Author's Note

Contains a scene of attempted rape.

03 - SERE

CHAPTER THREE: SERE

“Now, if you do manage to catch a radbit or other small rodent the quickest way to kill it for consumption is by breaking the neck, like so...”

Another explosion ripped through the air above as I finished off a healing potion, the wounds in my shoulder where one of the ground pounders had shot me closing up. The enchanted bullets had completely ignored both my flak jacket and uniform beneath, forcing me to shrug painfully out of my upper garments to see how badly I’d been wounded. A pair of AcheAway tabs were swallowed dry to help with the dull pain that remained. I didn't want to have to resort to painkillers yet.

“You’re done?” Chief Whisper asked after I pulled my blouse and flak jacket back on. I gave a curt nod, closing up the medkit, “Let’s keep moving, then.”

After leaving our crashed skytank a few things had become immediately apparent. Firstly, between us and the Overcast was a long flight through combat-filled skies. We might’ve been able to make it if we were in full power armor with class V self-healing ceramic plates, but all we had were our flak jackets and working uniforms, which didn’t really stand up to alicorn magic or triple A fire all that well.

Or enchanted bullets that would pass through class V armor without leaving so much as a scratch, I realized.

Second, even if we were armored up and ready to go, we were wounded. Even doped up on everything our brief prisoner had given her, it was still painful for Whisper to fly. She’d never make it to the ship in the state she was in, and I wasn’t feeling so hot either now that the adrenaline had worn off.

A third, and final, nail in the proverbial coffin was how the battle was turning. We’d come in with overwhelming firepower, but every now and again I managed to spot that dragon—a motherfucking dragon!—roaring about, spitting fire at the raptors. Those things weren’t called dragon killers without reason, but the beast seemed to be holding its own. Furthermore, the Overcast wasn’t looking too well off either, polished hull showing signs of damage. If the Enclave lost this battle while we were still stuck on the ground…

“Head in the game, Skiff,” Whisper drew me away from my worries, back to the dark depths of this evil forest, “We’re not out of this yet.” I nodded, expression grim, “If we can get far away enough from the action we can fly out of here and get to one of the rally points,” Whisper continued, verbally working through our problems and solutions, “From there, we can get back to the ship and help turn this clusterfuck around.”

‘If it can even be turned around,’ I didn’t say, wondering how long we’d last if an alicorn spotted us en route to our comrades.

“Second to that, we can find a spot to hunker down till the battle’s over. Enclave won’t leave us to the winds. You with me, Skiff?” Whisper asked over her shoulder, fixing me with a stern look.

“Yes, Chief,” I replied, following with my eyes and ears on a swivel, “but..but what if the rally points are all toast? This battle isn’t going according to plan, with the demon attacking the Lenticular and the wind-forsaken dragon—”

“I know,” Whisper growled, cutting me off, “We’ve gotta trust in our training, trust in our Enclave. We’re not about to roll over because the enemy is stronger than we planned.”

The enemy.

Rage boiled up like indigestion as I saw Masher and Breeze die again. Bullets ripped through soft flesh, a pony who always smiled. An explosive charge ruined the pretty face of a married mare. She’d been planning on trying for a foal during her next cycle.

They were gone, warm meat cooling on the forest floor.

Whisper had grabbed their tags and I’d grabbed their sidearms and spare sparkle packs from the lockers. Also tucked into my belt was the ground pounder’s revolver. Sure, I wasn’t skilled with non-energy weapons, but those were in short supply and every little thing helped.

We trotted on in silence for a time, steering clear of the violent reports of heavy machine gun fire. A small fireteam we might be able to deal with, but a machine gun nest? If the ground pounders didn’t turn the mounted weapon on us, they were sure to have enough small arms to put an end to two injured pegasi.

We walked. We dropped. We stopped. We crawled. We walked.

The cycle continued and my heart hammered in my chest, playing a similar tune to the constant reports of weapons fire. I slowed my breath and considered my training in an effort to calm my nerves and keep a level head.

Getting stuck beneath the clouds without the capacity to return was an eventuality that anypony with the right combat certification trained for. SERE training, it was called: Survival, Evasion, Resistance, and Escape. It was further broken down into A, B, and C-level training.

A-level we got in boot camp, just your basic book-smarts and understanding of the Codes of Military Conduct. How to be a model prisoner and what was expected of you if you were captured. I wondered how much of that actually applied to our current enemies. The codes hadn’t been written with slavers or raiders in mind.

B-level we’d got after aircrew training. Here we were taken to a spot of land above the clouds where the wild still grew and given the real pointers.

Survival focused on just that: how to make a lean-to to keep dry. How to make a buffalo fire pit so nopony would see your flames. Basic ways to identify edible flora and how to capture and prepare fauna if we needed an energy boost. It helped you stay alive when your kit was gone and your comrades were, too.

Evasion was where we were now: keeping out of enemy hooves for as long as equinely possible. It was easy now that they were all watching the skies, but once things started to settle we would need to book it to a safe zone. They always told us that no matter what the Enclave would never stop looking for downed soldiers until they found them or their remains. I wasn’t too sure I believed that, but it was a nice thought.

