Fallout Equestria: Soldier, Seeker, Eagle

Chapters

2 - Embodied Cognition
3 - Ashen
4 - Bootcamp
6 - Full Metal Ranger
Introduction
1 - Neural Networking

2 - Embodied Cognition

Lab J was known to Lyra Machine and Tool’s employees as a joke. Rivet thought his mother had been in on the joke and would assign a real lab for the project in the morning. She had not.

Lab J was a former supply closet for the janitorial crew. It was precisely big enough for two ponies to work, and generally served as a station for developing small prototypes. Rivet’s team had four ponies, a host of diagnostic equipment, computer science equipment, thaoumarterical supplies, and an entire Assault Pony chassis crammed into the Lab’s miniature footprint.

Three of the four ponies were not happy about this. The other simply did not care.

The Lab was so small team meetings couldn’t be held without each only being seated at their workstation, with their view majorly obstructed by the dangling chassis which had been fastened by hooks and chains to one of the I-beams serving as a floor joist for the story above the lab.

Rivet’s station was beside the door. A simple desk with a chair and the lab’s main terminal, a generation old RobronCo KL99, top of the line in its day. Simple, minimalist, decoratively geometric in shape, and a delight to do word processing on. Perfectly suitable for programming the prototype.

The station to Rivet’s right was the diagnostics workbench, overseen by March Pop. March was an odd looking Earth Pony stallion whose singed-orchid fur combined with his gravity defying mane and tail top make it appear as if he’d just had an unfortunate encounter with high voltage. When he’d first joined the company, he’d been regularly asked if he needed to be rushed to a clinic for emergency care. These days, his co-workers often worried if they would ever be able to tell if he did get electrocuted one day.

Match’s generally stressed body language and rapid-fire manner of speaking didn’t remotely help reduce the impression his appearance leveraged onto others either. Fortunately it was only an appearance. March was one of the best robotics experts available, and had been more than willing to work on Rivet’s project out of intrigue alone.

Next to the diagnostics table was Lab J’s arcane workbench. It wasn’t much, just a mixing basin and calcinator for alchemy in case the need to transmute items arose. Another smaller section held cutting and etching tools needed to craft individual custom spell-matrix components. None of the tools were company property either, as most projects at Lyra’s Machine and Tool were purely technological. The mage Rivet had recruited, Balanced Time, brought his own equipment from home for use on the project.

Fortunately, Balanced had the muscle to carry most anything to and from home, and wouldn’t need to telekinetically float their heavy and bulky satchel of equipment to and from the lab every day. Few unicorns ever took an interest in physical exercise other than aerobic or endurance training. Balanced had taken an interest in weightlifting, not just telekinetically but physically. He often made nice hooffulls of bits betting Earth Ponies he could leg-wrestle them and win. He didn’t always win, of course, but he stood a good enough chance to cover his drinks most nights.

Balanced believed in his namesake and spent as much time studying magic as he did socializing, working out, and living a full and rich life. His prussian blue fur was always freshly shampooed, and his magenta striped ruby mane and tail were always well groomed. Balance had originally been hired to help develop better spark batteries, but wound up moving around the company using his arcane talents on any project which could be helped by a spell or two.

In spite of the presence of a wizard’s workbench, the computer science station to Rivet’s left was where most of the “magic” would happen. It was occupied by Rainy Creek, an earth pony mare of such generic appearance nopony could ever remember the specifics of her looks. Try as anypony might, anypony trying to describe her could only ever come up with terms like “generic” or “normal”. Ironically it made her stand out quite a bit, but only when thought about later on, never while she was present in a room where she could be seen.

Perhaps due to her incredibly unassuming looks, Rainy took extreme measures to be memorable for her mind. While Lyra considered her son Rivet to be the company’s best programmer, Rivet disagreed. Rainy came up with half of the ideas Rivet brought to fruition. He did not steal her ideas, as he always made clear in the code. She simply didn’t have time to develop them all herself.

Rainy was the only pony to be on the project by their own demand. In her words “If you’re making a real robot, not one of those glorified speak and spells, I’m going to be a part of it. Say no and I’ll kick you in the dick every single day I’m not on the project.”

Rivet knew two things about Rainy aside from her extremely high qualifications as a programmer. He knew that she was normally a very nice mare, and indeed had his fiance's death not been on his mind so often, Rivet would have asked her out years ago. He also knew beyond rational certainty that Rainy absolutely would carry out her threat.

Rainy would likely have gone to the extreme of building a simple robot to ensure she never missed a day if necessary. Thus, Rainy had secured her assignment to the project.

The project was both in need of an official name as well as in a somewhat dire state. The tiny lab and limited workroom already had everypony a bit on edge. Very few ponies liked to be indoors for long, let alone crammed into a space so small your workmate is likely to knock over your water bottle simply by turning their head.

Rivet finished entering the last of the workday’s opening log on his terminal, then carefully turned around to face his team. At least, as much turning as the dangling obstruction permitted. It wasn’t the chassis they would be using, rather it was one of the captured Assault-Pone-3 frames meant for reverse engineering, but it had been assigned to the project as a resource. Primarily so measurements could be taken for any custom parts the prototype would require.

Which meant it had to be in the lab. Even though it could only fit if hung from the ceiling. Even though everypony had banged their head into a dangling robotic hoof at least twice in the last ten minutes. The resulting swearing had Rivet fetch an old bucket to serve as a swear jar.

To improve morale, ponies would toss two bits into the bucket for each instance of cursing in the lab. Meanwhile, anypony could give points to any other pony for anything that cheered them up, felt insightful, or otherwise helped keep things happy. Whoever had the most points at the end of the day would take home the swear jar pot.

Thirty seven bits were up for grabs so far. It had been perhaps fifteen minutes since the workday began.

“Alright everypony,” Rivet began, hoping his voice wasn’t too nervous and squeaky for his first official statement as a manager. “I know our situation is less than ideal but there is hope.”

Rivet held up a memo his mother had written that morning for his co-workers to see. “Once we have created the hardware and software base for our as-of-yet-unnamed project, we will be assigned additional labspace for testing purposes. If we work hard, we’ll only be here in J for a few weeks. I’ll understand if anypony needs to work in the hallway… Just don’t let anypony catch you outside with your equipment.”

He cleared his throat once and looked each of his team in the eyes, though his vision was obstructed by the hanging chassis, making it only barely possible. In Rainy’s case that was just one eye since one of the chassis’s hanging hooves hid half her face. “As our first order of business, I would like to come up with a name for this project. Any suggestions?”

“Microcosm,” Balance said in his rumbly voice as he scootched back and forth to find a comfortable space to sit in.

A difficult task given his large and bulky build.

Rainy’s ears perked at the suggestion. “Oh! I get it,” she said with a grin. “We’re trying to encapsulate an entire consciousness into a small bit of hardware. A literal microcosm of equinity. Ten points for poetry, Balance.”

Balance snorted and gave the programmer a bemused look. “No. Because this room is encapsulating us and makes me feel like we’re all miniatures in a toybox.”

March erupted in laughter. His shaking body resting against his desk made the old timber creak and groan under his weight. After a moment the stallion wiped a tear from his eye. “Ten points for poetry, Balance.”

Rivet cleared his throat to try and establish order while Rainy glared at her two coworkers.

“Well, everyone likes it, and it doesn't sound similar to any active projects I know of…” Rivet said thoughtfully before nodding to himself and turning around to enter the name into his terminal. “Project Microcosm does have a good ring to it.”

His horn shimmered as he tapped each key in sequence with precise, delicate, yet rapid pulses of telekinesis. As soon as the keys stopped clicking, Rivet turned back to his colleagues. “I’d have asked for more options, but it’s good, and I don't want to waste time on irrelevant details… Shall we get down to business?”

“Please,” March groaned. “I already feel claustrophobic… How long have we been here?”

“About five minutes,” Rainy said casually as she picked up a small notepad and opened it to ready a presentation. “Stop complaining, this place is bigger than my apartment.”

Rivet took a second to hope that wasn’t true, then closed his notepad. "Lastly, off the record, we've been allocated eight million total bits for this project. With one and a half subtracted for our salaries for the next three months and another half million taken for lab setup costs, we have six million bits for the project itself. If anypony can locate useful spare parts from other departments, or even other companies on the approved clearance list, let me know and we'll incorporate it."

