The Emergency

Chapters

Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 5

Chapter 1

The Emergency
Chapter 1

‘Well, I think it’s safe to say, we’re screwed’.

Summer had to agree there. The situation that she found herself in was certainly not a pleasant one. Despite the fact that she was here on a tropical island, the sun was shining over her head; there wasn’t a cloud in the sky, and by all accounts it was a beautiful day in a theoretically ideal situation, there was just one, small, problem. The jungle that she was sitting was filled to the brim with communist guerrilla fighters, and she was stuck here in the middle of it with possibly the most inept group of ponies that one could possibly be around.

She was a unicorn, dandelion yellow coated, with a forest green mane, which was, oddly enough, very convenient considering her surroundings. She was lance corporal Summer Lightfall, first battalion, B Company, of the Fillydelphia Regiment of the Equestrian Republican Army, and she was a dead mare.

‘Still with me Summer?’ the voice to her left asked. Summer merely smiled and nodded her head. ‘I’m still here Cereal, just relax’, she said softly as she turned to look.

Corporal ‘Cereal’ Wheatly nodded his head in affirmation. He was an earth pony, his coat was the colour of barley, hence his nickname. His ordinarily chestnut mane was not visible to her thanks to the combat helmet upon his head. He smiled at her and raised a hoof to adjust the smart targeting goggles over his eyes. He pulled them off, allowing a better look at her without having to sort his way through the tactical information that they usually displayed. He turned his head back towards of the other end of the gun pit that they were sitting in and frowned. ‘Wolsey is going to get us killed’, he said with a lazy point towards the north.

Summer looked over to the other end of the gun pit, which contained its’ third and final occupant. Lieutenant Madeline Wolsey, their commanding officer who was, arguably, the only one of their platoon who had deserved to get shot. Unfortunately for them, she had made it to this gun pit without as much as a scratch on her.

Wolsey was a unicorn like Summer. Her coat was mauve in colour, and her mane was a bubblegum pink, and she was clutching her rifle like it was a newborn foal, almost as if it was the most precious thing she had in her life. This was all her fault, she had marched their platoon out here, she had walked right into a trap, because of her; they were down to less than half of an infantry section.

They were going to die on this damn island, and it was all Wolsey’s fault.

‘Come up with a plan yet? Lef-tenant?’ Cereal called out to her.

Wolsey jumped slightly and looked towards Cereal and Summer nervously, almost as if she had forgotten that they were there. ‘I’m thinking!’ Wolsey cried out, immediately rolling over onto her stomach and deploying the bipod mount on her E86 Light Support Weapon, using her telekinesis to aim the weapon off towards the north. ‘I... I don’t see anything out there’, Wolsey said, mumbling to herself.

Yep, Summer was most certainly a dead mare. She knew that while Wolsey may not have seen anything, she was relying on her smart targeting goggles to call out targets for her, and wasn’t really looking with her own eyes. That’s what had gotten them into this mess in the first place. The smart targeting goggles were useless in the jungle terrain; too many places for a communist to hide. They were out there, Summer knew it. Wolsey had gotten most of their platoon killed because she had relied too heavily upon her smart targeting. When they came under fire, the Lieutenant’s first words were, and to quote: ‘There are no targets!’

So here they were, stuck in this gun pit surrounded by every communist on the island, each of whom had an overwhelming desire to murder them dead, and possibly eat them after wards, one of the younger privates in their platoon had sworn to her that a buddy of his’ platoon had come under attack, and that the communist guerrillas hadn’t even waited for the equestrian troops to die before they started munching on them, though Summer was pretty sure that that wasn’t actually true. The only thing that could have made the situation they found themselves in worse was if they were running low on ammunition.

Oh wait, that’s right. That was going on too. When the communists had started shooting, Wolsey had frozen up, those that weren’t killed in the opening volley had tried to take cover and return fire, but when the platoon sergeant bit the dust, Wolsey ordered a retreat in a panic. Costing most of their extra supplies on the frenzied retreat to this poorly dug out gun pit.

So here they were, on some small island that Summer had forgotten the name in the middle of the Salay Archipelago, she was surrounded by possibly hundreds of angry communist guerrillas, and thanks to one inept officer; almost everyone who had been competent in her platoon was now dead. This is what her life had come to. She was a dead mare and she knew it.

What made it worse was the fact that this had been their first deployment. The Salayan Emergency, as it had been called, was the first military action the Equestrian Republic had taken since the so called ‘Great Patriotic War’ in Year 35 of the Republic, that had been sixty years ago. You could train all you want, but you never knew how well you were actually going to perform under fire. If anything, that was Wolsey’s problem. They had been trained to wait for their smart targeting goggles to call out targets for them, however, anyone with half a brain should have been able to adapt when they didn’t.

Summer’s head snapped to attention when she heard a rustle from the jungle, using her telekinesis, she levitated her weapon up and trained it on the spot, a fast moving target burst through the trees, causing a flash indicator to appear on her smart targeting goggles, a green targeting box appeared before her eyes, and she let out a sigh of relief. Green meant friendly.

There was a loud thump as the owner of the green targeting box dove into their gun pit, landing with expert grace. ‘G’day mates!’ he said with a smile.

Summer couldn’t help but smile back at the newcomer; here was another poor sod that had gotten himself in way over his head. ‘Walter’, Summer said with a nod.

Trooper Walter Berger was a kangaroo, a tank driver for the King’s Own South Island Dragoons regiment, and a native of Swan City, South Island. An island nation in itself, the South Island Army was naturally in an excellent position in deploying their forces in Salaya. Kangaroos had experience fighting in the jungles, far more than the Equestrian Army did. They were pretty much right next door, after all. The archipelago itself was situated between South Island, and another island nation known as New Seeland. Both nations had been the first on the scene. Walter’s tank had gotten separated from the rest of their troop while bulldozing over the jungle terrain, and his tank had hit an improvised explosive and knocked out the tracks, Summer didn’t know what happened to the rest of Walter’s crew, but she figured that she also didn’t need to ask, there weren’t many possibilities for what could have possibly happened.

‘Tell me you’ve got some good news here Walter’, Cereal said, glancing over to Wolsey, who had not even noticed the kangaroo’s return.

‘Oh I’ve news! Good news and bad news, which would you like to hear first?’ Walter asked as he offered the equestrians a smile.

‘Let’s have the bad news first’, Cereal said with a frown.

‘Ah, well the bad news is we’re surrounded by sixty or so communist guerrillas... and they looked kind of hungry’, Walter said with a shrug.

Summer frowned, that was bad for them. Considering that the natives were meat eaters, the guerrillas were of a race called the harimau, which in their language meant ‘tiger’. ‘What’s the good news Walter?’ Summer asked, hoping that it was damn good news.

‘The good news is: I managed to steal some of their guns!’ Walter said with a smirk. ‘Bad news is that they’re Præsidium made KV74s and KVS-74Us which means we can’t use their ammunition to feed our own guns, and that they won’t link to your smart targeting goggles’.

Summer frowned as she used her telekinesis to pull her own rifle up to inspect it. Her E85 Rifle was among the second generation of equestrian smart weapons, lacking anything but standard iron sights for back up. Weapons were linked to a soldier’s smart targeting goggles which would regularly call out targets by indicating them as red boxes. It wasn’t perfect though. Good camouflage in a jungle setting was enough to fool the targeting array into showing that nothing was there, to say nothing of the thermal and infrared view modes, too much background noise to be useful. These new weapons, while rugged and dependable, were dumb, in the sense that they didn’t include any smart targeting features at all. These weapons came from the Unified Præsidium of Socialist Republics, the long time informal enemy of the Equestrian Republic. They mass produced these weapons cheaply, for use in their own army, and to export to poorer nations around the world, a lot of people in the more civilised world refused to touch them, seeing them as inferior to their own. Summer knew better though, as fancy as her E85 was, it was still a gun that shot a bullet. The KVS-74U too, was a gun that shot a bullet, out here in the jungles of Salaya, there was no difference.

Walter tossed one of the 74Us over to Summer, who caught it in her telekinesis. There were times when it paid to be a unicorn. She looked over to Cereal who fumbled with one of the regular 74s to clip it into his storm harness. While a unicorn pony could use their telekinesis to wield weapons like these, earth ponies and pegasi weren’t so lucky. They were forced to use the specialised harness in order to fire their weapons. Guns were fired by biting down on a control yoke with their teeth. Fortunately for Cereal, the storm harness came equipped with its’ own back up iron sight with an adjustable zeroing point, though in the dense jungle of Selaya, anything above the closest setting of one hundred metres was going to be useless.

Summer glanced over to Wolsey, who was still aiming her E86 down range and mumbling to herself. She was most definitely not getting a new weapon; she was liable to shoot them on accident before hitting a communist guerrilla.

There was a growl out in the distance. Summer turned her head towards the south and pulled her smart targeting goggles off of her eyes. They were useless with these Præsidium weapons, so why even bother?

Wolsey jumped at the growl, pulling her E86 up and shifting over to the south.

‘What’s the plan, Lef-tenant?’ Cereal asked her as he shifted to face the south alongside her.

‘Shut up! I’m thinking!’ Wolsey cried out in a hoarse whisper.

‘Gee, you think the Lef-tenant is nervous or something?’ Summer asked sarcastically. Wolsey was too frightened to hear her.

‘Understatement of the year, lance-corporal’, Cereal said with a frown.

‘Wolsey isn’t cut out for this Cereal, what the hell is she even doing out here?’ Summer asked.

‘Way I heard? She didn’t have much of a choice, considering who her grandmother was...’ Cereal said with a shrug, his voice trailing off as he scanned his eyes down range looking for trouble.

‘Who was her grandmother?’ Summer asked, raising an eyebrow at the earth pony.

‘Field Marshal Trixie’, Cereal said plainly.

Summer’s mouth dropped open. ‘No way’, she added in disbelief. She couldn’t believe that. Wolsey? A direct descendant of Trixie, The Trixie? Next thing Cereal was going to tell her was that Wolsey also happened to be carrying The Gun That Killed Three Princesses.

Summer’s ear twitched, there was a loud pop, and before she knew what hit her, a bright white hot flash filled her vision. She raised her forelegs to shield her eyes, knowing what was coming next. With a loud crash her ears began to ring. She knew what was coming, and when the light faded, she would be fighting for her life.

Chapter 2

Chapter 2

‘So that’s it huh? That’s the Gun That Killed Three Princesses?’

Summer Lightfall nodded in agreement and took a closer look at the antique revolver behind the case and began to read the plaque on the wall beside it. ‘The Gun That Killed Three Princesses is an Emerald Ordinance No.4 Revolver, Serial Number 109813, manufactured by Emerald Ordinance in South Island for use throughout the Welaran Empire during the World War. This particular revolver, was manufactured in year 15 before the Republic, and was once the side arm used by kangaroo Fusilier Benjamin Willoughby of the Royal Kingsland Fusiliers Regiment of the South Island Army. Eventually gifted to the first Equestrian Prime Minister, Twilight Sparkle, the revolver was used overthrow Princess Celestia and Princess Luna in Year 0 before the Republic, and then used again seven years later at the Battle of the Cave, where then Prime Minster Twilight Sparkle wielded it into combat with the leader of the Royal Guard Holdouts, Shining Armour, and his wife, Princess Cadence, where Twilight Sparkle was forced to kill her brother and sister-in-law, giving the weapon its’ unique name: the Gun That Killed Three Princesses. The weapon went unfired afterwards, and was donated to the Equestrian History Museum in Year 25 of the Republic’.

Summer Lightfall looked down to her younger sister. Aurora Lightfall was more than a couple of years younger than she was. Her coat was a dark yellow, and her mane a milk chocolate rolled into curls. She was bored, Summer could tell. She found it somewhat depressing that her sister did not care for history like she did. This was not how Summer had intended the last day that she had to spend with her little sister for quite some time to go. She was shipping out for recruit training, where she’d be undergoing a rigorous eighty day training course, upon completion of which, she would become a member of the Fillydelphia Regiment of the Equestrian Republican Army.

Once training was over, the rest of her service would be a breeze! Two years, two years of standing around and providing a garrison force for Fillydelphia’s heavy industry centres. The Equestrian Republic had not deployed its’ troops over sixty years. Not since the Great Patriotic War, or so it was called by those bastards in the Præsidium. Their invasion of Bundesrepublik Schäferhund in Year 35 of the Republic had been met with swift counter action by the Equestrian Republic. Despite being meat eaters, the schäferhund and Equestria had long been allies, hell, the dogs had even helped in the fight to overthrow the Princesses. While it had been the first major military engagement for the Equestrian Republican Army, their intervention had been enough to send the commies running back to Petrograd with their tails between their legs, the Fillydelphia Regiment under the brilliant leadership of Field Marshal Trixie had personally led the charge. Summer was proud that she was about to be carrying on that tradition.

Summer looked back down towards Aurora, she was so bored, but she was far too polite to say anything about it. Summer couldn’t help but smirk, when she had been Aurora’s age she was not nearly as well behaved as her little sister was. Aurora had always been a little on the quiet side, preferring to spend her time with her big sister at home rather than be out making friends. Oddly enough, considering that her interests were pretty much the opposite of Summer’s. Aurora was a savant went it came to mathematics and science, while Summer was lucky if she could multiply any two numbers without use of a calculator. ‘What are you thinking about kid?’ she asked, offering her younger sister a small smile.

‘the one hundred thousandth digit of the square root of pi is two’, Aurora said simply.

Summer looked at her kid sister and raised an eyebrow at her, and couldn’t help but smirk. ‘Well, I’m going to have to take your word on that one kid’, she said with a chuckle as she waved for her to follow. ‘I know you’ve got to be hungry, and we’ve hung out here in the museum long enough’.

A whole ten minutes.

‘Are you sure?’ Aurora asked, cocking her head to the side as she looked at her sister. She clearly didn’t want to disappoint her, Summer was her idol.

‘Yeah, we’ll get some lunch, and then afterwards we can head over to the science museum, as long as we can look at the pendulum and the anti-gravity simulator, I always loved those’, Summer said with a smile, nodding her head reassuringly that she was fine with the change of plan.

Aurora nodded her head excitedly and the two sisters headed out to spend the rest of their day. Summer was going to miss her younger sister very, very much while she was gone, she knew that for certain.

...

‘Let me take this opportunity to welcome you to Training Company D of the Fillydelphia Regiment, or as I like to call it, “D-Coy”, why do I like to call it D-Coy you may ask yourselves? it is because you all ARE NOT SOLDIERS! You are decoys! And until you are trained to be a soldier that is all you will ever be good at! I am Warrant Officer Class Two Gunmetal, and I am your drill sergeant, DO NOT be mistaken! My rank may have the word officer in it, but I work for a living! I will make soldiers out of every one of you if it kills me!’

Summer had stopped paying attention to the words coming out of Drill Sergeant Gunmetal’s mouth and stood at attention. She didn’t move a muscle, and struggled to not draw attention to herself. She merely watched as the grey coated earth pony trotted back and forth before them, ranting loudly about how things worked here.