Resistance and Escape were more touched on in SERE C, but you either needed to be a high-level officer or an intel spook to get into SERE C. At the B-level they just re-hashed to keep a level head and follow your superiors in the event of capture.

That part I was doing quite well, Whisper’s shapely butt shifting beneath her haze-gray trousers as she trotted ahead of me. I almost missed the quick gesture she made with her wings, the two of us dropping low in the thick foliage.

Two armored equines burst forth, galloping past us close enough to see that one had a horn and neither had wings.

“...support at the next battery over! Took a hit from a bombing chariot and…” one of them was saying, his voice rising and fading away as he and his comrade disappeared again.

I hugged the dirt for a minute before Whisper gestured again.

We started to crawl.

* * * * *

The skytank idled in a clearing, hovering just above the ground on its bed of self-generated clouds. The hatch in the back was open, but the skytank was quartered away from our vantage point so seeing inside wasn’t possible. Its black and green armor plating was unmarred, not even a scrape on the hard surface...though with armor-negating bullets that wasn’t much of a telltale sign. How it had wound up sitting there in the clearing was a mystery, but the status of its crew wasn’t.

Three pegasi in bloody uniforms were slumped up against the starboard side of the skytank, the one facing us. I couldn’t identify them with the bushes in my face and deep down I really didn’t want to, I’d lost enough friends today, enough to last a lifetime.

The fourth was a mare named Sun Daisy and her screams had cued us towards where we were laying now, hidden in low brush at the clearing’s edge. It gave us a nearly perfect vantage point over the clearing, letting us watch the final two ponies with clamped jaws.

Neither of them had wings, both were armed and armored in Red Eye’s colors.

“I said: shut-up!” I could only hear the first soldier because he was yelling, the sound his hoof made when he smacked Daisy across the face was inaudible. Her screaming stopped as she lay limp in the dirt, quivering.

“Nimbus,” Whisper whispered beside me.

“What?” I whispered back.

“That’s the Nimbus,” she winced as she gestured towards the skytank with a wing, “Air Sergeant Fluff’s skytank,” her voice seemed distant, “Just the other day she was complaining about something...something stupid, I don’t even remember what it was now…”

Explosions and gunfire like distant firecrackers lit the air for a few moments. The two Red Eye soldiers discussed something, the first pressing Daisy down with a hoof. The second shook her head, her tone annoyed when she replied.

“She’s one of those bodies now...and I feel like that should make me feel sad or something,” Whisper started up again after a moment, “But all I can think about is that we’re going to need a new Lead Air Sergeant once this is all over.”

‘She was kind of a shittly LAS,’ I almost said.

“What’s our next move?” I asked instead, belittling the dead could wait until we were safe.

“We keep watching,” it pained her to say that, her eyes watching Daisy and her captors, “No idea how many of them are there, but this is our best shot. Once we get an opening we get that skytank back and gun it to safety. I’ll drive, you’ve got the gun.”

“And Daisy?”

Whisper was silent for a moment, biting her lip as she weighed our options. Some would argue that the right thing to do would be to get her back, no matter the odds of two messed up crewponies beating two heavily armed soldiers. But that would get us killed.

On the flipside, we could wait until the enemy soldiers left, probably with Daisy as a prisoner, maybe with her body resting against the skytank with the rest of her crew members. Neither of the soldiers would be able to pilot the skytank, that required wings, so they would either leave it be or try to scuttle it.

Daisy started screaming again, both of our eyes going back to her. The second soldier had an annoyed look on her face, her horn ignited and pinning Daisy’s limbs down. The first…

“Don’t you even think about it, you fucking pig!” Whisper hissed, unheard by the soldiers.

The first was about to rape her.

He was pulling at her flak jacket with his maw, yanking the velcro open and forcibly tearing it off the screaming mare. He grinned down at her, then bit down on her blouse. The buttons popped off as he pulled it open revealing the dark purple t-shirt beneath. Daisy’s screaming reached a crescendo, both of the soldier’s ears flattening back until the soon-to-be-rapist struck her hard across the jaw.

“Stop now,” Whisper growled quietly, glaring as if she could will the buck to stop through sheer force of will.

“Chief?” I asked, but she didn’t respond.

The first soldier tore at Daisy’s belt, pulling it out of its looping and flinging it away. The second soldier watched it land in the dirt with her annoyed expression before turning back to the pinned Daisy. Her comrade yanked Daisy’s trousers down to her ankles, stopping to take a deep sniff at her undergarments. Daisy was conscious enough to tuck her tail up against her backside, but the soldier just pinned it to the ground with a forehoof, the other one reaching beneath him and dropping his pants to his ankles. Unlike Daisy, he wasn’t wearing any underwear, his erection impossible to miss. His maw dropped down to Daisy’s underwear and pulled slowly…

“I’m going to eat my gun if I have to stand by and watch this,” Whisper growled, grabbing her pistol and flicking the safety off. She looked at me for less than a second, eyes telling me that she wasn’t going to give me the order that would get me killed to try and save Daisy’s honor.

She didn’t need to.

Daisy’s undergarments were down her ankles and the second soldier was turning her eyes away as we burst from cover and began to close the distance. It would’ve been ideal to fire from our hidden position, but our pistols didn’t have the range or accuracy to make the shots we needed to make.

