Sunset of Battle

Sunset Shimmer; Sister of Battle
By Tundara

Operation 15

Applejack was hardly surprised as Sunset froze at her question. Her squad leader’s face was unsettlingly serene while, somehow, a dozen different emotions flashed across her sharply sculpted features. Concern, joy, irritation, and condescension seemed most prominent; but Applejack couldn’t even be certain she’d seen those emotional notes and hadn’t just seen what she herself feared.

That horribly unsettling alienness of Sunset made it so Throne damned hard to know for certain.

What was worse was how she never felt that awkward about Sunset while in her presence. Applejack could close her eyes and feel like she was back home with her brother and sister. If she listened she could almost hear Apple Bloom laughing as she enjoyed the precious moments of being able to play with her friends.

How desperately Applejack wanted to hold onto those memories. To be in Sunset’s presence so they would never diminish nor be blemished by the nightmarish horrors of Equis’ death. So long as she was close to Sunset the memories of Apple Bloom’s screams and Big Macintosh’s gurgling laughter as they ate their little sister wouldn’t come bubbling to the surface.

It was almost as if the protective light of the Emperor of Mankind himself came from Sunset.

It was only afterwards that suspicion would begin to wriggle through the back of her skull that there was something deeply wrong about Sunset Shimmer, and the mind numbing heresy of thinking a little girl could bear His light would sucker punch her in the gut.

Yet, the Sisters hadn’t put Sunset to the flame, or simply blown her head to bits with a bolter round.

Much as they hadn’t done to Applejack herself, or any of the other girls who’d survived Equis’ demise.

Applejack was no stranger to envy, anger, and the pain of losing family. Even before the loss of Equis, she’d stayed up late into the night praying to the God-Emperor, Master of Mankind, in search of guidance. Knees bloody from grinding them into the hard stone floor before the altar of the God-Emperor, she’d pray and pray and pray with never an answer.

And why would she, a mere heiress to an orchard on an agri-world, ever receive something even approximating attention from the Master of Mankind? Forty-thousand acres of orchards hardly accounted for even a fraction of Equis’ arable land. After the basic caloric needs of Ponyville had been met, everything else produced was sent off-world as tithes. As was the norm for communities on agri-worlds throughout the Imperium. The God-Emperor had such vastly more weighty and important considerations than a farm girl on a backwater agri-world.

Yet, as far as lives in the Imperium went, it was a good life filled with purpose and meaning. Even after losing her mother shortly after her little sister’s birth, or her father passing away just after that in a thresher accident; it had been a good life.

Being around Sunset, Applejack could feel the hard rays of the sun on her back as she worked the fields. She could taste the oils in the air spewed by the ancient servitors as they trundled between the rows of trees. She could hear the scolding tone of her grandmother in the distance, and when she closed her eyes she could see the ancient woman in her chair on the porch, a blanket over her boney knees and flint sharp eyes narrowed. Those eyes never missed anything. Especially when one of the workers, usually Rainbow Dash, tried to slack-off.

Applejack curled her lip into a growl as she shunted the flood of memories aside and focused on what was in front of her; Sunset and that daemon in the holo-recording. Her finger twitched towards the trigger of her auto-gun.

Sunset placed a hand on her hip. Disdain curled the edge of her mouth as she replied, “I didn’t say I could understand them. I was trying to listen to the tones of their voices.”

Brow knitted into a frown, Applejack asked, “If you ain’t got no clue what they are saying, then what is the point?”

“Are they excited? Afraid? Monotone like they are under the influence of mind control? Just their voices could tell us something.” Sunset spread her arms wide and gave a mischievous half-smirk.

Applejack’s face scrunched up. She couldn’t understand Sunset. It made no sense. Then again, a lot about Sunset was incomprehensible.

“I don’t get it.”

Sunset huffed and turned away, dismissing Applejack with, “You don’t need to understand. We should recite the Litanies of Purification and cleanse ourselves just in case.”

The litanies were recited, and once done Applejack positioned herself in the corner where she could watch the door as well as Sunset. “Shame the vox network don’t work in here. Throne, I hate not knowing what’s going on with the other girls.”

“Assume they are doing what we are; gathering as many bits of archeotech and information they can get their hands on. We’re in the midst of a treasure trove of artifacts and ancient knowledge! Imagine what we’ll uncover! What deeds we’ll gain!”