‘You!’ Drill Sergeant Gunmetal said, stopping directly in front of Summer and looking at her with a piercing glance.

‘Sir!’ Summer said in response, making sure that she was still at attention, and that she didn’t slip even a millimetre.

‘What is your name decoy?’ Gunmetal asked.

‘Private Summer Lightfall, sir!’ Summer said, making sure never to forget to address him as such.

‘Tell me something Private Lightfall, have you ever fired a gun before?’ Gunmetal asked.

‘Yes sir! I used to belong to a gun club, sir!’ Summer said, matter of factly, not adding that it had been several years since she had last discharged a firearm.

‘Oh really? Is that a fact?’ Gunmetal asked with a smirk. ‘I bet you think you’re a good shot then?’

‘Yes sir!’ Summer said instinctively, her unicorn telekinesis did offer her a greater sense of precision and control. Summer looked at her drill sergeant and immediately realised that this had been a poor choice of words, the last thing she wanted to do was make herself seem like a hotshot, she had been a fair shot in those days, but those days were long gone, and they did not matter. ‘But certainly not as good a shot as you, sir!’ she added, figuring that the complement couldn’t possibly get her into trouble.

‘Damn right!’ Gunmetal said with pride in his voice, Summer had never seen Drill Sergeant Gunmetal in action, and had no idea just how good he actually was, but to be appointed as a drill sergeant, he couldn’t have been anything but the best, to think otherwise was plain stupid. ‘Tell me something private, in this gun club that you belonged to... what weapon did you shoot?’ Gumetal asked as he continued to look her over, sizing her up to see what she had to offer for the company.

‘Uh... well... I...’ Summer began to say but stopped herself. She found that she was not sure exactly where to begin; she had tried out a number of different weapons ranging to pistols, rifles, and submachine guns.

‘I can’t hear you private!’ Gunmetal shouted at her.

‘Sir! I most commonly used a Bonifacio Policía 11 millimetre, sir!’ Summer said, and braced herself for the expected round of verbal abuse. Bonifacio wasn’t an equestrian company, and she half expected the drill sergeant to be biased towards equestrian made arms.

Much to her surprise, though, Gunmetal merely raised an eyebrow at her. ‘Maybe this one won’t be so useless after all! Alright Private Lightfall, now drop and give me a hundred sit ups for not paying attention to my welcoming speech!’ He shouted at her, and pointed to the spot on the ground where he wanted her to start doing sit ups.

Of course, what could have possibly led her to believe that she had gotten herself off the hook? ‘Sir yes sir!’ Summer cried out and immediately dropped to the ground and did as she was told; groaning inwardly as she preformed the difficult physical task, moving this way wasn’t exactly easy for a pony body. Otherwise, Summer did not complain. She had already known that training was going to be hard, but afterwards, it would be nothing but a cake walk. Two years, two easy years of military service, and the Republic would pay for everything for a four year stint at university. What could be better than that? Once she was finished with training, it was going to be a cakewalk.

...

‘It is important to remember! You are not schäferhund! You do not have sharp teeth! You are not a gryphon; you do not have sharp talons! You are not a kangaroo! You cannot balance on your tail and kick your enemy in the face, and possibly claw their eyes out while doing it! Which means, that if you are forced to fight up close and personal, you are at a disadvantage, which is why, if you are forced to fight in close quarters, you must be the one to initiate combat! Now! Fix bayonets!’ Drill Sergeant Gunmetal cried out.

Summer used her telekinesis to pull her rifle up and held it in front of her face. She pulled her bayonet out from its’ sheathe that had been slung over her shoulder and promptly secured it into the bayonet lug on her training rifle. She was standing besides several other recruits, looking down range at an instruction dummy.

‘At the sound of my whistle, you will charge forward, and you will defeat the training dummy in a close assault! It should be simple, because the dummy is physically unable to fight back!’ Gunmetal cried out at them as he trotted around Summer and her fellow recruits, double checking to make sure that they had not done anything stupid, such as mounting their bayonets on backwards, or anything that was just as ridiculous.

Summer glanced around the training area, the sun was shining over her head, and there wasn’t a cloud in the sky if anything it was a perfectly beautiful day out, a perfectly beautiful day to mutilate training dummies with a highly sharp bayonet. Summer almost let out a smirk at the thought, but kept a straight face, lest she wanted Drill Sergeant Gunmetal to chew her out for day dreaming.

Several of the other recruits had not taken their eyes off the dummies, almost as if they expected them to jump up and attack them, a possibility of which, that Drill Sergeant Gunmetal had assured them, was impossible. Out of the corner of her eye, off in the distance Summer could see a mauve coated unicorn mare standing on an observation platform, peering down upon the training exercise through a pair of binoculars.

‘Hey?’ Summer asked, gently prodding the recruit next to her, a cyan coated pegasus stallion going by the nick name of Joker. ‘Who’s that up on the balcony?’

‘That?’ Joker said, tilting his head towards the platform. ‘That’s Lef-tenant Wolsey. She’s supposed to be one of the regiment’s best officers or something’.

Drill Sergeant Gunmetal blew his whistle, and Summer charged forward and slashed at the practice dummy with her bayonet, almost forgetting about this Lieutenant Wolsey completely. By the time she had sufficiently dismembered the practice dummy, the unicorn mare had departed from the platform, and unfortunately for Summer, she had no idea that her fate and the fate of the mare watching her were to be intertwined.

Chapter 3

Chapter 3

Summer Lightfall let out a sigh of relief. Her entire body ached from the day's training, and it was time to relax. She had an hour until lights out to do as she pleased, and she knew exactly what she was going to do. The mess area had an old style videophone, and they were allowed to use it in the hour before lights out. One call, five minutes. There were a lot of people who wanted to use it. Summer waited patiently for Joker, the cyan pegasus pony that she'd talked to earlier about Lieutenant Wolsey, to finish up talking with his girlfriend, or wife, or whatever.

'Hey, I got to go; we've only got five minutes to use this. I love you! And I'll talk to you next week', Joker said with a smile before hanging up and moving aside to let the next person in line use it.

'Jeeze, took you long enough, eh Joker?' Summer called out to him with a grin.

'Eh piss off!' Joker snapped back without bothering to look over his shoulder.

Summer couldn’t help but smirk as she stepped up to the videophone and deposited a fifty pence coin in the coin slot. Private Joker was particularly easy to mess with, despite his name; he was a rather serious pony. We’re it not for the fact that he annoyed the hell out of Drill Sergeant Gunmetal, he would be their company’s vote for most likely to become an assistant instructor.

‘Please speak the name of the party you wish to call’, the videophone’s automated voice said in a soft tone.

‘Lightfall residence, Fillydelphia, 6226’, Summer said simply, and waited for her call to connect. There was a flash on the screen as the call connected, and Summer smiled brightly at who had just picked up.

‘Summer!’ Aurora cried out in excitement.

‘Hey kid! What’s up? I hear you just started school yesterday?’ Summer asked.

‘Oh I’m doing great! I really like my classes! Cheerilee Academy is much nicer than my old school’, Aurora said, hardly able to contain her excitement.

Summer smiled, if there was anyone who belonged in the Cheerilee Academy, it was her little sister. Cheerilee Academy had been founded in Year 45 of the Republic in honour of the first Minister of Education herself. Cheerilee had been responsible for the formation of the modern standardised education system herself, and had a good number of schools named after her. What made the Cheerilee Academy different however, was its focus on small class sizes for gifted students. One student at the Cheerilee Academy had an IQ bigger than half the members of parliament combined, and Aurora Lightfall certainly fit into that category.

‘I can’t wait to hear all about it! Unfortunately we just don’t have the time, they only let us have five minutes to talk’, Summer said, watching as a look of disappointment formed on her younger sister’s face. ‘However, you can always send me a holostate and tell me all about it that way!’

Aurora’s face lit up with excitement and she nodded her head in agreement. ‘I will!’ she said simply.

‘Are mum and dad home?’ Summer asked.

‘Nope, they went out to dinner, Ms. Carmine is watching me for the evening, but she’s asleep on the sofa again’, Aurora said with a shrug, adjusting the camera on her end to point towards the sofa to show that the Lightfall’s elderly neighbour was indeed asleep on the sofa. Aurora turned the camera back to face towards her. ‘But I’ll certainly tell them that you called!’ Aurora said, promisingly.

‘I knew I could count on you kiddo, hey listen, I got to go, but I look forward to your holostate about your first day of school! I love you!’ Summer said with a smile.

‘I love you too sis!’ Aurora said with a smile, outstretching her forelegs as wide as she could, simulating a hug. Summer stretched out her forelegs as well, returning her sister’s ‘hug’, for a couple seconds and closed out the call.

Summer Lightfall loved her little sister, and let no one have any doubt of that.

...

Training wasn’t easy, that was for sure, Summer had been here at Camp Trixie on the outskirts of Fillydelphia for almost two weeks, and at this point she was starting to feel like a real soldier. Here she was sitting in the mess hall, eating her morning oatmeal as she always did, watching as the earth ponies and pegasi struggled to eat it. Silverware was a long standing joke in Equestrian society. Everyone in the regiment was given a spoon, a fork, and a knife at each meal, and the officers got a kick out of watching each of the recruits try to use them. Being a unicorn, Summer had no issue, of course. Much to her amazement, Joker, who happened to be sitting next to her had gotten particularly good at balancing his spoon between two feathers of his wing and eating his oatmeal in such a fashion.

The rest of the earth ponies and pegasi, however, discarded their silverware and plunged head first into the bowl. Summer had to wonder, what was the point in continuing to make these when two thirds of the population couldn’t use them?

‘That’s pretty clever’, Summer said, gesturing to the spoon in Joker’s wing.

‘Took many years of practise’, Joker said, folding his wing and taking another spoonful of oatmeal into his mouth.

‘Hey! Everyone! You all got to see this!’ One of the other recruits, an earth pony mare named Pender called out, waving everyone over to her table. Joker dropped the spoon onto the table and jumped up from his seat, interested in the matter. Summer stayed put, not particularly interested in anything other than eating her oatmeal, or at least until Joker came back over to her.

‘Lightfall, you’re going to want to see this’, he said, a look of complete seriousness on the pegasus recruit’s face.

Summer took one last bite of her oatmeal before standing up and heading over to Pender’s table. Someone had set up a small holographic emitter on the table, tuned to this morning’s local newscast.

‘... fighting has broken out in the streets of Miri on the Island of Sarawak, as members of the Harimau Liberation Front, a communistic guerrilla warfare group, have taken to the streets en masse, seising control of the isolated city. The HLF have promised that this was only a beginning, pledging that take control not only of Sarawak, but the entirety of the Salayan Archipelago. A spokesman from the Præsidium Foreign Ministry has pledged it’s support to the Harimau Liberation Front, applauding them for finally taking a stand against the, quote ‘Highly Corrupt Federal Government’. The Præsidium statement has been met with protest by Equestrian Republic Prime Minister, Desert Rose, who in an official statement made to Parliament today pledged to stand by the willingly elected government of Salaya, and pledged their full support against the HLF. Chief of Navy, Vice Admiral Firestar, has commented that a naval battle group has already been assembled, and will depart to assist the Salayan Government in suppression of the uprising once orders from the Prime Minister come in. Further escalation in troop deployments are likely, and come as a shocking surprise to many Equestrian Citizens. This will be the first time that Equestria has deployed its troops in nearly sixty years. The last such deployment was during the Great Patriotic War, which began in Year 35 of the Republic...’

Summer’s jaw dropped wide open. The Republic was at war. And here she was, one of its’ soldiers. The realisation finally hit her. She had joined the army to pay for university; she had never expected that there would actually be a war.

...

‘All right maggots, you’ve all heard the news! War has come, which means we need troops to send. We will be accelerating your training, to a focus on marksmanship! Harimau are an incredibly dangerous foe up close, which means that if they get to you, you are screwed! Which is why you must shoot them down before they can get close, however, you have an advantage that that they do not, in a wide array of advanced technology to assist you in the fight!’ Drill Sergeant Gunmetal said as he walked up and down the rows of recruits before him.

Summer watched nervously as he paced back and forth, the idea of going into battle frightened her very much. She honestly didn’t know if she had it in her, what was she going to do?

‘You there! Private Lightfall! Front and centre!’ Gunmetal cried out.

Summer stepped out of rank and stood at attention before the drill sergeant. ‘Sir!’ she cried out, struggling to keep herself from squeaking in fear.

‘Put these on’, Gunmetal said before passing her a pair of goggles.

Summer did as she was told, and placed the goggles over her eyes. She was surprised to see that Drill Sergeant Gunmetal was now surrounded by a green targeting box.

‘What do you see private?’ Drill Sergeant Gunmetal asked.

‘There’s a box around you, sir’, Summer said plainly.

‘Correct! These are smart targeting goggles, each of you will be issued one of these, it will mark friendly units with a green box, and likewise, it will mark hostiles with a red one! You will be able to see your enemies coming! It will tell you exactly where to aim! So you wait for a targeting solution! You do not eyeball it! You are not a cowpoke firing from the hip!’ Drill Sergeant Gunmetal said.

Summer nodded in understanding. All the while thinking to herself: ‘what have I gotten myself into?’

Chapter 4

Chapter 4

She was screwed, Summer Lightfall was so screwed, and as she lied back in her bunk, the realisation of what was about to happen continued to set in. Drill Sergeant Gunmetal had done his best to prepare them for action against the Harimau, from training them in marksmanship, drilling in small unit tactics, rigorous physical training; they had been taught everything they needed to know in the first two weeks, now it was just down to drilling it into them.

The acceleration of their training hadn't helped. This was supposed to be a twelve week course, and it had been cut down to six. To quote Drill Sergeant Gunmetal they were: 'As ready as they were ever going to be'.

That made her feel much better about herself.

'Psst! Lightfall!' a voice called out to her in a harsh whisper.

Summer did not reply, in fact, she barely noticed it.

'Lightfall? You awake?' the whisper called again.

Summer jumped slightly, and turned her head to look at the bunk next to her. Pender was lying wide awake, looking directly at her. It was dark, and the earth pony's purple coat made her difficult to see, If not for the light of the moon reflecting off her eyes, Summer wouldn't have noticed her at all.

'What is it Pender?' Summer called back in a hoarse whisper.

'I can't sleep... I mean... war? Who'd have thought?' Pender said.

These feelings were shared by almost everyone in the company. No one, not even the instructors had ever seen any action. There hadn't been any in sixty years! Summer wasn't stupid, she could train to her heart's desire, but until you got out there, and saw the real thing? You had no idea how it was going to go.

'I know...' Summer said with a frown.

'Now we're stuck in this mess...' Pender said with disheartened words in her voice.

'Oi? Pender? Shut the fuck up will ya? Trying to sleep here!' The voice of Joker harked over from the bunk on the opposite side of Summer's.

'I don't know how you could possibly sleep Joker...' Pender snapped back before the pegasus stallion interrupted her.

'I don't either... considering the fact that you won't SHUT UP!' Joker snapped back.

'Oi, knock it off will you? Before you wake up the Drill Sergeant!' one of the other recruits called out.