The second soldier spotted us first, her eyes shooting wide and her body turning towards us. Her magic faded from Daisy’s limbs, consolidating around the rifle slung against her breast. The beam of my weapon shot out over her shoulder and I corrected my aim onto her snout, the solid beam better than any sighting system. Her eyes snapped closed, a painful look on her jaw, as I burned away her sense of smell. Her weapon chattered loudly, but without her eyes directing it, the shots went wide and after a piercing scream through blackening lips she crumpled to the ground.

The first soldier reacted slower, his mind having to switch from rape to retaliate. His weapons were attached to his battle saddle and with his pants around his ankles and his penis stiff beneath him his mobility was shit. Still, as Whisper’s shots splattered against his heavy armor, he managed to get his guns to bear on us, a grin on his face as he grabbed his firing bit and tongued the firing mechanism.

Daisy was the only reason we survived.

No longer pinned down by the second soldier, all four hooves came up into his body. Her forelegs targeted the machine guns on his battle saddle, forcing their barrels up and away from us as they fired. Her hind legs targeted his crotch, crushing his unguarded testicles up into his body hard enough that his hind legs came up off the ground.

His mouth came off the firing bit and he toppled over with a wheeze. Daisy scampered away with a wild look in her eyes, tripping on her trousers and curling into a fetal position with a sob.

“Wait!” the soldier wheezed as Whisper stomped up to him, pinning his firing bit to the ground and dropping her pistol into a wing. I covered the second soldier, not sure if she was still alive, and yanked her rifle away.

“Say again?” Whisper asked him.

“Wai—” his plea turned into a choking sound as Whisper pressed her pistol into his mouth and squeezed the trigger twice. It wasn’t enough to vaporize him, and I suspected that that was the point as I watched the buck choke and writhe at the beyond-hot energy that burned out his throat. His erection faded and he emptied his bladder into the dirt as the light began to fade from his eyes. Whisper pulled her weapon out of his mouth and burned off his bruising balls with a final squeeze of the trigger. We both hoped it was the last thing he ever felt.

A calm fell over the clearing, distant gunfire a soothing background noise by now. Fading adrenaline brought back pain I’d forgotten about, making me slump for a moment before a sudden realization struck me.

“We’re alive!” I exclaimed, Whisper jumping at the sound of my voice. Her grimacing wince told me she was coming off her adrenaline high like me. She took a moment to collect herself, blowing a breath out past her lips.

“Go pull tags,” she waved her pistol towards the three pegasi slumped against the Nimbus. A look of surprise splashed across her face as she realized she still had the weapon out and she tucked it back in its holster, “Let me handle Daisy.”

I turned to where the mare was lying, her body wracked with silent sobs. She was still curled up in a fetal position, her tail tucked against her bare backside. Her back was to me, but I could only imagine the look on her face.

I started to move, but then remembered the second soldier I was covering. She hadn’t moved, face a blackened mess almost like Breeze’s had been, “What about this one?”

“She still alive?” Whisper halted on her way over to Daisy. When I shrugged she drew her pistol and put three rounds in the mare’s face, her body vaporizing into pink ash. Whisper holstered her pistol and started moving to Daisy again.

“We’re not war criminals.” Whisper had said. But again I saw how the mare had held Daisy down while the buck stripped her. Was it really a war crime if they’d been committing one first? Did they cancel out?

I shook away my thoughts and cantered over to the skytank, slowing back to a trot for the final few paces, my nose wrinkling at the smell of blood and waste. All three ponies had been propped into a seated position, holsters and flak jackets removed and pockets inverted.

The first in the grisly lineup was a buck with a bulge in his trousers that would have been embarrassing were he still alive. The term: ‘angel lust’ popped into my brain from somewhere weird and I looked away. Two bloody circles on his uniform told me he’d been struck twice in the upper chest, a third bullet had taken a chunk out of his throat, and a fourth had taken off his scalp and turned his brains into mush. It took me a second to place the listless eyes and bloody mane as those belonging to Dusty Day, but the ID tags confirmed it.

He’d been eating lunch with Masher and me, now both of them were dead. A weird sensation trickled up my spine and I looked around the clearing. Nothing but the remains of Red Eye’s soldiers, Whisper, and Daisy were there.

I turned back with a shiver and moved to the next body. It was Air Sergeant Tufty Fluff, slumped back with two bloody holes in her breast. Death had done her no kindnesses, a dumb look on her homely face and a urine stain in the seat of her trousers. A distant thought occurred to me as I pulled her ID tags: she wouldn’t need to worry about taking the physical readiness test anymore. No more last minute wing-up sessions and dieting for her. Now she didn’t need to worry about anything.

The last pony in the lineup was Rosy Pose, bullets had traced a diagonal line from her gut up to one shoulder. The lower holes put out a sickening smell so I pulled her ID tags quickly while holding my breath. Looking at them while trotting towards Whisper, I realized with a strange feeling that Pose and I had the same blood type: Ka-.

Looking up from the ID tags, I saw Whisper shaking her head at me, pointing with a wing back to the skytank. Glancing at Daisy’s quivering form, I nodded and changed course.

The interior looked like a murder scene, and technically it was.