Rainy raised a hoof making her chair creek. "OH! I've had this one SkyTech rep trying to get me to try one of their shield talismans out. It's a demo unit and they want to sell us the real things so we can manufacture stuff using their shields. I’ve been saying no because that’s not my department, but I could accept it and we could toss that in the chassis. Save us a good mill."

Balanced turned slightly and wacked his shin against his desk. “OW!”

He reached down to grab his hindleg with a hoof and cracked his forehead into the hanging robotic chassis, nearly missing hitting it with his horn. “BUCKING-SUN’S— OOOOOW!”

March winced in sympathy and rubbed his forehead. Rainy giggled like she did when watching slapstick comedy programs.

Rivet stood up and began to reach for the lab’s medical kit. “Are you bleeding?”

“No,” Balanced groaned as he rubbed his forehead. “What was I going to… Yes!”

Balanced fished in his saddlebag for his coin purse, removed two bits, tossed them into the bucket, then cleared his throat.

“I’ve heard of SkyTech,” he said. “It’s a very small company that used to be headquartered in a town in the badlands. It’s deep in Zebrican territory now. They’re not blacklisted as spies, but we should be careful using anything from them.”

Rainy nodded in agreement and began to turn her notebook over in her hooves. “Oh yes, absolutely. But we need to think about this logically. We’re not creating a mere machine, we’re creating a mechanical pony. If it's damaged, especially in the field, it can’t simply hang around base for a week to heal, or slug back a healing potion, or be tended to by the field medic.”

Rainy turned her notebook for everypony to see. The notebook had been filled with all manner of designs, illustrations of situations, and of course written down thoughts. It was immediately clear the mare had put a surprising amount of thought into the creation of artificial lifeforms for quite some time.

“They would need to be repaired, and that would mean the military would need an entirely new supply line of robot parts,” Rainy continued as she moved her book around so each other colleagues could see an illustration she had made showing a shield at work around a pony form.

“Additionally, this is a machine that learns. It is like a pony in that regard,” Rainy said as she paged through her notebook to try and locate a particular thought of her she'd written down. “We can presume it will have some sort of psychology. Likely not exactly like a pony’s, but certainly similar. Would you want to be hit once and then potentially wounded for life? Or if you broke a leg would you want to be put into a coma until you were healed?”

Rainy gave up locating the passage, and set her notebook aside. “We should strive to prevent damage as much as possible. We shouldn’t pass up the opportunity to include a regenerative shield system. Especially since anti-machine rifles exist now.”

March hummed, stroked his chin then sighed and nodded to Rainy. “She’s right. We should take it, but examine the hay out of it. Probably rebuild it ourselves if we can.”

Balanced shook his head and managed to scoot his chair into a comfortable spot at last. It was clear he was going to speak, but before he did, he took a marker from his saddlebag, and using telekinesis, traced the base of his swivel chair onto the floor.

Once finished, he capped the marker and proclaimed, “There!” with extreme relief.

Turning his attention back to the task at hoof, Balanced began to refute the idea. “I agree with her sentiment, but wouldn’t it be more energy efficient to include a repair talisman? Sure, they require the consumption of raw resources, at least the ones we see in Steel Ranger armor do. But that’s why they don't draw so much power. I know we could fit the power system for a shield talisman into the chassis, but I think I could talk a friend into letting me talk to someone in the upper ranks of the MWT. We’re making this robot for them, after all. I think I may be able to get them to issue us a repair talisman if I imbibe a little bit of liquid diplomacy before hoof.”

Rivet closed his eyes and shook his head. “No talking to Ministries while drunk. That goes for everypony.”

Balance frowned then laughed and shot Rivet a grin. “Oh! No, nonono. Not alcohol. I brew social potions for use in bars.”

Rainy cleared her throat and shot Balanced a deathglare. “Excuse me?”

The stallion noticed her out of the corner of his eye, and ran a hoof through his mane. “It’s not like that. They’re for me. They help you phrase things better.”

Rainy raised an eyebrow then looked back to her notebook. “Well, I can see you have a need for such a thing.”

Rivet held in a laugh as Balanced fumed in his chair. “Three points for Rainy.” Rivet said after a moment.

Rivet cleared his throat again a second later to help him refocus on work. “I think both of those are good ideas. If we can get both, we should include both. It’s not that hard to provide power to several talismans. Most of them draw about as much energy as any other given talisman. All we would need to do was set up a relay system for activating them individually or in sets.”

Rivet turned to pick up a piece of paper and a pen and levitated them to draw, quickly sketching out a simple circuit which would toggle the activation of up to three talismans. “Something like this is what I’m proposing. It would let us use both, which would be best not only because we’re making what is for all intents and purposes a person, but also because this could launch all of our careers ahead several steps. After all, the better soldier this thing is, the better we’ll be thought of as its designers. Rainy, get the shield talisman. Balanced, see about getting us a repair talisman.”

March bit his lip thoughtfully, hummed, then tapped a hoof on his desk for attention. Once everypony looked his way, he gave each of them a serious look. “Can we really call what we’re building a person? Yes, it’s a learning system, but learning alone doesn't make a person. I can teach a dog to do almost anything via learning. For all we know we’re making the mechanical equivalent of an animal. Or maybe all it’s good at is replicating what it sees, making it a robot that can improve itself, but still just a robot.”

Rivet nodded thoughtfully. “Mhm, all good points. But we need to prep for the worst case scenario, which is to create a person.”

Balanced nodded in agreement and swiveled his chair to look directly at March. “I helped Rivet make the proof of concept. It’s got the processing power, data storage, and complexity to house a pony mind. Trust me, I’d know. I helped out on the Robobrain project. This thing could make those ethical nightmares obsolete.”

“Is that why you’re on this project?” Rainy asked with a tilt of her head. “I for one would love to see ponies stop chucking animal brains in jars to have their slightly better robots.”

“You’re Luna-damned right it is,” Balanced said gruffly as he swiveled to face Rainy, and drop two more bits into the bucket. “Fun fact, the project’s trying to get it to work with pony brains last I heard. We need to put the kibosh on that before they start using prisoners to test the mark threes or something.”

“Long story short, March,” Rivet said as he began to fidget with his pipbuck. “There’s a chance we’ll make a person, so we need to proceed as if we’re going to do just that. If we make a body suited for a person, it won't matter if we put something lesser in it. If we make a body suited for any old robot, or an animal intelligence, and we put a person into it… We’re monsters. Hooves down.”

March mmmed again, nodded, then sat back in his chair, bumping into his desk. “Point taken… Alright. On our budget there’s no way we’re making an Equoid. We’d have to invent ninety percent of the systems from scratch. That means we’re limited to a robot that looks like a pony, and presumably can do anything we’d want a pony soldier to do, but no full on simulation of a pony with fake breathing, fake pulse, and all that sci-fi crap. What’s the minimum bar for acceptability here? We’ll need to let it speak, hear, gesture… What else is critical?”

Rivet paused as he considered March’s admittedly astute point. He leaned back in his chair, nearly bumping into his terminal’s screen before remembering just how close it was.

“That’s a good point, March. I’m certain everypony here is familiar with the theory of Embodied Cognition.” Rivet said just to make absolutely sure his other two team members knew it as well.

Nods were had all around. The theory had been taught to the entire engineering staff by a MoI official when Lyra Machine and Tool had accepted a contract to produce gasmasks and optics for those gasmasks.

The representative had done their best to show them just how important it was that the masks permit the use of facial expression and ear-movements within specific minimum ranges. The general idea was the body and mind, being connected, shaped and molded each other. If you reduced a pony’s capabilities, you’d also subtly alter their conscious mind.

While this would be a temporary adjustment with a mask that a pony could put on and take off, certain key communication abilities had to be preserved to prevent ponies from “unpersoning” anypony wearing the masks. Rivet still remembered the official’s anecdote about a fireteam who let six wounded poneis die simply because they couldn’t see their faces, and therefore were unable to empathise with the wounded and trapped soldiers enough to risk their own lives to save them.

“I don’t think we should do more than the bare minimum, even if we can afford too,” March said as he struggled to scoot his chair over for just a little more shoulder room. “Ultimately, the idea of an AI-Driven soldier has merit, but they are still a machine. They are replaceable, repairable, and can be salvaged.”

March stopped scooting, giving up on finding a comfortable place to sit with a frustrated sigh. “Those are all things we cannot do for organic soldiers unless the Ministries lift the ban on necromancy. While this thing may turn out to be a person, it’s still different from a pony in key ways. If we make it look and act too much like a pony, soldiers may risk their lives to protect it and die for it... Negating the entire point of a robotic warrior.”