'I'm already awake decoys! Now shut your mouths before I come over there and shut them for you!' Drill Sergeant Gunmetal's voice said from seemingly nowhere.

Everyone in the room fell silent, and no one said anything for the rest of the night.

Joker smiled and finally went to sleep; his impersonation of the Drill Sergeant's voice had worked perfectly.

Summer, still however got no sleep.

…

The accelerated training was nothing short of brutal, Summer watched as more recruits flowed in each day where they would be placed in one of the eight training companies. Before the war, D-Coy was the only one, now... it was merely the beginning, the vanguard for all others.

Talk of war was downplayed. Even the external media had stopped referring to it as war. The word ‘war’ in and of itself was a word that made people nervous. Some of Equestria’s older citizens had been children during the time of the Great Patriotic War, and memories from that time came flooding back. The camp commandant even issued a standing order for the recruits not to use the word ‘war’.

‘What the hell are we supposed to call it then?!’ Pender cried out as she read the notice from the commandant on a bulletin board that someone had set up in the Mess Area.

‘Drill Sergeant Gunmetal and the other instructors are calling it “The Emergency”, as if that’s any better’, Joker said with a frown.

Summer nodded her head in agreement. She’d grown close to Joker and Pender during her time at Camp Trixie. Honestly? They were the only two ponies she had bothered to learn the names of. There were a hundred ponies in their company, and Summer had the unfortunate curse of being bad with both names and faces. She’d heard some of the officers talking, casualties were supposedly pretty substantial out in the field, their company would be broken up and they’d be assigned as needed to fill vacancies in the regiment’s first battalion. In any case, it was highly possible that Summer could be assigned to a different unit than Joker or Pender.

‘Honestly? I don’t even know if I could point Salaya out on a map’, Joker said with a frown. ‘I’d never even heard of it before the Emergency started’.

Pender nodded her head in agreement. ‘No kidding, and how would we have? What business do we even have over there? Do we have any ties to the area?’ Pender asked.

‘Not that I know of’, Summer said, shaking her head.

‘Exactly! So why are we even going over there in the first place? What is it to us?’ Pender asked again.

‘It’s only because the Præsidium’s foreign ministry said what the Harimau Liberation front is doing is a good thing’, Joker said with an annoyed huff. ‘Now, I like the communists as much as the next person does, which is to say, not at all, but come on, we pick some pretty dumb things to get into arguments over’.

Summer frowned. As much as she hated to admit it, Joker had a point. No one had really gotten over the Great Patriotic War; the Præsidium lost, and was out for retribution, the Equestrian Republic was sorry that they didn’t finish the job. More likely than not, the two nations would never get along.

‘You know, I heard a story about the Præsidium’, Joker said as the trio began to walk away from the posted notice and out of the mess area.

‘Oh? And what would that be?’ Pender asked, raising an eyebrow.

‘Apparently, only one in seven families in the Præsidium own a car’, Joker said simply.

‘No kidding?’ Summer asked, considering the population of the Præsidium, that was a pretty low number.

‘Uh huh, and there’s this story I heard, that it takes them ten years to be able to get a car!’ Joker said with a nod. ‘So there’s this guy, who goes down to the secretary in charge of distributing cars to people, and he fills out the paper work and puts down the money. The secretary looks over the paper work and the money and says: “Okay you’re good, come back in ten years and we’ll have your car ready for you”, and the guy looks at him and asks: “Morning or afternoon?” The secretary looks at the guy strangely, “Well, its ten years from now, so what difference does it make?!” The guy looks at the secretary and offers him a shrug and says: “Well, the plumber is coming in the morning”’.

Summer and Pender looked at each other, a grin forming on each of their faces; the two of them struggled to keep from bursting out into laughter. They could hold it no more, and broke out laughing as hard as they ever had before in their entire lives.

‘I didn’t... I didn’t... oh jeez... I didn’t know that Joker could actually be funny!’ Pender said as she struggled to catch her breath.

Joker merely rolled his eyes at his friends and shook his head. ‘Well come on Pender! My parents called me Joker for a reason; it wasn’t for the irony here!’

The trio continued to walk, struggling to contain themselves, lest Drill Sergeant Gunmetal chew them out, he was supposed to make an announcement today, and they were all nervous to what exactly it would be.

...

‘Alright, so I’ve got some good news for all of you! You are no longer decoys! You are trained soldiers of the Republican Army! There is no more that I can teach you, you have practiced everything you have learned plenty, as far as I am concerned, you all are ready to head out into the real world and kick commie arse!’ Drill Sergeant Gunmetal said as he paced back and forth as he usually did. ‘You will be shipping out to Saleya in forty eight hours, so until then, you are all granted leave... you will be back here in this spot in EXACTLY forty eight hours. Do not be late! If you do not show up... I will come out there, and I will find you myself, you don’t want that. Trust me; now go on... get out of here!’

Summer needed no encouragement, now was time to relax a little, in forty eight hours, she would never have the opportunity to relax again.

Chapter 6

Chapter 6

Summer had taken Shortfuse's advice to heart, and now stood looking up at the night sky as she waited for the bus that would take her home. It wasn't like she could see anything. Fillydelphia was a big industrial city, too much light pollution and smog from the factories to see anything.

When Summer was a kid, it had been a lot worse though, industry ran rampant, not just in Fillydelphia, but in Ponyville, and Manehattan too. Canton had been spared from pollution due to the fact that there was no space to build any factories up on that plateau. There had been two major bouts of rapid industrial build up in Equestria, one in the 10s, and the second in the 60s. Both times, industry had outpaced environmental regulations, and the pollution had gotten pretty bad.

When pollution was bad, it was pretty much the only way that the Equestrian Green Party could come to power in Parliament. Unsurprisingly, when one considered the state of things then. There had only been two Green Party governments. Fluttershy's administration in Year 25 and Stormhorn's in Year 70.

There had been a move in the last thirty years towards cleaner energy sources, most importantly nuclear fusion. Older forms of energy production, such as coal, oil, and natural gas were being replaced in phases, and existing fission reactors were being upgraded and optimised to run as efficiently as possible before they would be phased out completely by Year 120.

Summer glanced down the street, and watched as the bus pulled to a stop in front of her; the door opened, and allowed her entry. Summer stepped on, depositing a coin in the fair box before taking her seat near the back of the bus.

She was mostly alone; busses were completely automated with Virtual Intelligence pilots having replaced drivers many years ago. There was only one other passenger, not surprising, considering how late it was. Summer glanced over to the other passenger. She was an earth pony mare, her coat was a dark grey, and her mane and tail alternated between teal and emerald. Her eyes were a soft orange, and there were tears streaming down her face. Summer could tell that she was struggling to keep quiet. Something was clearly wrong.

It probably wasn't any of her business. She turned and looked away back towards the front of the bus. Then the thought occurred to her that her problems weren't really any of Shortfuse's business either and the pegasus mare's talk with her had really helped.

Summer got up from her seat and trotted back towards the earth pony mare, taking a seat across from her. 'Hi... are you alright?' Summer asked.

The earth pony mare jumped in her seat, her head shot up and she sat silently for a moment before turning her head back down, as if in shame. 'I could lie and say yes... and that it was just my allergies... but you wouldn't believe that, would you?' the mare asked.

'No... no I wouldn't. I can tell that something is clearly bothering you... and I thought that maybe you'd like someone to talk to?' Summer asked, offering her a smile.

'I... well, I haven't told anyone about it... and... hey? Why do you care anyway? You don't know me! I don't know you!' the mare said, going on the defensive.

Well great. This was going well.

'I'm Summer Lightfall, let's just say... that I'm going through a hard time too, and I understand what it's like to be alone and afraid of what's coming', Summer said.

The mare was silent for a moment; she bit her lip and glanced back and forth before turning back towards Summer. 'I'm Anastasia Hopely... call me Hopely', the mare said simply.

'Pleased to meet you', Summer said. She rose from her seat and crossed over to the earth pony mare, and sat down next to her. She placed her hoof on Hopely's shoulder and offered her a small smiled. 'Now... what's going on?'

'I... oh jeeze... I've just realised that I've never said this out loud', Hopely said with a frown. 'I'm... pregnant'.

'I see... ‘Summer said. Well, that wasn't something too bad, was it?

'I... I was... I was raped', Hopely said with a frown.

Summer was very glad that she did not say that last bit out loud.

'I'm here to get it aborted... hopefully that'll be the end of it that I can move on with my life', Hopely said as tears began to stream down her face.

'Did you go to the police? Maybe they can catch the guy who did it?' Summer asked.

Hopely broke out into sobbing for a few moments before wiping her eyes, and reaching into her overcoat with her teeth and pulling out a handkerchief and blowing her nose into it. 'You don't understand... I am the police', she said with a sniffle.

'Huh...?' Summer asked, her eyes widening in disbelief.

'I'm a patrol copper in Ponyville... and I ticketed someone for jaywalking. Wouldn't take the ticket, so I arrested him and hauled him in... little did I know he was a Præsidium national that my superiors were watching... so they let him go, a couple nights later, he cornered me in a dark alley... and he raped me in retaliation... worst thing is, he made sure that I knew it was him... and now... now... I'm pregnant with his foal', Hopely said before burying her head into Summer's shoulder and crying her eyes out.

Summer wrapped her foreleg around Hopely for comfort. Hell, the more Summer talked to people, the more she felt like her own situation wasn't quite so terrible. Hopely had it far worse than she did.

'No one I work with can ever know...' Hopely said with a sniffle. 'I want to be a detective... but I want to earn it on my own. I don't want to get promoted out of sympathy... that's why I came out here to Fillydelphia, no one can ever know...'

Summer gave Hopely a hug, gently rubbing her back and whispering to her that it would be okay. She allowed Hopely to cry into her shoulder for a few minutes before Hopely eventually pulled her head up and wiped away the last of her tears.

'This is hardly something that you should be going through alone... do you... want me to go with you to the hospital?' Summer asked.

'You... you don't have to do that...' Hopely said.

'I know I don't have to... but I want to, you shouldn't be alone in this. This is a tough time for anyone', Summer said, offering her a smile.

'You... you're too kind for a stranger... almost too good to be true', Hopely said, looking up at Summer with a strange look on her face.

Summer said nothing and smiled.

…

Summer was surprised that there were doctors willing to do abortions at this time of night. It was half past one. Summer sat with Hopely in the waiting area as the earth pony mare filled out a number of forms, scribbling with a pencil between her teeth on a few pieces of holopaper.

Hopely finished filling out the final form and dropped the pencil onto the pad and rose from her seat. ‘Every time somebody says we're becoming a paperless society, I feel like they give us ten more forms to fill out’, Hopely said with a grumble as she headed over to the receptionist’s desk and returned to her seat and waited to be called.

After a few minutes of sitting in silence, Summer glanced over to discover a nervous look forming on the earth pony mare’s face. ‘You don’t have to do this, you know’, Summer said, patting her on the back.

‘Yes I do’, Hopely said with a frown. ‘Even if I wanted this kid, I couldn’t take care of it, hell, I can hardly take care of myself. My work is my life! Everything else comes second’. Hopely took a deep breath and let it out, doing her best to try to relax. She was scared, to say the least, but she knew that this was what she had to do. ‘You want to know what the funny part is? I used to be against abortions all together. Even in cases of rape and incest. Oh how the irony hath stung...’

Summer had to admit, the universe had a brutal sense of humour.

‘Anastasia Hopely?’ a voice called out from the far side of the room. Summer looked up to discover one of the nurses holding open a door and looking at them. ‘We’re ready for you’.

Summer and Hopely looked at each other for a moment. Summer could see the fear in Hopely’s eyes. She placed her hoof on the earth pony mare’s hind leg, giving it a light pat and offering her a smile. ‘Go on, I promise you that I’ll be waiting right here until you get back’, she said simply.

‘You don’t have to do that... you could just go home, I can manage on my own from here’, Hopely said simply.

‘You’re right, I don’t have to stay here, and you can manage on your own from here’, Summer said, nodding her head in affirmation, but not moving from her seat.

Hopely returned the smile, and rose to her hooves, and headed back with the nurse. Summer would be waiting right here until she returned.

Chapter 7

Chapter 7

Summer must have fallen asleep, because the next thing she knew, she was being prodded awake by someone. Her eyes popped open and she discovered none other than Anastasia Hopely before her. 'Oh hey... how did it go?' Summer asked, letting out a yawn.

'Complete success', Hopely said with a smile. 'I've just signed my discharge papers'.

'Glad to hear it... how long was I out?' Summer asked with another yawn before rising to her hooves.

'Don't know, but I went back three hours ago', Hopely said with a shrug. 'Doctors say that I'm good to go'.

Summer smiled and gave Hopely a tight hug. 'Let's be thankful for modern medical science!' She said warmly.

'No kidding... can you imagine what would have happened had we lived a hundred years ago?' Hopely asked, shuttering at the thought.

'Yes', Summer said plainly. '“Allowing the abortion of unborn foals is not only morally incomprehensible, but all together unnecessary, even in the cases of rape and incest, because as everypony knows, such heinous crimes do not happen in Equestria, and allowing such a procedure is nothing short of encouraging young mares and stallions to be careless.” as decreed by Princess Celestia in Year 45 Before the Republic'.

'I'm surprised you know that...' Hopely said raising an eyebrow.

'I plan to major in history when I attend university after I finish my military service', Summer said with a shrug.

‘You’re in the military? Shite...’ Hopely said with a frown. ‘You’re in for some rough times then, aren’t you?’

Summer nodded her head in agreement. ‘Yeah, but what can you do? Besides, I’ve got plenty of time left before I have to be back at camp for deployment’, Summer added with a smile.

‘Let’s get out of here, I don’t know about you, but I’m starving!’ Hopely said, waving her hoof for Summer to follow.

...

Hungry Colts was an oddity in Equestrian Society. Considering the fact that on the surface, the restaurant served meat products, something of which the pony digestive system was unable to process, and even then eating meat was something that most of the world’s races would find abhorrent.

Hungry Colts, however, used that controversy to its’ advantage. People unfamiliar with the restaurant would often express their shock upon learning of it, and would track down one of its’ locations, just to see if such a place could really truly exist. What they would find, however, was that the restaurant had absolutely no meat products anywhere on its’ menu. The sandwiches they served were all made from soy beans and other various veggies and put together in a way that would imitate meat products one would find in Bundesrepublik Schäferhund, the Twin Gryphon Kingdoms, or the Empire of the Jaguar. Perfectly safe of the equine stomach and still pleasing to the world’s meat eating races. Summer and Hopely had been sitting on a park bench, looking up at the sky as the sun began to peak over the Canton Plateau, the start of a new day.

‘I’ll be needing to head back to Ponyville soon’, Hopely said as she took a sip of her drink and pulled up the clock on the MIP on her leg. Nearly five thirty. ‘I have to be at work at 0830’, Hopely said with a frown.

‘You’re not going to take a sick day after what you just went through?’ Summer asked, raising an eyebrow. ‘Don’t you think that maybe you should?’