“Is it murder if you’re at war?” I asked nopony in particular, getting no reply.

Blood splattered the overhead, red lines of it running down the port and starboard bulkheads. Further puddles were drying on the floor, numerous red hoof marks and what were probably drag marks ran through it. The metallic smell of it all turned my stomach so I breathed through my mouth as I hopped over the worst of the blood and got into the pilot’s seat. For a split second, I worried that Masher might poke his head in and say something about me being in his spot, but then I remembered why that was impossible.

Sorrow choked its way into my throat and my hoof went up to my mouth to stifle a sob that burst unbidden from my lips. Wing Masher, master of dumb jokes that only he laughed at, a pony of few manners and fewer aspirations, was dead and gone forever.

That was a long, fucking time.

I scrubbed away snot and tears with my forelegs, trying to focus on where I was, what I was doing. I was in the pilot’s seat of the Nimbus, Air Sergeant Fluff’s skytank, another Type VIII Model B “Harrier” like the Stratos. We had all cross-trained for each position for the exact scenario that I was in now, crew casualties necessitating a gunner to be a driver. Daisy was the driver of the Nimbus, it only made sense; the Nimbus must’ve taken a tracer stream like we had, only with the inverse effects. How had intelligence not know about the magical bullets? How could they have? How many lives had been lost because of it?

At least four.

“Skiff, how’s she looking?” I jumped at Whisper’s voice behind me, banging my head in the small space. I twisted about, rubbing my head, to find Whisper strapping Daisy into the BaWS bank’s control seat. Her trousers were back up, but her blouse had been left behind, her purple t-shirt tucked loosely into her beltline. Once the shell shocked mare was secured, Whisper broke out a silvery emergency blanket and wrapped it around her, “Skiff?”

I flinched again but didn’t hit my head this time, looking back into Whisper’s querying eyes. Concern rested there, an emotion I hadn’t seen on her face before.

“You okay?” I didn’t flinch that time.

“Yeah, um,” I turned back to the controls, realizing I’d never checked the vehicle’s status.

“Skiff, take gunner,” the commanding tone in Whisper’s voice had rounded edges. Without comment, I slipped my wings out of the pilot’s controls, the two of us squeezing past each other. Whisper took the driver’s seat, I secured myself into the gunner’s seat, doing my best to ignore the blood splatter covering it.

Quiet clicks and clacks turned my ears towards where Whisper was doing pre-flight checks I should’ve done. Embarrassment colored my cheeks so I quietly checked that the main gun was online so as not to feel entirely useless. Aside from the blood, everything checked out, the previous gunner had loaded up an area effect round, never to be used.

“Gunner online, hot,” I reported.

“Roger, gunner online, glad to have you back,” Whisper replied, “One bad sneeze would put us down so we’re not going to risk demon-static on the radio. I’ll see if we can’t make it low and fast to one of the rally points, get our shit patched up and get back to the Overcast.” Whisper settled herself into the pilot's controls now that the pre-flight checks were complete, “You mind getting the hatch? Gonna take a minute to get this thing back up and—” her voice cut out.

“Chief!?” I yelped, turning to her. But she wasn’t slumped over the controls or otherwise dead. Movement in my peripherals drew my eyes to my cameras, seeing a small group of Red Eye soldiers trotting carefully into the clearing with a multitude of heavy weapons raised. The only reason we were still alive was because our front was towards them, the open hatch hidden from their view.

One of them had wings.

She also had a horn.

“Don’t move the turret, whatever you do, don’t move the turret!” Whisper hissed back at me, “Get out of your seat and use the manual winch to get the hatch closed, don’t use the motor, they’ll hear it.”

I nodded, though Whisper’s eyes were glued to her viewports so she wouldn’t have seen it. Slipping my wings carefully from my turret controls, I moved back to the hatch controls, popping open the emergency winch and hoping it was properly lubed. If it so much as squeaked, we were done for.

I held my breath as I twisted the winch, the hatch slipping silently closed.

“Search the area, somepony clear that tank, she couldn’t have gone far!” someone ordered from outside. My wings and forehooves started to burn as I employed all four to work the winch faster.

I gasped for air once the hatch clicked shut, throwing the manual lock a second before I heard someone knock on it. The fact that they didn’t just shoot through it told me they probably hadn’t seen it close.

“Hey…” a faint voice startled me from the other side of the hatch, “didn’t we leave this open?”

My gaze snapped back to my cameras, seeing everyone outside, alicorn included, start to exchange worried glances.

As one they raised their weapons.

And I put my hoof down.

The skytank lurched to the side as I pressed the firing lever, hurling a ball of superhot plasma into the clearing. My cameras flashed white as the round detonated, a loud whoosh sounding from outside as the air itself vaporized into a brief vacuum. Had the hatch not been sealed, we would have been glowing goo.

“Holy shit!” Whisper exclaimed as I leapt into my controls. The infrared and night vision cameras were toast, but after a reset my DTV came back in grainy glory. I panned it over the clearing, not even seeing goo piles in a wide circle around us. Some of the trees on the outskirts were on fire, many nothing more than empty holes in the ground were their roots had grown. Thank the four winds for area effect rounds.

