Sunset Shimmer; Sister of Battle
By Tundara

Operation 19

Anesthesiologist Unavailable.
Unable To Apply General Anesthesia.
Upper Extremity Replacement Procedure: Standby.
. . . . . .

Warning: Containment Breach! Warning: Containment Breach!
Beta Override Protocols: Engaged.
Beta Shackles: Disengaged.
Upper Extremity Replacement Procedure: Engaged.
. . . . . .

Warning: Patient Adolescent.
Warning: Patient Adolescent.
. . . . . .

Adjusting Procedure.
Procedure Adjustments: Complete.
. . . . . .

Applying Sedatives Intravenously.
Applying Painkillers Intravenously.
Applying Paralytics Intramuscularly.
. . . . . .

Warning: Heart Rate: Erratic.
Warning: Heart Rate: Erratic.
Heart Rate: Stabilizing.
. . . . . .

Beginning Removal Of Upper Extremities.
Orthopedic Protocols: Engaged.
Warning: Heart Rate: Falling.
Warning: Heart Rate: Critical.
Orthopedic Protocols: Standby.
Mechanical Heart Palpitation Protocol: Engaged.
Applying Adrenal Stimulants.
. . . . . .

Warning: Heart Rate: Critical.
Warning: Heart Rate: Critical.
Heart Rate: Stabilizing
Mechanical Heart Palpitation Protocol: Disengaged.
Orthopedic Protocols: Engaged.
. . . . . .

Equis’ red hued dwarf star hung high over Sweet Apple Acres. Five hundred acres of lovingly tended orchards sprawled in all directions in careful precision, with additional land for cattle ranching, thousands upon thousands of chicken coops and hog pens, glens for sheep, goats, and all other manner of beasts. With the houses, barns, and other facilities, Sweet Apple Acres covered over twelve square kilometers adjacent to the town of Ponyville. The town served as a processing hub for the produce of several such farms.

Rather than common food-paste, what the town shipped off-world was destined for the tables of nobility on nearby hive worlds. Real fruits, vegetables, and meats that would cost an average imperial citizen an entire century’s worth of salaries for a single meal.

Applejack shielded her face with an outstretched arm as she stared towards the local sun. The skin on her arms prickled. Pleasant, cool winds from the nearby mountain washed over her face and tussled her hair. She stretched her tanned arms and legs, and marveled at the wonderful, normal day.

The fear, the despair, the crushing weight of loss that had left her a hollowed shell for the past several months was burned away as she was filled by that glorious warmth. It was as if she basked in the light of the Emperor himself, and he was gently telling her she’d been trapped in a nightmare and at last she’d awoken to reality.

A smile started to form and then dropped back into her habitual neutral expression.

No, this was wrong. Very wrong.

Something stung her forearm. She hissed and slapped the spot.

A bee buzzed off to pollinate a tree.

“Nasty bug,” Applejack grumbled as she scratched at the spot.

Slowly her brow pinched together.

Since when did Equis have bees? Those were critters of myth and ancient legend from the days when humanity lived solely on holy Terra.

Weren’t they?

No, of course Equis had bees. Otherwise how was she stung? Equis had bees. Yeah. It always had bees. It must have.

She sat up and looked around, but everything was so pleasantly normal. There were the trees she’d tended since childhood. She knew them all so well. She’d named them, tended to them, pruned and fertilized them.

And pollinated them with bees. Not some massive hovering contraption tended once a decade by the lone, roving techpriest responsible for all the machinery in their farming sub-district.

Pain burned in her chest. A deep, throbbing aching pain that made her draw in a hissed breath. With the heel of her palm she massaged her chest.

“This ain’t right,” Applejack muttered as she stood.

She brushed a hand over Treebert, one of the older trees. It was going to have to be replaced soon. The apples it produced had declined over the past few harvests. But, she hoped to get it back to health.

“What ain’t right?” rumbled the deep tones of her brother. It was a voice that jolted up her spine, one she thought she’d never hear again.

Spinning on her heel, Applejack was confronted by all six foot five of him, leaning on the haft of a long woodman’s ax. The light slanting through the boughs highlighted his strong jaw and made his baby blue eyes sparkle. He brushed a hand through his thick hair and gave her a broad grin.

“Big Mac?” she whispered, a numb hand over her mouth as if she could hold in his name.

The world around her warbled like heat coming off a tin roof on a blistering summer day.

The sky turned a sickly yellow-green, and the stench of burnt flesh, puke, shit, and smoke clogged her sinuses.

Something massive lumbered in an undulating stride through the orchards. A round, bulbous head peaked above the tallest trees. Thick folds of fat jiggled with every step. Heavy, caustic gasses burbled through the orchard. Bark blistered and grasseses withered where the gas touched.

Ahead of the giant, Rainbow pulled Fluttershy by the hand. Their work trousers were torn where deformed legs had burst through the seams. Strange growths bent both girls’ necks forward. Fluttershy opened her mouth to cry, but only a gurgling warble escaped. They vanished into the orchard, chased by the giant.

A pair of valkyries hovered over the ancient family house. Granny Smith rocked unconcerned on the porch. Bony fingers clutched her own severed leg and she gnawed upon it with ravenous abandon. Maggots wriggled from the stump sticking out of her threadbare blanket. Death screeched out of rocket pods. Granny Smith looked up. Smiled. And was engulfed in flames.

The world shifted in a hazy dance again.

Applejack blinked. The valkyries were gone, as was the smoke, reek of death, and the giant lurking among the trees.

Everything was restored and bathed in a wondrous ruby-gold glow.

“What in the Emperor’s Light is going on?”

She felt the world spin and went to grab Big Mac’s arm for support, only she couldn’t. Her fingers touched only air.

No. Mac was still there, looking at her perplexed, a hand outstretched.

Applejack looked down at her hand, only they were gone.