‘Nope’, Hopely said simply, shaking her head. ‘I want to be a detective, and nothing will stand in the way of that. I don’t want anyone knowing that there was ever anything wrong, so I’ve got to go on business as usual. Besides, the doctors said I was fine’.

Summer sighed and shook her head. She didn’t know why she was surprised, from what she had learned about Anastasia Hopely, it was that she was a determined pony, and that nothing would slow her down. ‘I wish you good luck’, Summer said with a smile as she pat Hopely on the back.

‘Hey, the way I see it? You’re going to need it a lot more than I will’, Hopely said with a smirk. ‘You come back safe, you hear me? You’re too good to be lost to the world’.

‘Heh, I’ll certainly do my best’, Summer said with a chuckle.

Hopely did not reply, instead, she leaned over and planted a quick kiss on Summer’s cheek, turning the unicorn mare’s face a bright red. Hopely couldn’t help but smirk and rose to her hooves. ‘If you’re ever in Ponyville, look me up!’ she called back, waving Summer goodbye and crossing the street to pick up the next bus.

Summer waved back, watching as Hopely disappeared into the bus. A small smirk formed on her face. She had a lot to look forward to when she came back from fighting in the Emergency.

...

A couple hours after parting ways with Hopely, Summer finally found herself in the Fillydelphian suburb of Portside. This was her home, where she had grown up. The sun was well over the Canton Plateau at this point, and everything was well illuminated. Summer had taken something of a roundabout way of getting here, preferring to travel on hoof and take in the sights one last time before heading out. Not to mention that arriving too early would have been pointless, her parents and Aurora would have still been asleep.

Now, it was close to 0900, her parents and younger sister had to be up by now. It was Saturday morning, and her eight year old sister could hardly justify sleeping through the morning and wasting her day.

Summer turned down her street, and smiled warmly as her house came into view. Number four Lyra Drive, her childhood home, likely the last time she would see it for quite some time. She trotted up to the brick and mortar house, setting her things down on the front porch, and absentmindedly swiping her fetlock over the lock. Getting more than slightly annoyed when it didn’t open, her parents couldn’t have reconfigured the lock not to take access from her MIP... could they?

It was at that moment that Summer discovered that she was not actually wearing her Micro Information Processor. The leg mounted computers had not been allowed to be used while she was at training, and she had gotten too used to not wearing it. Using her telekinesis she unzipped her bag, and dug through piles of clothes and other miscellaneous essentials, before finally finding the device stuffed haphazardly into the bottom. She snapped open the device’s binding and placed it on her right fetlock, securing it tightly and then once more swiped it over the door’s lock.

The door opened with a click, and allowed her entry. Summer stepped inside and took a look around at her home. She was standing in the entrance hallway, in front of her was a set of stairs that went up to the second level. If she were to continue along the hallway, she would eventually enter the kitchen, and then the rest of the first level.

She wasn’t interested in the kitchen, however. Rather she was interested in what was upstairs. She could hear a faint noise coming from upstairs... music. Summer trotted upstairs, where she found the door to Aurora’s room open just a crack. Her younger sister was singing and dancing obnoxiously to the music, which Summer recognised as that one song by the schäferhund pop band that she had no idea how to pronounce the name of. Aurora’s favourite song.

‘Moskau, Moskau! Wirf die Gläser an die Wand! Kosakenland ist ein schönes land! Ho ho ho ho ho, hey! Moskau, Moskau! Deine seele ist so groß! Nachts da ist der Teufel los! Ha ha ha ha ha, hey!‘ Aurora sang happily as she danced, bouncing back and forth between her legs.

Summer quietly pushed open the door and headed inside, quietly observing her sister long enough to pick up the dance, and joined in.

‘Kosaken hey hey hey hebt die Gläser! hey hey! Natascha ha ha ha du bist schön! ha ha! Towarisch hey hey hey auf die Liebe! hey hey! Auf Dein Wohl Mädchen hey Mädchen ho! hey hey hey hey!’ Aurora continued to sing. Though it was about this time when she noticed that Summer had entered the room. ‘Summer!’ She cried out, and leapt at her older sister, throwing her forelegs around her in a tight hug.

‘Hey kid!’ Summer said with a bright smile as she returned the hug. Aurora’s horn began to glow as she used her telekinesis to turn off the music.

‘I can’t believe you’re here!’ Aurora cried out happily. ‘I thought you were at training?’

‘Training is over... I came back to visit you one last time before I’m deployed... you’ve heard about the Emergency, right?’ Summer asked.

Aurora nodded her head in affirmation.

‘I’m going to have to go fight in it... and since I don’t know how long I’m going to be gone... I’m going to spend all the time that I have left with you!’ Summer said with a bright smile.

Aurora let out a cheer of excitement. Shortfuse Skydancer had been right. This was what Summer needed now.

Chapter 8

Chapter 8

Summer was happy to be home, and as she sat on the sofa with Aurora, she had never been happier. They'd been talking mostly about Aurora's new school. Even in a school with gifted foals, Summer still knew that Aurora was the smartest of them all.

That filly absorbed information like nobody's business. She was only eight years old and she displayed a high aptitude and understanding in calculus, physics, astronomy, and a number of other fields. That wasn't saying that she knew everything there was to know about these subjects... or at least she didn't yet. That was always the joke in the Lightfall household, 'Aurora doesn't know everything, but she will by next week'. It was safe to say that Aurora Lightfall was nothing short of a complete genius, Summer was proud of her, and happy to hear about her successes with her studies.

There were two sides to the coin, however, as there always were. Aurora was the brightest student in her class, and everyone knew it. Aurora was having trouble making friends. Based on everything that Aurora had said, no one in her class wanted to talk to her because they saw her as a know it all. To be fair, Aurora did know a lot about a number of different subjects. She made a room full of brilliant foals into idiots. Not that Aurora thought she was better than anyone else. Summer had drilled into her sister that no one was better than anyone else years ago. Still, it wasn't helping.

'… so yeah, school is school, I really enjoy my classes and I like my teacher!' Aurora said with a smile as she finished up her story.

'I'm glad you like it kiddo', Summer said with a smile, ruffling her younger sister's mane. 'You really should try to make some friends though, are there any foals who that you have common interests with?'

Aurora frowned and looked down at the ground. 'I... um... I haven't really talked to anyone', she said softly.

This was the second problem. Aurora was notoriously shy to the point of complete meekness in informal social situations, the structure of a class room was where she really shined, but with no direction, no problem needed to be solved? Aurora was basically helpless. Could have been worse though, her younger sister could lash out at and be mean to people trying to talk to her, but she was far too polite to ever do that.

'Aurora... we talked about this...' Summer said with a frown.

'I know! I know! But... it's hard...' Aurora said, frowning back.

'I know it is but if you give it your best effort...' Summer stopped herself in mid sentence. Out of the corner of her eye, she noticed something, a small flash of light. She turned slowly, and that was when she noticed it. There was a digital camera floating at the level of the window sill in a unicorn's telekinetic grip. 'Aurora, go upstairs', Summer said simply.

'What? Why?' Aurora asked, looking at her older sister in confusion.

'I'll explain later... just go upstairs, please', Summer said.

Aurora nodded her head in understanding, and rose from her seat and headed upstairs. Summer got up and headed over to the front door and threw it open. She stepped out onto the porch and looked over to the window that opened up into the living room. Lying in the bushes just below the window was a navy blue unicorn stallion, and he was levitating the digital camera that she had seen up, still taking pictures, seemingly oblivious to the fact that there was no one in the room to take pictures of.

'Oi!' Summer cried out. 'The bloody hell do you think you're doing!?'

She had clearly startled the unicorn stallion; he dropped the camera and quickly rose to his hooves to run. Summer was faster though; she leapt at him, throwing her full weight on him and knocking him back to the ground. She picked up his camera in her telekinesis and took a look of the last few pictures he had taken. What she found horrified and disgusted her. The pictures were all of Aurora. Here at home, pictures of when she was at school, even pictures of when Aurora was out with their mum and dad.

'What the FUCK is this SHITE?!' Summer cried out in anger, as she showed the pictures to the unicorn stallion on the ground.

'No! No! It's not what you think! I swear!' the unicorn stallion cried out.

'Oh? Because it looks like you've been taking pictures of my LITTLE SISTER without her or my parents consent! Which is illegal, I might add. What are you then? Some kind of sick pervert with a foal fetish!?' Summer cried out.

'No! No! It's nothing like that! I swear! I swear!' The unicorn stallion cried out.

'Oh? Then what is it?' Summer asked, looking at the unicorn stallion with disbelief.

'I... uh... can't tell you?' The unicorn stallion said with an uneasy smile.

'Wrong answer arsehole!' Summer cried out as she drove her left fore hoof as hard as she could into the stallion's face. She rose to her hooves and used her telekinesis to pull the unicorn stallion onto her back and trotted away from the house and turning down the next street.

'Wha... what are you doing!?' the stallion cried out.

'You and your sorry arse are going in the bay!' Summer said as she turned down another street, and crossed to the water's edge of the Fillydelphia bay.

'No! Please! Stop! Don't do this! This is assault! This is illegal!' the stallion cried out, pleading for mercy.

'So is secretly taking pictures of an eight year old filly!' Summer said before using her telekinesis to remove the MIP off the stallion's fetlock, and then promptly tossed him into the Fillydelphia bay.

She watched for a moment while the unicorn stallion struggled to keep himself above water, he must not have been a strong swimmer. Summer couldn't help but smirk, if he wasn't before, he would be soon. She held the MIP in front of her and pulled up the holographic interface. Now it was time to see who this bastard was. She discovered very little, his name was Midnight Blue, how original, he was twenty five, and he lived in Ponyville. Kind of far from home this one was, if he wanted to spy on a foal for his own sick fantasies, wouldn't he pick one a bit closer to home? Continuing to look through the information, she discovered that his MIP was FutureTec issue. He was a Junior Systems Analyst at Station SPECTRE, in the Ghastly Gorge Industrial Complex.

Gobbledygook as far as Summer was concerned. FutureTec loved the names that they gave everything, as far as she was concerned though, his employment didn't matter.

'Is there a problem here?' a voice asked from her left.

She turned to discover that while she was looking at the MIP, a patrol unit from the Fillydelphia Constabulary had come up to her. The constable was an earth pony stallion, clad in the reflective yellow vest and the famed custodian helmet of the police services of Equestria.

'Oh, I just found this pervert laying in my front garden, taking pictures of my little sister, so I beat him up and tossed him in the bay', Summer said with a shrug.

'I see... you have any proof of this?' the constable asked.

'His camera', Summer said, showing him the pictures on the camera.

'You do know that what you did is illegal?' the constable asked.

Summer merely offered him a shrug.

'Yep... tossing rubbish into the bay is littering, the fish could try and eat it and they could get sick', the constable said with a nod. 'Fine is usually five hundred pounds... but I think that I'll go ahead and let you off with just a warning this time, don't let me catch you doing it again', the Constable added with a smile.

'IS SOMEONE GOING TO HELP ME?' the unicorn stallion cried out.

'Oh shut up! Tread water! You'll be fine!' the constable cried out before turning back to Summer. 'Go on home ma'am, I'll call for more patrol units to help fish him out'.

'Will do', Summer said with a nod, handing over the stallion's camera and MIP and headed home. Her mind filled with thoughts as to what had just happened. The unicorn stallion was a pervert, she knew that for certain, but she still had to wonder, what had made him come this far from home to watch a filly? As sick as the thought was, Ponyville had twice the amount of people that Fillydelphia had, so why not a stalk filly from there? Why did he specifically seek out Aurora?

Chapter 9

Chapter 9

Summer came back to her house, swiping the MIP over the door lock and pushing through the door. 'Aurora?' she called out to her younger sister as she trotted up the stairs.

Aurora opened the door to her bedroom and looked up at Summer worriedly, she didn't know what was going on, and Summer intended to keep it that way. At least, not to the full extent. Aurora didn't need to know that the pervert had been taking pictures of her. Summer leaned down and latched on to her younger sister with a tight hug. 'What's going on?' Aurora asked, her voice trembling with fear. Filly was certainly smart; she knew when something wasn't right.

'Nothing you need to worry about', Summer said with a smile. 'I took care of it'.

Aurora looked up at her sister and smiled. She was glad to know that she had her older sister to look out for her.

Summer however, was a little more worried, not that she was showing it, but still, worried nonetheless. She didn't think that Aurora was in any kind of danger or anything, this was probably just an isolated case of perversion... still. A pervert who stalks his prey so far from his home usually indicates that there is more going on than she'd like to think about. Worse still, she was going away soon, and when she was gone there was nothing she could do to protect her little sister.

'Aurora?' Summer asked, looking down upon her little sister. 'I need you to promise me something'.

'What is it?' Aurora asked as she raised an eyebrow in confusion.

'Whenever you're out and about, whether it's with mum and dad, or you're at school, I need you to pay attention to what's going on around you, and if at any time you feel like someone strange is around, tell mum and dad or your teacher, okay?' Summer asked.

Judging by the look on Aurora's face she didn't understand why her older sister was asking her to do this. Still, instead of questioning what she was being told, she merely offered her sister a smile, and nodded her head to indicate that she would do as she asked. 'I promise!' Aurora said with a smile.

Summer smiled back and hugged her sister tightly. 'Thank you Aurora', Summer said softly. It was probably nothing, but as long as Aurora was alert about her surroundings, Summer could go off to fight without needing to worry about her.

…

Summer had been dreading this moment. The hours were winding down and it was time to leave. She needed to be back at Camp Trixie in an hour and a half, and it would take about that long to get back. She had kissed her goodbyes to Aurora and her parents, and she now stood waiting for the bus back. She checked the clock on her MIP and remembered that she was still wearing it. She removed it from her fetlock and stuffed it back into her bag. Last thing she wanted was for Drill Sergeant Gunmetal to have something to chew her out on.

The bus came around the corner, and pulled to a stop in front of her, opening its' doors and allowing her entry. Unlike the bus that she had met Anastasia Hopely on, this one was far from empty. In almost every seat was someone clad in an army uniform. As Summer stepped on, she looked around, checking to see if there was anyone that she knew.

There was one. Not someone that she knew personally, but someone that she had been made aware of. Lieutenant Madeline Wolsey sat looking out the window in her seat. The seat next to her was empty, almost as if no one on the bus wanted to take it. Summer trotted up to her and offered her a salute. 'Is this seat taken, ma'am?' she asked.

Wolsey looked up and shook her head. 'No, you can have it', she said before turning back to the window.

'Thank you, ma'am', Summer said, about to salute the Lieutenant before being interrupted.

'Please stop with the ma'aming and the saluting. You don't need to do it here, okay?' Wolsey said with slight annoyance in her voice.

'Sorry...' Summer said, taking the seat, and almost regretting having ever asked in the first place.

'It's fine private. You're just doing what you've been taught', Wolsey said with a shrug. 'Madeline Wolsey', she said before turning back, offering a hoof to Summer to shake.

'Summer Lightfall', Summer said, shaking in return. 'Your reputation precedes you'.