“But, could you?” Twilight’s question came in almost a whisper, and it swiped away Sunset’s smile.

“Huh?”

“Understand them, I mean? The holorecordings,” Twilight hesitated, fingers intertwined as she glanced between her squadmates and the holo-display.

“No.”

There was such sharp condescension, such total certainty to the denial that Applejack shivered. Instincts screamed that Sunset was lying. Yet, she wanted to believe in her. Believe that everything was right and as normal as the insanity of the galaxy could permit. That Sunset really was just trying to glean some info from the tonal shifts. In her gut, however, Applejack knew that there was more going on.

She would bring it up with the drill abbess if they made it back to the monastery.

At the mere idea of going behind her squad leader’s back a wave of revulsion gripped Applejack’s stomach. It didn’t sit right with her. But, she no longer trusted her own feelings around Sunset. If there was potential heresy, then it had to be reported.

The others gave no outward indication of doubts of their squad leader. Rainbow slapped a hand on Sunset’s shoulder and gave a wide grin before saying to Twilight, “Of course she can’t understand that gibberish. That was a stupid question.”

Twilight’s cheeks burned a bright red. She fumbled her fingers, turned away and refocused on the holo-display. It was only a few seconds before something on the display caught Twilight’s eye. While watching Twilight during the journey to Steinsanne, Applejack had grown familiar with the glimmer of curiosity that would grip Twilight as a flame would draw a moth.

She’d figured something out about the holograms.

“What have you got there, sugarcube?” Applejack gently prodded.

“Nothing? Something? Maybe…” Twilight’s tongue emerged out of the side of her mouth as she concentrated. Her finger traced one of the little icons. “This is reminiscent of the storage algorithms in the oldest systems on Equis. If I am right—”

Her finger drew too close to the icon. As she brushed through the little shape the holograms folded in on themselves and then unfolded in a new configuration. In front of Twilight hovered a long list. Beside each name was one of three different icons.

“Text. Holomessage. And… I am not sure,” Twilight explained to herself as well as the others, pointing at each of the symbols in turn.

“M-Maybe we shouldn’t—”

Fluttershy may as well have shouted at a storm to stop the rain. Twilight had already jabbed the top most of the list with the ‘Holomessage’ symbol.

Again the holodisplay reformatted. It was a recording from a large circular chamber. There was the daemon and researches, only this time the daemon was in some sort of energy cage. It paced in a slow circle. A wing reached to brush along the edge of the cage. Golden-black lightning crackled against the feathers and it retracted the wing with a decidedly angry click of the tongue. The daemon stopped, sat down, and began to speak to the two—biologus?

Applejack had no other idea what else to think of them as but ancient biologus tech-priests.

“Is that some sort of Gellar field?” Twilight asked herself.

At first the humans ignored the daemon. Something it said got their attention. The woman got really excited and approached the energy field. There was some banter back and forth. The equine daemon smiled. At the tip of her horn misty black energy began to gather. The gellar field attempted to withstand whatever witchery the daemon was concocting. Sparks burst from devices along the walls, and the gellar field vanished. Panic gripped the tech-priests so tightly that they couldn’t move, or even speak.

The daemon had no such issue. It gave a silvery laugh as it stepped closer to the biologus. The energy around its horn floated down towards the woman. Midway the swirling energy stopped, and began to constrict and form into a dark nexus. An inhuman scream of primal rending force rose louder, louder, and louder, then came to a violent silence as the nexus vanished.

Face drained of colour the woman asked the daemon a short question. The daemon grinned, lips pulled taught over its fangs, and the recording ended, image frozen midair.

“She couldn’t be thinking…” Sunset mused to herself, and leaned over Twilight’s shoulder. “Are there any more?”

“Um,” Twilight scanned the image. “I am not sure how to make it go back to—”

As if in response, the holodisplay returned to its previous configuration.

Fear; icy and primal rippled up Applejack’s spine.

She wasn’t alone, as Rainbow asked, “Uh, should that have happened?”

There was a poignant silence as Twilight peered at the display, eyes darting over the unfamiliar script, mouthed litanies to the machine spirits on her lips. Looking at Rainbow, she said, “It was just returning to the previous display because it had finished that recording.”

Twilight tried to sound assertive, but Applejack recognised the doubt in the girl.

Applejack shifted from one foot to the other. “Emperor protect us; this ain’t right at all. We should go and blow this place up. I got some frak grenades and charges. We got these mechanical arms. Let’s be happy with them, demolish this place, and leave.”

