“Get ready ladies,” Lieutenant Colonel Chrysanthemum snapped, his faint Trottingham accent coloring his words, “Intel says that the Diamond Dogs are dug in hard and deep, and are very well armed. Quite a few of us won’t be taking this train home.”

He looked around at his unit, his fiery scarlet eyes taking in his troops. There were sixteen of them in the car, not including himself. His vampiric vision enabled him to sense their blood pressure and the levels of various chemicals in them. Right now they were all jumped on adrenaline and their blood pressure was elevated. All to be expected before an op, but he couldn’t help but marvel at how they managed to keep their excitement out of their faces.

Once more, he went over the parameters of their assignment. Operation Cartwheel’s main goal was to shut down a Diamond Dog mining and manufacturing operation that was confirmed to be supplying illegal weapons to an unknown buyer.

Given that the facility in question was very close to the Ancient Lands, Chrysanthemum’s all-thestral unit had been selected for the job to prevent tensions with the thestral homeland.

He examined their equipment. All of them were wearing the usual dark grey and blue kit of the Lunar Guard Marines, but with patches in the shape of a winged skull being pierced by a sword on their shoulders designating them as elite High Altitude Drop Elite Squadron -or HADES- troops. They were highly trained shock troops. The best of the best of the best.

Typically they would have been inserted via high-altitude drop pods (hence their team name), but the intel they had received indicated that their target had, in addition to machine gun nests and a large team of well-equipped security personnel, at least SOME form of anti-air capability. With that option closed off, they had been forced to utilize a train with several armored military cars. It was not what they were used to, but hopefully surprise would remain on their side.

“Who cares?” a voice suddenly piped up from the back of the car, breaking him out of his reverie, “Fuck this train. It doesn’t even have a bar car!”

Chrysanthemum looked to the back of the car where the fresh-faced soldier was seated. His shoulder patch identified him as a corporal, and he was gripping his P90 submachine gun eagerly.

He nodded with approval as the entire car erupted into laughter. Despite their admirable self-control, his men needed something to break the tension.

Besides, he did have a point.

“For that little remark, corporal,” he barked, “First round’s on you when we get back!”

There was an appreciative murmur, and the corporal took a bow.

Chryanthemum’s grin widened. This sort of banter, while it was frowned upon elsewhere as unprofessional, was just the sort of informal, non regulation that was characteristic of how HADES usually operated. They were often described as more of a fraternity than a military.

Suddenly, the entire train jolted to a halt, and Chrys was almost thrown to the floor. Everyone in the train slammed to one side and then, without warning, the entire car was tilting sideways. It was a testament to the Marines’ training that they didn’t cry out. Instead, they hastened to get on their feet and stand on what had been the wall and was now the floor.

“Terminus!” Chrys barked, grabbing his AUG A3 assault rifle and checking his Glock 18 machine pistol, “Get us an opening!”

The burly demolitions expert immediately trained his SCAR H battle rifle on the former roof and fired its underslung grenade launcher into it at point-blank range. The 40mm breaching round detonated on impact and the shaped charge blasted a hole plenty big enough for a soldier in full kit.

“GO! GO! GO!” Chrys roared, motioning for his men to follow as he charged out the opening.

He sensed, rather than saw, his men charging out behind him as he sprinted away from the wrecked train. He looked back and saw what had caused their sudden stop. The entire locomotive that had been pulling their car was a mess of twisted metal, roaring flames, and thick black smoke. Behind the locomotive’s coal car, another boxcar had been shredded by an explosion. His gut twisted as he recognized the destroyed car. It had been carrying their light field artillery and Light Reconnaissance Vehicles.

That’s gonna make things more interesting, he reflected. As a drop unit, they rarely had the luxury of such things. However, field cannons and Puma LRVs would have made the op much MUCH easier.

Now that he had put some distance between himself and the destroyed transport, he realized that they were charging across a wide open plain of barren mud towards a lone mountain that had all sorts of mining equipment around it. In front of the entrance was a fenced-off compound with several buildings and a number of massive mining trucks parked in neat rows.

As he watched, a contrail suddenly streaked from a recessed cave in the mountain’s face and slammed into the personnel car. The entire thing went up in a huge explosion of debris and black smoke. He saw a young soldier, one he remembered as having joined the unit recently, get caught up in the blast and slammed to the ground mercilessly. He didn’t move again.

Chrys’s mouth went dry and a cold knot formed in his gut.