Wolsey opened her mouth to speak, and then closed it again after a moment. 'What do you mean, “my” reputation?' she asked finally after a moment.

Summer had to admit, she wasn't quite sure how to respond to that, or what the lieutenant meant. 'I've... heard that you're one of the best officers in the regiment', Summer said after a moment.

'And?' Wolsey asked.

And what? Summer had only really talked about Madeline Wolsey once, in passing, with Joker on their first day of training, other than that. Summer didn't really know anything about her. 'Uh... that's all I've heard', Summer said, offering a shrug.

'Oh', Wolsey said, thinking over what Summer had said for a moment before a small smile formed on her face. 'Good then', Wolsey said finally, continuing to smile and look out the window.

Summer thought the line of questioning was a little odd. She had questions now. Was there something about Lieutenant Wolsey that everyone knew but she had somehow missed out on? Regardless, Summer shared no more words with Madeline Wolsey, and it wasn't long before she closed her eyes and took a nap. Her leave had left her exhausted, with everything that had happened with Shortfuse Skydancer, Anastasia Hopely, and the pervert that had been stalking Aurora; she had only gotten three hours of sleep the entire time she was on leave. It was no surprise that as she closed her eyes, she drifted right off to sleep.

…

'Did you hear that they're remaking Wonder?'

Summer was now wide awake; having slept just enough to feel refreshed and rejuvenated, despite the fact that she can't have slept more than an hour. She recognised the voice that had just spoken as belonging to Pender.

'What? Why?!' Joker cried out. 'Wonder is a classic! It does not need to be remade!'

Summer sat up in her seat, looking over to the seats across from her to discover that Joker and Pender were sitting next to each other, they either had not noticed Summer or realised that she was sleeping and had wanted to let her do so. 'Did I hear you right? Pender? They're making a new version of Wonder?' Summer asked as she turned to look at them.

'Yeah, my dad's a gaffer, and he's going to be working on it. And he's just as happy about it as we are', Pender said with a shrug. 'He was a kid when the original came out'.

Summer frowned. Wonder was a war film from Year 45 of the Republic, set during the Great Patriotic War, it chronicled the famed aerial duel between Group Captain Soarin' of the Equestrian Republican Navy's Naval Air Corps and the traitor Podpolkovnik Spitfire who flew for the Præsidium. Before the fall of the Old Monarchy, Spitfire and Soarin' had been best friends, and team mates in an aerial stunt group call the Wonderbolts. After the Fall of Canterlot, however, Spitfire had been disgusted at the over throw of the monarchy, declaring the Republicans traitors to Equestria, and went into a self imposed exile, where she was never heard from again until the onset of the Great Patriotic War, where her former team, flying for the Equestrian Republican Navy discovered her single headedly engaging and destroying entire flights of Republican Navy aeroplanes. Soarin' orders his flight to withdraw, and speaks to Spitfire himself, trying to convince her to stop what she's doing and come home. She refuses, saying that she is on a mission from Celestia to destroy the Republic one plane at a time; Soarin' announces that the only way that this can end is with one of their deaths. Spitfire agrees and opens fire on him. After a painstakingly difficult fight, Soarin' eventually comes out on top, and Spitfire goes down in a ball of fire.

What really made the original version of Wonder great was its’ historical accuracy, and the fact that Soarin' had been played by himself. As one could expect, it was both Summer’s favourite film, and Aurora’s least favourite.

‘This new one is going to suck’, Summer said with a frown.

‘No kidding’, Pender said, nodding her head in agreement. ‘It’s being directed by Saul Boll’.

Summer cringed. Saul Boll was a schäferhund film director, and possibly the worst thing that could have ever happened to the remake of Wonder. ‘And to think. It would be illegal to shoot him’.

Pender let out a sigh as the bus came to a halt outside of Camp Trixie. Everyone rose in unison and made their way off the bus. Now it was time, they would be getting their assignments and shipping out.

Summer took a deep breath, and readied herself. She was feeling much better about her chances, after everything that had happened to her. She would be coming back. She could feel it.

Chapter 10

Chapter 10

Everyone must have taken Drill Sergeant Gunmetal to heart when he had dismissed company D for leave, because of the one hundred ponies to have completed training, all one hundred of them returned for roll call.

It was right after this that they had been assigned to their permanent postings. Both Summer and Joker had been assigned to the first platoon of company B of the first battalion, under Lieutenant Madeline Wolsey herself, while Pender on the other hoof had been assigned to a platoon in company A. The rumours had to have been true, there were heavy casualties out in the field and they’d broken down their training company to fill the vacancies.

Summer felt a little better about the situation knowing that she would be serving under an officer like Wolsey. Her reputation preceded her, and now she was sure of it. Summer would be coming home, she could feel it.

…

Thunderchild.

Summer had never seen anything quite like the ERS Thunderchild, she was the first of the newest generation of Aerial Assault Frigates. The front runner of the Thunderchild-class was one of the most advanced ships in the Equestrian Republican Navy, aero- or wet-navy notwithstanding. The Thunderchild-class represented a shift in Republican ship building, away from slower, heavier ships with huge kinetic rail cannons, to lighter, more agile ships designed to support major operations by establishing air superiority over a battlefield, and once air dominance had been achieved, it would be able to support infantry on the ground by providing remote air strikes.

This was a radical change in tactics, older ship classes, like the heavier City-class cruisers and Twilight Sparkle-class dreadnoughts, while hosting much heavier armour and firepower also had the misfortune of lacking manoeuvrability. If they were to park themselves directly over a battlefield they'd be nothing but a sitting duck, and every hostile fighter and missile would be gunning for them until they were dead. Cruisers and dreadnoughts would be forced to focus their attentions on fighters and missiles, and wouldn't have time to support the infantry like they should be. Thanks to this, cruisers and dreadnoughts needed to sit back away from the battlefield and rely upon infantry to radio targets up through the chain of command, and wait for the dreadnoughts to align their guns to it. That was a slow process; it would almost be easier and quicker for infantry to assault everything but the most fortified targets.

Another problem was, since the dreadnoughts and cruisers had to sit back and fight at a distance, it was left to fighters, usually from wet-navy carriers, to enter a battlefield and establish air dominance. While there hadn't been anything particularly wrong with that in the past, fighters still had a limit to fuel and ordinance that they could carry, Fighters carried out fights against other fighters usually through the use of air to air missiles. Now, when each Equifighter Tornado air-superiority fighter carries eight missiles, those are quick to be used up. Requiring each fighter to return to their carrier to refuel and rearm after their payload had been deployed.

As one can imagine, this isn’t particularly efficient. So having a capital ship able to do the same job in a way that works better? The Navy is all over it.

Summer was quite impressed by the Thunderchild. The ship itself was a hundred and thirty metres in length. Twenty five metres wide and twenty metres tall, she was certainly not a small ship. Her sleek and streamlined design, in conjunction with the lifting body principle, helped to keep her in the air when moving, and through the use of its thrusters, could hold its position above a battlefield and provide support to the Army’s content.

The ship’s bridge sat in a control tower at the stern of the ship, some ten metres above the rest of the hull, gave the perfect position to survey the battlefield from, and was easily one of the most important spots on the ship, and one could tell so by the fact that the bridge deck was adorned with two of the largest interceptor cannons that Summer had ever seen.

‘Wow’, Summer said as she glanced through the cockpit window from her seat. ‘Glad that Thunderchild is on our side’.

‘You and me both private!’ Lieutenant Wolsey said, nodding her head in affirmation.

They had been assigned their posts, and the company was now en route to Cloudsdale, where the Thunderchild sat docked, waiting for them to arrive. Summer glanced back out the cockpit window. Here she thought that they were riding in style to get here, the Hellfire-class carryall that they were riding in couldn’t hold a candle to the Thunderchild.

The Hellfire-class was the standard troop transport and gunboat operated by the Republican Navy. Hellfire-class crafts were used in a number of different roles, gunboat and air ambulance being most common. The modular cargo bay could be configured in a number of different ways, from being able to carry supplies and vehicles to the battle from the ship, to being used as a bulk troop transport. Like the one they currently sat in. This Hellfire had been configured with an extended troop bay, allowing for fifty passengers to sit relatively comfortable. Hellfire’s were twenty metres in length, with a wingspan of about sixteen metres, though with the added troop bay, this particular carryall was about thirty metres in length and ten metres wide.

Summer looked around to each of the ponies around her. Private Joker sat quietly to her left, not saying a word. Lieutenant Wolsey was on her right. The oddest addition to their group, however, was none other than Gunmetal, the former drill sergeant had requested demotion after the end of their training to colour sergeant so that he could be transferred into the field. Colour Gunmetal would be serving as the lieutenant’s platoon sergeant, if anything; this made Summer a little less worried about their chances.

The Hellfire moved to dock with the Thunderchild, and out the window of the front cockpit she could see Cloudsdale coming into view.

This Cloudsdale was not to be confused with the Cloudsdale of the Old Monarchy, in those days, Cloudsdale was said to have been literally made of clouds. Not this one. This Cloudsdale was a floating fortress of steel. Serving as the mobile fleet base of the Republican Navy, Cloudsdale usually found itself hovering over Fillydelphia.

The Hellfire made a sharp ninety degree turn, and slowed to a quarter speed as it entered the Thunderchild’s docking bay, touching down gently on the deck. The engines died, and the order came to file out.

Summer did as she was told, and filed out behind the lieutenant, as the crowd of soldiers dispersed between the two Hellfires, Summer instantly noticed two other mares clad in naval officer’s uniforms. One a unicorn, the other a pegasus.

‘Lef-tenant Wolsey?’ the unicorn mare asked, stepping forward. ‘Captain Dula Heartstrings, commanding officer, this is my second in command, Lieutenant Commander Ice Wind’.

Wolsey stopped, offering the two mares a salute. ‘Heartstrings? Sounds familiar...’

‘I’m the granddaughter of Lyra Heartstrings’, the captain said simply.

‘Ah! Yes! Yes! Of course, very pleased to finally make your acquaintance captain’, Wolsey said.

‘I’d like your assistance on the bridge once you get settled, there’s a matter that we need to discuss that could use your expertise, lieutenant’, the captain said, offering her a small smile.

‘Of course captain... I’ll just set down my bag and be right up. Ma’am!’ Wolsey said, offering the captain a salute.

‘Excellent! Good to see such enthusiasm!’ the captain said with a smile, as she returned the salute.

‘What are you doing standing around private?! Move it!’ the booming voice of Colour Sergeant Gunmetal came from directly behind her. Summer jumped in surprise and stopped loitering around the lieutenant and trotted off as quickly as she could to her bunk without having broken into a full out run.

Curiosity was starting to get the better of her; she wondered what exactly the matter was that Captain Heartstrings had requested the lieutenant’s help in? The more she thought about it, it probably had something to do with how the Thunderchild would be inserting into the battlefield. Summer had no idea what to expect on the way in. They weren’t the first troops being sent in. The first deployments had been nearly a fortnight ago, but Summer didn’t know anyone who had already been deployed, and thus, had heard no information about what to expect.

‘Once more unto the breech, Summer Lightfall, once more’, Summer said to herself as she trotted along. She knew she didn’t have anything to worry about. With Lieutenant Wolsey and Colour Sergeant Gunmetal leading them, she knew that they would all be coming back alive. After all, where on Belleau could you have possibly found more capable leaders?

Chapter 11

Chapter 11

Say what you will. Looking at the Thunderchild from the outside made it look huge, but on the inside it was cramped as hell. Summer had never had any problems with claustrophobia before, but being aboard the Thunderchild was slowly turning her into one. The Thunderchild wasn't exactly a troop transport ship, but it wouldn't have mattered even if it was. On a dedicated troop transport ship, they would have just packed more ponies in. You couldn't go anywhere and be by yourself because there was someone hanging out in literally every open spot on the ship.

Worse still, they'd only just left Cloudsdale when the first fight between airheads and hoofers broke out. Summer had groaned instantly when she had learned what the insults meant. The navy personnel assigned to the Thunderchild had been dubbed airheads thanks to their serving aboard airships, and hoofers, in turn had been declared by the sailors to refer to them, since they'd be 'hoofing it', through the battlefield.

Summer didn't know when or where this started at, and she didn’t really care, but it was getting on her nerves. Everyone was bitter and irritable. The tight, enclosed quarters, were just making it worse, and as Summer sat in the mess hall eating her morning oatmeal in silence... or, at least, that's what she was trying to do, she could see that Joker was once again picking a fight with one of the sailors, a pegasus, Able Seaman Starhawk who had apparently insulted Joker's mother.

Summer had tried to ignore the bickering, trying to drown out the noise as best she could. What they were saying didn't matter. It was all just stupid. Then she saw it, Able Seaman Starhawk rose his hoof to strike at Joker, and she knew that this had gone on far enough. If that blow landed, the entire mess hall would erupt into an all out brawl.

Summer leapt from her seat, and immediately pushed her way between the two pegasi, separating them from each other before things got ugly. 'Alright! That's enough! I don't care what you two are fighting about. I haven't even been listening to what you were saying, but I don't need to have had to know that it's stupid. Now! Joker! You go over there', Summer said with a huff of annoyance, pointing to the starboard corner of the room. 'And Starhawk, you go over there!' she added, pointing to the port corner.

Both of the two grumbled in annoyance at being told what to do.

'Do it or I'll knock both of your teeth out!' Summer said, threateningly.

The two continued to grumble, but listened to her, heading off to their respective corners where they wouldn't bother anyone. Summer finished her oatmeal in peace and left the mess area to return to her bunk to read a book or something and keep herself from strangling Joker in the future.

As she left the mess hall, she stopped as she heard the sounds of two hooves clapping together slowly. She turned to discover Lieutenant Wolsey sitting on the deck behind her, clapping her hooves together.

'Ma'am!' Summer said, snapping to attention and saluting the lieutenant.

'At ease private... Lightfall? Is it?' Wolsey asked, as she rose to her hooves and returned the salute.

'Yes ma'am!' Summer said, nodding her head.

'I saw what you did in there, private, and I liked what I saw', Wolsey said, offering her a small smile. 'Everyone is on edge, and these cramped quarters aren't helping, but you know what I see? Ponies listen to you, that makes you valuable. We're going to need ponies like you to get through this campaign. I'm appointing you lance corporal. Once we get into the field, you'll be bumped to second in command of your infantry section. Congratulations, Lance Corporal Lightfall, you've earned it', Wolsey added with a smile, and tossed Summer a foreleg band with a single chevron on it, pointing down.

Summer stared at it a moment in disbelief, before putting it on her left foreleg just above her knee. 'Th... thank you ma'am!' Summer said, snapping a salute to her commanding officer.

Wolsey returned the salute. 'Do us proud, Lance Corporal', Wolsey said, and dismissed her back to her bunk.

…

Some folks are born to wave the flag, Ooh; they're yellow, green and blue. And when the band plays "Oh save the Premier", Ooh; they point the cannon at you, Lord. It ain't me, it ain't me, I ain't no MP's son, son. It ain't me, it ain't me; I ain't no fortunate one, no, Yeah!

'Wheatley! Turn that shite off!'