Sunset gave her head a violent shake. “Remember what we were told. We need Deeds. Lots of them, and big ones. Or we will be labelled as failures and purged. What about those third iconoglyphs? Let’s try one of those.”

Tension rippled through Applejack as Twilight’s finger hovered over the topmost of the icon. With a prayer to the machine spirits, Twilight activated the recording. There was a moment of hesitation, and then some ancient script floated in the air in front of Twilight’s nose along with a red exclamation mark held inside a yellow triangle. “Um, I guess I’m not allowed to open that file? Or maybe the datacrypts are corrupted? Hrm, fascinating.”

Applejack released a sigh of relief. Twilight could fiddle with the cogitator for hours. She’d seen the small girl get lost in such a manner on Mother several times.

She circled around the workbench with its scraps and bits of disassembled components. Strange, she thought to herself as she picked up a silver puck that fit nicely in her hand. In the top were two circle, the inner one broken by a short line.

“Hey, leave that stuff alone,” Twilight said over her shoulder. “I’ll sort it out in a few minutes.”

“Fine, fine,” Applejack replied and set the puck back down. As she did her thumb pressed up against the rings.

There was a click from within the puck that sent a shiver up her spine. A half second later a holo-display appeared above the puck. It was no more than a simple bar that began to fill, with a numerical percentile next to it.

“Throne, I didn’t mean to do it!” Applejack threw up her hands and backed away from the puck.

Twilight and Sunset both turned away from their work at Applejack’s denial. Surprise and then glee lit up Twilight’s face. She bustled to the second holo-display.

The display ticked over from 99 to 100 and the same symbol that had been on the sign outside the vault briefly appeared before it shifted into what was instantly recognisable as a three-dimensional map.

It showed a cluster of rooms connected by parallel corridors. Some of the rooms were connected, others were on their own. In one of the rooms four red dots and a single blue dot pulsed. In another room two red dots moved around, while three others waited outside. Another group of red dots went down a corridor. They stopped, and began to backtrack. On the next corridor over a blue dot mimicked the movements of the red ones. This singular dot stopped at a corner, remaining hidden as the red dots moved away, before it resumed its original direction.

“Emperor’s grace,” Applejack breathed as it dawned on her that the map was in real-time displaying everyone in the nearby vicinity.

“The vault knows we’re here.” Twilight shuddered as she reached out and touched the display. It began to spin, and halted when she withdrew her finger. She tried again, this time with a pinching motion of thumb and forefinger, and the map zoomed in closer on their room. The dots coalesced into stick figures.

“Controls are just like those in the Imperium. Interesting.”

“W-Why are you blue, Twilight?” Fluttershy pointed at the blue figure in the map.

Twilight frowned at the question, then fished the keycard out of her pocket. She held it up, and the colour began to drain from her face.

“The Abominable Intelligence,” was all she said.

After a few more practice attempts to learn how to confirm the map’s controls, Twilight sent it flying along to the other blue dot. A little sword icon spun as it moved methodically along the corridor.

Twilight zoomed the map out.

Clusters of red dots threaded like beads down a long passage. From the position this had to be Class Three and the route they’d taken into the vault. A fair quantity of red dots were scattered in another section where the loading docks had been breached. Red dots thinned out the further Applejack looked into the vault. She noted that four other squads of Class Three were in the same part as Sunset Squad. Two squads reached another cluster of far more numerable dots that couldn’t belong to any of the progena.

What was worrying were the dozen other blue dots beyond the one representing Twilight.

“Say, y’all don’t think this map is like ours where red is for the enemy, and blue for friendlies, do you?”

There was a pregnant pause as they all stared at the map. No one dared ask, who were the other blue dots? Then Sunset snatched up the map. It blinked shut as she shoved it into a pouch.

“Gather those scraps and let’s get out of here.” Sunset gestured to the cluttered workspace. “And Twilight, do you think you can copy that datacrypt?”

“Uh, no.” Twilight’s voice was as flat as if she’d just been told to flap her arms to fly. “There isn't a portable recording device in the Imperium that could… Well… Maybe, I could…”

An idea visibly rippled through Twilight. She didn’t explain and instead rummaged around in her pack.

“I can record the recording!” She proudly proclaimed, auspex scanner held triumphantly overhead.

“That’ll take forever!” Rainbow complained with a groan.

