noticed if it weren’t for the movement of the clouds rotating around the cockpit canopy. The sky darkened. The bright blue shaded to violet and then navy, and suddenly he could see stars without the filter of the atmosphere. Nothing had fallen off, cracked up or burst… yet.

That was when they ran out of fuel.

“Ess-arr-bees at zero. Separating.”

The ‘thunk’ of the separation columns releasing was felt throughout the entire airframe. If Marko could look back he’d see the outer fuel tanks flare outwards like the petals of a blooming flower, then short bursts of fire separating the rest of the boosters from the SCALPEL.

The moment they cleared the debris he pushed the throttle forward and spooled up the starfighter’s engines. They started their usual song, starting at a low-pitched hum and working up through the scale to a soprano whine and then a sensation of nothingness that only a dog might hear. The sudden burst of acceleration was easy to sense and accustom to as they broke out of atmosphere and settled into velvet safety of space.

Marko and Ishmir were consumed with checking readouts and checking off items on their orbital checklists. Twilight was however pressed up against the cold glass of the cockpit canopy, staring at the planet they had come from.

High above atmosphere, way beyond the reach of any alicorn or pegasus-pony; they hung seemingly motionless in the silence of space. As the planet pivoted, to an onlooker it would have seemed the sun was moving just over the world’s event-horizon. The ions in the toxic upper atmosphere of the habitable planet glinted cool aqua mixed with fiery oranges and reds glinting in the sunlight, giving the impression the planet was bleeding out into space.

The view was tranquility incarnate...

A plate of metal swung across the view. The white flags and UNSC insigne were obscured by splotches of black scorch burned into the armour causing the surface to warp and bubble. More metal spiralled past. Bits of girder. Particles of scaffolding. Doors. Deck plates.

A human body drifted by. The man wore a grey jumpsuit glistening with ice crystals and hung frozen in space for a moment before toppling out of Twilight’s view.

She jolted at the sight and stumbled back across Marko’s lap. The Spartans didn’t say anything and the princess followed their golden gazes.

There was more debris. Entire ships, monoliths of steel, gutted and spiralling out of control. A graveyard hung all around them.

“What happened?” Twilight whispered.

Ishmir answered by pointing out ahead. “They happened.”

Twilight peered past the spinning rings of debris making up the foreground and gazed into the stars. Out there in space holding high orbit she saw them. Ships, bulbous sleek vessels with the profile of fishing hooks and stabilising fins under the rounded prows. Their engines glowed cool blue leaving a shimmering haze in their wake as the ventral lights charged and glistened. Every so often one of the many Covenant ships dotting space above them would unleash a beam of blinding light that cut through a piece of wreckage or a limping UNSC ship.

There were too many of the enemy ships to count and Twilight suddenly realised the fleet of infinite destructive proportions made absolutely no sound compared to the heavy hammering of blood in her ears.

“Ish… are we going to make it out of here?” Marko asked slowly, staring at the drifting Covenant army. “I’ll believe you if you say yes.”

“Yeah, we’re gonna make it, Marko,” Ishmir answered as he pulsed the thrusters and guided them into the shadow of a dead frigate.

“Well at least try not to make it sound like a fucking lie! We can’t hide in here forever. We should try and jump this baby to Earth!”

Ishmir shook his head. “We can’t. Cole Protocol. We can’t risk leading the Covenant home. We’ll need to make a few stops before heading to Sol.”

“Okay, do that then.”

“Yeah. Problem.” Ishmir shook his head again. “We only have enough power for one jump. We better make sure wherever we go is safe.”

“Safe? Did you not see what just happened down there? Reach is being turned to glass! And up there the entire Reach defence fleet is being turned into chum! There is nowhere safe left in the galaxy!”

“Head to the Horsehead System,” Twilight Sparkle interjected. “To Equis. We’ll go straight to Equestria.”

There was a pause of silence as Ishmir checked the instruments. “It’s in range. We could.”

“Yeah, and we might lead the Covvies there too.”