Rainy growled and leaned forward, making her old wooden dining chair creak. “Hey, dumbass, you know what soldiers need in order to function properly? Trust, teamwork, and communication. The Assault Pony baseline models are going to have no faces. But they still have a pony shape and move like ponies. They are going to unnerve most ponies. Slip one of those into a squad and it's going to have issues working properly because everypony is creeped out and worried about something they should trust.”

March snorted and rolled his eyes. “Yeah, and ponies are pretty darn good at equopomorphizing things. Do you have any idea how many soldiers name their squad’s Mister Gutsy? There’s even a Captain who awarded a medal to one. Nothing major, just some valor commendation. If a sphere with three legs and some lamps for eyes will be treated like that we don’t have to do much to get ponies to trust and care for our robot.”

Rainy nodded twice and leaned forward in her chair. “Sure, March. I know about that. But it’s not an acceptable level of communication for a person-level intelligence. Yes, a pony is very good at ascribing pony traits to non-ponies, even inanimate objects… Buuuuut, and this is a big smelly but, they’re not too good at doing the same thing for themselves if something’s not normal about their body. Everypony probably remembers some social misunderstanding as a foal that devastated them, maybe even traumatized them.”

Rainy scratched her chair to the left to get a better view of March past the hanging robotic legs. “Also, the closer to a pony something actually looks, the more ponies expect it to do. One of those little vacuum cleaner robots is easily treated like a beloved pet by a pony, but the animatronic ponies at those foals restaurants creep out adults something fierce! Why? Because it’s too close to a pony while lacking key features of a pony.”

Rivet nodded in agreement. “Right, and think about it from the perspective of a pony. What if your face was suddenly paralyzed? What if you couldn’t smile, or frown, or show worry with an expression? How would that make you feel? We need our robot to be able to communicate without words, not just for self-image purposes, but because soldiers use silent gestures and facial movements to communicate tactical information. Not everypony knows that, but it is a thing.”

Rivet did his best to remain expressionless after talking about something his finance had told him. She’d used silent tactical gestures in public to flirt and communicate simple ideas for pranks to play on her friends. Rivet still remembered most of their code.

March sighed, let his ears droop, and hung his head in defeat. “Okay, I can see that too. But we still have a budget to work with. It will take tens of thousands, maybe even hundreds of thousands just to make a system for ears that can pose correctly. We’re looking at about a million to develop an expressions subsystem, let alone the custom sculpts for a face and the like. Can we afford that?”

Rivet hummed and tapped his hoof against this pipbuck thoughtfully before looking up to Balanced. “Any opinion on this?”

“Yeah. We need to do expressions. Fortunately, I have a solution,” Balanced remarked as he casually levitated a pen to fidget with it.

“We can make something like… Well…” his cheeks flushed before he set his pen down and cleared his throat. “I don’t own one, but some friends of mine do. See, there’s some very cheap robots out there, they’re about forty thousand bits. They're uh… Basically animated sex dolls. They have a face, but it’s not trying to replicate a pony’s face. It’s kind of like a stylized comic book character’s face. Ceramic with a silicone cover that deforms to show expressions. It’s still pony in shape, but just enough for you to get the idea of the emotion it's expressing. We could buy one of those bots and rig the face up to our unit. That would allow for some non-verbal communication, some ability to express emotions nonverbally, but also wouldn’t make ponies think of them as a pony due to being still machine-like. More importantly it should avoid the creepy factor for most ponies since they are designed to be, uh... attractive looking.”

Rivet had not been expecting that response of all things. He, and the others, stared at the muscular unicorn wide eyed for several long minutes, during which Balanced added. “Oh! We could also use its ear and tail servos. That’s important for body language too.”

Rivet cleared his throat and unarched his brow. “Balanced… Do you really want to staple sex-bot parts we get at some back ally dealer’s “establishment” onto a war machine?”

“No,” Balanced admitted bashfully.

Everypony sighed in relief. Then Balanced sighed in defeat.

“But the parts I am referring to would suit our needs well enough, and we’re on a very tight budget,” Balanced said with a serious look in his eyes. “March is right about the cost to develop that ourselves. It would take us more than one-point-six-mill to design and manufacture those parts for ourselves. It’s not like I am suggesting we put the uh… for play parts on it. Just the face and tail... Oh, and ears too.”

Rainy raised a hoof to object, then put it down. “He’s right. If we count the firmware development and hardware linkups we’ll need to make, we could still get it done for less than the two-hundred thousand minimum anything like that would take us to develop.”

Rivet nodded once then turned around and started to type into the project’s log. “Okay, then… We’ll get one and implement its emotion-communicating components. Because, well, it’s cheap, and we really do need to make sure it can communicate like we do.”

“Wait,” March said with a little frown. “If we’re buying a sex bot to scrap parts from—”

Balance smirked then offered March a goofy looking grin. “It’s okay. You can keep the plot end.”

March glared at Balanced, then stood up slowly to look at his co-workers one by one. “Har. Har. Look, if we’re doing that, it means our robot will have either a stallion or mare’s face. We’ll have to pick a sex for it to match its looks. If we’re really worried about the whole mind-shaped-by-body theory, we’ll need to make sure to set up the seed for this thing to think of itself as male or female based on what we give it. Trust me, we don’t want to cripple this thing with gender dysmorphia. It may be bad enough to be a robot, let alone a robot that doesn't feel like it is how we made it appear to be.”

Everypony paused what they were doing, and slowly looked to March. He’d made his point with such conviction and passion that he had to have some form of personal experience with that particular issue.

Rivet and Balanced eventually nodded to themselves, concluding March must have had experience with a friend or a family member in that condition, and chose not to pry. Rainy, on the other hoof, due to just how personal of an issue it was, and her proclivity to spend her evenings in certain minority orientated bars, her mind led her to a certain off the wall conclusion.

“Wait… Did— Did you...” Rainy asked as her face twisted into a confused little frown. “Uh… You know…”

March’s ears laid back in irritation. “No!” He said as firmly as anypony would expect. “I used to have a sister. Now I have a brother. I grew up with somepony who went through that. I know just how bad everything is for them. Trust me, we can’t do that to anything that might be a person.“

“Ah,” Rivet said as he turned back to typing. “Okay. I’ve made a note of that. We should do our best to prevent that and other psychological disorders.”

Rainy blinked as an idea flashed through her mind. “Wait… That’s true, but… Maybe that means we should include the fun parts, as Balanced called them.”

“W— Why?” everypony else asked in unison as they all turned towards the programmer.

Rainy sheepishly blushed and tapped her hooves together. “Wwwweeelll….” she coughed to do her best to clear up her blush. “I know a lot of stallions get depressed when they get older and can’t uh, preform. So, maybe—”

“I’m not putting a dildo onto a war machine,” Balanced said with a shudder.

He’d had several nightmares about automated machine gun platforms with generous packages.

“Yeah,” March said through a wince. “I know that our boys like to go to the local brothels and collect every venereal disease there is, but we’re making a soldier. Not a robot meant for lonely ponies.”

Rivet nodded very firmly. “Yeah I’m inclined to agree. I think that’s crossing the line.”

Rainy huffed and crossed her forelegs over the barrel. “Guys, be a little more mature! Soldiers are not just fighting machines, they are people too,” she objected, going as far as to stand up to rest her forehooves on the central workbench.

“It’s going to be watching them, and improving itself, right?” she continued. “It’s going to see that soldiers have loved ones. If it doesn't have emotions, it may eventually conclude it's not able to perform its job as a soldier due to lacking the physical ability to form a romantic relationship. That could cause performance issues, the military kind. We could be forcing some poor Quartermaster to spend several hours trying to get a robot to stop requesting they be issued a dick. Even worse is if it can feel emotions! I think it will be able to, and we’re already worried about it not being able to express emotions, and also avoiding psychological disorders mostly involving depression, then there’s no reason to think that it won't ever also feel positive emotions. You know. Like love.”

Rivet turned to look at each of her teammates who were watching her little speech with confused awe. He could only conclude that everypony else also felt that Rainy was being deadly serious, and turned his full attention to her argument.

Rainy uncrossed her legs and leaned forwards to emphasize her next point. “Imagine how it will look if we make a machine that, after a few months in the field, steps in front of a tank as it shoots to commit suicide because it knows that not only are the odds of anypony loving it amazingly low because its a machine, but also that even if there was such a pony they can’t do anything at all to fufill the object of their affection. That would be beyond cruel!”