I stopped panning as I saw something weird in the middle of the clearing. A strange, translucent sphere that the camera couldn’t get a good image of. Frowning at it, I felt my butthole pucker when it faded to reveal the alicorn, her green coat unscathed. She glared first left, then right, then right into my camera.

“Alicorn’s still alive!” I got an error when I tried to load another round, my controls winking red for the main gun. The point blank area effect round had toasted the focusing device and the BaWS bank on the starboard side of the skytank, “Shit, gun’s down!”

Clang! the hull reverberated around us, Daisy letting out a sharp scream.

Looking back at my cameras, the alicorn’s horn was lowered towards us, glowing bright and then flashing. Another loud clang reverberated through the hull.

“Get us out of here!” I yelled.

“Can’t!” Whisper called back, an edge of panic in her voice, “that round you shot vaporized our clouds. We’ve gotta regen them and it’s dry as hell outside, gonna take a minute!”

“Do we have a minute!?” I called back.

There was another loud clang and the starboard bulkhead buckled inwards a little. The alicorn smiled on my camera, horn lighting up again.

“How about the coaxial?”

“What!?” I asked.

“Try the co-ax!” Whisper yelled.

I checked my boards, the coaxial beam machine gun was yellow. Starting to overheat, but not toast. I switched over from the main gun and brought the crosshairs on the alicorn. My hoof went to the floor, a burst of energized particles spitting out in rapid fire. I only got a five second burst before the gun cut out, red warning signs telling me it was overheating.

It didn’t matter, the alicorn’s shield had come up the second I put the crosshairs on her.

“Cunt!” I spat at her, knowing she couldn’t hear me.

“You get her?” Whisper sounded hopeful.

“Nope, shield,” I reported back.

“Damnit!” Whisper hit something and I saw the Alicorn’s shield come back down, then flash back up after a moment. The co-ax had overheated, but she didn’t know that, she was testing to see if it was safe to drop her shield…

Because she couldn’t attack us and defend simultaneously! The tactical part of my brain tried to figure out the best way to use that knowledge.

“I need fifty seconds!”

“I can manage that!” I replied, flinching when the alicorn fired another telekinetic blast at us. It seemed weaker than before, she hadn’t charged it as much, her shield back up in an instant. A red light flashed to yellow and I fired a quick burst from the co-ax, not letting it overheat this time. The alicorn’s shield was back up, but when it faded she was scowling and a black mark colored one shoulder. “Tagged her shoulder!” I reported, “How you like that super hot plasma, bitch!?”

Not very much, it seemed, as the translucent sphere containing her lifted off the ground. I tracked her, hoof hovering on the firing lever. Was she retreating? Then she was gone from my camera, the turret unable to track her as she went past its maximum elevation. Normally such a thing wouldn't be a problem, with the skytank’s ability to pivot and rotate to get the desired angle. But stuck on the ground and unable to move...

“Shit, she’s above us!” I called out, “No elevation!”

“Copy!” Whisper called back as a louder clang reverberated through the hull. Our top armor was the weakest and it showed as a downwards bulge in the overhead.

“Don’t wanna die! Don’t wanna die! Don’t wanna die!” Daisy started chanting as another clang punched down into the overhead, the bulge deepening.

“Chief!” I called out, too afraid to care about the raised pitch of my voice, “We need to get out of here!”

“No shit, Skiff!” Whisper called back, “C’mon! C’mon!”

Clang!

“Hull breach! Hull breach!” an automated voice warmed, the bulge having turned into a thin slit through which light was starting to trickle through.

Daisy screamed.

Then my stomach dropped, vision tinging black as we shot straight up into the air. A scream burst out of me, thinking the alicorn had grabbed us, but then we pivoted and rocketed off and I knew we were under power again.

“We’re back up! We’re back up!” Whisper reported, “Bogey on six! Gunner engage!”

Training had my gun sights scanning our rear, switching to IR before remembering it was toast. I switched back to DTV, seeing the alicorn flapping after us. I let loose with a burst from the co-ax, but the shots went wide and the yellow light flashed to red.

“Stabilization’s fucked!” I called to Whisper, confirming it on my board as a blinking light that should have been solid.

“We can’t take her to a rallypoint!” Whisper growled, half to herself. My camera view lurched down to the ground as Whisper took us up at a sharp angle, “She’ll slaughter everyone there and with that fucking demon static on comms we can’t call ahead and warn them.”

“Back to the battle, then? Try and shake her in the chaos?” I asked.

“Again: no radio and no main gun. We’re an easy target and we can’t communicate with our people, we’re just as likely to get more heat than lose her. Gonna try for the cloud cover, unless she can shoot radar out of her ass she won’t be able to follow us if she loses sight.”

G-forces pulled at my restraints as we rocketed up into the sky. I tried to track the alicorn down with my gunsights, but without the turret stabilizers working right I couldn’t track her for longer than a second or two. I sent off a volley of shots, but they all went wide and the gun overheated again.

“Brace for high-G maneuvering!”

The Nimbus passed imperceptibly into the bottom of the cloud cover, the ground and our pursuer flashing into white clouds on my camera. I just managed to cram my hooves against my controls as Whisper twisted her wings and sent my stomach into my throat. We turned and corkscrewed back down into the clouds, skimming the top and accelerating again at high speed.