“It won’t matter,” Twilight Sparkle argued. “The Covenant are probably over Equestria by now anyway. You need to convince Princess Celestia of the danger so we can defend ourselves before the worst happens. We’ll deal with any Covenant re-enforcements if and when they arrive.”

“Good a plan as any. Locking co-ordinates and moving out of gravity-well.” Ishmir chuckled as he fed the computer targeting data and commanded the slip-space drive to spool up. “Hell, this experimental slip-space drive might just explode anyway.”

“It might just what!?” Marko was interrupted by sudden acceleration.

They arched around a length of what used to be the hull armour of a destroyer and made the short sprint into open space. Ishmir rolled them to narrowly avoid a piece of obliterated support frame without having to veer off course. The Covenant fleet was on their side now, sliding into view as Ishmir metaphorically righted them in space.

All the SCALPEL’s systems were at full power, thrusters answering a full burn and the vector funnels on the engines glowing with the heat produced. They were an enormous blip on enemy sensors. And looking across space Marko saw several of the colossal Covenant destroyers peel out of formation, turning about to face them.

Those sickly plasma cannons charged and any minute now they’d unleash a beam of energy that could cross the space between them and vaporise the SCALPEL in the blink of an eye.

Behind his visor Marko’s eyes widened and he commented with icy calm, “Ish, the giant alien armada is looking at us.”

Ishmir saw it. “Drive charged. Jumping.”

The satisfying ‘click’ of a button press filled the SCALPEL’s cockpit and the experimental slip-space drive answered. Space tore in two right before them. White light engulfed the Starfighter and as they vanished in a flash, Twilight’s last thoughts were concerning that elusive little plane of rotation…

“Sorry, I’m still getting the hang of the landings.”

They re-emerged into real-space within the blink of an eye. Only instead of finding themselves weightless the passengers of the SCALPEL transitioned into gut-wrenching gravity that span all around them. The spaceplane rolled hard to right while the nose bobbed up and down like they were out of control.

Ishmir quickly corrected with thrusters only to find nothing happened. The jets puffed out gas but there was no force countering their roll. He immediately slammed his fist onto the flap controls and deployed the air-brakes.

The roll suddenly stopped as air howled around the airframes. Moisture dappled the canopy and clouds raced past them.

“Damn nav-computer isn’t calibrated! We were dumped us half a system from where we’re supposed to be! We re-entered in-atmo!” Ishmir reported loudly as he struggled to flip systems into in-atmopshere flight mode as quickly as possible. “Hang on, this’ll be bumpy!”

Tracers were dragged from wingtips, arching as the spaceplane turned and weaved. They started tracing elegant S-shapes through the air, descending at an angle reserved for insanity but weaving gently to shave off as much speed as possible. Cloud cover parted and swirled around the craft as the SCALPEL disappeared into a greyish murk...

Then exploded out the other side dragging with it wisps of visible vapour.

When the clouds separated and Ishmir got a view of what was ahead of him he felt his eyes widen at the sight of something his sensors hadn’t picked up. The altimeter put them way too high for any mountains or landmass to be anywhere nearby, so they relied on thermals to navigate through cloudcover.

But reptiles were cold blooded, and the enormous gold-scaled dragon drifting in the air in front of them didn’t show up on thermal scanners.

They rolled over upside-down and Ishmir pulled hard on the yolk. The SCALPEL’s win surfaces flexed with the stress as they dropped under the creature’s belly then righted with another head-spinning one-eighty-degree roll.

The surprised looking dragon howled right over their heads and vanished from view, left in the SCALPEL’s wake.

“Oh, fuck! Next time I’m driving!” Marko screamed still reeling from that last roll.

The pale pony in his lap didn’t say anything, her eyes clenched shut, gut tight and breathing hard. This was worse than those rollercoasters at the Canterlot amusement park.

“Ishy! Don’t you think you should… y’know… apply the brakes!?” Marko commented.

“Stop backseat flying,” Ishmir retorted as he pulled them into the next set of tight turns.

