Hark! I Hear the Colonel Calling
Hark! I hear the Colonel crying,
"March, brave boys, there's no denying!"
The colours fly, and drums are beating,
"March, brave boys, there's no retreating!"
Love, farewell...
Slowly, I find myself roused by the soft patter of the raindrops as they fall onto the golden Aquila that hangs outside of my trench. Hurredly getting dressed and rushing from the dugout, I find myself gazing into the Basilisk sky that roars gently as it shells with cold water upon is. It took Warren a few nights ago— when he was trying to shelter himself in the dugout the upper wall collapsed, and you could hear him scream for a few minutes until the mud choked out his lungs.
I don’t know why they sent us here. The Ponies, the Commisar said, are trying to turn everyone into more Ponies. They’re a threat to humanity that must be punished, and they’re destroy the entire galaxy if they must. Because they think they’re superior to us, and we’re just obstacles to be converted or destroyed. But why here? Why this world? Why this sector? This patch of mud beneath an alien sky?
The bugle sounds, and stand to attention. The colonel gives us his usual talk- that we are the Emperor’s first line of defence, that the Ponies are filthy xenos to be destroyed, that the Emperor will reward us with a seat at His table if we die.
But this time it’s different. He tells us that today is the offensive, and this time they’ll really get to the Barrier, and we’ll finally be marching into Canterlot before long.
We stand in line as my heart beats. The sweat falls down my face, mixing with the rain as it soaks my uniform. Time seems to pass slowly as we stand in line, the whistles of each company getting stronger and stronger.
The colonel’s whistle blows.
I feel a scream from the other guardsmen as we climb the ladders of our trench. To my left I hear the breaking of wood, the scream of a greenhorn and the trampling of boots on flesh.
My ladder is strong. I climb up it, into no man’s land. Or sea.
“Forwards, for the Emperor!” the Commissar shouts, “Purge the alien in their holes!”
I feel myself running, following the black-coated man as the other guardsmen follow behind him in a line. The line breaks— was it Vincent? No, it was Alton; his boot made an unlucky step into a patch of liquefied mud. He screams as he falls in. His left leg disappears, then his waist, his stomach, his chest, his neck, his head, his hand…
We must reach the Ponies at any costs. The Commissar continues his march. I hear the howl once more, followed by more screams, the sound of bodies splashing. The hollow sound of the potion mortars…
An escasty of fumbling follows as we put on our masks to prevent ourselves from inhaling it. I duck into a muddied pond, filled with crawling things. The howl softens, and I rise. The sound of my breathing fills my ears, and I find my vision reduced to two small holes to the left and right.
I peer upwards. Lewis stumbles, hyperventilating, words forming in his mouth but failing to escape it, before he disappears under a pink haze.
I hear the sound of lasguns.
We are close enough to the trenches to see them now. Pastel coloured manes, some horns sticking out. We approach closer. Long eyelashes, then big eyes. Candy-coloured coats.
Barbed wire.
The sappers take out their wire-cutters, desperately trying to cut through and place planks into the mud to allow passage. Some of the other guardsmen, impatient, try and navigate the wire, becoming entrapped and entangled, their screams vanishing into the rain.
Crossing the planks into the enemy trench, we take out our lasguns, our pistols, our knives, our clubs. A rainbow of violence fills our field of vision. Red. Yellow. Pink. Purple. Blue. Blood red.
I pause and gaze around me. A pink unicorn smashes the spine of one of my comrades, finishing him off with the blow of a sharpened spade to his brain stem. A bayonet is thrust into her eye, and the warm honeyed glow against white is replaced by pure red. You have to keep low, watch your legs. A Pony with the colour of a warm summer day with a blazing wildfire lit by a storm of lightning lunges for one of my other comrade’s lower leg in front of me with a spiked Morningstar. With a blow from his own mace, his spine is cracked, and bright summer green yields again to an angry red. To the left of me, a purple Pony springs around like a jack-in-the-box as a human Guardsman tries to keep his wits around him, before cornering ihm and taking out a knife that splits his skull in two, the brain matter leaking out of its skull as it spurts gibberish and gibberish fades.
“Come on, colts! The only good human’s a dead one!”
And you have to look up to the iron sky, too. The pegasi have arrived, dropping magic potions (not just Conversion) into the crowd below. Someone to the left of me bursts into a riot of polka dots, another grows small yellow flowers on his arm and he screams in pain. When their potions run out, they dive, bayonets sharpened, and many of the guardsmen shriek as they are impaled on their enchanted blades. The melee is reborn as we desperately lunch forth at our new assailers. A splash of baby blue flashes before my eyes, and I jump forward with my own bayonet. He blocks, he lunges, I block, and I lunge again until I knock his bayonet away.
For a brief moment, I stare ar his face. He is young, barely a stallion, staring up at me wide his big, wide eyes that are candy-cane red against a pure white background. They tell me he knows nothing about this war, why an uncaring Princess unicorn would send him away here to die in a forsaken hellscape He whimpers briefly and he sinks into the mud of the wall. The world pauses as I begin to lower by lasgun.
“SUFFER NOT THE UNCLEAN TO LIVE!” shouts the Commissar, as I turn around and see his own stern gaze meet mine. I turn back to the Pegasus, and stare down at my lasgun.
I plunge the bayonet into his ribs as he screams in agony that by all rights should have been unknown to him.
Love, farewell.