Cloud-tech sensors would have detected our penetration and logged it as routine via handshake routines in the Nimbus’ own cloud-tech. The alicorn’s penetration, however, would be logged as abnormal as she followed behind us. If we’d been closer to a cloud city or dedicated sky farm there would have been defensive technology that could zap unauthorized penetrators out of the sky. I wondered what it would do to an alicorn.

“Bogey’s back on six, got eyes?” Whisper called back to me.

My gun swiveled and I caught a glimpse of green against white.

“Intermittent! No go for the co-ax,” I replied as a quick maneuver made me lose her again, “She following on radar?”

“She’s keeping up!” Whisper reported back, “See if we can’t shake her.”

We dove back into the cloud cover, Whisper’s viewports and my cameras ghosting to white. This high up the chance of us hitting something would be slim to none, but I still saw Whisper’s head drop to the pilot’s controls, flying on instruments alone.

We juked left and right at random intervals and angles, then Whisper picked a direction and stuck to it. Maybe, like with any battle of predator and prey, if we just kept away from her long enough the alicorn would give up and seek out an easier food source. Our hydrogen fuel cells were almost full and able to recharge off of the clouds around us. I didn’t know the exact figure, but we could accelerate like this for hours at least. Alicorns were tough, too, but eventually she’d need a sandwich (or whatever it was alicorns ate) to recharge her energy.

The fact that we started to slow after a good ten or twenty minutes told me that was probably the case.

“She’s falling back on radar,” I couldn’t miss the stark relief in Whisper’s voice, “bringing us down to something more economical. We’ll keep this up for a while and then see if we can’t try and find a safe spot to hunker down and wait for help.”

* * * * *

After trotting about on the ground for over an hour, ducking into the dirt and sweating bullets as wingless ponies trotted past us, getting to relax back on fluffy clouds with the warm sun above should have been beyond blissful. We were safe now, far from any fighting with an old emergency distress beacon pinging SOS into the sensors of the cloud cover.

But whenever my eyes drifted shut somepony died.

Enchanted bullets proved that Wing Masher did, in fact, have a brain.

An explosive charge caved in the Stratos’ hatch and Breeze’s face with it.

I even saw the unicorn I’d shot in our skytank, the mixture of shock and terror that had shot across her face in the fraction of a second before her body turned to ash.

Over and over again, a series of short videos stuck on repeat inside my head until I gave in and propped myself up gingerly with my uninjured side. The other side hurt and my shoulder was starting to go stiff, but I’d already taken the maximum dosage of AcheAway.

Laying on her right side next to me, Whisper had managed to fall asleep. It would have been adorable if not for the way her breath rose and fell with quakes and her face squeezed and contorted.

Did we have Wartime Stress Disorder now? Everypony talked about it sometimes, the self-assured hotshots scoffing at the idea that they’d feel bad about killing another pony. I’d quietly subscribed to the idea that I was tough enough not to be scarred by killing enemies of the Enclave.

But the buck who’d shot me fell backwards off the Stratos as I turned his face into a nightmare of burning flesh.

Surveying the area, I spotted the Nimbus resting silently where we’d parked it, the distress beacon just beside it. Daisy was still inside the skytank, shivering and shaking her head when we tried to coax her out. The hatch was cracked open for her and all weapons had been removed from the interior. Whisper had done her best to calm the mare, but she had gone condition black and needed to sort things out on her own.

The old distress beacon was standard issue for all clouships larger than bombing chariots. It was little more than a block of cloud-tech wired into the ship for power and into the cloud cover for transmission. Interfacing with the perimeter breach sensors, it would ping out SOS to the nearest monitor station until the Nimbus ran out of power, but the Enclave would come for us long before that.

I laid back down, the clouds soft beneath me and sunlight warm against my face. Again I let my eyes fall closed, furrowing my brow as I focused on counting up and down from a hundred. In my mind I traced out each number as it shot into my head.

‘One... two... three... four…’ two wet splats and Wing Masher died. I bit my lip, ‘Five... six... seven... eight... nine... ten…’ I saw the wastelanders outside, calling for Breeze to get back from the hatch, ‘eleven... twelve...’ I got to twenty-one and Dusty Day choked on his drink in the Overcast’s galley, then he was a body against the side of the Nimbus, ‘Twenty-two...twenty-three…’ at forty-nine the large earth pony was driving his knife towards my throat, then he was ash cascading down atop me, ‘Fifty... fifty-one…’ when I reached one-hundred my concentration slipped and the alicorn was glaring into my camera, her horn flashing and Daisy screaming, ‘Ninety-nine... ninety-eight…’

I wasn’t sure at what number I’d managed to fall asleep, but when a shadow fell over me I was awake in an instant. Some long-forgotten instinct from a time before taxes when rocks and spears were all the rage.

My first bleary thought was relief, the Enclave had finally found us. They’d cart us all back to base for medical treatment and a debriefing. With how stiff my shoulder was, I’d kill for a cortisone shot right now.

The alicorn grinned down at me.

“Augh! Fuck!” I couldn’t help the shrill sound of my voice as I screamed and rolled onto my hooves, scrambling for my sidearm for all the good it would do.