Up ahead he made out the landmasses of Equestria. Bright colours dominated the land even with the layers of winter snow settled over the landscape. He hadn’t even looked down at himself to realise he had re-acquired the same soft outlines as when they had first visited.

They buzzed high and quiet over the golden towers of a marble city plastered against the side of a mountain and curled around the outskirts of a picturesque town in a valley of rolling hills. Ishmir finally dropped them low over a recognisable sprawl of wild woodland. The Everfree Forest was dusted with snow and ice like everything else. And it didn’t take Ishmir long to lock on to the familiar clearing with the standing stones from where they’d left last time.

“I’m going to circle the ell-zee, air-braking all the way down. Hang on!”

They rolled a quart to one side then pulled into a hair-rising turn. The world whirled around them as they circled, circled and circled like they were plummeting down a train. Marko was so disoriented he had no idea how Ishmir was keeping them oriented on the landing zone. He followed the princess’ example and slammed his eyelids shut.

Ishmir wished he could say he wasn’t feeling sick from the spinning, but he couldn’t afford the luxury of keeping his eyes closed. Looked out the side he watched the LZ spin below them, hand hovering over the thruster controls. He tweaked the pedals, nosing them closer to the clearing as they dropped in.

And then one of the wingtips clipped the forest canopy, throwing a cloud of snow, sticks and leaves into the air. Debris rattled against the hull and the canopy while Ishmir threw the thrust control forward.

The underside nacelles lit up with fire and heated air. The nose lifted up, they rotated on the spot and then settled abruptly right above the clearing of snow between the widely spaced standing stones.

Easing the throttle back with a sigh, Ishmir settled them down among the stones until the landing skids touched down and took the full weight of the SCALPEL.

“Graceful,” Marko commented sarcastically as the engines and other systems began to power down with a low whine.

“No,” Ishmir admitted, tapping an armoured finger on the analogue fuel gauge. “But it was efficient. We have enough fuel to wage a short dog-fight if we have to.”

“How short?”

“Depends on you, porker. How much weight do you think you can lose?”

“It’s all muscle, bro,” Marko assured as he clambered out of the cockpit and thudded into the snow beside the spaceplane.

The airframe groaned and clicked as the hull cooled down. But as far as Marko could see there was no evident damage. They hadn’t lost anything at least.

Twilight Sparkle leaned over the side of the cockpit and hesitantly spread her wings before hopping clear. Her wings fluttered, but with a spray of purple feathers she dropped like a rock. Thankfully Marko had seen it coming and caught her.

“Sorry,” Twilight blushed sheepishly as Marko put her down on solid ground. “I’m still getting the hang of the landings.”

“Yeah, you and Ishmir both.”

While Ishmir closed up the spaceplane and retrieved their bags with gear Twilight Sparkle trotted around the standing stones and took a long deep breath of that fresh Equestria air. It felt good to be back. Part of her thought she might never see Equestria again.

As she was happily shivering in the frigid snow, Twilight absent mindedly charged her magic and levitated up a rock out of the snow. She smiled broadly, dropping it as she bounded back to headhunters who were checking their gear.

“My magic’s back!”

Ishmir turned with a cocked helmet. “Must be something in the air,” he said, smiling by the sound of his voice.

Their little moment flipped when a rustle in the woods caught their attention. But before Twilight could see what it was both Spartans had drawn steel and stood ready. Marko rose from where he’d been going through the duffel bags and shouldered his shotgun while Ishmir stepped in front of Twilight with his pistol gripped in both hands. They were both probably still in combat mode. Then again, they were Spartan-III’s. When were they not in combat mode?

Eventually the vegetation started moving and was pushed aside, but no other-worldly beast came charging from the treeline like they had been expecting. Instead, out trotted a barcode printed pony. The zebra had a pink scarf wrapping the gold rings around her neck and a pair of saddlebags of much more traditional design compared to the princess’ adorning her sides.

“Zecora!” Twilight Sparkle cried as she floundered around Ishmir and ran to her friend, just happy to see a relatively pony face. She’d had her fill of Covenant for the day.