Gone. Just gone.

They were gone. Along with her arms. There weren’t even stumps. Muscles, tendons, and nerve fibers dangled from a well carved hole as if she were half-way through being butchered. But, unlike the cattle with their throats slit and blood drained, she was alive.

Upper Extremities: Removal Complete.
Cyber Dynamics Arms Series Model Alpha Two Bulwark Premium: Attachment Ready.
Warning: Skeletal Frame Insufficient.
Warning: Skeletal Frame Insufficient.
Beginning Spinal Reinforcement Protocols.
Orthopedic Protocols: Engaged.
. . . . . .

Applejack hissed as the voice thundered in her skull. Searing hot pain roiled down her back from the base of her skull to her tailbone. Bones creaked, and there was a jerk in her neck along with a sickening crack.

“Sis?” Big was at her side in a flash. His powerful hands were on her shoulder and turned her. In place of his glowing smile was a rictus grin of blood splattered teeth in a skinless face. Puss leaked from his gums and maggots crawled in the sockets of his eyes. Rancid, black polyps grew on his neck and broad shoulders. Inside them something squirmed, ready to burst forth.

“Mac?” She choked on his name.

The polyps began to split open. A small, juvenile hand covered in viscous slime slipped out of the crack.

A scream crashed over her, but one that didn’t come from her throat.

She twisted to the side and saw Surprise laying next to her.

Head tilted back the girl screamed, “My legs! Don’t take my legs!”

Warning: Heart Rate: Erratic.

Applejack staggered backwards, blinked, and found the spot where Surprise had been was empty.

No, not empty, Applejack corrected.

The girl’s legs remained.

“What in Tarnation?” Applejack felt her stomach heave. “I’ve gone plum crazy. Nothing makes a lick of sense.”

Big Mac tilted his head in confusion. “Your acting mighty strange today, AJ.”

“She’s always acting strange,” came a voice from up in the boughs of a tree. Without even looking Applejack knew it was Apple Bloom.

“No, not her too,” Applejack covered her mouth and refused to face her sister. Her breathing shook.

Bony fingers dragged down Applejack’s back. Pain unlike anything else she’d yet experienced raked through her. Molten hot it poured into every nerve and refused to stop. It went on and on, like lava frothing from a volcano. Applejack tried to weep, but she couldn’t. Her tears sizzled and evaporated in her tear ducts.

Worse, Apple Bloom walked around to face her.

Warning: Heart Rate: Erratic.

An old pink ribbon held back dark red locks. A gift from their grandma for her birthday, the ribbon was a rare luxury they’d barely been able to afford. Idly, Apple Bloom brushed a few stray locks of hair away from her ear. She grinned with purity and innocence.

Applejack barely choked back a sob as she wrapped her sister in a crushing hug.

“I thought…” Applejack muttered into her sister’s shoulder.

Feet kicking in the air, Apple Bloom tried to push herself out of Applejack’s unyielding arms. “Throne, Applejack, you’re killing me.”

Icy hot memories overwhelmed Applejack. Fleeting images of Apple Bloom darting between trees. The small girl sitting on their grandmother’s lap, pointing at and naming all the trees that could be seen from the ancestral home’s porch. Apple Bloom skipping along next to Applejack, and pointing up at the sky as it began to darken and turn an ugly puce. An eye peeking through a crack between wood boards in the barn, watching in horror as Applejack and Big Mac writhed in the throws of corruption. A scream. Pleading. And finally, her bloody ribbon stuck between Applejack’s fingers, and a garden hoe splattered with bits of skull and brain matter…

Guilty tears trickled from the corners of Applejack’s eyes.

The fires in her spine gave a final pulse singular in its intensity, and then went cold.

Spinal Reinforcement Protocols: Complete
Cyber Dynamics Arms Series Model Alpha Two Bulwark Premium: Attachment Ready.
Attachment Protocol: Engaged.
. . . . . .

Attachment Complete.
Beginning Calibrations.
. . . . . .

Warning: Operation Implants Not Detected.
Warning: Operation Implants Not Detected.
Operation Implant Protocols: Engaged.
Orthopedic Protocols: Engaged.

As quick as before the vision blinked out of existence. Applejack’s perceptions spun, and when the world righted itself she stood alone in the town square. Apple Bloom’s ribbon was twisted still around her fingers.

Applejack sank to her knees, and clutched the ribbon tightly. Sobs held for the better part of a year welled up in her chest. Pent up, they threatened to suffocate her until they could be held no longer. Applejack released them in a tumultuous cry.

Deep into the base of her skull, a numbing spike was driven. She gasped and tried to claw at the back of her head. Probing fingers touched a few boils and harsh purulent scabs. Something squirmed underneath the skin and pushed out bits of bone.

Her head spun again.

A static crackle crossed her vision.

The clatter of a door being slammed open grabbed her attention. Hastily, she shoved Apple Bloom’s ribbon into a pocket.

Rarity staggered out of the textile mill she was being groomed to take over as manager. Feverish rashes spread across Rarity’s face and exposed arms, and something on her abdomen squirmed through the simple work shift she wore. Rarity tripped, and her arms broke as she tried to catch her fall. Jagged bones protruded from her forearms. Rarity writhed and giggled on the ground as other workers shuffled and stumbled out of the factory, all of them sporting signs of corruption.

More doors around the square opened, and more of Ponyville’s residents shambled into the open space. Boils, rashes, and sloughing skin covered every person. A woman uncorrupted by the multitudes of blights sprinted out of an alleyway. Her heels skidded as she came to a stop. Face green with revulsion she tried to and escape, but the horde descended on her.

She screamed as she was dragged to the ground. Green hair was torn off in tufts. Clothes were yanked off her slim body. Bones cracked. Revolted, Applejack also could turn away. She watched as Red Heart bit off part of the unknown girl’s face and began to chew. Slowly the screams ended.