Corporal 'Cereal' Wheatley frowned. He liked this song, it had a catchy tune. He didn't even care that it was an anti-war song. He reached out to the holographic display of the rover’s radio and turned off the music. 'You're a real hard arse, aren't you Morningstar?' he asked.

'Heh, like that's ever changed, and out here, it's “sergeant”', Morningstar said with a stern look on her face.

'Uh huh, whatever Sarge', Wheatley said, brushing her off.

'You sassing me boy?' Morningstar asked.

'What are you going to do, court martial me?' Wheatley said with a grin.

Morningstar let out a chuckle and grinned back at him. 'Maybe I will. I most certainly could', she said, turning her eyes back to the road.

Wheatley grinned. He was lucky that Sergeant Morningstar would never go through on her threats. She was a violet coated unicorn mare with a long pitch black mane, tied back in a bun underneath her helmet. She and Wheatley had been friends since they were foals, you couldn't split them up if you tried.

Here they were driving an all terrain rover through the jungles on the island of Sarawak, loaded down with supplies, heading deeper into the jungle to support the regiment’s forward firebase. They were still clearing the trees, and there wasn’t enough room to bring them in by carryall. Not yet anyway. They would be by the time that the greenhorns fresh from training showed up though.

Wheatley wasn’t looking forward to it. Casualties had been pretty heavy over the last fortnight. Lieutenant Dusk had taken a hit not five minutes off the carryall, and one by one their platoon had been whittled down to a handful of people. Too few to send out on patrol, too many to justify rolling them into another platoon, so they’d be littered with replacements who didn’t have a clue what they were doing.

Wheatley made no pretences that he was any better. Still, he’d been out here for two weeks and was still among the members of the living. That had to count for something. So far, the insurgency was isolated to Sarawak, and they’d been working to keep it that way. The last thing they wanted was for this to turn into an island hopping campaign; otherwise they would never get home.

If it did turn into an island hopping campaign, then that was it. Not even worth trying after that, the entire archipelago would fall to communism, and that would be it. Too many places for rebels to go, too many places to hide, and the harimau being natural predators made them particularly effective at hiding and launching sneak attacks.

Kind of like the one they had just driven into. A land mine exploded underneath their rover, throwing both Wheatley and Morningstar from their seats, the two of them landed on the ground with a hard thump. His ears were ringing, and everything seemed to be moving slowly around him, but otherwise, as far as he could tell, he was okay.

Morningstar, on the other hoof... she was missing her front legs. Wheatley struggled to get to his hooves, and looked around. There were no harimau to be seen, didn’t mean that there weren’t any around, but if they had been planning an attack, they’d have been all over them already. Meat eaters love a fresh kill. That had just been a land mine that their sappers had missed.

He looked back down to Morningstar, and to his relief, saw that her chest was still moving up and down. This instance, as messed up as it was, was what the soldiers of the Fillydelphia regiment called a lucky break.

Wheatley struggled to pull Morningstar onto his back. They weren’t far from the forward firebase. Their medics would be able to do something... stop the bleeding, and Morningstar would be shipped on home to be fitted with a new pair of cybernetic legs and otherwise live out her life in some degree of normality. The ironic thing here is that cybernetics had almost completely fallen by the wayside in favour of newer technologies like organ cloning, and here this war was going to revive the Equestrian Cybernetics Industry like no other.

‘Wheatley?’ Morningstar called out weakly.

‘You’re going to be fine sarge!’ Wheatley said.

‘Don’t call me sarge...’ Morningstar said, her voice trailing off.

‘Since when have I ever listened to you?’ Wheatley said with a smirk.

‘Make... a fair point...’ Morningstar said again, before falling unconscious.

Like no other.

Chapter 12

Chapter 12

The rest of the trip was rather uneventful. The airheads and hoofers eventually got bored of antagonising each other, or so, that was the official story coming from both camps. In reality, they had all heard and seen Summer Lightfall threatening to knock the teeth out of anyone who got into a fight.

Summer soon discovered that her single chevron made a big difference when talking to pretty much anyone. Every one of the hoofers on the ship was a private, except for her, Colour Sergeant Gunmetal, and Lieutenant Wolsey. She actually had pull with people!

She didn't let it go to her head though; just because she could technically order any private to do something doesn't mean that she should. Lance Corporal was an appointment in the army just as much as it was a rank. Lieutenant Wolsey was in her right to freely give it to anyone she thought deserved it, and she could also take it away in pretty much the same manner that she'd given it.

Summer was fair, she kept everyone in line, and kept the rest of the hoofers from antagonising the airheads, and she'd only needed to make Joker clean the ship's toilets once to let everyone know that she was serious.

…

Madeline Wolsey had been particularly impressed with Lance Corporal Lightfall, she was a natural leader, and if she kept this up she'd make corporal well ahead of schedule. She had a feeling that she’d be relying a lot on Lightfall when they got out there into the field. Wolsey didn’t want anyone to know this, but she was scared. More than just a little scared, very scared, honestly she wasn’t sure she was cut out for this. Command, being an officer, hell, even serving in the military wasn’t what she wanted to do with her life. She had only joined up because she was practically obligated to have. Her grandmother had been Field Marshall Trixie; her mother had been a colonel in an artillery regiment. Her father had been a brigadier in the Welaran Army. The thought of doing anything else with her life would have sent her parents over the deep end.

The bigger problem was that Madeline didn’t even know what it was that she had really wanted to do with her life. She was twenty six, and she didn’t have any better ideas then she did when she was sixteen. If not for her family’s history of military service, she’d have been a bum on the streets by now. Madeline was by no means a royalist, but she did envy one part of Old Monarchy society, and that was the cutie mark.

A cutie mark told a pony what their talent was, and once they had one, it would determine what they would do with their lives. Modern Republican society saw this as a curse, a mark of slavery, and something that froze one’s social class in place. Once a cutie mark was obtained social mobility was not possible. Your class could not go up; your class could not go down. If your cutie mark was in shovelling dung, then you shovelled dung until the end of your days and were expected to enjoy it. Madeline could see why the idea behind the cutie mark was bad. Still, for ponies as indecisive as she was, it would have been welcomed with open arms.

And as she stood looking over the holographic display of Sarawak, her indecisiveness was getting the worst of her, once again. Captain Heartstrings had asked her to point out where she thought anti-aircraft guns would most likely be placed at, reasoning that her training in ground pounder tactics would help her determine the best places for such guns would be. Honestly? She didn’t know. There weren’t really any places that leapt out at her and screamed: PUT AA GUN HERE.

Well... there was one hill that looked good for one, and that was the one that the Regiment’s forward firebase had been built around. Other than that...

An idea popped into her head. Lance Corporal Lightfall had a head on her shoulders. She would call the Lance Corporal to her quarters and have her pick out places that she would think would make good locations to put anti-aircraft guns at. Then she could recommend those places to Captain Heartstrings. She would tell Lightfall that it was an... exercise, part of her appointment to lance corporal. Yes! Brilliant! There was absolutely nothing that could go wrong with this plan!

...

Summer had to admit, when Lieutenant Wolsey had asked her to come to her quarters, she was more than a little nervous. The invitation... and that’s exactly what it was, an invitation, had come from practically nowhere. She had only spoken to the lieutenant on three occasions thus far. She didn’t really know her all that well, what could she have wanted?

Summer stopped outside the lieutenant’s quarters and knocked on the compartment door with her hoof.

‘Enter’, the lieutenant’s voice called out from inside.

Summer pushed open the compartment door and entered the room to discover the lieutenant looking over a holographic display. ‘You asked to see me? Lef-tenant?’ Summer asked, offering her commanding officer a salute.

‘Ah, yes. Lance Corporal Lightfall. Good of you to have come’, Wolsey said with a smile, returning the salute, and offering Summer a seat on a chair sitting at the holographic display, directly across from her.

‘If I may ask, ma’am, what is this about? Summer asked, instinctively raising an eyebrow at the lieutenant.

‘I’ll get right to the point, Autumn... it is Autumn, isn’t it?’ Wolsey asked.

‘Summer, actually... ma’am’, Summer said, correcting the lieutenant.

‘Ah, my apologies. Well Summer, I’ll get to the point. You’ve got the brains; I honestly think that you’re command material. You’ve got the intellect. Now, I’m pretty important as far as the regimental commander is concerned... if I were to recommend you for a promotion... you’d get it. Like I said, you’ve got the intellect, you can figure things out, what you don’t have is the experience. I like you, you remind me a lot of me, which is why I’m going to help you out, get you what you deserve’, Wolsey said, offering her a warm smile.

‘I... thank you ma’am!’ Summer said, unsure of what to think of what the lieutenant had just said.

‘I’m going to tutor you in tactics and strategy, give you the edge you need, so to speak. I’ve prepared an exercise her for you, this is a map of Sarawak, which is where we are going, of course...’ Wolsey said as she slid her hoof over the map. ‘The most important thing to do when you’re planning an attack on something is to think like your opponent. Now... the Thunderchild is going to be coming from the northwest, think like the enemy commander. If you knew you could expect an aerial assault from the northwest. Where would you put anti-air emplacements?’

Summer looked over the northwest quadrant of the map before her, studying it for a few moments. The North West quadrant was a small, peninsular outcropping. It was a good place for the Thunderchild to move into because there wasn’t really anywhere that was in deep enough cover for an obvious anti-air emplacement. She looked up at Wolsey; the lieutenant was keeping a neutral expression. She figured that the lieutenant must have been trying to keep from nudging her to the right place.

Summer looked back down at the map and reached out with her hoof, touching a spot on the end of the peninsula. ‘I’ll say this, you don’t pick any easy questions, do you, lef-tenant? If I were going to place an anti-air gun on this peninsula, I couldn’t do it in a normal fashion, because any enemy coming from the northwest would just blow it up. So what I would do would dig out a bunker at the end of this cliff and put a gun in here. Field of fire is going to be limited, but it might be enough to keep any invader off guard. Just to make sure, I’d also plant a dummy gun a couple metres back on the peninsula to bring the focus to that. I’d also put two guns hidden in the tree line back here, while the enemy are focusing on the dummy, the hidden gun on the peninsula will keep them busy, and let the two guns in the tree line do most of the work’, Summer said, tapping at the holographic screen to indicate each location.

Wolsey nodded her head in affirmation. ‘Yes... very good, clever. I agree with your assessment. Well done Lance Corporal!’ Wolsey added with a smile.

‘Th... thank you Ma’am’, Summer said, offering her commanding officer a salute.

‘You’re welcome, you’re a natural at this, Lance Corporal, and I wouldn’t be surprised if you make Sergeant by the time this war is over!’ Wolsey said with a grin before dismissing her back to her quarters.

Summer smiled, offering the lieutenant another salute before leaving.

Wolsey looked down at the holographic display. It was brilliant, just brilliant enough that she could pass it off as her own assessment. It was just like someone of her reputation would think.

Chapter 13

Chapter 13

'Do you agree with the lieutenant's assessment? Captain?'

Dula Heartstrings looked up from the holographic tactical map on the Thunderchild bridge towards her executive officer. Ice Wind, the snow white pegasus with her forest green mane stood before her, looking over the tactical plan that Wolsey had delivered to them. It seemed like a lot of effort for the harimau to go to, but still crazy enough to work.

'Partially...' Dula said with a shrug as she returned to her seat in the centre of the bridge and pulled up the holographic keyboard on her seat and began to type.

'Captain, I have to ask, why did you ask this of the lef-tenant? Isn't this something that our Hamilcar-class Virtual Intelligence should be able to determine?' Ice Wind asked as she crossed the room over to the captain's chair.

'Indeed it should. Hamilcar?' Dula asked as she continued to type.

The holographic representation of the ship's computer's virtual intelligence interface appeared with a flicker before them. 'How can I assist you, captain?' the VI asked pleasantly.

'Please run a tactical assessment on the island of Sarawak, plot likely spots for anti-air emplacements', Dula said as she input the information.

'Working', Hamilcar said before disappearing in a flicker. Virtual Intelligence was everything that it sounded like. A computer program able to simulate interaction with living beings. Dula Heartstrings could, in theory, have a philosophical debate with Hamilcar on a number of subjects, and if you didn't know better you would almost swear that you were talking to a living, thinking being, but you would be wrong to think that.

As intelligent as Hamilcar seemed, it was still a Virtual Intelligence and not a true AI, it lacked awareness, and merely simulated reasoning and logical thought. It was unable to have true thoughts of its' own. It would only 'think' if it was given data to analyse.

Hamilcar's holographic representation of a pony in a business suit, vaguely resembling Sprocket, the chief executive officer of FutureTec before and up to the middle of the Great Patriotic War, reappeared before them. 'I have finished the tactical analysis, Captain Heartstrings', he said, matter of factly before pulling up the grid map to show her.

Looking over Hamilcar's assessment, Dula discovered that two of the suggested anti-aircraft emplacements that had been suggested in the tactical analysis provided by Lieutenant

Wolsey roughly matched up with Hamilcar's, the two in the tree line, to be precise. 'Thank you, Hamilcar', Dula said with a nod towards the Virtual Intelligence. 'I guess Wolsey's up to snuff after all'.

'Captain?' Ice Wind asked, raising an eyebrow.

'When we first talked to Wolsey, I had a bad feeling about her. Everyone should be nervous about heading out into battle... Wolsey was too nervous though. I was worried that it would get to her head', Dula said with a shrug. 'Guess I was wrong'.

Ice Wind nodded, and looked over the two tactical assessments. 'Wolsey's is pretty out of the box. You think it'll come to pass?' she asked.

'Maybe', Dula said with a shrug. 'Doesn't matter either way, Hamilcar should be able to find and knock out those emplacements before we even come into range of them'.

…

It was early the next morning that the Thunderchild entered Salayan aerospace. This was it. This was the big one. Every one of the hoofers stood assembled, armed with assault rifles and armoured in the standard issue tactical vests and armoured shoulder plates. Lightweight, but efficient, and it was pretty comfortable too. Summer understood why nephites wore these things so much.

Summer hefted an E85 rifle up, threading her head through the shoulder strap and headed out of the ship's armoury with five magazines of ammunition, and began to head towards the docking bay. Checking the magazine on her bullpup rifle one last time, and she was ready to go. This was it. No more doubts, no more fear. She was ready, with Lieutenant Wolsey, Joker, and Colour Sergeant Gunmetal by her side, there was nothing they could not do.

It was time to fight.

...

Captain Dula Heartstrings and Lieutenant Commander Ice Wind had huddled around the tactical operations map in the centre of the bridge. Sensors had picked up remote fire anti-air emplacements, and the two officers were examining the display and comparing with Wolsey’s tactical assessment.

‘I’ll be damned! There are guns right where she said they would be!’ Dula said, crying out in surprise.

Ice Wind let out a sigh and shook her head in disappointment. ‘And here you thought the lef-tenant didn’t have it in her’ Ice Wind added, shooting a grin at her commanding officer.

‘Lef-tenant commander? Shut up. That’s an order’, Dula said as she returned to the captain’s chair in the centre of the bridge.