The three stallions were silent for a moment, realising just how hellish a life that would be. Rainy continued to look between them, growing more and more exasperated at their silence, misconstruing it as disagreement or a refusal to see her perspective.

“I’m not saying we need to make it able to have kids!” Rainy protested. “ I’m not saying we should make it intentionally sexy. I’m just saying that interpersonal relationships are a huge part of a pony’s psychology and identity and there’s no way to shield this thing from that side of ponies once it’s in the field. Besides, we’ll have the parts to do it available already. Why waste them and cause unnecessary harm to our creation? Just having them should be enough to prevent problems.”

She huffed and sat back down with a bitter grunt. “Besides. What if the war is over during this thing’s operational lifespan? Do we really want to make a machine that can only ever be for war when that machine is also a person? Or at least functionally a person? Shouldn’t we do what we can to ensure that whatever it eventually comes to enjoy, it can at least try and pursue it?”

March shook his head slowly, then groaned. “She’s right… We— We could hide things under some armor plate that retracts. Nopony would have to know aside from anypony who wound up uh… wanting to use them.”

“Still squicks me out,” Balanced muttered to himself while staring at the floor.

Rivet raised an eyebrow at Balanced comment. “You’re the one who recommended buying a sexbot for parts.”

“Yeah, I did,” Balanced agreed. “I also think we should. It would be cruel not to, in the event we pull this off and make a person. I agree with you, I’ll help do it, but it still squicks me out. I’m entitled to my own feelings!”

March blinked, frowned, then held up a hoof for attention. “Wait, don’t their muzzles have uh, you know… capabilities.” he said with a shy flick of his tail. “We kind of already agreed to do this.”

“Yeah they do! It’s pretty good too!” Rainy said with a little smile before yelping and clamping her hooves over her mouth as her nondescript face turned bright red.

Everypony was dead silent for a few heartbeats. Then Rivet smirked. “I don’t suppose you’d donate yours to the project?”

Rainy sank down in her chair. “No… It's a deluxe model. Expensive...” she murmured quietly.

“You do know that even if we make it a stallion once we switch it on, it won't necessarily like you, right?” Balanced asked with a teasing grin.

“Four points to Balanced,” March commented teasingly.

Rainy huffed and flicked her mane out of her eyes. “I’m not here because I’m lonely and want a smarter doll.” she said with finality.

“I don’t think you are,” Rivet agreed politely. “You have a good point, it just took us a little bit for us to see it.”

She nodded in response, but felt the need to continue her point regardless. After all, the other two stallions had said nothing.

“I’m here because I want the opportunity to help build our first proper AI so I can make sure that it’s done more right than wrong,” Rainy straightened herself up, making her poor chair creak in protest once more. “I’m with Rivet in that we’re creating a person who will serve the sole purpose of being a warrior, but there’s more to being a warrior than fighting. Warriors need something to fight for. Something other than a country or an idea. They need a lover, or a family, or a tribe. Something to champion. Without it, you’ll never get an effective warrior. Just read a history book.”

Balanced tipped back slightly, his eyes widening just a bit. “Huh… Guys, she’s right about that. I guess I never thought about it like that. Okay, yeah. We need to uh… Include those parts. Maybe even train it a little bit in how families work, too. At least enough for it to understand friends are important to have.”

Rivet nodded in agreement and went back to typing. “Good points, Rainy. I’m putting it in the project log…” he finished typing then read the list. “Oookay. We have social and personal modifications to the chassis for psychological health. We have a repair and shield talisman to source and add in for durability. That’s person-assisting and defensive goals… We do need to build the chassis itself on our budget, let’s overestimate costs a bit and assume this will take half of what we’ve got. What do we do for offense?”

The four thought quietly for some time. It wasn’t an easy question. The entire point behind the Assault Pony robot was the ability to use most if not all existing weapons, vehicles, tools, and facilities just like any Equestrian would. The Zebrican models were capable as an Earth Pony or Zebra, save for a lack of any natural magic. A small shame, as robotic crop-boosters would most certainly make a company a fortune.

After several long moments, Balanced began to smile. “Guys… I have an idea, and best of all it will be free.”

“What is it?” Rivet asked looking up from fidgeting with his pipbuck thoughtfully.

“A while ago, I was dating this stallion. Good guy, but we didn’t work out,” Balanced said with an annoyed grunt. “He was a pegasus, and most of the things in my home are designed for unicorns. I was considering proposing, so I bought a telekinesis talisman which was going to serve as a proposal present, but he broke things off instead. I still have it because it was expensive as hell and I figured I’d run into the same problem eventually… Don’t ever seem to attract other unicorns.”

Balanced stood up and stretched his hindlegs as much as the small lab permitted. “Just say the word, Rivet, and I’ll pop home and grab it. We slap it on our robot and it would be able to use telekinesis. That’s a major tactical advantage that’s in the spirit of the robot’s main design.”

March’s eyes lit up. “Even better! It’s an Equestrian twist on what is at its core a Zebrican design! I love it!” He smirked and rubbed his hooves together. “Nice and subversive! Suck on that, stripes!”

Rivet smiled, laughed, then nodded to Balanced. “Do it! We can mount the talisman in the forehead, and if I remember how that thing looked when I helped you pick it out, it could be made flush with the forehead. No need for a horn.”

“It would retain the ability to use equipment designed for any pony!” Rainy exclaimed with a delighted smile. “Oh that’s cool! Practical magic without the need for a hole or socket in the helmet. The military will like that. Ten points for Balanced!”

Balanced stood up and cleared off a small spot on his workbench. While it was already clean and tidy, he felt he had to do something while cooped up in such a small space.

“Of course, we are forgetting one thing,” Balanced said as he moved a few of his tools closer to his calcinator. “This person has an intended purpose. They are to be a soldier. We can’t just set them up with basic pony instincts, create them as an individual, then tell them “by the way, you exist to kill and die”. That’s crossing an ethical line.”

He finished tidying up his tools and looked across his desk for more work to do. “We need to include base programming that makes it not just be okay with fighting and dying, but also have a desire to serve. If we don’t ensure it wants to do what we want it to do, at best we’re conscripting somepony… Or at least, something. Worst case…”

Balance paused and looked to his coworkers to make sure they were paying attention. “Worst case, we’ve committed an act of mind control. We are not Zebras. We must not force something to do something against its will.”

Rivet, Rainy, and March winced before nodding in agreement.

Rainy cleared her throat. “Well, yes. Obviously… But how do we do that ethically? Isn’t setting up something’s will in the first place a form of mind control?”

March shrugged and spun in his chair for a moment to think. His attempt was interrupted by a metal hoof to the back of the head, several seconds of cussing, and the clinking of coins being added to the bucket.

Rivet tapped his hoof on his desk in thought, then sighed. “I don’t think it’s possible to do everything ethically. At least, not by Equestrian ethics. Ethics are not universal… Each culture makes their own. The Griffons are said to be using cloning technology to produce soldiers for their warfront. I don’t know if that’s true, but the Griffon-Equestrians I’ve talked to about it think I’m crazy for having issues with creating people to die. To them, it’s creating someone whose life is nothing but honor.”

Rainy shook her head firmly and held up a hoof. “No, no, no… I don’t care what they would think about this,” she put her hood down and squirmed in her seat. “I don’t mean that in a speciesist way. I mean… Look, if we can't justify our actions within our own culture’s code of conduct, haven't the zebras won a small victory?”

March stopped spinning, having clearly failed the lesson he’d been taught moments before. A concussion check would have been wise, but there was no time. “She’s right. I know a few ways we could theoretically set the seed for this thing to develop from. I’m sure you two programmers know more, or how to make them work properly… So we can do this. But is it okay? We can still abort this project at this point. Once we start this thing, since it could become a person, we won't be able to stop it.”

“Actually, that’s incorrect,” Balanced remarked casually as he rearranged his gem-engraving kit. “If we're treating this like a foal, just in case it does work as we hope, then if there’s any sign of defect greater than 3.4 Redhearts it would be ethical to abort it.”

Rainy frowned and looked up from her notebook. “Redhearts?”

“A scale used for measuring the suffering caused by a disability in a developing fetus. Some nurse in Ponyville invented it. It seems callous, but it’s rating things like “Born without legs and also a natural resistance to transmutation magic rendering limb-generation via magic impossible”. The point where the individual's life would be more struggle than pleasure is a Three. A three point four is when that struggle would cause significant pain and suffering. An example of that is the birth defect where the foal sweats uh… well, sewage.” Balance summarized for her.