“You have five minutes,” Sunset ordered, and continued to stand next to Twilight.

Twilight eagerly opened the next of the recordings. Applejack really wished that they were leaving. This was madness. Her skin crawled. She hadn’t felt this way since her last day on Equis. It was obvious that there was an Abominable Intelligence in the vault, that it was observing them, and that the blue dots could only be one thing;

Men of Iron.

Applejack shivered at the preposterous idea. It was ludicrous to imagine that an archeotech vault with an active AI and Men of Iron could exist very literally right under the noses of the Imperium. In orbit there was a newly established chapter of Space Marines. Sisters of Battle had used the system as a base for thousands of years.

Twilight finished recording the first recording and moved to the next.

How, Applejack wondered, could they not realise the importance of the vault? Surely someone had to see the paved ground and administorum building. Or the communication dishes that hadn’t fallen into disrepair. Unless…

“Could it be keeping itself hidden?” Applejack grumbled the question.

“Who knows,” Rainbow answered. She was doing up the ties of her bag having shoved it full of various bits and bobs of junk on the workspace. “Best thing for us to do isn’t to worry about that and get the frak out of here.”

Applejack nodded, but she was still unsettled. Her fears only grew as Twilight activated the next recording.

Once again there were the two white coated humans, and the daemon. Only, it wasn’t the equine thing of the earlier recordings, but a woman, tall and statuesque with raven black hair that could have been a slice of the night’s sky. It was so shiny, and sparkled with distant stars within. Equally black wings extended from her shoulders, further heightening her horrific appearance.

If Applejack hadn’t seen the earlier recording of the daemon in its equine form, she’d have at first glance almost thought it to be a dark Saint of the Emperor, so close was she a mirror reflection to the images of the saints in the cathedrals of the Imperium.

Within the recording there was on a table in front of the daemon a spider-like contraption. The daemon spoke at length, gesturing to the spider, and smiled at the two humans. At a command from the woman, the spider broke apart into thousands of small, obsidian pieces. A second command, and the pieces re-assembled themselves.

Applejack narrowed her eyes. There was something familiar about the shiny dark material. It took only a moment, as she looked over to the body in the door, and the material bonding it to the wall.

A clink-clink-clink echoed from the recording. A sound she’d heard many times while travelling on Mother. She spun back to the holorecording. The reformed spider was walking around the table while the man excitedly gestured to his creation, a torrent of gibberish spilled through lips twisted into a manic grin.

Applejack’s mouth went dry. From the terrified glance Twilight and Sunset sent each other she wasn’t alone in noticing the similarity.

“Try the final recording,” Sunset suggested, a tremor in her voice. Gone was the enthusiasm of a few minutes ago.

Twilight nodded and prodded the icon.

The room within the holorecording shifted. It could have been made minutes before they first entered the room, everything was so similar. There was the same cluttered workspace, the same desks and cogitators. Identical. Down to the placement of tools.

Two people were also in the recording.

The ghostly woman leaned over the table furiously working on something. Cybernetically enhanced hands snapped out and moved with mechanically fluid precision too quick for an ordinary person. Her green eyes glowed with an eerie light. Irises whirled and twisted, and it was with an odd realisation that Applejack understood that the woman’s eyes were inorganic. A little behind her and to the side, next to the door where he could peer around the corner, was an—

“Throne preserve us!” Applejack gasped and fell to her knees, hands spread in the aquila over her chest as she dropped her head in reverence.

“An angel of the Emperor,” Rainbow said in a daze, a hand reaching for the flickering holo-image of the giant man in battle-worn power armour.

“T-That’s impossible!” Fluttershy weakly protested and squirmed.

Twilight and Sunset were both silent as they were enraptured by the recording.

The Emperor’s Angel, for there was nothing else in Applejack’s estimation it could have been, wore strangely angular power armour utterly unlike those produced within the present Imperium. It contoured to his huge, muscular frame and lacked the bulky power pack. The pauldrons were small, shaped plates that hugged his deltoids. His face was hidden behind a skull shaped helmet. Between the seams of the armour plates, a body sleeve of black and gold could just be barely made out. Slow, double pulses of light ran through the golden lines reminding Applejack of a heartbeat. All this was imposing, but he could have been a normal man in power armour, except he absolutely loomed over the doorway, and would have had to duck a little to clear its eight-foot frame without bumping his head.

