Prologue: The Longest Hour
Prologue
The Longest Hour
“Now, I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds.”
– Trottenheimer
The sky was dark.
It was pitch black in fact. The smoke from burning wreckages was so thick not even the moon’s rays could penetrate it. Night had fallen, or maybe dawn had come already, it was hard to tell, and the battlefield was silent, aside from the pop and hiss of the damaged vehicles stuck in noponys land and the haunting groans of the injured and dying.
In the middle of all of it, was a hoof full of ponies, not more than twenty five huddled in their trench. Coated in mud and dried blood. Each mare and stallion looked grim, they each coped in their own way. Some were drinking while others were playing cards. Others just stared at the muddy soil that was their home. For the most part they were all that was left of the famed Sunfury Company.
Sure they knew there were two more companies on either side of them, not even a few hundred yards away. Yet of their regiment only twenty five ponies out of two-hundred and fifty remained. The silence was deafening. It felt alien without the roar of gunfire. It was quiet. Too quiet.
Walking out of the improvised communications bunker their captain looked over the last of his ponies. He looked tired. The thirty year old stallion looked like he had aged thirty more years over the last day. “I know … you’re tired.” he started, “Fuck, even I am tired. But we can’t rest lads.” his tone was mournful and revealed the heavy weight on his shoulders.
“But Sir! We won’t stand a chance!” a mare shouted, out of turn.
Gale glared her down. “We have to. We hold the line.” he announced with a glance back towards the civilian population not even two miles back. “We have to, until the Ministry of Peace gets their asses in gear and finishes the evacuation.” said Gale with a heavy sigh.
“If even a few of those striped bastards gets through, it’ll be a massacre. It’s up to us to keep them occupied.” He had everypony’s attention even as the first telltale cracks of rifles firing started to ring, followed by another, and another culminating in the all too familiar din of battle.
The radio came to life with chatter, announcing the end to their little respite. “We are the sun’s fury. We never give up. We never surrender.” He said, taking his rifle up in his magic. “Come on, you sons of bitches, do you want to live forever?”
The words hadn’t even left his muzzle or the remaining ponies simply chanted “Never give up, Never surrender.” As one they took their posts, and waited for the enemy to show their ugly mug. They were the centre of the line. They were the focal point of the assault.
“Steady. Steady.” Gale said, speaking into the headset that was integrated into his helmet. The helmets were as environmentally sealed as was possible without power armour. It had certainly helped when the Zebras had resorted to gas attacks, though the integration with Eyes Forward Sparkle, or simply EFS.
Eyes Forward Sparkle is a spell that alters the sight of the PipBuck users which, when activated, changes the perception of nearby living creatures.
Any nearby life forms of a certain size will be assigned a color, either red or yellow. Red life-forms have been identified as hostile by the spell, while yellow indicates neutral or friendly lifeforms. The spell can even identify life forms through walls or solid matter on occasion.
The added nightvision from the helmet was a bonus onto itself. In the distance they could already see the enemy approaching through the smoking wreckages of war engines. A mass of red approaching them, cracks of zebra rifles spraying overhead. “Wait for it....”
The first Zebra became visible.
Gale was startled for a moment. Not only were they wearing the heraldry or the Roamani tribe, the most elite warriors of all the Zebra tribes, with a reputation towards ruthlessness. They also bore the the mark of the Legate’s personal guard,
“Fire at will!” he bellowed over the coms, and just like that all hell broke loose from their side. Even though the fire at will command had been given, Gale was proud to see the trigger discipline from his troops. One shot. One kill. Clear and efficient as one would expect from the Special Ops company.
Even though every one of his ponies wore a military grade pipbuck, none of them were reliant on the Stable-Tec Arcane Targeting Spell. SATS, as it was called, is an advanced spell used to assist in combat. When activated, the spell causes the world to, on appearance, slow to a crawl allowing the user to gauge the situation in peace. The spell presents the percent chance of scoring a successful hit on various parts of the target's body and allows the user to line up multiple attacks. When the spell is released, all attacks are carried out automatically. After use, S.A.T.S. must be allowed to recharge for several seconds.