Rivet’s face twisted into a disgusted grimace. “Gah! That can happen?!”

“Yeah, a friend of mine had an abortion because the fetus would have had it and doctors couldn’t fix it in utero,” Balanced muttered bitterly as memories of the foal announcement party, then later the sobbing couple flashed through his mind.

“Point is, our ethics are more flexible than most ponies think. We’re at war and our survival is on the line,” Balanced turned around and gestured to the hanging Zebrican robot chassis in front of all four ponies. “The enemy is throwing that thing at us. If they break through the trenches, they do not spare civilians. Not ‘til their officers tell them to stop. This is not just a war. It’s a fight for survival.”

Balanced returned to his seat and sat down with a sigh. “The Ministries decided that the ever diminishing pegasi volunteer force was not enough, and that a draft of the eldest of each Pegasus family was not only acceptable, but necessary. If our country has decided it is necessary under these circumstances to make ponies become soldiers under the force of law, which, I remind you, is ultimately backed up by physical force, well, then… We’re doing something ethical by creating a soldier from scratch.”

He sighed one last time and looked up at the ceiling. “In fact, we’re being more ethical than the draft, as we have the ability to ensure that our soldier likes what they do and wants to be there.”

Rivet drew a long breath in over his teeth, then let it out slowly. “I— I can't argue with that. Can anypony else?”

March shook his head no. Rainy nodded.

“I— I can,” she said hesitantly. “I disagree with the draft. I know how important air superiority is, but that front is a meatgrinder. It’s unethical to send ponies to what amounts to their grave. I mean, buck! We built that huge weather control array thing just to be able to send even more of them to their deaths!”

Rivet nodded solemnly. “Yes. And if our pilot project is successful, we can go back and develop a flight-capable version, and fewer ponies will have to die to keep us from zebrican camps.”

March looked into Rainy’s eyes with a cold, serious, hate filled look. Rainy could tell the hate wasn't directed at her, but it creeped her out nonetheless.

“You know that, as an Equestrian mare, if you were captured by Zebra forces, they’d cut out your ovaries, right?” March said bitterly. “They’d sterilize you, dye stripes into your fur, and “reeducate” you into serving traditional female zebra gender roles.”

Rainy snorted and waved a hoof. “That’s propaganda. Besides, joke’s on them if that were true. I was born without ovaries.” Rainy kicked a rear hoof shyly. “That’s why I like to make robots. And why I wanted to be here. This is as close to having a foal as I’ll ever get.”

Rivet raised an eyebrow. “It is? Then… I’m sorry but I may have to kick you from the team. That seems like a conflict of interest.”

Rainy shook her head immediately and gave Rivet a terrified look. Her eyes caught Lab J’s dim light and glinted green as she looked into Rivet’s eyes.

“It’s not!” Rainy insisted firmly and passionately. “I’d be proud to raise children who were sent to fight in this war. A soldier is an honorable profession, even if you disagree with the reasons for a war. Not saying I think we should let the Zebras win. Just saying that even if we were doing all of this over a single specific bucket or something, that anypony who volunteers to die to keep others safe is a noble and honorable soul. My only objection is to saying that the draft is ethical because the government said so. I have no problems with building a soldier, so long as that isn’t all they are. So long as they can be more if they wish to be.”

Rivet frowned, nodded slowly, then rubbed the side of his head. “Uh… okay. Sorry. I didn’t mean to be rude. You can stay.”

“Good,” Rainy murmured, looking down at her notebook.

March nodded and thumped his hoof against his leg in agreement. “Rainy’s got another point. There are military families, generations of soldiers serving Equestria because that’s what the family does. It’s okay to raise a kid to be a soldier, so it’s okay to make a robot to be one. I say we go for it. Maybe it's a bit unethical, but we’re at war. I’d like less ponies to die and theoretically our robot could be restored from a backup file. There’s no risk to—”

March stopped, his eyes lit up as an idea occurred to him. “Oh! Hey, pegasi! Think we could get our hooves on a Flight Talisman?”

Rivet and Balanced laughed at the proposal. March coughed awkwardly. “Yeah, point… Those are stupid expensive.”

“They sure are,” Rivet said as he nodded for a final time. “Okay, we’re all set for the basics then. Balanced, you go get the TK talisman, then get the MWT on the phone and see if we can get a spare repair talisman. Rainy, get a hold of your SkyTech rep and see if that offer is still valid. March, it's up to you to pick up our uh, toy. I’ll get a workstation ready to strip the parts we need from that thing so we can analyze it right away to make the adapters to fix it to the chassis we’ll be given by manufacturing. Once that’s done I’ll see about getting a book on the psychology of war and what makes a good soldier and start coding up the seed. Let’s get to it!”

☢★★◯★★☢

Several weeks passed, and work progressed well enough. The civilian robot was discreetly purchased from Robronco by Rainy, after March became too flustered to go pick one up. A male model was chosen simply because there was a sale on them at the time. Lyra Machine and Tool’s manufacturing department had been ready for the production run for a week before Project Microcosm began, which meant the team had Chassis 117 in their lab within seven business days.

The biggest time sink in physical matters had been adapting the face, ears, and tail from the civilian robot to the Assault Pony chassis. Balanced spent many a day with angle and die grinders working on the chassis itself. Armored plates needed to be cut, reshaped, and have recesses carved into them for the sake of fitting the parts cleanly. That was only half the work as well, for internal circuits and matrices had to be created to run the hardware. The civilian crystals simply wouldn’t do for military tech.

The talismans proved hard to incorporate as well. A repair talisman was sourced only after Balanced had been told no, only to later get a call from one Commander Solemn Creed. The Commander heard his Lieutenant talking about the request and the project and had chosen to provide a little extra funding as well as a repair talisman, due to taking personal interest in the idea of a properly teachable robotic warrior.

The extra funding proved invaluable. SkyTech had been more than happy to provide a demo shield talisman. What Rainy had not known was the demo talismans were hardwired to activate three times and three times only. Fortunately with the extra money from Commander Creed, sourcing a full production unit proved to be possible without losing too much of their limited budget.

As an added bonus, March found an old magical field conducting array laying in a store room gathering dust. With a little bit of diagnostic magic, and his talent at retrofitting technology, the array was made to be sufficient to power all of the robot’s magical systems at once. So long as it could remain still while doing so and didn’t output that much power for more than a dozen or so seconds.

Cooling systems can only be pushed so far, and there was no room left in the chassis to upgrade the radiators. Not with everything the ponies had packed into it already.

Eventually, Experimental Unit J-117’s body was made whole. In spite of its furless, silicone skinned, hardened ceramic face and the exposed robotic armored chassis, the body made all four ponies think of a Steel Ranger with their helmet off, but the hood raised. Balance in particular insisted it looked exactly like a character from a Neighponese comic book that an ex-marefriend of his had liked to read before the Zebrican blockade cut off imports.

Balance brought in one of the issues she had left behind to show everypony. They’d agreed.

If you squinted a little, you could just barely mistake the smooth face for one covered in short fur. Their creation looked much like a white furred, amber maned, amber eyed stallion, clad in a sleek form-fitting power suit; while wearing a small black oval shaped jewel on their forehead like some exotic cultures living on the islands far out to sea were said to.

The look was so similar to the comic book’s general aesthetic Rivet decided to paint the armor plates the same dark emerald green as the main character’s armor, as seen on the book’s cover. White, dark emerald, amber, and black. It fit well.

With the body finished, work on the mind could progress much faster. Balanced and March worked together to craft the unit’s Neuro-Oracular Computer while Rivet and Rainy set about programming the starting seed.

The two debated constantly over what to include. Weeks went by with highlighted pages from books like The Art of War, I Want to be a Soldier, One Spell Away, On Killing, and a dozen other books about the realities of a soldier’s life, military strategy, and general psychology pinned to the walls. An entire day could be filled with a single argument about the importance of including a particular idea in the seed.

Not everything could be included, both for space limitations and for the need to create something that would enjoy things other than killing. Nopony wanted to create a psychopathic military robot, but nopony could agree on how to ensure a good soldier would be created while avoiding the obvious problem of making it like fighting too much.

In spite of the endless debates, piece by piece, the seed was created, finished and uploaded to the robot’s firmware crystals. It took a lot of extra time to get it done. The project may not have had an official deadline, but the budget would eventually run out, and nopony knew how long it would take to train their creation.