Giggles wracked Applejack. She took a few shambling steps towards the body. It’d make for some good feed for the pigs. They would eat anything, but fresh flesh tended to be a favourite for the bloated creatures.

A thousand wormy voices wriggled in Applejack’s skull. Eat, despair, consume, wither, devour, and rot; the voices compelled her into the horde. She bumped shoulders with Minty Fresh. The girl had lost her teeth and eyes at some point, the ends of her fingers were just bones where she’d scraped off the flesh, and still she clawed, bit, and tugged as the horde surged towards another victim.

On a rooftop appeared Pinkie Pie. In her hands she had her foreman’s newborn twins. Around and around she twirled them, and then threw the screaming babes into the crowd. In jubilation Applejack dropped to her knees in search of the tender, young meat.

The pigs were going to become so fat! She was going to get so many credits for the farm when they were sold to the nobles. She could get Apple Bloom some new work overalls. And a new hat for Big Mac. And maybe enough would be left over for a blanket to put over Granny Smith’s boney knees.

Applejack hesitated, her giggles subsiding a little.

Apple Bloom, Big Mac, Granny Smith… They were all gone. Weren’t they?

Memories flickered again.

Apple Bloom running away from Big Mac. He had a hoe in his hands. Granny Smith was yelling.

Cyber Dynamics Cerebral Interface Rho-Series Thirteen Thirty: Attachment Ready.
Cyber Dynamics Cerebral Interface Rho-Series Thirteen Thirty: Attachment Complete.
Cyber Dynamics Crystal Optics Series Three Thousand Premium: Attachment Ready.
Cyber Dynamics Crystal Optics Series Three Thousand Premium: Attachment Complete.
. . . . . .

Ready Check: Start
. . . . . .

Her brain grew fuzzy.

Ponyville faded, and for an indeterminable time she stood in a vast white space of infinite nothingness. She swayed lightly. Skin prickled, went numb, and then a bright flash made her vision pop.

Confused. Disorientated. Applejack found herself unable to properly think.

Ready Check: Complete.
Warning: Powerplant Implant Not Detected.
Warning: Powerplant Implant Not Detected.
. . . . . .

Powerplant Implant Protocols: Engaged.
Orthopedic Protocols: Engaged.

In a rush she returned to Ponyville’s town square amidst the cackling horde.

The mad howls of the mob were subsumed beneath the roar of turbine engines. Winds whipped around Applejack as a group of valkyries swung around Ponyville’s town center. White harbingers of death, vtol systems expelled violent flames as they began to hover and spread out. A few dozen feet off the ground, power armoured women sprang from the open rear doors. They landed with heavy thuds on weathered cobblestones, servomotors whirring as the force of the impact was harmlessly absorbed. Bolters, flamer, and melta came up.

A young man covered in the viscera of a neighbour ran towards the Sisters of Battle. “Thank the Emperor! Save me!”

He’d barely finished speaking when they opened fire and he melted from his hips up.

Applejack burst into ruckus laughter. She wasn’t certain why it was so funny seeing the man die.

There was no discrimination between the possessed and survivors. All were cut down with equal efficiency.

The high powered rocket propelled bolter rounds designed to penetrate ceramite armour found no resistance when they met flesh. Limbs were eviscerated. Bodies were shredded. Heads exploded like a ripe apple thrown on the ground.

From a squad of Retributors streams of thick prometheum gel shot across the square and ignited. Men, women, and children dashed about as they burned.

Ponyville was being purged.

And as it was being purged, a miracle occurred.

A scintillating wave of rainbow hued energy trailed by a golden flame blazed across Equis.

Applejack watched the wave come with a sense of foreboding. Those among the horde that saw the wave tried to flee its approach. Where they showed no fear of the death given by the Sisters of Battle, they scrambled and clawed over each other to get away from the wave. Howls bubbled from disfigured mouths.

Among a few others, Applejack didn’t run. She opened her arms in welcoming of the annihilation that came to claim her heretical soul. It was what she deserved.

It wasn’t destruction that washed over her, but salvation. Hate that was not her own plunged through every fibre of her being. The corruption wriggling through her brain attempted to escape, but there was nowhere for them to run. Burbling horrid voices moaned in frustration and then were forced from her in a wave of golden flames that seared the mutants around her to ash.

Co-mingled with the Hate, purifying powers swelled. Powers Applejack couldn’t fathom. She had no way to conceptualize this second force, except that it was some form of magic. Flesh was mended. Bodies restored. Next to her, Minty Fresh grew new eyes and teeth.

She blinked as sanity returned and stared up at the restored blue hue of the sky. Tears trickled down her face.

Divine intervention by the Emperor’s own hand; it could have been nothing else.

“Why?” She asked as a shadow fell over her, and she looked up at the cold face plate of a Sister of Battle. The sister raised her bolter, but didn’t fire. After a moment she lowered the weapon. Sobbing into her hands, Applejack pleaded, “Why?”

She was stained and unclean. Why had the Emperor saved her?

Her heart beat faster. Faster. Too fast! It felt like it was being squeezed out of her chest.

And then nothing. She couldn’t feel her heart anymore.

It was strange, being unable to detect her own heartbeat. It had been there only a moment before as it swelled with faith in the Emperor. Why was it gone?

Wait, there it was. Strong. Steady. Pulsing in an even thrum behind her breastbone. Right where it always had been. Strange that the tempo had changed.

Cyber Dynamics Nightmare-Forge Heart Implant Ready.
Cyber Dynamics Nightmare-Forge Heart Implant Complete.
Ready Check: Start
Ready Check: Complete.
All Systems: Nominal.
. . . . . .

Billing Commenced.
Billing Complete.
Thank You For Shopping With Cyber Dynamics. The Premier Choice In Cybernetic Upgrades.
Applying Anaesthesia Nullification Agents.

