The Defector

The three Royal Guards stood proud above their fallen opponents, leaving my entire group awestruck. They looked like hell; their manes were matted with sweat, the gold plating of their armor was smeared with drying blood, and one of them had a bandage wrapped haphazardly around a still-bleeding leg wound. Despite all this, they looked confident. On top of the world. God, I did not envy their inevitable crash from that adrenaline high.

Of the three stallions in front of me, I recognized two of them: the brown-furred sergeant in the middle, and the grey pegasus pony to the sergeant's right. Greyhound, alive and... okay, not exactly well, but alive. The third soldier was a magenta earth pony with a dark blue mane. He was the one with the poorly-wrapped bandage on his leg, just above the knee. All three of them were carrying AK-47 rifles, the barrels of which were still smoking from the skirmish. To complete the picture, they all had confident, gloating smiles on their muzzles.

The sergeant locked eyes with me, and - his smile never dropping - asked, "What the hell took you so long?"

"Things got a bit complicated," I replied, lowering my weapon and flicking off its flashlight. I nodded to the bodies behind him, "As I see you've figured out."

"Eyyup," he said. Something stirred below him, drawing his attention to the floor. I followed his gaze down to see one of the human soldiers, barely alive and reaching slowly for a pistol that was laying on the floor by Greyhound's hooves. The sergeant sighed, "Oh, no you don't."

*Blam!*

A single shot rang out from his rifle, the bullet tearing through the human's black helmet and sending a stream of crimson splashing onto the nearby wall. I heard a couple of the civilians behind me screech at the sight, but none of the guards flinched. Well, except for one. I saw Rainbow Dash jump a bit out of the corner of my eye, more out of surprise than anything. At least, I hoped.

"Check the rest," the sergeant ordered the magenta stallion. He then turned back to me, "So, you ran into 'em, too, then?"

"Yeah. Too many for my liking," I said solemnly.

"They your boys?"

"No," I said a bit too quickly, "They're French. Special Ops. And they got a lot more inbound, including a chopper already overhead."

"Chopper?"

Before I could respond, the dull roar of helicopter rotors could be heard above us. We were only on the second floor, but a quick scan of the hallway revealed that we were on the outer edge of the hospital's west wing. The entire right-side wall was covered in large windows that filled the dark hallway with moonlight - or, what little moonlight there was. The light drizzle outside had picked up to a moderate downpour, and the sky was covered in dark clouds.

At the sound of the helicopter, Dash's ears went flat and she began looking around through the windows, "What was that?"

My mind recalled the radio chatter I had heard back in the mess hall, specifically the helicopter's callsign: Raven Three. In French, Corbeau Trois. I answered Dash with the latter. I heard her mutter something under her breath. Something about a rarity naming it? I couldn't make it out, and didn't feel it was important enough to ask for a repeat.

Ivory Shadow's voice pulled my attention away from the rainbow-maned rookie at the window, "So, now that we've regrouped, what shall we do?"

I turned to look at the black mare, "You're the officer here, ma'am. That's your call."

She nodded, but looked a bit flustered, "I suppose it is, but you seem to know what your doing. I'm requesting your opinion."

"Well..." I paused to think. It would have been easier if I knew the layout of the hospital. Since I couldn't rely on that, I instead gave the objective I knew we had to work towards, "We need to get out of here."

"What?" one of the soldiers behind Ivory blurted out, "Bullshit! We can fight these guys!"

"Let's take this place back!" another one chimed.

"We don't have the forces to take it back," I said, my voice rising a bit, "And we can't risk any more civilians. We need to get them out first and foremost. Then we can worry about taking it back."

"He's right. The citizens come first," Ivory agreed, addressing her soldiers. She then turned back to be, "What do you suggest, then? Where do we go?"

It suddenly dawned on me that she might not know what she was doing. Can't say that I blamed her; a designated security force like her's usually isn't expected to go up against hostile special ops teams, especially when stationed at a civilian-run hospital. I thought for a moment at her question. Where did we go from here? We get the civilians out, and then... what, exactly?

An idea suddenly sprouted in my mind.

"Surely, this can't be the only military stronghold in the city," I began, "Where else are you based out of?"

The brown-coated sergeant behind me answered, "Just the recruitment center. Probably about twenty Guards, give-or-take; and they're all sleeping right now."

"What about the militia?" I asked, shifting my gaze between the two officers.

"They'll rally as soon as they know what's going on," Ivory told me.

A plan slowly began to form in my mind, "Alright, so we can..."

"'We?'" I heard a voice from the back of the group. It was a young, but gruff male voice, coming from a dull orange stallion that was making his way up to me, "You keep sayin' 'we' like you belong here. Since when are you on our side?" There was an obvious venom in his words. I saw a few other guards give me dirty looks and nodding. Others just looked stunned, including Ivory Shadow.

The confusion I felt showed on my face as I looked at the suddenly aggressive soldier. Before I could get a word in, he continued, "Maybe you've forgotten, but you're still our prisoner. An enemy. So why the fuck are you helpin' us? Against your allies, no less?"