“They have artillery!” He shouted, immediately changing his headlong charge into a random zig-zag pattern in order to make himself harder to hit. As he ran, his mind raced furiously. The intel said nothing about artillery, he thought, Dammit! This changes everything! We thought that we were only going to have to deal with some heavy machine guns…

As if on cue a myriad of rapid flashes began strobing from the barren area in front of him as well as from several balconies on the mountain itself and several towers around the external compound.

Three of his men were slammed back into the mud as the massive .50 caliber rounds pounded into them. “MEDIC!” He called, grabbing the only one who showed any signs of life and dragging him into a small dip in the terrain. The HADES armor was a state-of-the-art mixture of spider silk and carbon nanotube fibers that lent more stopping capacity than Kevlar, with ceramic plates coated in energy-ablative material placed at strategic intervals, but it just wasn’t designed to stand up to direct fire from an emplacement gun.

The team medic and the communications officer quickly joined him and the medic began attempting to stabilize the wounded man.

“Get me CENTCOM!” He told the communications officer, “We’re going to need an immediate evac!”

The communications officer nodded and began shouting into the headset.

Chrys stood and immediately spotted a pair of Earthers armed with handguns advancing on their position. Without the slightest hesitation he pulled the trigger and hit them with a stream of high-velocity 5.56mmX45mm rounds, cutting both down before either could get a shot off.

A round slammed into his shoulder from a sniper lying prone with a hunting rifle on a mining truck’s cab, followed closely by a second shot that caught him in the chest. The heavy bullets knocked him flat on his ass and blasted his shoulder plate off. “Shit!”

He inspected his shoulder and breathed a sigh of relief, realizing that he was unharmed aside from what was sure to be a pair of wicked bruises later. Note to self, he thought, buy the whole damn Lunar Guard R&D team beers if we make it outta here alive.
He waved off the medic. “I’m fine. Keep working on the sergeant, my armor stopped it.”

The medic returned to her attempts to stabilize the wounded sergeant, and Chrys peeked back over. He spotted the sniper, who didn’t appear to notice him, and tagged his position on his headset’s HUD display. Then he carefully set his rifle to semi-auto and took aim. His AUG’s 4x ACOG sight was just barely powerful enough to give him an adequate view of the sniper. He took a deep breath, exhaled slowly, and pulled the trigger.

The rifle cracked, and the bullet slammed into the truck barely an inch away from the sniper’s hand with a spray of sparks.

“Dammit,” he hissed, adjusting his aim before the sniper could react beyond a slight recoil, and pulling the trigger three times in quick succession.

As the enemy sniper’s body went limp, a voice crackled through his earpieces. “This is CENTCOM. What’s going on down there?”

“Enemy is extremely well armed and has artillery!” He yelled, gunning down a third hostile and firing his rifle’s underslung grenade launcher. The 40mm High Energy Discharge round scored a direct hit on a machine gun nest a few dozen yards away, sending bodies flying with a powerful blast of blue energy, “WE WEREN’T TOLD THEY HAD ARTILLERY! We have men down! Requesting immediate evac!”

“We’re getting gunships in the air right now. ETA fifteen minutes.”

Chrys swore internally. “I’d like to have my remains scattered at Thundercloud Central Park.”

He switched to TeamCom and shouted, “Anyone who’s still alive, consolidate on my position!”

He hunkered down next to the medic as she gently closed the sergeant’s eyes. Chrys sighed and took the fallen soldier’s dog tags. He hadn’t expected him to survive, but he’d still had hope.

After a few minutes, while he was checking his supplies, his surviving men trickled in. His heart sank as he realized that only six soldiers were standing in front of him.

“What happened? Report.”

“A shell got Lightfoot and Trench,” said a visibly shaken private, “Branch, Lynch, and Buckshot got dropped by a sniper right next to me!”

“I saw Omega go down to a machine gun nest,” said Terminus, holding a piece of bloody gauze to his cheek, “And Dynamo got shredded when the train blew.”

Chrys did some quick mental math.

“Where’s Hot Round?”

“Got jumped and skewered by a knife.”

“Dammit!”

He checked his watch, then the bullets in his mag. “I’ve only got four rounds left in this mag, and one spare banana. What about the rest of you?”

The rest all had at least one spare mag each for their primaries, their sidearms, and three frags between them, as well as two smoke grenades.

“Alright boys,” he said to the soldiers before him, “We have gunships coming to get us out of here, but we need to hold out for…” he checked his watch again, “Eight-ish minutes.”

“Eight minutes?” Yelped the private, “Might as well be eight weeks! How’re we gonna survive that long?”

“With an assload of bullets and luck,” said Chrys sharply, “Terminus. You got any 40mm sprinklers?”

The demolitions expert nodded and loaded a 40mm cluster bomb into his launcher.