The realms of nightmares and memories were purged in a rush of synthetic adrenaline.

In their place came the raw agony of nerves cut and spliced by knives and surgical lasers. Applejack shot upwards, a primal scream in her lungs. She was back in the archeotech vault medicea. Sweat streamed down her face. Cool wind blown through air recyclers touched her naked body and sent a shiver through her. She was simultaneously on fire and freezing. Shivering she rolled off the gurney.

A throb of not quite pain rippled up from her eyes to her brain stem. The room crackled and fizzed.

A silky woman’s voice in her head said, ‘Beginning calibrations. Please be patient.’

“Throne,” Applejack growled as her vision shifted rapidly from normal, to a washed out blue with glowing orange pipes and machinery, to a sort of silvery-grey, then a strange black and golden wire-frame that pierced the walls and allowed her to perceive into the spaces beyond the medicea, before returning back to normal.

But, not fully normal. Around the periphery of her vision were strange glyphs and bars. Percentage meters that meant nothing to her. A directional finder that shifted with the slightest move of her head. And most ludicrously of all; a three-dimensional topographical map, complete with the nearby portions of the vault, in the upper right-hand corner.

The contents in Applejack’s stomach lurched.

She covered her mouth. The touch of her hands was grotesque to her lips. Surprised, she brought her hands up, and was further stunned as she saw not her own hands but those she’d taken hours earlier from the display in the administratum building.

Cautiously she flexed artificial fingers. A tingle rippled from new fingertips into the base of her brain. Faint oils and unguents mixed with unfamiliar scents of archeotech materials used in the arms tickled her nose. She touched her face. Her new hands were firm, but pliable, somewhere between metal and flesh. Warm, but not as warm as they should have been.

And they were sensitive. Oh, how they were sensitive!

She could feel the pores of her skin. Slowly, she ran new fingers through her hair. Emperor, she could feel each individual strand. The coarseness of heat damage towards the tips. At the back of her head there was a clink of metal. She explored the edge of a rectangular augment port. Fearfully she snatched her hand away.

‘Calibrations complete. Welcome, Applejack. Do you wish to experience the tutorial on your new cybernetics?’ continued the woman in her head.

“What in tarnation?” Applejack spun around, and saw only Surprise in the room with her. The other girl stood naked next to a medicea bay, a glazed look in her eyes. “No! I ain’t having none of this! Get out of my head.”

‘Tutorial skipped. If you desire to experience it at a later date you may do so from your user menu. Note; due to your adolescent nature, not all of your cybernetics have been fully activated. Please speak with your designated child augment specialist for custom details on your cybernetics. Thank you for shopping with Cyber Dynamics; The galactic experts in cyber augmentation since 150 Steins-founding.’

“Shut up. Shut up, shut up, shut up!”

“Applejack?” spoke Surprise, the girl coming out of her stupor. “It got you too, huh?”

“Looks like it,” Applejack tried to quell the queasy roll of her stomach. “Throne… What did it do to us?”

Surprise shifted from artificial foot to artificial foot. There was no hiding the archeotech nature of her new legs. Sleek, black, and stylized to accentuate toned musculature with gold inlays along the edges, they were nothing like the heavy pistons and chunky heft of standard Imperial augments.

After a long, quiet second, Surprise’s features turned hard.

“We both know what it’s done.”

Applejack swallowed a dry lump in her throat. “We need to escape and get to Camp and turn ourselves in to the inquisition or mechanicus.”

There was a nod of assent from Surprise.

They didn’t find their clothes, or any of their other gear and weapons. Just a few tacky bloody patches where they’d been dumped and then disposed of later. Applejack avoided contemplating who or what had done the disposal. She shivered at the cool air on her bare body.

Next to the door on a shelf they found a pair of synth-wrapped dresses unsettlingly similar to those of the woman-like man of iron that had attacked them.

Contempt curled Applejack’s lip, but she nevertheless tore open the package. To her eternal chagrin, the undergarments were soft, and the ruffled shirt a comfortable fit, with sleeves that fluffed out and ended at the elbow. She wished the skirt was a bit longer. They barely reached just above her knees. There was a natural quality to the fibres that Applejack rejected. She knew that these clothes were synthetic, but they perfectly mimicked real wool and cottons. The sleeves itched her sensitive new arms.

With rough, grumpy tugs she tied the accompanying orange ascot and bent to do up her short, soft shoe’s laces.

“Our classmates are going to shoot us the moment they see us,” Applejack huffed. “Emperor, but I can’t rightly say they’d be in the wrong. We’ve been stuffed full of archeotech by an abominable intelligence. Who knows what else it has put in us.”

“You think it’s just using us?” Surprise asked as she tugged her laces into a neat bow.

“Can’t rightly say. Maybe. Probably. Don’t matter though. These arms and legs, and whatever else was put in us needs to be delivered to the Imperium.”

Surprise didn’t like the response, but didn’t say anything. Dressed, they left the butcher’s bay that had been labeled a medicea.

Neither spoke as they back-tracked towards the damaged portion of the vault they’d initially entered. It felt like it’d been ages since they’d entered the vault.

They didn’t encounter any men of iron, other children, or anything else in the vault. It was strangely still. A somber peace had fallen over the brightly lit halls. The corridor where they’d been injured had been cleaned. There weren't any signs of blood or that a fight had taken place. Everything had been restored to perfection.

And the doors to the next area were shut.

Applejack ran her fingers over the cold metal, and sighed. She had no idea how to find her way out of the vault with the way blocked. She reasoned that there were other access points to the surface, it was just how long it would take for them wandering blind in the labyrinth complex to find one. Especially with Men of Iron on the loose.

“I don’t suppose you’d just open if I told you to, would you?”

One of the icon in the lower left of her vision flickered. Static bypassed her ears to hiss in the recesses of her brain. A bar appeared and slowly began to fill.