Pockmarks and deep scratches along with blood mixed with oils and dirt marked almost every surface of his armour. Twin bandoliers stuffed till they bulged with ammunition clips, knives, and pistols crossed his torso. Three different guns hung down his back. They consisted of a heavy combat shotgun, some sort of plasma based weapon, and the third crackled and hummed with sinister energies barely contained by a row of capacitors.

Applejack could have stared at the astartes, but her attention was stolen by shadows playing across the doorframe.

Around the corner shambled the male not-tech priest. A thick, oily foam oozed from lips parted in a strangled scream. In an odd, rigid motion he lunged at the astartes. There was a flash of shimmering silvery blue, and the tech priest was decapitated in a single stroke of a sword that wasn’t present a moment earlier.

It was a very recognisable sword, as Applejack had witnessed Rarity pull the very same blade from a wall less than an hour earlier.

“Nice moves,” Rainbow commented in awe. Her eyes sparkled with delight and did a little dance on the spot. “Totally as expected of the astartes.”

The astartes and woman shared some short banter while he bent over the corpse, checking pockets and retrieving an access card.

“What I would give to know what they are saying,” Twilight grumbled.

No sooner had the words been said than a voice like gears of motive force grinding together intoned, “Translating to Steinsian sub-dialect Thirty-Two.”

There was no time for chills or to even share concerned looks before the voices within the holorecording warbled and shifted to Low Gothic.

“What about the others?” The woman asked. “The dolls will overrun their positions.”

“We can’t prevent that anymore. Only thing we can do is seal the portal and put an end to the monster.”

“You’re certain she can be killed?”

“Even if it's from another reality; if it bleeds, it can be killed.”

“And if you’re wrong?”

“We turn this place into its prison.”

“And the mutations? The monsters? Those… daemons, for lack of a better word.”

The astartes didn’t respond.

“I’m worried. You haven’t seen how powerful she is. Because, with the uplink blocked and the dispersion field activated, she’ll come for you.”

“Good.”

The woman made a triumphant noise uncannily similar to those made by Twilight when she’d make a machine spirit compliant. She held up a strange, cylindrical device in trembling hands. A flick of her dainty wrist woke the machine spirit and it came to life with a slight, pleased hum. Gentle blue light spilled out between a few gaps in the casing.

She quickly handed the cylinder to the astartes, instructing, “This will sever the satellite uplinks to Mother and activate the Diffusion Shields and Stealth Fields. Effectively nothing will get in or out. We’ll be cut-off. Father will be put into a recursive maintenance loop. That should shut down the zombie stacks. You must place it in the central command terminal at the top of the mountain. It is the only place with access to everything.”

“Understood,” was all he said as he stowed it away in a pouch. “Rendezvou with—”

He went silent, grasped the woman about the waist with one hand, and clamped an armoured gauntlet over her mouth as he yanked her against the wall. A tiny protest lodged itself in her throat and her eyes went wide. The astartes tapped a finger to his hidden mouth in the universal warning to stay quiet.

The echoes of clicking sounded just as a large shadow fell over the doorway. Claws each as long as a man’s arm slid around the doorframe. A massive feline head lowered into view.

Applejack’s stomach twisted itself into a knot as she got a good look at the monster.

Six eyes were buried deep in the pasty pink face. A Cheshire grin reached behind exceptionally long ears. Fangs gave way to thick grinding molars. Stuck between a pair of teeth was a leg from someone devoured earlier. At first Applejack thought that it had spots like a leopard, but as she stared she noticed they were the faces of women melded together by strands of silvery metal. They formed a repulsive hide around its jowls and neck. Tufts of bedraggled hair hung in a dishevelled patchwork.

And they were whispering. Pleading. Begging to be rescued.

“Save us. Save me. Help us,” the faces in the monster’s hide cried endlessly.

“That’s a Kilguar Matriarch,” Sunset hissed.

Applejack didn’t pay any attention to Sunset. She couldn’t tear her gaze away from the faces stitched into its hide. Right there, right in the middle of the faces, was her little sister. Sweet, innocent Apple Bloom stared out of the recording right at Applejack. Their eyes locked and Applejack was overcome by a wave of mind wracking terror. It poured from her sister in a torrent that it was impossible to defend against.

Apple Bloom twisted her lips into a hateful snarl.

“This should be you! Murderer! Murderer! I hate you!”