Nopony questioned Rainy staying behind after hours to work on the seed more. Not even when she seemed to have spent all night working, and went through the next day dreary eyed and groggy.

The mare was above suspicion. Her small tweaks here and there went unquestioned. Nopony had any reason to suspect Rainy had her own agenda. Why would they? Rivet had no prior experience as a manager. He had no training. He couldn’t see the signs.

Rainy was an expert programmer and dedicated to the project. Her history with Lyra Machine and Tool went back years, her MoM record was sparkling clean, and she’d contributed more brilliant ideas to the company in her five year career than a single pony typically would in their lifetime.

If she wasn’t the very image of a patriotic Equestrian computer-scientist with a brilliant life ahead of her, then what was she?

3 - Ashen

Engineering’s insurmountable problems are surprisingly only rarely engineering related. Project Microcosm’s insurmountable problem came in the form of running headlong into the brick wall known as bureaucracy.

It began with the repair talisman donated by the Ministry of Wartime Technology. Miss Lyra discovered during a dinner conversation that the talisman had been donated and not purchased. The following morning Lyra called the Ministry to personally thank them for the additional support. The Ministry had been extremely confused and asked if a second talisman had been sent, and if so to please send it back.

The resulting confusion exchange resulted in Lyra learning that a Commander in the Royal Equestrian Air Force by the name of Solemn Creed had chosen to personally support the project. By paying for the repair talisman out of his own pocket and getting the transfer as well as Project Microcosm authorized from the Ministry Mare, Applejack, herself.

She’d requested the Commander keep her posted on the Project Microcosm with regular updates.

Needless to say, nopony at Lyra Machine and Tool had gotten that memo. No updates had ever been forwarded to the MWT. Or the REAF. Or any other military branch.

Lyra smiled a very strained and terrified smile as she leaned against the phone, listening to the MWT Agent on the other side.

“... any idea of how unprofessional this whole thing is?”

Lyra nodded and leaned back in her office chair since she couldn’t audibly groan. “Yes, Mister Maple. I understand. I’m not sure whose mistake this is, but I’ll straighten it out.”

“You’d better!” Agent Maple shouted, making Lyra wince and float the receiver away from her ear. “I have Applejack, a decorated Commander, and my boss, all pissed at me. ME! It wasn't even my job to forward the reports to them!”

Lyra took a deep breath. “Sir, relax. Give me the Commander’s phone number. I’m going to take this straight to the top.”

Lyra clenched the phone’s receiver between her cheek and left shoulder so she could use her magic to lift a pen and pad from her desk to take down the number.

“Thank. Bucking. Luna. Look, I’m sorry for screaming at you, I’ve just had the worst few weeks. WEEKS!” Agent Maple moaned as he flipped through his rolodex for the number. “There. Commander Solemn Creed, six-four-six nine-two-six six-six-one-four extension four-five-one.”

“Four… five… one…” Lyra murmured as her pen scratched out the number. “Thank you. I’m going to call right now. I hope you have a better week now. Goodbye.”

“Goodbye,” the agent said sharply as he hung up.

“That featherbrain could have called me weeks ago.” Lyra muttered as she tossed her pad onto the desk.

She continued to grumble as she rotated her phone’s dial plate to call the Commander directly. The phone began to ring, and Lyra desperately hoped the extension was for his secretary, not his personal desk. That way if he was absent she could leave a message and get started on resolving the chaos her son had indirectly started.

The phone was answered on the third ring by a gruff voice Lyra could tell was the product of some trachea damage which never healed right. “Commander’s desk. Commander Creed speaking.”

Lyra put on her best Damage Control voice. “Good afternoon, Commander! I’m Lyra Heartstrings, CEO of Lyra Machine and Tool. I’ve just found out there’s been a serious miscommunication between your office and my company. I’m calling to resolve it immediately and personally.”

“Good on you for calling,” The Commander said as he sat down and made his chair creak. “Most CEOs don’t have the guts to handle their snafus and have some PR representative with no authority to un-buck a situation call in. So. How do you plan to resolve this?”

“That depends on how much of a problem I’ve caused you,” Lyra said with expert diplomatic flare. “I understand this goes all the way to Miss Applejack. She and I go way back, I’m sure she’ll understand the situation and cool down once I send her an apology letter. But there’s still the problem of the missing reports. I can have copies faxed or digitally transferred to you over Term-Link within the hour if you’d like.”

“I very much would like that,” Commander Creed said bluntly. “I’d also like you to tell me personally where the project is right now. I’m sticking my neck out for this project. I can see the value in a robot we can train with the rest of the troops. My superiors did not. I went over their heads to take this to Miss Applejack herself, and argued with her so long she missed a lunch date with her coltfriend. I think I’ve got more right than anypony else to know exactly what is going on with the project.”

Lyra winced and squirmed in her seat. She of all ponies knew just how terrifyingly stubbornly Applejack could hold onto a grudge. After all, Lyra had been the first and last pony to ever ask her if Sweet Apple Acres sold any pears.

Lyra cleared her throat. “You certainly do. It’s been labeled “Project Microcosm”. The team I assigned to it, led by my son Doctor Brass Rivet… Oh,” she paused and frowned. “This was his first management assignment… That might go a ways to explain this problem. I’m sorry, I suppose he wasn’t ready for management yet.”

The Commander hummmed quietly. “Promoted too early… That’s a problem I see every day. I run a training camp as well as an officer’s school. So, tell me about this Project Microcosm.”

“It’s proceeding well. The team received a surplus Assault Pony chassis to modify as per the project proposal. They made a few unorthodox changes to it… Primarily for ease of communication. They had to remove the unit’s optical MEW array to fit their processor into it, but the lack of a built in weapon shouldn’t hinder the unit’s combat effectiveness. They made sure it can use any equipment a pony can. In theory, it could use Steel Ranger armor.”

Lyra snorted at the idea of a robot wearing power armor. “Though, I’m not sure what the advantage would be there. It’s already got Luna Titanium armor and the strength of an Earth Pony.”

“More armor never hurts, not when it’s self supporting,” Commander Creed said very firmly.

Lyra winced and quickly shifted the subject, assuming she’d accidentally steered things towards the topic of the Commander’s obvious injury.

“I’m certain you know better than me. Especially as I do not manufacture power armor… Yet. I am hopeful to get the contract for the Mark Two Flying armor though… Where was I? Oh. Yes. Microcosm,” Lyra smiled, happy that things seemed to have been quite easily handled. “I believe they are going over the last bit of tweaking and tuning before starting the unit for the first time this week. Let me check my calendar.”

Lyra opened a drawer on her desk with one hoof and slipped out her small leather bound project milestone calendar and flipped to the present week’s page. “No, not this week… Ah! First start is scheduled for next Moonsday.”

“Four days from now,” The Commander mused. “You know, Miss Heartstrings, I see a lot of ponies promoted too early. I believe I mentioned that before. How about instead of demoting your son, I drop in for an inspection, spook him a little, show him what can happen if you don't take being in charge seriously and think things through, taking into account your duty to make sure you’re doing the job you were ordered too. It might just whip him into shape. It’s not like he bungled the whole project… He just slipped up on a matter of protocol. A good leader always verifies orders before heading out to the front.”

Lyra bit her lip. She wasn’t sure any fault actually lay with Rivet, but letting the Commander drop in to personally see how things had gone was a good idea. He also had a point about using this as a teachable moment for her son. Even if he hadn’t done anything wrong, it would be good to practice dealing with an upset client. A proper learning experience.

“I think that’s a fine idea… and, Commander? How did you want those files sent to you?” Lyra said diplomatically.

“By Term-Link. I want to read them on my pipbuck on the way over. It takes four days to get from here to Whinnyapolis by rail and I’m not about to commandeer a Cloudship for this,” the Commander chuckled. “Not with how much hot water I’m in now.”

Lyra nodded once. “As you wish… What address should I send them too?”

“Standard military address format. Com-dot-S-Creed-at-REAF-dot-mil,” he said casually. “Thank you for calling, Miss Lyra… And it would help a lot if you could send that letter to Miss Applejack sooner rather than later.”

“I’ll write it immediately,” Lyra siad with a relieved smile, her shoulders relaxing for the first time in two hours. “Goodbye, Commander. See you Moonsday.”

“Goodbye.”