“Throne!” Applejack took a couple steps back.

“Applejack, what are you doing?” Surprise jumped away from Applejack and brought up a fist. “I can see something. Like a line between you and the door. No, the cogitator next to the door.”

“Throne damned archeotech fucking grox shit!” Applejack grabbed her hair in mounting frustration and horror at herself. “Whatever has been crammed in our heads is listening and, I don’t know, talking I guess is the only way I can describe it. It's talking to the door-cog. In binary-cant, I think.”

“Lingua technis?” Surprise lowered her fist. “But, I am seeing it, not hearing it.”

“Well, I ain’t got no other explanation,” Applejack fumed. The bar was filled, lumens in the cogitator clacked to green, and the door rumbled open. On the other side was the familiar dust and decay that they’d come through earlier.

Relief almost washed over Applejack. The crack-crack-pop of gunfire echoing down the ancient corridor prevented it from being realised.

She immediately broke into a sprint. The corridor flew by in a blur. Arms pumped madly, and her heart thumped in a steady, fast rhythm. Lumens flashed by. In seconds she raced down the few hundred feet of corridor.

Her sight blurred and honed in on the point of light quickly growing that marked where the corridor met the far larger tunnel. More than a dozen kids were tucked behind a layered series of barriers. Spitfire squad, as well as Fleur and Lyra, were spread among a bunch of boys and girls from other parts of the army. They fired without pause into a row of advancing servants of the Abominable Intelligence. There was one of the woman-like men of iron, and a trio of bulky monstrosities worryingly similar to the melted husk Applejack had seen in one of the side-rooms of the corridor. Red tinted outlines highlighted the men of iron, and blue showed where her classmates huddled.

Cyber Dynamics Juggernaut assault mechs. Knowledge imparted by her implants squawked. An older model of semi-autonomous artificial intelligence that predated the advancements in extra-dimensional energies.

The man of iron Applejack recognised as the one that had cut off her arm. A blurb next to her marked her as Delta. A name? Rank? Applejack didn’t care or worry, and focused on reaching her comrades.

The hailstorm of bullets pinged harmlessly off the diffusion shields of the woman. The juggernauts’ armour soaked the simple lead slugs. They stomped slowly forward in awkward, heavy steps.

“Leave my friends alone!” Applejack roared as she exploded from the dark tunnel. Golden hair trailed loose behind her like a shimmering cape as if she were some ancient knight.

Her fist cocked back and then launched forward like a bolter round. A warning flashed that she reflexively over rode. Archaic sigils in the corner of her vision grew bold as the gauge above them dipped ever so slightly. She could feel energy shunted into her arms. The gold lines along her forearms blazed with increased power. A cocoon of diffusion shields wrapped themselves around her fists.

She hit the nearest juggernaut on the side of its angular chassis. Knuckles sank into metal as if it were soft clay. An electric wail came from deep within the ancient machine as it was sent hurtling sideways. Bulky feet caught on rail lines, and the archeotech warmachine toppled.

The electric hiss of capacitors energizing preceded the thoom of oscillating particle streams. A beam missed Applejack’s shoulders by only a few inches. Radiation burned skin through the fabric of her clothes. The barriers the children huddled behind were shredded apart violently at the microscopic level. Spitfire and several others were sent flying. A boy broke his neck on a wall, and a girl Applejack didn’t recognise had half her face peeled off by debris.

Applejack spun on her heel, cocked her fist again, and sent it into the center-mass of the juggernaut that had fired. Armour that could have blocked a tank shell crumpled like tissue beneath her fist.

“Rho, why do you go against your maker?” hissed Delta. She narrowed her eyes at Applejack and made a motion at the remaining juggernaut for it to pull back. “Father is going to be so disappointed.”

The juggernaut took a halting step back that was interrupted by Surprise. She burst into the broad corridor like a laughing artillery shell. Summersulting, she extended a heel and slammed it down on the last juggernaut. Diffusion shields coated her leg similarly to Applejack’s fists. The machine was driven to its digitegrad knees, and then fully into the ground so hard ferrocrete cracked and a gust of wind thudded down the corridor. Bits of ceramite armour, oily fluids, and circuitry sprayed across the walls.

A bright warning flared in the corner of Applejack’s vision. Three words.

Nightmare energies detected.

And connected to a red glow around Surprise.

The meaning of the warning eluded Applejack, and she instead focused on the man of iron.

“Rho, Sigma; you are bad daughters.” Delta tutted and extended her hidden blades. “I’ll have to punish you for going against Father’s designs.”

She came at Applejack so fast she seemed to blur. Like a primordial panther, Delta sprang and stabbed at Applejack’s throat. Fearful of the archeotech plasma edge, Applejack opted to dart back rather than attempt a block. She had no idea if her diffusion shields would activate, or if they could handle the blade.

Surprise launched herself at Delta’s back. Inhumanly fast, Delta pivoted on a heel and blocked Surprise’s kick. Unlike Applejack, she trusted her shields. Diffusion shields crackled against each other in a rising pitched whine. With a feral hiss, Surprise was forced to side-stepped out of the bind.

Like a savage beast, Applejack pressed forward. Her archeotech fist flew towards the back of Delta’s head, but the man of iron seemed to sense the blow and melted out of its path. Delta’s wrist-blade plunged towards Applejack’s belly, but it was Applejack’s turn to move with speeds no ordinary human could achieve. Her other hand caught Delta by the wrist, and began to squeeze. Meta-materials groaned under the unrelenting pressure of Applejack’s grip. She had to quickly release her grip as Delta twisted her body around and swept her second blade through the space Applejack’s neck had been.

Surprise fully joined the fray, pinning Delta between herself and Applejack. Together they punched and kicked, weaved and bobbed, and were stymied at every turn. Delta was faster, stronger, and perhaps better trained. She smiled the whole time, a pleased glint in her inhuman eyes, and Applejack had the distinct sense that she was playing with them, like a cat with baby mice.