“Greetings to you, Princess Twilight,” Zecora rhymed with a smile before looking to Ishmir and Marko. “And good to see you headhunters, you’re a comforting sight. When I saw that unusual bird in the sky,” she nodded to the SCALPEL and continued to say, “I thought to myself; those two Spartan warriors must have learned to fly.”

“You knew it was us?” Marko scoffed disbelievingly.

“A lucky guess, I do admit. But you have to say, the shoe does fit. Equestria used to be a quiet place. Then you two blundered in to mix up the daily pace. Since last night aliens and doom have loomed. But thankfully thanks to you we will not be consumed.”

“You know about the approaching Covenant ship as well?” Twilight Sparkle asked.

“Last night I read what the stars had to say; but that is a story for another day.” Zecora craned her neck and rifled through saddle bags to produce a pair of gold and glass bottles that she dropped in front of the Spartans. “I mixed these brews especially for you in my pot. They should mask your true appearance for your journey to Canterlot.”

Twilight inquisitively levitated up one of the bottles and gave it a sniff. Eyes widening with surprise she smiled. “These are transfiguration potions! They’ll turn Marko and Ishmir into ponies.”

While Zecora was nodding in confirmation, the headhunters looked at each other for a while… and then both burst out into hysterical laughter. The pony and the zebra looked crestfallen as Marko doubled over, then collapsed into the snow.

“Sorry, sorry…” Ishmir managed to apologise. “But, um… why would we need that?”

“We need to travel through Ponyville and to Canterlot. The fastest way is by train. Can you imagine how many ponies we pass just to the train station? If they see you we could cause a panic before the Covenant even land!”

The Spartan contemplated for a moment then nodded. “Actually, Marko, she’s right.”

The other Spartan suddenly sat bolt upright. “Wait, what!?”

“Think about it. Walking around Equestria as we are introduces a lot of unknowns,” Ishmir reasoned picking up one bottle and throwing the other to Marko. “Why waste time dealing with all that when we could just disguise ourselves and walk right up to Princess Celestia’s front door. We’re here to convince Equestria’s leaders that the Covenant are not to be trifled with. We can’t do that if we’re struggling to put out fires our appearance may cause.”

Looking at the potion he’d caught, Marko rose to his feet and sighed. “Fuckin’ hell, I hate it when you’re right. Just please tell me this is reversible?”

Zecora nodded and the headhunters shrugged.

“Fair enough.” Marko and Ishmir clinked the bottles together and lifted their helmets. “Bottoms up.”

Ishmir closed his eyes and knocked back the liquid. He wasn’t sure why but he’d expected a bitter, horrible brew. But it was actually kind of pleasant, like warm milk and cookies before bedtime. It brought Ishmir way back to before the Spartan-III programme. On Onyx it was all go. There had been no time for the pampering and spoiling Ishmir had been accustomed to as an only child.

He’d almost forgotten all about the silly little childish comforts. With the Covenant attack on his homeworld, the rough year in the orphanage and the training on Onyx Ishmir had been forced to grow up as quickly as possible.

Reminding himself, Ishmir clung to the memories and swallowed. The potion warmed him like a cup of hot tea on a cold night and when he eventually lowered his head he looked at the empty bottle. Tucking his helmet under his arm the teenager cocked an eyebrow to his comrade.

Marko flung the empty bottle over his shoulder and slid his helmet back down over his face with a long belch.

“I don’t feel anything.”

But even as Marko said it he fell. Straight forward, no holds barred, face down into the snow he landed with a loud ‘thud’ of armour.

“Marko?” Ishmir took a step forward to check on his fellow Spartan.

The moment his foot landed his knees buckled and his leg muscles gave out. He hit the dirt on his knees, head rolling drunkenly. His vision blurred as the world tilted and span. He saw the horizon, then the sky, then the undergrowth in the treeline up ahead.

The world tilted sideways, and before he could even hear the comforting ‘thud’ of his own landing it all went black. And he swam in inky darkness.

Flintlock will return…