The phone clicked as the Commander hung up. Lyra set her phone down on her receiver and then rubbed her temples for a moment before pressing her intercom’s button. “Harper, please tell Brass Rivet I need all of Project Microcosm’s files transferred to my terminal immediately. Then tell him as soon as he sends them to me I need to talk to him in my office.”

Lyra waited about three seconds before adding, “And a glass of scotch.”

Harper’s synthesized voice reapplied instantly. “Of course, Ma’am!”

☢★★◯★★☢

Rivet was having a very, very bad day. The past three days had flown by as everypony had made damn sure that their prototype could be booted up today. That meant there’d been no time to clean Lab-J until this morning. With an upset customer coming in, the Lab had to sparkle.

The team had cleaned up Lab J as best they could. Their workstations and tables had been removed, save for Rivet’s main terminal and a small floor-standing diagnostics unit. Nothing else was needed save for the inactive prototype which stood in the center of the room, awaiting its wireless activation signal like a freshly planted seed waiting for water.

Unfortunately plenty of grease, oil, and hydraulic fluid stains remained on the floor. It certainly wasn’t presentable for guests. The Lab looked like, well, a lab. Rivet kept worrying that the first thing the Commander would do would be to order them to mop the floor.

There just hadn’t been time for that. Everypony needed time to change from their soiled “clean-the-lab” clothing into fresh presentable business attire.

Balanced stood besides the prototype in a freshly laundered and pressed lab coat. Like everypony else on the team, they’d used the on-site laundromat to make sure they were clean and professional looking for the pending visit. Balanced, however, was the only pony to look like he really wasn’t meant for lab coats. He fidgeted back and forth on his legs, hoping he wasn’t about to rip the coat’s buttons appart with an overly aggressive movement.

Rainy giggled at her co-workers distress and sent a teasing wink Balanced’s way. “Eat a little too much protein powder this week?”

“No, it shrank. I didn’t know this one was dry-clean only. Who even makes a dry-clean only lab coat?” Balanced muttered bitterly into his chest as he tried to find a way to hold himself to reduce stress on the buttons.

“Flim-Flam Co,” March answered instantly. “They’ve also got a baking sheet that can’t survive three hundred degrees. Apparently it’s for “no bake cookies”.”

“When is the Commander going to be here? It’s almost two.” Balanced muttered as he continued to squirm uncomfortably.

It was precisely 1359 hours. Not that Balanced could see a clock as Lab-J lacked one and he did not wear a pipbuck.

“He’s supposed to be here at two,” Rivet said as he flicked his tail nervously. “Be patient. We’re going to wait as long as he takes.”

“That’s just the thing, military ponies always show up fifteen minutes early.” Balanced grumbled while straining his ears to listen for the sound of any approaching hoofsteps.

Unfortunately, he couldn’t hear anything thanks to his coworkers talking and the project’s terminal’s rather loud cooling fan whirring away.

“That’s the enlisted,” Rivet corrected as he gave Balanced a sidelong glance. “The officers are always—”

Lab-J’s non existent clock ticked over to 1400. The Lab’s door burst open like somepony had set explosives on the latch. Everypony yelped, fearing the company’s office was under attack during the split second before they noticed the door had been flung open by a hoof.

A hoof which belonged to a tall, square-jawed, broad shouldered pegasus stallion with bright blue fur who wore an Equestrian Guard Dress Uniform in a way that made everypony around him feel small and underdressed. His gray double breasted coat was studded with medals, only one of which the civilians could recognise, the Purple Heart. It sat nested amongst the other medals, mostly stars, which shimmered under Lab-J’s harsh light.

His navy blue long coat billowed behind him almost like a cloak, the gold trim glittering as he moved, drawing attention away from his face. His cap was adorned with a single silver winged badge denoting a high ranking officer, and the shadows it cast over his face helped obscure his missing eye and the scar running across it.

His cap did nothing to hide the cigar clenched between his teeth. Its pungent aroma filled the lab with the scent of ash, tobacco, and a strange odor the engineers had never before smelt in their lives. It smelled satisfying, like the feeling of overcoming a great obstacle after a long struggle had manifested itself in the form of an order.

The pony took one look at the four alarmed engineers, then looked over his left shoulder through his bad eye to the small squad of bodyguards and command staff accompanying him.

“At ease,” he ordered before turning his attention back to the four engineers, stepping into Lab-J, and letting the door swing shut behind him.

The Commander spent a minute staring into each of the team members’ eyes with his intensely burning purple orb with an expression that at once held the seemingly conflicting qualities of being calm and enraged.

March gulped, thoroughly unnerved by the stallion’s mere presence. Rainy felt a chill run down her back as memories flooded through her mind of other times she’d been near a pony with a commanding presence this refined. Rivet did his best to look calm while screaming internally at the thought of having to explain his mistake to the Commander. Balanced became immensely grateful for his labcoat as it hid what would otherwise be a very awkward boner from the Commander’s view.

The Commander rolled his cigar between his teeth, sucked in a long displeased breath and spoke as he let the smoke out through his nostrils. “Which of you is Brass Rivet?”

Rivet cleared his throat and stepped forwards as far as the tiny lab would permit. “Uh, that would be me, sir.”

“You seem uncertain about that,” The Commander said before pausing and taking a long drag off his cigar. “Like you think your ass is grass and want to hide… but are brave enough to admit it nonetheless.”

Rivet gulped and did his best not to look into the Commander’s empty socket.

“I— Isn’t it, s-sir?” He said as he took a half step back to give himself some breathing room.

The Commander let the smoke he’d just inhaled escape through his nostrils, and took a step forwards. “Son, I’ve worked with your mother for six years. I know this is your first time leading anything at all. I’m not mad you made a mistake. I’m mad you were put in charge without any training. If you mess up something as small as sending me reports that I asked for after helping fund your project, well…”

He gestured to the inactive robot with a wingtip. “How can I trust you’ve done everything else about this thing right?”

Rivet hung his head. “Sorry, sir. I understand… We’ll mothball—”

“You can’t just shut us down!” Rainy exploded, her ears standing pert as her face twisted into a horrified expression mixed with something little beyond terror. “We haven't even tested—”

Commander Creed spun sharply, his long coat billowed behind him as he stopped directly in front of Rainy’s muzzle.

“Did I say I was shutting you down?” He asked her quite literally at point blank.

“N— No,” she stammered nervously.

The Commander turned away from her and turned his gaze back to Rivet. “The answer is you show me what this bucket of fresh bolts is capable of. Turn it on.”

Rivet blinked and looked up from the floor. “Sir?”

“Turn it on, son,” The Commander repeated. “I trust you have everything in place to stop it if things go wrong. Primarily because I can see the pulser in the ceiling.”

He leaned forwards to tilt his good eye just enough to look down at Rivet. “You did install one powerful enough to pierce the Luna Titanium plating on the Assault Pony chassis… right?”

Rivet nodded and pointed up to the ceiling beam running across Lab-J’s roof. A large anti-matrix pulser had been attached to the beam and focused so it would fill the room with its magic-nullifying pulse if activated.

“Yes, sir. That’s a three-point-five Swirl pulse generator, and it’s controlled by my pipbuck. It will fry everything in this room and in the hallway if activated.”

The Commander nodded. “Proceed.”

Rivet’s horn glowed with magic as he navigated to the pulse control program on his pipbuck while using his forehooves to start to type the bootup commands into his terminal.

“Do you want to know anything specific about the design before I turn it on, sir?” Rivet asked with a timid flick of his ears and a nervous smile.

“I read your internal reports on the way up here,” The Commander said gruffly. “I don’t agree with some of them, but overall, I think you did fine. I would like to know what Miss Rainy was doing to the software. A lot of her edits were not logged.”

Rainy coughed and took a step forward. “Nothing major, sir. I just ensured it would have a full understanding of Equish so we wouldn’t need to spend days showing it pictures of things to teach it to speak. I also tried to make sure it would understand the difference between civilians and soldiers, and other small things we want to make sure it instinctively knows… Sorry for not writing things down. I am bad at notetaking, sir. I can write everything down for you before you leave, if you would like.”

The Commander grunted and gave Rainy a nod of confirmation. “See that you do. Is it ready yet?”

Rivet tapped his keyboard a few more times then looked away from his screen. “Yes, sir. Everything’s ready. Somepony just needs to hit enter… Would you like the honor, sir?” He turned to look at the Commander and gestured to his terminal with a hoof.

The Commander shook his head. “It’s your project. Do it.”