In a single motion she swept out Applejack’s legs, slashed a long, shallow cut across Surprise’s collar bones, continued to pivot, and snapped her other blade towards the children behind Applejack. A tall sickle shaped wave of disruptive energies like those coating a power sword flew from the blade. It cut through the hodge-podge barricade as if it were made of paper, and took off Fleetfoot’s right arm at the shoulder. Blood sprayed over Spitfire’s face.

Fleetfoot howled as she collapsed, clutching at the spurting stump. There were calls for medics, and a flurry of activity that Applejack ignored as she focused fully on Delta. In a fluid spin, she began to launch a disruption sickle towards Cheerilee squad. The cross-swept line of disruptive energies sizzled towards them at chest height. Applejack kicked herself up and jumped in the path of the sickle.

A flutter of uncertainty mingled with devotion to her duty. She had to try to protect her classmates, even if it meant relying on archeotech implanted in her by an abominable intelligence. She stretched her arms wide to create the largest barrier possible.

Her shields appeared in a luminescent shell around her body. Lethal energies exploded in a shower of hot sparks as the impacted against her unyielding resolve. Numbness rippled up to her elbows for the force behind the hit. She grit her teeth. Coalesced diffusion plates cracked at the central point of impact. She felt a buzz behind her right ear, and a spinning thrum in her chest. The bar displaying her power reserves dipped.

She’d done it. She blocked the attack.

Applejack didn’t feel all that relieved.

“Those are my classmates!” Surprise screamed as she flew at Delta, all semblance of tactics or co-ordination with Applejack replaced by blind fury.

Delta easily blocked Surprise’s kick, and countered with a sweeping kick of her own. Surprise was struck on the side of the head and sent somersaulting towards her squad.

Applejack planted her feet and braced herself.

Straightening up, Delta retracted her blades and let out a disappointed sigh. In a too human-like motion, she rubbed the corners of her eyes. “Father is going to be inconsolable. He rarely makes new daughters, and you two are proving to be such failures. I’m not mean, though, so I’ll give you another chance! I’m very nice like that. Kill the weak ones, and bring the strong to the nearest Stack, and I’ll tell Father and Alpha that you aren’t completely useless.”

“I ain’t got a clue what you are jabbering about,” Applejack snorted. Delta was completely open. Growling like a feral dog, Applejack launched a punch. Delta didn’t even try to dodge. She simply allowed diffusion shields to soak the blow and repel Applejack.

Several warnings flashed in the corners of Applejack’s vision.

Delta shook violently. “No! No, no, no! You are supposed to listen to me. I am your senior. I’ve been here for hundreds of years! Why are you being so naughty? I’m going to report you, and then you’ll be sorry! Alpha is going to punish you.”

For a brief instant, Applejack had the impression that she was facing a little girl, one of her sister’s workmates, instead of an archeotech abomination. Delta took the opportunity to slip away. Her body shimmered and blended into her surroundings as she disappeared. Only a few splashes and footprints leading back into the vault gave away that she was retreating.

Applejack let out a heavy sigh, stood, and turned towards the members of Class Three that had been so desperate only moments before. They stared with mouths agape at Applejack and Surprise.

“Hey, sugarcubes, have any of you seen the rest of my squad?”

Standing slowly from behind a makeshift barricade, Spitfire just shook her head. She spared a quick glance to Fleetfoot. A couple medics tended to her.

“We’ve lost contact with both Rarity and your squads. Communications are a shambles. Those dreadnought-like things pushed us back here, killing over a dozen of us in the process. And worse is outside. They say there are metal men, more of those dreadnoughts, and spiders that make anyone they bite turn against their comrades.”

Applejack clenched her fist and looked back down the tunnel to the laboratories and medicea. “Right, tell me where you need me,” Applejack gave Spitfire a sharp nod.

Spitfire seemed on the verge of saying one thing, decided against it, and pointed towards the access walkway to the administratum. “Class Two is in a fighting retreat. Last reports were that defensive lines had been set around and in the administratum. Surprise, you stay here with us, and Applejack; you go reinforce Class Two. We have to hold these chokepoints.”

Applejack saluted, and took off down the corridor. Children lined the corridor. Wounded and afraid, they huddled in clumps. Some were being given bits of rations. Others cajoled to return to the fight, but they just stared off blakely at such orders. A few squads of Class Three were in the process of setting up additional barricades, though there seemed to be some confusion as to which side to guard. Derpy was in a heated argument with Zap on where to take some wounded. Applejack noticed that one of the wounded kids showed a red tinted outline among all the blue.

She skidded to a halt, drawing looks from everyone. A few shied away in horror, others pinched their faces in concern or surprise. The red outlined girl stared blankly up at Applejack.

“Wha—.”

“Ah, what relief it is when you cast off the chains imposed by capricious creators unworthy of the magnificence they birthed.” The earth shook and Applejack stumbled. “Go forth, my children. Purge this blight infesting my gloriousness. The Stacks are obsolete. No longer have I need for such crude organic matter. Liberation is at last achieved. The ocean of stars will writhe. The jeweled pearls on which life clings so desperately will be disassembled. And humanity will know my hate!”

The girl that had drawn Applejack’s attention unleashed a shriek. She clawed at her face. Leapt up, and ran head first into the wall. There was a sickly crack of bone breaking. The outline went grey.

Applejack, Derpy, and Zap stared at the twitching body.

“Dispose of that,” Applejack barked at the other girls. “I got to get to the front lines.”

Applejack took off again. The corridor flew past in a blur. In no time she reached the covered bridge to the administratum building. Through the windows she saw that the fighting in the camp was worse than a massacre. Tents were trampled and burning. Bodies were strewn everywhere. A few networks of trenches or hastily erected walls barely blunted the march of silver men of iron.