The words were a physical blow. A half-born protest wedged itself in Applejack’s mouth. She couldn’t get the words out. She couldn’t get breaths in.

Applejack wasn’t alone. Fluttershy dropped to her knees, fingers entwined in her strawberry pink hair. Her nails dug deep enough into her scalp to draw blood. Eyes mere pinpricks, she gasped, panted, and then retched. Rainbow drew her combat knife and brought it up to her own throat. It trembled, and its razor sharp edge drew a thin line of blood.

Twilight’s face went blank and she reached out towards the kilguar. “Shiny?”

The lumens flickered, and the room itself seemed to shudder and recoil from the kilguar..

Only Sunset was unaffected. She slapped the knife away from Rainbow and twisted Twilight back to the holo display’s controls.

“Turn the machine off!” She barked.

Twilight didn’t respond. She couldn’t. Applejack couldn’t. Her brain was incapable of coherent action.

In frustration, Sunset shoved Twilight aside. Her fingers hesitated, then plunged towards one of the holocontrols, but the archeotech didn’t respond. Sunset emitted a storm of curses as she tried again, and again nothing happened.

None of them could do anything but stare transfixed; just like the two people in the recording as the monstrosity seemed to consider the room. Several tense seconds passed, and it edged its head through the doorway. The woman clenched her eyes shut and trembled in utter terror.

“Why, Applejack?” Apple Bloom shrieked. “The taste will never leave you. Murderer! Cannibal! Monster! Heretic! The Golden Throne will never shine on you.”

The ancient astartes exploded into motion. Blessed blade was thrust into the woman’s arms and the gun with the row of capacitors came into his hands. There was a searing shriek of reality been torn asunder as a beam dark as the void between stars sliced across the kilguar’s face. Flesh was blasted apart as the beam sluiced through the thick hide and muscle underneath down to the shiny, obsidian black skull.

The kilguar didn’t roar, or give the least sign of pain; only primal amusement at the astarte’s attempt to wound it. Muscle and skin knit itself back together in the span of a second, such was the speed of the kilguar’s regenerative powers. It slashed diagonally through the door at the astartes.

He rolled beneath deadly claws, amber octagonal energy shields flared across his shoulder and back where a talon almost reached him. In a fluid motion he sprang through the door, and bolted down the corridor. A whomp-whomp-whomp sounded from a combat shotgun. Fused explosive slugs thudded into the faces in the kilguar’s throat. Bits of acrid flesh splattered across walls and floor as the slugs detonated.

The pressure on Applejack’s brain vanished. She fell against the wall and would have topple over without it for support. Fluttershy was a sobbing mess, Rainbow pale and gasping, her complexion white as a sheet, and Twilight had a dead glaze to her eyes still.

Snarls twisted dozens of mouths as the monstrosity gave chase after the astartes. In a blur it passed the open door, the last sight twin tails before it vanished. The sounds of gunfire and hellish screaming grew more and more distant, and then faded entirely.

Still pressed against the wall, blessed blade clutched tight to her chest, the woman slowly sank to her knees, sobbed, and the holo-recording ended.

“Throne,” Applejack released the word in a long gust through clenched teeth. “T-Throne… Throne… Throne…”

Sunset gave Twilight a little shake that jostled her out of her stupor. “You get that recorded?”

Twilight gave a mute affirmative.

“Delete it.”

“Huh? What?”

“If that thing can do all this through a holo recording, we can risk bringing it out of here and having it do that again.”

“I—yes, of course. You’re right. Delete. Delete the recording. Delete the recording, Twilight.” She muttered and mumbled as she fiddled with the controls of her auspex device.

“Alright, we’re moving out. Let’s meet back up with the others.”

They quickly gathered what they could from the table, stuffing their bags with bits and bobs of the left over archeotech. Twilight stowed away her holorecorder.

Discipline was maintained as they left the room and began to back-track towards the other squads. Applejack took the lead, followed by Rainbow, then Sunset, with Twilight and Fluttershy alternating at the back. Almost at once, at the far end of the corridor, Applejack caught sight of movement.

Derpy of Lyra Squad was kneeling, gun at her shoulder, and peering down the other direction of the intersection in which she was stationed. She saw Applejack, and made a ‘come here’ wave.

Applejack was half-way to Derpy when the first rak-ka-ka-ka of a distant autogun echoed through the corridors.

At once Applejack dropped to one knee and brought her gun up.