Chrys peeked over the rim of their lifesaving rise and spotted two dozen Earthers armed with an assortment of civilian and military weapons making their way towards their position. His vampiric senses also detected thirty warm bodies in a trench not too far from the entryway that they had originally intended to storm.

“Angulation, 85 degrees,” he muttered.

Terminus knelt and aimed his gun at a steep angle and muttered then fired.

The cluster charge flew high, then fragmented at the peak of its flight. Nearly three dozen smaller explosive charges, each with about the same payload as a hand grenade, rained down on the unsuspecting grunts with an earth-shaking roar.

“BREAKDOWN! NOW!”

The heavy weapons specialist surged up with his M60 medium machine gun and sprayed the surviving Earthers with suppressive fire as the other Marines popped up and opened fire.

Chrys’s rifle spat four times, bringing down two hostiles, and he swapped mags before the spent shell casings even hit the ground. His vision turned red as he flicked the gun to semi-auto again and began firing at the reinforcements that were pouring out of the entrance. The cracks of his rifle were strangely muted in his ears as he pulled the trigger over and over again.

The 35-round magazine emptied far too soon, and he slung it over his back before snatching his Glock from its place on his belt.

Around him, Breakdown was in the process of unjamming his MMG, Terminus was pouring three-round bursts into the oncoming hostiles, and the rest of his surviving Marines were firing with the cold, single-minded intent of killing anything that moved.

For a short eternity, there was nothing but the roar of gunshots, the screams of wounded and dying hostiles, and the kick of his pistol.

Suddenly, a familiarly scratchy voice came through his headset.

“Lieutenant Colonel? We’re almost there! Status!”

His stomach squirmed as he recognized the voice as belonging to Captain Spitfire of the Wonderbolts.

“We’ve got ten men down, we’re under heavy fire, and running low on ammo. Enemy is closing, and closing fast!”

As he spoke, another Earther unwisely poked his head up, and with a short trigger pull, it vanished again under the force of a 5 round burst.

“How close are they now?”

With a bitter laugh, Chrys ejected the empty mag from the Glock and slapped a fresh one home. “Hang on a sec and they’ll tell you themselves! 45 meters at the moment!”

“Dropships are a minute out. We’re gonna need an LZ.”

“We’ll do our best, but we’ll need some air support if we’re gonna live long enough to mark it. Danger close!”

“Roger that. Mark ‘em!”

Chrys popped a green smoke grenade and hurled it. “Hostiles are marked with green smoke! 40 yards!”

“Roger. I see it. Order up, dirtbags!”

He turned to his men.

“DOWN! DOWN! DOWN!” He shouted, hitting the deck and covering his head with his hands.

The rest followed suit as three jets screamed overhead, releasing streams of cannon fire and missiles that decimated the hostiles on the ground as well as the machine gun nests and, hopefully, the artillery.

“Targets neutralized.”

Chrys threw their last smoke grenade at the still-burning train as hard as he could, marking the Landing Zone with red smoke as several dropships appeared, racing towards them and being protected by the Wonderbolts’ F-35 fighters.

The Marines began retreating toward the smoke, firing back at any Dog goons dumb enough to try and stop them.

Suddenly, a shell streaked past them and missed one of the dropships by inches. It appeared that the artillery had survived the strafing run, and it began hammering at the retreating soldiers. A shell detonated right next to the medic, leaving her miraculously unscathed even though she was blasted a good ten feet to the right. Another clipped the tail of a dropship, sending it into a chaotic tailspin that the pilot was just barely able to correct before pulling up and avoiding a crash.

Finally, after what felt like an eternity, the dropships set down and the Marines piled into one. As it lifted off, he felt as though a weight had been taken off his shoulders as he watched the last three Marines climb into the second dropship We’re going to make it, he thought.

Then he heard the unmistakable whistle of incoming artillery, and Spitfire shouted, “CHRYS! INCOMING!”

Time seemed to slow down as he turned around just in time to see the warhead slam into the mud two feet away.

His slit pupils dilated.

In a split second, not even enough time to throw his arms in front of his face, much less run, the 500 pound explosive shell detonated.

All the air was sucked from his lungs and he was blown off his feet. He screamed as shrapnel tore into him. He felt a searing, burning heat as the blast wave hit him, then everything went black.

Author's Note

So here it is. The improved story I promised... What, a month or so ago? Again, I apologize for any military inaccuracies. I am not a member of the armed forces, and though I did my research as best I could, I still likely missed quite a lot, and would greatly appreciate any feedback and corrections.

Also, "Earthers" are Earth Ponies.