It was also a crutch used by the less skilled pony, and its widespread use was an indication of just how the standards for recruitment into the Army had degraded throughout the war. Gale’s rifle roared to life as one of the legionnaires got too close for comfort. He knew this was only the first wave, Zebras were a little predictable like that.
What he wasn’t expecting was to see a green egg shaped device being thrown by one of the zebra before that legionnaire fell face down in the mud, dead. He had seen one before. They had lost twenty ponies to one that morning. “Balefire egg!” He shouted, and before anyone could do anything a silver coated unicorn mare leapt up, grabbed the device in her magical grip, let it orbit her horn and flung it back towards the zebra lines.
“Get down!”
The resulting explosion was earth shattering. Dirt, irradiated dirt, rained down on them as the radiation counters on their pipbucks started clicking wildly. Even though she had flung it quite a distance the radiation needle jumped right into the yellow. “Back into the fight! Form up, ranks!”
Watching his troops scramble back up forming two lines, one behind the other, he gave the order.
“First rank; Fire!” They obeyed without question. The volley of bullets ripped into the enemy.
“Second rank, FIRE!” It all went like clock work. The thunder of well disciplined fire, bullets ripping into zebras. It didn’t sit well with Captain Gale. In fact he despised the senseless slaughter that this had turned into. Warfare was not meant to be like this. Prolonged engagements were unfavourable.
A slow, building, rumbling noise, more felt than heard, caused a chill to run down their spines. They knew instantly what was slowly emerging from the smoke, knocking away the wreckages of war engines. The large box shaped vehicle they had been dreading to see had finally made an appearance, its striking white hull covered in black stripes.
“Get down!”
Gale screamed, far too late. Its front mounted machine guns had already opened fire and was ripping through the trench. To his horror he saw the mare that had just saved them quite literally sawed in half by the hail of bullets.
“FUCK! I thought the fucking M.O.A took care of their motor pool!” He heard somepony shouting over the radio.
“Fucking showoffs missed one apparently.”,
“Shut up.” Gale barked in between the chatter. It made it hard to think. There was only one mare up for this job. “Sparky,” he said, looking over into the communications bunker. “We need that sexy cyber flank of yours out here.”
The mare showed herself, like the others she looked dead tired. Covered in grime and motor oil. One of her eyes glowed a bright baleful red. Her legs and most of her belly had been replaced with metal. An operation courtesy of the Ministry of Peace. All Gale knew was that these cybernetics seemed to be quite a bit more advanced than the more commonly available prosthetics, though he attributed it to the connection his company had to the Princess of the night, she and only a hoof full of others even knew of their existence. It wasn’t a stretch for him to imagine Luna had pulled some strings, to get this done. The only complaint he had was that Sparks had been quite a bit more loopy ever since she had come back.
Sparks unlatched the missile launcher from her battle saddle with an almost insane grin. She wasn’t allowed into battle much, she was the senior communications officer. Even so she was the only one who could use the heavy anti-tank weaponry they had without needing power armour. “Awwh yeah, ‘s about fookin’ time!”
Gale simply rolled his eyes a little and with a deep breath he was over the edge with her. “Just bring it down! I’ll draw it’s fire.” he said, the enemy vehicle was an anti-personnel variant, as such it had a twin minigun as its main weapon. Ducking behind the cover of a burnt out vertibuck he narrowly avoided the stream of fire.
His plan worked, the behemoth was focusing on him and not the enhanced mare that was flanking to its weak point. Sparks was quick, her augmented legs allowed her to reach speeds anormal pony couldn’t. She had a simple pistol, her sidearm, in her muzzle, she didn’t wear a helmet. A helmet got in the way for her. Her cybernetic eye did all her targeting calculations for her. With an almost mad cackle, of a mare who enjoyed explosions a little too much, she loaded her favourite type of missile in the launcher on her battle saddle.
The weapon was something she had designed back on the Stormfront. It was mainly used for busting entrenches positions, the warhead worked in two stages. The first stage was based on a proximity trigger, releasing a payload of superheated plasma, The release happened approximately thirty centimeters before the target is hit burning a hole big enough for the rest of the weapon to enter. The second stage was essentially a high explosive bomb packed with nails, glass and buckshot which was based on a timer which activated approximately fifteen seconds after the first stage was triggered.