‘Shutting up ma’am’, Ice Wind said with a smirk.

‘Hamilcar? Heat up the main guns and give me ship wide. The Hoofers are going to want to see this’, Dula said as a grin formed on her face.

...

Summer had joined with the rest of the hoofers in the docking bay, she climbed aboard the carryall and took her seat up near the front alongside Lieutenant Wolsey and Colour Sergeant Gunmetal, and she buckled herself in, keeping her rifle at the ready. This was it, the big one. They were going in.

The carryall’s speakers began to crackle, and a holographic display materialised before them with an image of the peninsula that they were approaching on. Summer’s jaw dropped, the anti air guns were right where she had said they would be.

‘Fillies and gentle colts of the Fillydelphia regiment, this is your captain speaking! We’re about to enter some heavy... ah... turbulence, and I am now switching on the fasten seatbelt light, please fold tray tables in the upright and locked position. We will be arriving at our destination in five minutes, but don’t think we don’t have time for an in flight movie, please turn your attention to the holographic display in front of you and enjoy the show!’

There was a round of light chuckling at Captain Heartstring’s joke. Summer watched the display closely as the Thunderchild approached the peninsula. Suddenly, bolts of violet hued energy erupted from the ship, Summer had to throw her hooves over her ears to drown out the piercing shrill of the ship’s guns.

She kept her eyes on the screen, watching as the energy bolts impacted on the ground, exploding with such tremendous force that they caused the entire peninsula to sink right into the ocean.

The carryall erupted into cheers.

‘What the hell was that!?’ Summer cried out in disbelief.

That, fillies and gentle colts was the first combat use of our newest shipboard weapons, the Megapulsar Laser!

Laser? Summer raised an eyebrow at that comment. Since when did the Republic have laser weapons? She turned her eyes down to her own E85 Rifle with disappointment. It was a gun that shot a 6x40mm bullet. She wanted a laser rifle damn it!

...

The carryall descended into the tree line touching down gently on the ground at the Regiment’s forward firebase. Summer filed out behind the lieutenant just as the doors opened. Looking around at the firebase, she discovered that it was little more than an arrangement of tents, surrounded by dug out slit trenches and reinforced up with sand bags.

Standing before them was a single earth pony stallion, his coat the colour of barley. He was clad in the standard issue body armour and wearing a combat helmet, oddly enough though, his smart targeting goggles were absent, and as Summer looked at him, she got the feeling that this stallion had seen a lot in his time here.

‘Lef-tenant Wolsey?’ he called out, getting the lieutenant’s attention.

Wolsey looked up at him, and headed over. ‘That’s me, who are you?’ Wolsey asked, raising an eyebrow.

‘Corporal Wheatley, ma’am, pleased to see that you’re finally here’, Wheatley said with a nod.

‘I need to speak with the company commander, can you direct me to them?’ Wolsey asked.

‘Uh...’ Wheatley said a little nervously before glancing around. ‘I guess you’re looking at him, ma’am’.

‘Excuse me?!’ Wolsey cried out in disbelief.

Wheatley merely nodded. ‘B-Coy lost the captain and half our lef-tenants on the way in to triple A fire. Didn’t have a fancy frigate covering our arses... ma’am. Once we got on the ground it wasn’t long before hostile marksmen started witling down our officers, best we can manage now is a corporal. A-Coy and C-Coy don’t have it nearly as bad, but their firebases aren’t as far north as ours is. So we take the brunt of it. Out here two weeks and we’re down to me, and about twenty two privates, I’m glad you brought reinforcements’.

Wolsey frowned at hearing this. Hell, even Summer could tell that was bad. ‘Not everyone we brought with us is here to reinforce B Company, corporal’, Wolsey said.

‘Permission to speak freely? Ma’am?’ Wheatley asked frowning at what the lieutenant had just said.

‘Go ahead, corporal’, Wolsey said, figuring that she was probably not going to like what she was about to hear.

Wheatley frowned in return and let out a sigh. ‘We’re pretty fucked over down here, ma’am’.

Chapter 14

Chapter 14

Summer had to admit, even with the lieutenant and Colour Sergeant Gunmetal here, Corporal Wheatley's descriptions of how bad things were here on... however you were supposed to pronounce the name of this island, Sarawak, or whatever, made her reconsider just how prepared she was. The lieutenant was nervous, Corporal Wheatley was nervous, Colour Gunmetal was nervous. Summer? She was scared.

Lieutenant Wolsey had spent the first few days getting what was left of the company organised, normal force organisation went right out the window, oh but did Wolsey try to keep it like it was supposed to be. She discovered quickly that it quite simply could not be done. There were many appointments to lance corporal over those first few days. Fortunately, with Thunderchild over head, it made the harimau think twice before approaching their camp, three days in Salaya, and Summer had still not seen one.

Apparently though, this was a common experience amongst the hoofers of B Coy, the harimau had been particularly stealthy, and had rarely engaged them openly, preferring instead to silently stalk them from hidden locations, laying traps and catching the rest in surprise attacks. Anyone who went out on patrol either came back without seeing any action, or didn't come back at all. Summer had only talked to one private who had seen a harimau and came back alive. He'd been out taking a piss, when he came across a lone harimau eating on a recently killed soldier. He'd been able to take him out and come back in one piece... sort of.

Said soldier had been disturbed very much by what he had seen. Who wouldn't? Fucking commie bastards were munching on someone you knew for dinner. Otherwise, things had been pretty light.

Summer struggled to keep up hope, and Lieutenant Wolsey wasn't making it any better. She was in charge of the whole company by default now, and she was quick to assert her authority. Summer had been witness to an event between the lieutenant and Corporal Wheatley that made her stop and think.

'Corporal Wheatley. You are out of uniform', Lieutenant Wolsey said.

'Ma'am?' Wheatley asked, raising an eyebrow in confusion. 'What do you mean ma'am?' he asked again, looking around at his uniform to check and see if he was missing anything.

'Where are your smart targeting goggles, Corporal?' Wolsey asked, pointing towards the earth pony stallion's head.

Wheatley glanced around, offering the lieutenant a frown. 'They're in my pack... ma'am', he said simply.

'Why are they not on your eyes, soldier?' Wolsey asked.

Wheatley frowned and glanced around the camp for a moment before answering the question with another question. 'Permission to speak freely, ma'am?' he asked. Summer could already tell that he didn't have anything good to say.

Wolsey thought about it for a moment before nodding her head and allowing him to do so. 'Go ahead corporal', Wolsey said.

'Smart targeting goggles don't work for shite out here, ma'am. The harimau are just too good at staying hidden, and the jungle foliage and the heat gives off too much interference, targeting boxes don't even form...' Wheatley began to say before being interrupted by the lieutenant. Wolsey would have none of it, and ordered Wheatley to put them on and keep them on. Not particularly having a choice, in the matter, Wheatley did as he was told. He would never be granted permission to speak freely again.

Summer didn't know what to think about that, but now she was starting to have doubts if Wolsey knew what she was doing or not. When she really thought about it, no one had seen any action in the last sixty years; Wheatley had been one of the first out here and had first hoof experience on how things worked out in the field. If anything that should make him valuable, but here Wolsey was throwing away everything that he was saying because it went against training. Training was good, yes, but field experience... that was something else.

Summer kept an eye on the situation for the next couple of days, and she determined very quickly that Wolsey did not like Corporal Wheatley for some inane reason. Summer had talked to him a couple times and he seemed like a good colt. Corporal Wheatley was 27, and had lived in Fillydelphia all his life. He'd joined the regiment out of a sense of civic duty, feeling like everyone should serve their country in some manner, for a time, at least. He'd been in almost three years when the Emergency broke out and he'd had the option of taking his papers and walking, but he'd decided that that wouldn't be the right thing to do. He re-enlisted, and was promoted to corporal soon afterwards, his preferred nickname was Cereal, which he had been dubbed thanks to his barley coloured coat. He'd given Summer permission to call him Cereal if she'd like. Everyone else though had to use Corporal Wheatley, especially Lieutenant Wolsey.

'Listen lance corporal and this is very important. Do not rely on your targeting goggles out here, it will get you killed. I meant what I said earlier, even if the lieutenant tells you to take out your eyes and implant the goggles instead, got it?' Wheatley asked, after having pulled Summer aside.

Summer nodded her head in agreement. She still did think that Wolsey was their best hope, she did have her doubts, yes, but that's all they were at this point. Doubts.

As time went by, more doubts formed as Wolsey found more and more to butt heads with Cereal about. She was doing her best to try and reform the company into some semblance of what it was supposed to be. She wanted uniformity, with every rifle pony using an E85 or E86. Wheatley however, had other ideas.

'Corporal... is there any particular reason that you're using an E1A1?' Wolsey asked as she did her usual inspection of the troops before morning patrol.

'Actually ma'am... it's a W1A1 that I scavenged out in the jungle off a dead harimau. They've got a significant amount of Welaran weapons, and I picked it up', Wheatley said with a shrug.

Wolsey looked like she was going to blow a gasket. The E85 series of weapons were co-designed by Emerald Ordinance in Welara, and FutureTec in Equestria, both weapons used a significant number of shared internal components, and had only a few minor differences, those rifles with the differences were of the W85 series in Welara. This had not been the first cooperative venture between Welara and Equestria. Emerald Ordinance and FutureTec had cooperated on the previous generation of weapons alongside Nederlander arms manufacture Nationale Fabriceert. To produce the E/W1A1 Self Loading Rifle. Compared to the E85, the E1A1 was self loading only. No automatic function at all and the reasons were simple enough. The E1A1 fired an 8x60mm bullet; recoil was significant, self loading only helped to keep the weapon under control. 8X60mm had a lot more stopping power then the 6x40mm round that the E85 currently used. Summer could see why Wheatley had switched to it. A bigger round wasn't going to get stopped by thick jungle terrain as much.

'And where is the E85 you were issued when you were deployed?' Wolsey asked, gritting her teeth.

'I turned it back in to the Regimental Quartermaster Sergeant, told him I wouldn't need it', Wheatley said with a shrug. Wolsey struggled to keep from flying off the handle; the Regimental Quartermaster Sergeant was stationed with A-Coy, meaning that there was nothing she could do about it.

…

'I'm telling you, Wolsey's fine. She's just trying to get everything sorted out is all!' Summer said, coming to the lieutenant's defence over breakfast.

'And that's all fine and good. The company is in a mess, and it needs all the help it can get. Still she's stressing the little stuff', Wheatley said as he adjusted the smart targeting goggles on his eyes. 'I hate these things...'

Wolsey had ordered the corporal to put his goggles on and keep them on. In protest of the order, he intended to do exactly as she said to the most literal interpretation of the orders. Five days since the order had been issued and he had not taken them off once. He slept in them, he showered in them, and he did all of his assigned duties around the camp in them, even so far as going to forward all of the raw tactical data from his time wearing the goggles to the lieutenant even when it wasn't needed, especially when it wasn't needed. Like when the lieutenant was sleeping.

Summer couldn't help but giggle each morning when the lieutenant walked into the mess hall each morning fuming from looking over the tactical data of Wheatley's last piss break. Summer was sure that she would bring the corporal up on charges of insubordination, and she had almost done so... before Wheatley reminded her that she had ordered him to put the goggles on and to leave them on.

Wolsey grumbled in annoyance at hearing this, and ordered the corporal to carry on.

'I don't like her', Wheatley said over breakfast. 'She acts like she's in control of the situation, but you all just got here. I tried to help in the beginning but now... now I'll just watch her squirm'.

Summer felt that this really wasn't the right way to go about this and was about to voice her opinion on the matter before Cereal reminded her that Wolsey had started on this nonsense.

He had a point. It was a lot of stupid for no real reason, especially considering what came next.

Chapter 15

Chapter 15

This was it. The moment that Summer had been dreading. Patrols were starting up again. Technically speaking, they had never ended, and small groups would go out and walk around the firebase's perimeter to keep an eye out for trouble, but they were never more than a shout away. B Coy simply hadn’t had enough numbers to send anyone out any further.

Now Wolsey had gotten the company into some form of organisation. They numbered at about fifty, enough for two rump platoons. These were rump because of the fact that they lacked real corporals for the infantry sections, and only the first platoon's platoon sergeant was actually a sergeant. The situation was desperate enough that newly appointed lance corporals were placed in charge of their sections. Including Summer.

Technically speaking, Corporal Wheatley was still a corporal and in charge of an infantry section. Unlike the lance corporals, which were created by appointment from the commanding officers, corporal was a full rank, and Wheatley could only be knocked down by court martial. Wolsey didn't trust Wheatley, which is why she had stuck Summer with him, and by her reckoning, it was Summer that was in charge.

Summer realised that it was petty, and had already worked out an arrangement with the corporal. They would lead their infantry section together. Each section was organised into a group of eight, and then subdivided again into two fire teams of four. Each fire team was outfitted according to the standard model. With the Team Leader, which would be either Summer or Cereal, armed with an E85 assault rifle, in her case, or the W1A1 in the case of Wheatley. Two other soldiers were issued E85s alongside them, while the last member of each team was issued the mighty E86 Light Support Weapon for use in providing long range fire support at a high rate of fire.

Each section in a rifle platoon was lightly armed on its’ own. At the platoon level, however, units were far better equipped, sporting a three pony E7 General Purpose Machine Gun team, and a two pony anti-tank team armed with a 88mm Gustav recoilless rifle. Summer was just glad she wasn’t one of those lugs. She already carried around her own weight in gear. The GPMG and rocket teams carried twice theirs.

Summer had yet to learn the names of her section mates. Apart from Joker, they were all hoofers who’d already been here when the Thunderchild had arrived in theatre. Wolsey had assembled a rump platoon and had taken them out into the jungle on their first patrol. Summer had to admit, she was a little nervous, but after the first hour went by with no contact, she started to ease up a little. She found it disconcerting at just how quiet the jungle was. The wild life had to have run off from all the fighting or something.

Summer glanced back around, behind her were the lieutenant and Colour Gunmetal, sticking close to the front, and stumbling along behind them was the GPMG team, doing their best to lug around that gun and it’s tripod mount. General Purpose Machine Guns, and really all belt fed weapons weren’t used on storm harnesses like the rest of the army’s weapons for several reasons. High rate of fire and large calibre meant that they produced a lot of recoil when shooting, and they could be used far more efficiently on a bipod or tripod mount, as a result, each crew member of the GPMG team carried an E4 survival weapon strapped to their foreleg instead of a regularly issued E85.

The survival weapon was originally created for pilots during the Great Patriotic War. A traditional pistol mounted on a storm harness would be too big and bulky to carry around on a pilot’s person in a cockpit, so the weapon was designed specifically to be used without one. Firing a standard 12.7x33mm round, it gave the user a powerful short range weapon for defence, made particularly famous by Group Captain Soarin' during his aerial duel with Podpolkovnik Spitfire of the Praesidium Air Forces.

The Anti-tank crew was a little better off. The Gustav 88mm rocket launcher fit on a storm harness, so they were issued pistols, giving them slightly better range over their machine gun toting brethren with their survival weapons.