The alicorn was faster. Pain blossomed in my chest and my hooves came off the clouds as her telekinetic strike hit me. My unholstered sidearm went flying away as I tumbled back across the clouds.

“Skiff!” My wings flared open, stopping my mad tumble in time to see Whisper cantering backwards, wing reaching for her weapon.

The alicorn was faster. Her long horn flashed and I cringed at the sight and sound of Whisper’s front right knee bending sharply backwards. Whisper’s eyes rolled up into their sockets and she toppled to the ground.

I tried to call out, but I couldn’t breathe, barely managing a wheeze that drew darkness into my peripherals. Trying to gulp down air past what was likely a broken rib, I rushed towards the Nimbus. If I could get to the turret controls…

But the alicorn was faster.

Pain shot up through my wing, arcing up and down my spine as I was flung into the port side of the skytank. Then I was laying on the clouds next to it, the moments between me hitting the skytank and crumpling to the clouds lost to mind-numbing pain. I gulped down air and whimpered like a foal at the throbbing sensation in my surely-broken wing, then I was flying again, hoisted up just above the cloud cover.

Focusing past the pain brought the alicorn back into view. The black marks on her shoulder confirming that it was the same one from below. Her glowing eyes moved from me to my left and when I followed her gaze I saw Whisper, blinking painfully as she regained consciousness.

“Two little gnats caught tight in a trap,” the alicorn grinned.

“We give up! You’ve won!” Whisper ground out past the pain of her crippled knee, “We surrender!”

“I should pluck off their little wings and toss them to a spider,” the alicorn didn’t seem to hear Whisper, “Maybe that’s just what I’ll do!”

Darkness swallowed me for a moment as her magic pulled at my broken wing, then I came back screaming, tears of pain streaking down my face and blurring my vision, “Please, stop!” I pleaded.

“But why should the spider have all the fun?” the alicorn ignored me, and suddenly my limbs were freed. For a fraction of a second I thought she’d finished with her cruel fun, then I felt her magic constrict around my throat.

Air that I had desperately struggled for just seconds ago was now refused to me. My forelegs came up to my neck, but there was nothing to grab or pull away. Her magic was nothing more than a tingling sensation that compressed my throat. My wings came up automatically in an effort to fly and I nearly fainted as pain flashed up my broken one.

Dark spots filled my vision and a warm spot spilled though my trousers, my body thrashing almost of its own accord. If I turned my head and focused I could just make out Whisper’s own strangling form. I would have bellowed out my rage and my terror as I saw her dying right next to me, but I couldn't even squeak with the alicorn’s magic strangling me.

I wanted to scream that we’d be okay, assure her that we’d make it through this together.

But most importantly, I wanted to tell her that I loved her.

My mind faded to nothingness.

When I gasped for air I wished I hadn’t as it shot hot fire through my chest and brought back all of my pain. A violent fit of coughing overtook my urge to breathe again and I saw blood splash down through the clouds at my hooves. I was in too much pain to care, I just wanted to lie here for the rest of eternity.

“I’ve got a better idea,” the alicorn informed me, and alarm shot through my brain as I felt her tugging at my pants. Was she going to rape me with her horn!?

But when I wheezed and looked up, I saw the revolver I’d kept tucked in my waistband floating in front of the alicorn. She fumbled with it briefly before getting the cylinder to swing out, her eyes filling with glee before she snapped it shut. A fit of coughing drew my eyes to Whisper as she lay sprawled beside me, bringing up her uninjured forehoof to rub her throat.

“Chief!” I wheezed out. We were about to die and she needed to know, “Please—Chief!”

“It’s going to be…” she coughed off to one side, “It’s going to be all—”

“I love you!” I cut her off, stunning her into silence, “I don’t...don’t fucking care if I was just a good lay to you or a dick on legs or some cheap sex toy. Maybe that’s how it started but I really—”

SILENCE!

My voice choked itself away in my throat as the word pierced my skull like a bullet.

“Very good,” the alicorn purred from behind me, “Now, you will...

STAND, her voice reverberated between my ears. A thought that was almost my own. But I really didn’t want to stand. My side ached and my wing hurt like nothing I’d felt before. The clouds were just so soft and I—

STAND!

A cry burst out of my lips as a thousand shimmering blades drove into my skull. My wing and my ribs were nothing but mild aches in comparison to the hell burning behind my eyes. Shaking and shivering, I drove my hooves into the cloud cover and swayed about as I found my balance. The pain in my skull abated...that hadn’t been so hard—

TAKE THE GUN!

The ground pouder’s revolver hovered in front of my face. Compared to standing, taking it was such an easy task.

“Skiff…” Whisper wheezed, her eyes darted quickly between my own, searching.

POINT IT AT THE PEGASUS.

Point it at...Whisper? But that wasn’t safe. That broke rules two and four of weapon safety. Always keep your weapon pointed in a safe direction and never—

POINT THE WEAPON AT THE PEGASUS!

I bit down on the grip to try and stifle the searing pain as it burned into my skull. The desire to do as instructed...the pain of disobedience...a strangled scream escaped me as I put the sights on Whisper’s chest.

PULL BACK THE HAMMER.

“Please no…” I mumbled through the mouth grip, feeling hot tears streak across my vision. Whisper’s eyes shot wide in alarm, darting between me and the alicorn.