"They are not my allies," I shot back, narrowing my eyes at the stallion.

He didn't back down, "You said French. Last I checked, they were part of your little trifecta of invadin' forces. That makes these guys your allies, am I wrong?"

"Yes, you are!" I said angrily, "My men don't pull shit like this! I don't know what the fuck's going on, but I do know that these are not my men."

"Uh, guys, we have a problem," my ears vaguely picked up Rainbow Dash speaking as I defended myself, though my mind didn't process it. My anger at the soldier's disrespect clouded out everything else around me.

"What's your endgame, exactly?" the stallion continued, "Even if these ain't your boys, why're you helpin' us? Think we'll just forget about your P.O.W. status?"

"I am helping you," I said through clenched teeth, my voice seething, "Because these people are breaking several international laws with an attack like this. That, and my personal code won't let me just look away when civilians are being slaughtered before my eyes. As far as I'm concerned, that's reason enough."

Another stallion, a dark green one with a black mane, retorted before the orange one could, "You say that like your kind don't do this shit too!"

"We don't!"

"Uh, Sergeant Blackburn... Lieutenant Shadow... you guys should really come see this," this time, it was Crimson Flare's voice my mind barely registered. His voice was overlapped by the orange pony continuing his vocal assault.

"The fuck you don't! I've seen you humans shoot civilians down before!" he said in a raised voice.

"That's different," I said, though with less sting than my earlier words. They were starting to get to me, and not in ways that heightened my anger. The opposite, actually.

"How the hell is it different?" a hot pink mare guard joined in the argument.

I sighed, the fight leaving me slightly. I knew why, but I hated admitting it, "In combat... shit happens. A civilian moves into your sights when you don't expect them to. Your instincts kick in before your mind does. That's war, that's just how it is; but this," I spread my arms out in an all-consuming gesture, to indicate the entire hospital situation, "This shit just doesn't fly. Not in America's playbook."

The guards paused, not sure how to respond to that. Ivory continued to stare at me, and I saw the doctor giving me a similar shocked look. I realized I had just revealed a lot about myself to them. What I had more than likely done while in combat. I hated even thinking about it, and now I just told the ponies - who were still my captors - that I was probably guilty of such crimes. I wondered how the doctor's opinion of me had changed with this revelation. Would he hate me now? Fear me? Both?

"SERGEANT BLACKBURN!" an unfamiliar voice boomed through the hall, turning everyone's attention to the window. Rainbow Dash and Crimson Flare were looking out the window, eyes toward the ground below. Next to them stood Greyhound, who was looking back at me with an annoyed look. Was that him that just shouted my name? I opened my mouth to ask him why...

"Motherfucker, you can speak?!" Okay, not what I had intended to ask. Though, thinking back, I realized I had never heard him speak before. The most I could ever get out of him for the past three weeks was either a gesture or a grunt. Never words. The fact that he spoke now told me how dire the situation must have been.

"Come look at this," he said, waving a hand toward him and the window. I stepped forward, along with most of the guards and civilians. I took up the space directly to Dash's right. Ivory Shadow was right next to me, to my right. Our arms brushed against each other's as we all looked out at the compound below.

The entire west wing of the hospital's outside courtyard was filled with French military. About a dozen UN-marked Armored Personnel Carriers were parked around the lot, with a squad's worth of soldiers pouring out of each one. Most wore the standard French camouflage, but at least one team was made up of the all-black tactical units. They were swarming, moving about the yard in teams of four, towards the building. I had a feeling there was a similar make-up of units on the other sides of the hospital as well.

The cavalry had arrived.

"Well..." Ivory was the first to speak. She was oddly calm. That, or really good at faking it, "That certainly complicates things."

Before anyone could retort, I noticed one group of three black-armored soldiers moving away from the building. They approached a French soldier who was standing by a UN-marked Humvee - the only vehicle of that type on the lot that I could see. The man had no rifle in his hands, but a pistol at his belt. He wore a beret instead of a helmet. An officer, obviously in charge of the assault. Or, this portion of it, anyway.

As the three soldiers reached the officer, I had the foresight to put in the earpiece for my commandered radio. The four men talked for a second, before one of the three soldiers looked back and pointed at the building. Specifically, at us. Oh, no, I thought. This could not be good.

The radio cracked to life, and I heard the officer give out a command.

"Raven Three, we have sighted multiple hostiles on the second floor, west side. Engage immediately."

This was not good at all.

I opened my mouth to respond. I didn't need much time. Just two seconds, at most, for two words. "Get down."

I didn't get that time, though. Before I could even utter the first sound, a blinding light flashed into our eyes. The sound of a helicopter's rotors hit my ears, deafeningly loud amid the quiet of the hospital corridor. Instinct took over immediately. I grabbed the two mares beside me and pulled them down with me as I dropped to the floor. My movements triggered a few others to do the same, including Crimson Flare, but most were too slow.

Corbeau Trois opened fire.