Summer turned and glanced over her shoulder to discover that Joker was looking around in every direction. The pegasi private was looking for something. 'What is it Joker?' Summer asked, raising an eyebrow at his odd behaviour.

'Do you not hear that?' Joker asked.

Summer did not get a chance to respond. Joker's head exploded.

There was a loud crack, it was a few seconds before Summer realised that they were under fire. 'TAKE COVER!' Summer cried out as she dived to the ground, trying to make herself as small as possible.

The sounds of automatic fire filled the air; those who weren't able to get down in time were cut down by the hail of bullets. Summer glanced around, and to her horror, her smart targeting goggles weren't picking out targets. The only targeting boxes that had been formed were green ones.

'What do we do?!' one of the privates cried out.

'I don't see them!' another one said.

'There are no targets!' Lieutenant Wolsey cried out.

'Enough! Hoofers! Shift your fire to the east!' said the booming voice of Colour Sergeant Gunmetal. The colour sergeant bit down on Summer's mane and pulled her to her hooves. 'That means you lance corporal!'

Summer had hunkered down behind a tree, doing her best to keep herself in cover. She watched as the GPMG crew struggled to get the gun set up behind a fallen log before turning her eyes to the east. She trained her rifle down range and began scanning for targets. She saw none. 'Colour! My smart targeting goggles aren't calling out targets!' she cried out.

'Neither are mine! Shoot anyway!' Colour Gunmetal said as the earth pony soldier bit down hard on the control yoke for his storm harness, letting out a long burst of fire.

'But colour... in training you said...' Summer began before being interrupted.

'I don't care what I said in training! Do what I'm telling you now!' the colour sergeant said as he continued to yell out orders to the other members of the platoon. Summer nodded her head in understanding and pulled the trigger with her telekinesis.

The 'spray and pray' tactic in shooting was frowned upon in the Equestrian Republican Army, because the likelihood of hitting anything was incredibly low. Summer let out a long burst with her rifle before pulling back around the tree. She glanced over to the GPMG team. They'd finally gotten the gun set up on its' tripod and were opening fire in short bursts on the east.

Summer wasn't a religious mare, but she was hoping to the Nephite God that they'd hit something. She watched the gunner bit down on the gun's chomp trigger, firing off bursts of roughly five into the east. The machine gun seemed to be doing its' job, because bullets stopped whizzing by her.

'Cease fire! Cease fire!' Colour Gunmetal cried out.

All noise ceased, the machine gun crew eased up and looked over at the colour sergeant.

'Did we get them?!' one of the gunners asked in confusion.

Three shots rang out simultaneously, dropping each member of the GPMG crew. Summer leaned back out and let out another burst from her rifle. That was when she saw it, for a glimpse she was able to see one of the hostile contacts as they shifted firing positions. ‘They’re not harimau!’ Summer cried out.

The hostile contacts charged forward from their cover, opening up on them with their assault rifles as they charged.

‘Præsidium Spetsnaz! Open fire!’ Colour Sergeant Gunmetal cried out. He exposed himself from cover and bit down on his chomp trigger and took a hit to the chest, knocking him down to the ground. Colour Sergeant Gunmetal, the toughest, bravest soldier of them all was done.

A look of horror appeared on Summer’s face. It was at that moment that she knew it. They were going to die. Wolsey turned her head and discovered that the colour sergeant had been hit. ‘Retreat!’ she cried out. ‘All units fall back! Repeat! Fall back!’

Their lines fell into a panic, and many of the hoofers abandoned their gear and ran, only to be cut down by the Spetsnaz troopers as they ran. Summer moved to pull Gunmetal to safety before Wolsey stopped her.

‘Lightfall! Move it! There’s nothing you can do for him! He’s dead!’ Wolsey said as she pulled her away.

Summer turned back, and swore that she could see the colour sergeant moving slightly, but as a bullet whizzed by her head, Summer went into self preservation mode. She ran as fast as she could alongside Wolsey for what felt like hours before tripping over a branch and falling face first into a pit, knocking her cold.

...

It took a moment for her to remember what had happened. Summer couldn’t see anything but a blank white over her eyes. That was when she remembered that the flash grenade had gone off. She was blinded, and had fallen on her back; it had felt like her entire life had just flashed before her eyes. She let out a cough and looked down to discover that there was a bullet wound in her stomach. She was bleeding pretty badly. She looked around, trying to take in her surroundings. The KV-74 she’d been using was lying on the ground next to her. The magazine was ejected, and there were thirty or so spent casings littering the slit trench.

The kangaroo, Walter Berger was gone, nowhere to be found. She glanced around looking for any signs of him. There were no foot prints in the mud that matched kangaroo feet. She hadn’t imagined the kangaroo... did she?

To her despair, Cereal Wheatley lay next to her, slumped over his W1A1 self loading rifle, bleeding profusely, he was unconscious. Still breathing... but unconscious.

She turned her head to the right, and discovered Lieutenant Wolsey lying next to her as well. Her eyes wide open, cold and dead. She let out a small smile, at least in this way the lieutenant got exactly what she had deserved.

The retreat action she ordered... it got everyone killed. She’d ordered everyone to abandon their cover and flee for their lives, making them easy targets for the Spetsnaz troopers hunting them. Wolsey was dead. Those pointless deaths avenged and...

Summer stopped. Wolsey’s chest had just moved. That bitch! She wasn’t dead! She was just pretending to be dead. ‘Wolsey!’ Summer hissed.

No response.

‘Wolsey!’ Summer hissed again as she struggled to get up. ‘I know you can hear me... this... this is your fault! You got us all killed!’

No response.

‘You killed everyone... you didn’t even return fire on the enemy!’ Summer said with a cough as she used her telekinesis to pull up the KV-74 she had been using. Sliding in a new magazine and pulling the cocking handle.

‘You... deserve to die, and I’m going to make it happen’, Summer said, as she pointed the weapon at her commanding officer.

New voices, these ones were unfamiliar to her, it was the Spetsnaz soldiers, had to have been.

‘Yuri! Look!’ one of the voices said as two ponies clad in jungle camouflage climbed into the slit trench alongside them. Summer looked up as a grey coated Cossack pony with shimmering green eyes, his mane slicked back climbed on top of her, looking her over. She dropped the KV-74, and he pushed it away from her.

‘I see them Oleg... and I see this one here... this one will do!’ the Cossack pony called Yuri said simply as he picked Summer up and put her on his back. She looked up and watched as the other Cossack pony, a bastard with amber eyes and a spiky mane dug through Cereal’s barding, looking for anything good.

‘Nothing’, the pony called Oleg said with a shrug. ‘Still breathing too...’

‘Correct that. We have what come for, no survivors’, the pony called Yuri said as he turned to look at Wolsey as she lie on the ground, continuing to play dead. ‘Would have preferred two unicorns... ah but I guess it can’t be helped! Oleg! Hurry up! We leaving!’

‘Dah! Dah!’ the pony called Oleg said with a nod as he drew his pistol and pressed it to Cereal’s head. He bit down on the control yoke of his storm harness, and Summer could only watch helplessly as Cereal Wheatley’s head exploded.

‘You... bastards!’ Summer said weakly as she felt her eyes grow heavy. Her blood loss was getting worse now that she’d been moved.

‘Ah! She speaks! Don’t you worry pretty head! We have plans for you!’ the pony called Yuri said with a grin as he climbed out of the slit trench.

Summer was too tired to put up a struggle. She gave Wolsey one last look as she left the lieutenant behind. She vowed to herself that the death of all those in her platoon would be avenged... some day.

Summer closed her eyes and drifted off to sleep.

Chapter 5

Chapter 5

To say that Summer was high strung was an understatement. She had forty eight hours... well, no, now it was about forty. She had forty hours before she had to be back, and then, deployment. She had since parted ways with Joker and Pender, who had gone home to visit with their families.

Summer would be doing that too, when she was ready. Until then, she needed to just sit back, and relax, and get her mind off of her impending doom. She was trying, but it wasn't working that well. Despite the fact that she had picked a place to go to that was almost guaranteed to take your mind off whatever was troubling it.

Summer sat back in her lounge chair, sipping on an Apple Martini and listening to the thumping beat of club music as she looked up at the stage, watching intensely as a pegasus mare dressed in stockings and a short skirt danced before her. Pegasi were naturally endowed with grace and agility, and as once could expect, that transferred over to the art of exotic dancing.

Summer wasn't picky when it came to what attracted her, it was more about personality then gender, still, there were things that Summer could appreciate about another mare's body, and this mare had it. The mare before her had a turquoise coat, her mane alternated between neon green and dark purple, and had been cropped short, styled in a way that almost made it look wet, even though it was dry. Summer didn't know what it was, but mares with wet manes were deemed the pinnacle of sexiness by modern Equestrian society. The mare's eyes were a soft, warm, amber and they had taken notice to the fact that Summer was watching her closely.

The mare slid down the pole that she was dancing with, and laid down on her back, rolling her head and training her eyes on Summer. 'Hey there!' the mare said with a smile.

Summer turned bright red. Here was this beautiful mare lying before her, Summer had to struggle to keep from turning into a blabbering idiot. 'H... Hi...' Summer said with a stammer, offering the mare a small smile.

‘You look... stressed’, the mare said as she rolled over onto her stomach, placing her fore knees on the stage and resting her head on her hooves. ‘I think I know what you need...’

Summer swallowed loudly, was this really happening to her?

‘See those rooms over there?’ The mare said, tilting her head to the left. Summer looked over, and discovered that on the far end of the room were three doors leading to rooms for private dances. Summer nodded her head to indicate that she saw them, causing the mare to smile. ‘Take the one on the far left, and I’ll be over once I finish this dance’.

Summer nodded and finished her martini. She rose from her seat and trotted over to the private room. She took a seat in the large lounge chair on the far wall and after a few moments the pegasus mare came into the room, shutting and locking the door behind her.

‘Hello’, she said, offering a warm smile. ‘I couldn’t help but notice that you seemed to have the weight of the world on your shoulders... and I thought that maybe you’d like someone to talk to?’

This was certainly not what Summer had been expecting; still... the offer was tempting to say the least. She thought about it for a moment before slowly nodding her head. The mare smiled brightly at her, and squeezed herself into the longue chair with Summer, causing the unicorn mare to grow hot with nervousness.

‘What’s your name?’ the mare asked.

‘S... Summer Lightfall’ Summer said nervously.

‘Shortfuse Skydancer. Pleased to make your acquaintance, Summer Lightfall’, the mare said warmly.

‘Doesn’t sound like a stripper name’, Summer said with a small chuckle.

‘Heh, no it’s not, I have a feeling that you wouldn’t take me seriously if I used one’, Shortfuse said, smiling with her eyes. ‘I was serious you know, you look like the world’s come crashing down around you, what’s going on?’

‘I’m...’ Summer began, not sure how much she wanted to tell her. She looked into the mare before her eyes’ the look that she was giving her seem to indicate genuine concern. ‘I’m a soldier, I just recently graduated from training... and I’m on my last leave before deployment...’

‘Ah! Soldier girl huh? Can’t say I blame you for looking the way you do, I’d be terrified if I was going out to fight the war’, Shortfuse said.

‘The Emergency’, Summer corrected, causing Shortfuse to raise an eyebrow. ‘Oh... sorry, they don’t want us to call it a war, no declaration or anything, and the brass are afraid that using the word war will damage morale... so they’re having us call it the Emergency instead’, Summer explained.

‘I see...’ Shortfuse said, nodding her head in understanding.

‘Worst thing is? I’m not sure I’m even cut out for this, I joined the army to pay for university, I never thought there would be a war to fight’, Summer said with a frown.

‘An Emergency to fight, you mean’, Shortfuse said with a cheeky grin.

Summer couldn’t help but smirk. ‘Heh, I guess I deserved that one, eh?’ she asked.

‘I couldn’t resist’, Shortfuse said with a grin. ‘I know where you’re coming from on that one, I’m in a similar situation with this job, I never quite wanted to be an exotic dancer... but hey, the pay’s not bad, and there’s a lot worse jobs I could be doing, and occasionally... I get to spend time with cute mares like yourself’, Shortfuse added with a wink.

‘What did you want to do?’ Summer asked, changing the subject and trying to hide the fact that she was turning bright red.

‘What I WANT to do is be a computer programmer, and for that, I’ll need a four year degree at university. National Government subsidies and no profit universities can only go so far’, Shortfuse said with a shrug.

Summer must have been giving her a strange look.

‘I know, I know, I don’t quite look the brainy type, do I? Believe me, I’ve heard it before’, Shortfuse said with a sigh.

‘I don’t mean to offend... but stripper doesn’t exactly go hoof and hoof for someone who wants to program computers’, Summer said with a shrug.

‘No, no it doesn’t’, Shortfuse said, nodding her head in agreement. ‘That doesn’t mean I don’t find it fun.’

Summer must have been giving her that look again.

‘Come on, what filly doesn’t ever want to dress up and have a little fun?’ Shortfuse asked with a grin.

Summer supposed that she had a point, and nodded her head. ‘I’ll admit... there are times when I like to feel... sexy’, she said softly.

‘Ha! I win!’ Shortfuse said with a mad mare’s grin.

‘You are... not quite what I expected’, Summer said with a smile. ‘And this is most definitely not what I expected when you asked me to come here to this private room...’

‘I get that a lot’, Shortfuse said with a shrug and then glanced at a small clock on the back wall, offering it a frown. ‘I need to get back to work...’ she added with disappointment.

Summer frowned, but nodded her head in agreement. ‘It was... nice talking to you’, she said, offering the pegasus mare a smile.

‘Likewise... let me ask you something though. Do you have any family?’ Shortfuse asked.

‘Yeah, mum and dad and a little sister’, Summer said with a nod.

‘Then this is not the place that you should be at right now... you should be with them, you don’t have a lot of time to waste before you go off to fight. Spend it with your loved ones’, Shortfuse said, placing her hoof on Summer’s shoulder and rubbing it gently.

Summer nodded her head in agreement. ‘Yeah, yeah you’re right, I’ll go see them’, she said, promisingly.

‘Good!’ Shortfuse said with a smile before rising from her seat and headed over to the door.

Summer stopped her, reaching out with her telekinesis and tugging at one of her stockings. Shortfuse looked back to see Summer pull a one hundred pound bank note out of her wallet, folding it carefully and gently stuffing it into the stocking. ‘You’ve got an education to pay for, right?’ Summer asked with a smile.

‘That’s not...’ Shortfuse began to say, but was quickly interrupted.

‘No, no it’s not; still, I want you to have it. Not like I’m going to need any money while I’m off fighting right? Don’t you dare try to give it back either! I’m a unicorn and I can just stuff more in if I wanted’, Summer said with a grin.

‘You’re very kind... tell you what though, when you get back, look me up, and you’ve got a dance on the house... and for you maybe a little more’, Shortfuse said with a seductive purr and a suggestive wiggle of her flank. ‘Make sure you come back though, or I’ll be disappointed’.

‘Oh believe me’, Summer said with a grin. ‘If I don’t come back, I’ll be just as disappointed’.