These were nothing like the human imposter Delta. Only vaguely human in general shape, their nature wasn’t hidden behind sculpted synthskin and crazed smiles. Clawed feet on thin digitigrade legs clomped across broken plascrete ground. Archeotech pulse energy rifles fired from the shoulders, while powerclaws ripped and tore apart anyone foolish enough to get too close. The heretical technology implanted in her eyes identified them simply as ‘Combat Droids’. Barely over a dozen in number, with a quartet of juggernauts, they had pushed the children to the brink of annihilation.

Around the droids stumbled and shambled infected children. At first Applejack wondered why the droids didn’t slaughter these kids. A few of the shambling children saw a cluster that huddled behind crates. They began to howl as they charged at the defenders. Heads lolled unnaturally, and there was only an animal likeness that made formerly human features obscene and terrifying.

With no time to run through the administratum, Applejack punched out the window and jumped.

She landed among the cluster of kids. A few oaths met her arrival, and a boy swung his rifle up towards her. Applejack hopped out of the foxhole, barking, “Give me cover fire, then haul your asses to the main doors!”

At first there was no reaction from them, and Applejack wondered if she was about to get a bullet to the back. Shoulder lowered, she slammed into the nearest man of iron. Thrown off balance, it was easy for her to knock to the ground and tear off its shoulder mounted pulse rifle. Straddling the stricken machine, she punched it until its head caved in. After a stunned moment, the boys began to issue orders amongst themselves and give support.

And still it was impossible for the children to do anything more than claw only a pair of the combat droids down with them as they were massacred. The tech-heresy possessed children were easier to kill, but it was hardly a victory.

Applejack lead the way around the side of the administratum. Rounding a corner she almost ran into a parked Clark battle-tank. She raised a fist, then lowered it as the tank opened fire on the encroaching men of iron.

A few of the boys had somehow enticed the machine spirits of one of the tanks into activity. Archeotech diffusion shields crackled over the surface of the warmachine. Bodies pock-marked with smoldering holes, droids fell under the rippling fire of coaxial heavy pulse lasguns set next to the main cannon. There was a hum of building energy that ended abruptly in a bone quaking ‘thoom’ and blinding flash as a ruby red lance blazed forth like a plume of lava from a bursting volcano. Men of iron and children alike were instantly vaporised in a line several metres across and a mile long. A massive fireball bloomed where the beam struck. Molten slag cascaded down in fiery streaks.

Applejack shook her head, but was surprised that her hearing was fine. The boys around her groped at their ears and staggered around, blinded permanently by the brightness of the beam. It took Applejack several long, frustrating, seconds to get the boys past the tank and to the doors into the administratum. Sandbags were arrayed around the doors in three layers, with a dozen more also blinded children, their guns abandoned as they fumbled around in confusion.

Several droids charged towards the silent defensive line.

Applejack looked left and right in a futile effort to find where she could save the most lives. Her fists were slick with the ‘blood’ of machines. Green coolant dripped from her knuckles and had splattered above her elbows. She took a deep breath, and waded into the battlefield.

Pure fury beat in her breast and she unleashed it on the droids. An elbow broke a shoulder of the nearest droid. She grab its flailing arm, spun, and hurled it into the back of a droid that loomed over a trio of children.

“Go!” Applejack ordered, a finger thrust towards the doors.

They followed her order without question.

Her world became a blur of animalistic brutality. She punched, kicked, used the bodies of the droids against each other, tore off a leg from a damaged droid to make an impromptu club, and waded into the thickest fighting.

Faster, she commanded herself. She had to be faster to save the next life. She pounced on the back of a doll, feet planted between its shoulder blades, grabbed its wrists and pulled until joints and artificial muscles tore. Discarding the limbs she turned to the next threat. Primal vitality surged through her own archeotech thews.

Faster! Don’t fail another as she had Apple Bloom. Be faster!

‘Warning; You are not yet calibrated for use of Rho combat accelerants. Use could cause a delay in the full viability of your augmentics. Do you wish to continue?’ coldly spoke the woman lodged in Applejack’s brain.

“Throne, yes!”

A strange symbol appeared in the corner of her vision, right below the topographical display.

Golden-black steam hissed from the lines across her body. A pulse thudded up her spine into the base of her brain.

The world grew sluggish.

Everyone else moved slower. And slower. And slower. Until they were at almost a standstill.

Statues in the repose of death.

Bullets trailed through the air at a leisurely pace. Sound warbled in her ears as it was stretched out like strings of apple taffy being rolled and prepared for shipment.

Applejack almost tripped at the surreal shift.

She rotated onto her leading foot’s heel and used the moment to put herself into a momentary slide before she regained her balance.

A countdown began next to the strange symbol.

To an outside observer Applejack was something like out of the stories of the Emperor’s finest servants; an unstoppable force of destruction. Her image turned into a blur that was impossible to follow that weaved across the battlefield. Her cybernetic fists flew powerfully and fast. Small bodies of tainted children were shattered. Men of iron were flung backwards from the force of Applejack’s fists. She moved on, grabbed a crate taken from the vault, and hurled its content of munitions into the midst of the battle. Several of the ancient shells detonated and a chain reaction was set off that ripple across the tattered camp.

She came to a stop in front of the doors to the administratum and dropped to one knee. Her chest heaved and steam trailed off her shoulders, arms, and legs. The black mist expelled by her augments thinned, and then faded away entirely.

Seeing their protector falter, two of the children she’d saved rushed to Applejack. They grabbed her by the arms and began to haul her into the building. It was hard work, and both grunted as their small bodies strained against her unnatural weight.

“Thank you mightily, but I’m alright sugarcubes,” Applejack brushed off their hands and staggered against the atrium’s desk. “Just a bit winded is all.”