The missile hit home, almost flawlessly, in the side. Right between its engine and the crew compartment. The plasma spewed forth and burned a hole in the vehicle just big enough for the weapon to slip through. The clang inside announced that it had landed, a little off target.
The resounding explosion though was spectacular. She galloped back towards friendly lines. Her part was done, the tank was disabled by the death of the crew.
Gale smirked at her “Nice shot, that’ll give them pause.” Was what he wanted to say. His words were cut off before the N had even rolled off his tongue, interrupted as he was by the resounding sharp crack of a zebra sniper rifle. The mare that had just got to spend the hero slumped down, the left half of her face missing, splattered all over Gale’s uniform.
His legs carried him back to the trench. The chatter on the radio was washed out by his own mind going a million miles an hour. It was like a runaway freight train with a single destination: panic. His helmet was removed, and a sharp slap from his sergeant brought him crashing back to reality.
“SIR! Snap out of it. We have a line to hold.”
Gale sat there for a moment. His eyes wide and filled with anger. “Kill them all. We’re killing every single fucking stripe in that goddess damned trench!” He growled.
Before they could commit to their Captain’s vow, their collective attention was drawn to the shriek of a missile streaking overhead. It was a small thing. And before anypony could respond, it veered down, slamming into the central command post. The resulting explosion was thunderous. Dirt, concrete and steel along with the shattered bodies of the officers and their staff rained down around the impact zone.
Everypony was shocked into silence. It was so silent one could probably have heard a pin drop in the next trench over. Everyone simply gaped for the longest time. “How… did they know!? They leaked info indicated that it was a decoy!”
And so the chatter picked up, the arguing and shouting about traitors. The seeds of panic spread as quickly as the destruction of the direct command structure over the radio network. “Shut up!” Gale shouted. He was trembling with rage.”Stock up on ammo. Get as many grenades as you can carry. We are ending this. It’s up to us lads.”
“Captain! You’re going to want to hear this!” A shrill voice screamed from within the communications.
Taking a deep breath Gale stepped into the communications bunker. The junior communications officer, Radar, he remembered. A small effeminate stallion with an olive green coat and a blond mane sat behind the equipment, a horrified look on his muzzle. Gale doubted he was even out of puberty.
He simply pulled out the plug to his headset, letting the broadcast repeat over the speakers.
“... under missile attack. Proceed to your designated Stable immediately. Airborne strike in T-minus SIX minutes. Warning, this is not a drill. An omega level threat protocol is in effect. Equestria is under…” Gale fell to his rump, staring blankly at the radio as the message repeated over the Equestrian Emergency Broadcast System.
With his headset unplugged multiple speakers blared to life. The one that stood out was a panicked voice of a mare. She was screaming, and by the sounds of it she was crying. “They got … FUCK! By the goddesses they fucking hit Cloudsdale before the evacuation! FUCK everypony’s dead! T…” the transmission cut off with the sharp crack of static.
“Calling to all pegasi! By order of her royal majesty Princess Luna you are to return to your cities!”
“Fucking traitors! That is Bullshit!” Was called out over the same frequence, before the message repeated itself.
“...Fuck…”
The word caught his attention, everyone outside was staring back behind the lines. Reluctantly, Gale joined them. The sight was a chilling one. Far, far in the distance he could make out the mountain on which Canterlot rested, and the detonation of explosions. He had no idea how the pegasi had managed it but a thick layer of clouds was already forming. He could see pegasi from the next trench over flying up and away.
North east to the mountain it looked like the sky was literally on fire with green flames. The baleful green glow was sickening. It was followed by a baleful green cloud in the shape of what looked to be a skull, or a mushroom, the distance made it hard to tell, to the north east, Manehattan. Fillydeplphia. Baltimare. Vanhoover. Las Pegasus. Hoofington. Gale guesstimated the impact sites as he watched.
He fell back against the doorframe. Tears were running down his cheek. The world was literally ending all around them.
This was it.
...Game over…