“Skiff? Skiff!” she struggled to her hooves, then whimpered and collapsed back down as the alicorn twisted her crippled leg painfully with her magic. Whisper fought past the pain, growling through gritted teeth, “Whatever she’s making you do, fight it!”

PULL BACK THE HAMMER!

"I can't!" I sobbed, my good wing rising to pull the hammer back into position. Whisper was nothing more than a blue and pink blur, her eyes fading away into her face, “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I—”

SILENCE!

A whimper escaped me as my voice was strangled away.

PUT YOUR TONGUE ON THE TRIGGER.

There was no use in resisting. The weapon trembled in my quivering lips, Whisper nothing more than a blurry blue shape against the white world. I only hoped the alicorn would kill me swiftly afterwards.

“It was never about the sex,” Whisper whispered, “I love you too, Skiff.”

NOW PULL THE—

There was a soft whirring sound to our left and for an insane moment I wondered what Breeze was doing with the Stratos’ BaWS banks.

Then the air filled with the stench of ozone and burning hair as Daisy opened fire with the Nimbus’ port-side BaWS banks. This close to the skytank, the rapid-fire pulses of magical energy didn’t need to hit me to scald my flanks and dry out my eyes.

The alicorn screamed as her mental grip faded from my skull, letting me drag the revolver's sights away from Whisper. I pivoted, squinting against the unending stream of hot energy burning out of the Nimbus and searing my retinas. My heart fell when I saw the alicorn had her shield up, though she was sagging beneath it with most of her left wing burned off. One eye blazed with hatred and I knew that the second the emitters overheated we were all going to die horribly.

I wanted to scream, except I still had the revolver in my mouth.

The revolver from beneath the clouds.

With armor-negating bullets.

But what did armor-negating mean, exactly? How did the bullet know what was armor and what was flesh? My blouse wasn’t armor, but it had passed clean through that without a scratch. And how could it tell the difference between wires and hydraulics and armor in a skytank? It had to ignore all three of those things, and much more, to get to flesh.

So was it an armor-negating bullet?

Or a flesh-sensitive one?

Alicorn shields weren’t made of flesh.

I leveled the revolver as the BaWS banks finally overheated, cherry red tips jabbing towards where the alicorn stood in her magical armor. The alicorn glared at me, staring back down the sights of the ground pounder's revolver.

I had nothing to lose.

BLAM!

The revolver roared in my ears, deafening my hearing into a dull ringing sound as it jerked my head back. My teeth hurt from the sensation and I sorely missed the soft vibration that my service pistol made when it was fired.

The alicorn’s blazing hatred flashed into surprise as she stumbled back a step, her shield flickering out. She looked down at her side, finding a dark red line of blood pumping out of her shoulder.

“Oh,” she said, swaying on unsteady hooves.

Then she toppled over, her sides deflating with a wet wheeze.

They didn’t rise again.

I felt like I was supposed to say something. Ponies in radio dramas always said something cool when they killed the villain, saved the day once and for all.

But instead I just threw up, my legs shaking perilously beneath me. I didn’t even care as I saw the revolver swoosh through the clouds at my hooves, followed quickly by bitter bile and blood. Wait, I was puking blood?! Shit, that wasn’t good.

Daisy stumbled out of the Nimbus with a string of curses I couldn’t quite follow, her coat slick with sweat and her hooves shaking worse than mine were. She came to a halt, mouth agape as she stared down at the dead alicorn, as if she needed to see it with her own eyes to believe it.

“Medkit!” Whisper called tentatively, favoring her swelling foreleg as she trotted up beside me.

“I feel like I’m going to collapse if I move.” Had I just said that out loud? It sure sounded like my voice and it was true, my legs wobbling treacherously beneath me. If I so much as flinched I was bound to tumble down through the clouds, back to the wasteland below.

“Oh, fucking shit in my mouth, right!” Daisy scrambled back inside and returned with a medkit, “Cocks of the Council fuck my holes raw, I am so sorry! I should’ve fired sooner...but I was just…fuck, I hate my stupid, worthless guts right now!”

“It’s all right,” Whisper consoled the mare, grabbing the medkit and quickly snapping it open. She pressed something to my lips and had to order me to drink before I did, slugging back the health potion and feeling some of the pain in my chest abate. Two more joined it in my belly before Whisper spoke again, “You still leaking anywhere?” She peered over me.

“Pissed my pants,” I admitted, “Second time today.”

“Blood, Skiff, are you still bleeding?” Whisper specified with just a hint of impatience.

“I wish I knew,” I said, turning my head to look at her worried face, “Ah shit, am I dying?”

“Just shock, I think. Let’s get you laid down, c’mon,” I wasn’t sure what made me whimper as Whisper laid me down on my less injured side, laying an emergency blanket gently atop me. She sent Daisy into the Nimbus for something and her warm lips kissed my forehead, bringing some clarity back to my mind, “You know what the worst part about all this is?” I barely managed to shake my trembling head, “Gonna take a while to heal these wounds. We won’t be able to screw for a whole, long while, lover buck.”

Despite everything, all the hell we’d just been through and all the bodies we left below, I smiled, “That’s gonna suck.”