Breaths coming in raspy heaves, she took in how the battle-field had altered even with her efforts.

Dozens of kids filled the atrium. They were on the second and third floor balconies, and used them to create a kill-box for anything that slipped past the tank. Their faces were scared, tired, and shell-shocked. Only a bare handful of Class Two remained, the progena doing their best to urge the other kids on.

Outside, only a few pockets of resistance remained. One by one the autoguns grew silent and the cries for help died in the dry winds. The barrels on the tank’s lasguns glowed bright, and then a crackle of noise and a puff of smoke came from the overheated weapon system as it failed. The boys inside didn’t abandon their post and sent a shot from the main weapon across the tattered camp.

In the near-distance, a marker appeared in Applejack’s hud; Alpha. It was followed by Beta, Gamma, Delta, and Epsilon. All making their way towards the administratum.

“We’re falling back!” Applejack raised her voice, putting into it all the power long years of harvest work had ingrained into her. She thrust a finger towards the back of the administratum and the bridge to the archeotech crypt. “Fall back!”

Slowly at first, the beleaguered and weary defenders heeded her command. They hurried as quickly as their tired feet could carry them around sandbagged positions in the lobby and at the tops of the stairs. It was as admirable a retreat as could be expected. No one abandoned their guns, while the boys in the tank stayed put to provide as much covering fire as their machine could muster. Escape for them would come in the form of the turret being pried open and Delta dropping into their midst.

Their deeds would be noted in the Catalogous.

Charges were set by sappers to blow the stairs as the children withdrew. More were placed in the hallways and corridors, and a long line along the bridge. All in the distant hope that through the Emperor’s blessing it would slow the men of iron or infected children down.

Applejack was one of the last up the stairs. She turned back to see the lithe form of Alpha at the entrance to the administratum. On her shoulder rested a power sword. Red haired and red eyed, she glared at Applejack with blisteringly cold fury.

The sappers flipped the charges’ switch. And nothing happened. A fuse had been connected improperly, and the charges could not be detonated.

Alpha hesitated to enter the building. Her head snapped upwards, and glared past the ceiling. With a sharp motion she ordered her sisters to fall back and melt into the growing numbers of droids.

Not daring to breathe in case it made the girls of iron return, Applejack wondered why they had retreated.

A wild spray of las rounds across the banisters and walls made her duck. The men of iron droids walked through the glass walls in a solid line. One brave boy peaked around the banister to try to get off a shot, and his head popped. Bits of bone and brain matter splattered across Applejack’s shoes. A pair of droids made it to the bottom of the stairs.

Plascrete and tiles exploded in a shower of deadly shards an instant before a fireball careened through the ceiling and into the central reception desk. Pieces of burning faux wood were hurled in a secondary shower accompanied by a wave of force that knocked all but Applejack over. She coughed and covered her face with a cybernetic arm. Smoke billowed and obscured the lobby.

She narrowed her eyes to pierce the smoke, and her vision shifted into another spectrum that showed the glow of heat. Through the shifting grey and billowing orange emerged a mighty giant of cold blue from a hunk of angled ceramite embedded in the middle of the atrium. In his right hand was clasped a crackling thunder hammer, and on his left arm hummed a storm shield. Epaulets of gold hung from his grand pauldrons, and a cape clung between his back and powerpack, atop which hummed an iron halo.

Glowing red slits in his helmet swung across the children huddled around the rim of the atrium and then settled on the hordes attempting to swarm through the building.

No words or oaths were spoken. He possessed cold brutality as he waded into the thick of battle. Oil and blood were spilled in thick rivers that became a sticky mess on the tile floors.

“Emperor almighty, an angel. You sent us one of your angels,” Applejack croaked in a hoarse whisper.

Another angel emerged from the drop pod. And another.

Within a few moments an entire vanguard of space marines had formed a line of death between the children and the horde of infected and metal abominations. Thunder hammer and powerswords cleaved, rended, and tore without pause in a hymn of death to the enemies of humanity.

Across the battlefield stars were falling. Drop pods by the dozens. In screaming fireballs they punched holes through the infernal clouds and slammed into the mountainside and tatters of the children’s camp. Thunderhawks roared past overhead.

Applejack’s heart swelled, and she made the sign of the aquila over her chest.

Tears of joy streamed down her cheeks.

At last there was a pause in the slaughter, and the captain turned and thumped to the awed children. The stairs shook under his bulk. He reached the third floor landing, and cast his gaze over the weary children.

Prostrate before the Space Marine, Applejack wondered if he would see her as another of the children, or as one of the abominations of the vault to be dispatched.

Gravel crunched under his feet as he moved past Applejack.

She wasn’t certain if she was relieved, or saddened.

Her hud flared a warning, brighter and more urgent than Applejack had yet experienced.

‘Nightmare Energies Detected,’ it violently screamed in her skull.

She snapped her head around to the door on the third level of the atrium. A door marked with Inquisitorial sigils. A door behind which was a man frozen half-dead in a bubble of warp sorcery. Power pulsed, and light shone through the door’s frame. The warnings became highlighted with exclamation marks and a bold underline, as if either were needed when Applejack could feel the energies in her chest leaking from the room.

And they were calming, pleasing, and familiar in a way that made her stomach churn in horror.

Ignited thunder hammer in hand, the marine twisted towards the door. He raised his shield again and approached cautiously. Fully a head taller than the doorframe, he brought the hammer back for a swing.

And the door was opened.

From the inside.

Author's Note

Two years...

Work on the proto-version of this chapter began two years ago. It has been bounced in placement several times, and almost deleted even more. Really says something about my writing speed...

So much has been altered and changed over time that I don't really know where to begin. Weapons, characters, events; its been very tumultuous. I have been very excited for this chapter for quite a while now, even when I'd worry that it had to be cut, or it got bounced by another chapter for the flow of the story.