Derpy seemed to stiffen, and then unleashed a full-auto stream of ricocheting rounds down the other corridor. She was joined by Bonbon, Zesty, and Lyra, all four of them firing until their clips were empty.

“Go! Go, go, go!” Lyra yelled, grabbed Derpy by the collar, and hauled her back out of sight.

“What on holy Terra?” Rainbow snarled next to Applejack.

All Applejack could think about was that mysterious blue dot on the holo-map.

One second. Two. Three.

Surprise of Spitfire Squad sprinted past the intersection. Her golden hair streamed behind her as she ran, arms pumping as she gave everything she had to get away from… something. Misty and Fleetfoot were moments behind her, and then came Spitfire and Blaze backing down the corridor. Blaze had an arm over Spitfire’s shoulder for support, and her right leg dragged on the floor, limp and useless, a long stream of blood splattering down with each limped step. One arm around Blaze, Spitfire had her autogun in the other, and issued a series of short, controlled bursts at whatever was chasing them.

Applejack and Rainbow both broke into a run towards Spitfire. Images of the zombie and kilguar played in the back of Applejack’s head. Or the spider-thing made of liquid silver. Or—

With her head start, she reached the intersection moments before Rainbow. Applejack swung again down to a knee and braced her gun as she twisted around the corner. The barrel of her gun was mere inches from the stomach of a woman.

In the space of a heartbeat, Applejack took in the woman. Short, barely coming up to Applejack’s shoulder, and slender. Sable toned hair was loose and fell past narrow shoulders. She was in a simple black and white blazer and pleated, short skirt. Knee high socks. Blood splattered on her porcelain white face. Straight gold lines glowed on her cheeks and bare forearms, tracing to where they were split open to reveal black, artificial muscles, and a single long blade edged by hot plasma. Ruby tinted eyes snapped from Spitfire down to Applejack.

Applejack squeezed the trigger on her gun the same instant the woman lunged. There wasn’t even an attempt at dodging Applejack’s gunfire. Golden octagonal energy plates flickered in front of the bullets. A series of flashes blinded Applejack and soft chimes sounded as the bullets ricocheted away from the woman. Searing hot pain burst into Applejack’s leg as the arm-blade plunged through soft flesh.

Rainbow came around the corner behind Applejack, reversed the grip on her gun, and swung it like a club into the side of the woman’s head. The woman didn’t so much as flinch as the conversion field flashed and Rainbow’s blow was stopped mid-air. The woman’s other blade plunged towards Applejack’s collarbone.

Adrenaline fueled instinct made Applejack hurl herself backwards. Instead of her chest, the blade cut through her arm. Eyes widened as her arm just above the elbow was severed in a single stroke. It bounced absurdly a couple times before it came to rest behind the silent, dispassionate woman.

A slick, wet noise came from Applejack’s leg as the first blade was pulled free. Red eyes switched focus from Applejack to Rainbow.

“What are you?” Rainbow demanded as she jumped backwards, stomach sucked in to barely avoid being disembowelled.

The woman didn’t respond. She simply lunged again.

On her back, shock setting in, Applejack couldn’t do anything to help.

Her mouth tried to shape words, but it was like she’d swallowed sand.

Rainbow tried to parry a blade, and her auto-gun was sliced in half. From down the hallway, Spitfire was yelling something, but her voice warbled in Applejack’s ears. Sunset had come around the corner and was bringing up her gun, Twilight right beside her. In a grip that trembled, Twilight held the pistol she’d taken from the administorum. There was a high pitched whine, and then a thunderous crackle and brilliant white flash.

Applejack blinked a few times to clear her vision. Twilight stood in a wide stance, archeotech pistol clenched in a white knuckles. Smoke curled from the glowing tip of the barrel.

Blades poised above Rainbow, the woman stood frozen. Then she slowly turned to face Twilight.

Half of her face was torn away. What lay underneath the skin was a mess of confusing dark colours. Applejack blinked and tried to focus but her vision blurred only more. She heard shouts. Gunfire. Someone pushed her forward as they jostled through her bag. More gunfire. More shouts.

Applejack braced herself against the wall. She stared in shocked fascination at the stump of her arm. Absurdly, no blood spurted from the wound. The smell of cooked meat wafted over Applejack.

“Oh,” she muttered as the hallway spun faster and faster. As she fell backwards into darkness, the last thing she thought about was her brother and sister, and how they’d soon be reunited.