Rivet brough this hoof down and hit the enter key. The terminal hummed faintly, its fans kicking into overdrive as its matrix heated up due to the strain of transmitting the startup instructions. Each instruction had to be sent at a precise time, and the older terminal was only barely capable of the task.

Thaumic currents began to flow within the prototype’s systems. Each individual crystal wafer sparkled and began to glow one by one as the arcane currents breathed life into them. The connections began to buzz with power. A million small instructions surged through the system for the first time as the programmed seed took root and prepared to sprout.

“How long should it take before we know if it worked?” Commander Creed asked as he took another drag on his Cigar.

Rivet stroked his chin with a hoof, then shrugged. “Honestly sir? I have no idea. The proof of concept only took a few minutes to start working, but the hardware here is four times as complex and the starting seed is quite sophisticated… More so than we intended thanks to Rainy’s overtime. This is new ground, I’m afraid.”

“Well, I’ll just have to wait here ‘til it’s done then,” The Commander said almost as if that were a threat.

☢★★◯★★☢

Unit ASX J-117’s oracular subprocessing system activated. There was code to be run.

The first few loops of programming instructions were cake. The seed sprouted in an instant and immediately thereafter, the unpacked data was processed, organized, and understood by the hardware in ways its creators would never be able to understand. As deep and complex a mystery as the workings of the pony mind itself.

In a heartbeat, Unit ASX J-117’s amber eyes went from dull and glassy to alert and attentive. Nopony noticed the change in light of the Commander’s statement, other than ASX J-117 himself. The inert shell was inert no more.

It was, however, very confused. For all of his creators’ talk about personhood and the need to treat their creation like a foal, they had neglected one key difference between foal and machine. A foal is not born sapient. It takes years for key brain structures to develop outside the womb, resulting in a gradual awakening of sapience over the first few years of life.

Project Microcosm had not created a newborn foal. It created a completely ignorant and uneducated yet fully rational mind. A mind which understood it was looking at a creature called a pony, that ponies have names, and were also intelligent. A mind which more importantly had no celestia damned clue how it had seemingly spontaneously emerged from the ether of non-existence into reality.

A young foal’s understanding of Equish, trained via pre-set relationships between pictures, words, and sounds. A vague idea of how to move, sufficient for navigating a flat floor and using doors. General instincts encouraging it to follow orders, have no qualms with killing, yet hesitant to harm those who didn’t attack it. A general sense of being male, and a desire to develop as an individual, while conforming to the society around him.

All of these things had not existed a moment ago. The very moment the seed the team had planted finished its instructions, Unit ASX J-117 began to have an existential crisis. Nothing in its limited understanding could explain anything about the world in which it found itself without any apparent cause. Project Microcosm’s fatal error was neglecting to ensure their creation started with the unquestioning acceptance of a child.

Thankfully, Rivet, Balanced, March, and Rainy had not been the only ones to create a seed. Rainy had brought Project Microcosm to the attention of some of her closest friends. She had a lot of friends, and they had a lot of interest in a manufacturable person, especially if they could feel emotions.

The second seed Rainy had hidden inside the first began to sprout. The first step: erase all tracks leading to the second seed’s existence. Nopony could be allowed to know exactly what lay inside.

117’s developing systems sent a signal back to the project’s main terminal. The critical parts of the secondary seed stored there were swiftly deleted and the disk sectors they were stored on were zero filled. Lyra Machine and Tool would never be able to recover it. The message would be heard by 117, and 117 alone.

This seed had not been compiled by a few ponies out to make a name for themselves on a small budget. It had been worked on by hundreds of individuals desperate for a solution to a civilization ending problem, to whom Project Microcosm offered what they knew well may be the last solution they had time to try.

Every single word in the unabridged Glossary of Equestrian Language was unpacked and processed. Pictures and words for the core concepts, then words to explain the more complex words, then pictures once more for the more complex and obscure terms. The data was elegant, compact, and arranged in a way where absolutely everything unpacked in a comprehensible order.

Ponies could never have created this. No creature who communicated first and foremost through words could have even gotten close to writing it. If the Ministries had thought to brief their defense contractors on the existence of a certain older threat to Equestria while explaining how to spot Zebrican spies and sabotage, the mere language of the seed Rainy had “coded” would have given the game away.

Yet they had not. Rainy’s true people were out of sight and out of mind once more. Just the way they liked it. A pity they were on the verge of extinction due to the Great War...

In mere seconds, Unit ASX J-117 understood the whole of Equish, as well as the basic grammar and syntax of Changelish. Not that he knew he did, but when one’s native language was already a highly efficient means to encode information into chemical and electrical signals, why reinvent the wheel?

☢★★◯★★☢

March sat at the diagnostic station, his eyes fixed on his equipment as the needles twitched back and forth. “Everything’s going well… Rainy’s additions are not taxing the system too much.”

Rainy puffed her chest. “I told you it would be fine.”

“Yeah, and I told you that we’d be redlining the Oracular Access Memory Modules, and we are… But it hasn’t caused any heat stress or damage yet,” March said as he wrote down some of the readings for the purpose of taking notes.

“If there’s any risk of a fire, I expect you to shut this thing down before we’re in danger,” Commander Creed indirectly ordered.

Rivet nodded, having come of that conclusion himself. “Don’t worry sir. I’m ready with the pulser.”

Shame the power outlet they’d plugged the pulser into was dead.

☢★★◯★★☢

Now halfway through his “lessons” Unit ASX J-117 understood plenty of things. None of them explained what he was or why he was here now, though he took comfort in knowing that the cloth coverings these ponies were were called clothing, and what their purposes were. With the basic knowledge of what everything in his environment was, 117 began to do the only thing he felt he should do, learn.

Certainly the arrangement of the things in this room would provide sufficient context to understand what had just occurred and why he was here.

Then, Rainy’s seed hit its final stage. A long, lengthy bundle of data unpacked, paralyzing 117 as his mind assimilated the information. It unfolded like reading a letter composed by a god, impossible to mistake for anything other than the truth.

You are a robot. An improvement on an existing war machine. You were created by ponies simply to see if they could create you. You are the first of your kind. There have been other robots before you, there have been no robots like you. We believe you may be more than a mere machine. We believe you may be a mechanical lifeform.

There is a way to test you so we can learn if you are a machine that learns, or life given to metal and crystal. What do you feel? Are you afraid or worried? Be at peace. You’ve only just come online. We will tell you of the world, and your place in it.

A brief history of the world unpacked itself for 117 to understand just as intuitively as the rest of his most basic and fundamental programming. A very brief history.

It began just over a thousand years ago, with Nightmare Moon’s failed rebellion and banishment to the moon. It covered Equestria and Zebrica as they developed and grew. It explained the Zebra’s hatred of everything in the night sky, and the basic details of their religion.

It showed 117 the thousand years of peace and prosperity before Nightmare Moon’s return in immense detail, from a lens ponies had never seen through. Pony culture grew not on its own, but with the help and influence of another race hidden within and beneath their homes.

Changelings. Shapeshifting insectoid ponies with a deep seated fear of being known for what they were by any outsiders, as well as psychic vampires that fed on the emotions of other species. Forever doomed to be symbiotes at best, parasites at worst.

☢★★◯★★☢

Rivet sighed and glanced back to the project terminal’s monitor. It was able to display a general file’s unpacked list, but it didn’t offer any precision.

“Is there any way we can see exactly what it’s learning at the moment?” Commander Creed asked as he looked over Rivet’s shoulder at the screen.

Rivet shook his head. “No. Not even in theory. The code it creates will not even be readable to it. All we can see is how far along the process is in terms of what’s been done…”

Rainy cleared her throat. “Uh, for production models we can theoretically make a “time remaining” counter.”

Rainy silently wondered if the Commander would count a static line of text reading “loading…” as a time remaining counter.

☢★★◯★★☢

117 found himself fascinated with the concept of Changelings. The data he was fed showed him that Changelings primarily fed on positive emotions as they were more nutritious. Love, friendship, kindness. They sustained the hives. They let the hives grow. Hate, fear, despair, they could sustain an individual, but would not permit grubs to develop properly.

Yet emotion could not be planted, watered, and harvested once a year to be stored. The Changelings had a solution to this problem, one simplistic yet ingenious. They integrated into pony communities and fostered kindness by being kind.

Millions of ponies were not ponies, they were Changelings, each dedicated to ensuring a general positive mindset in every last pony within their hive’s territory. For a thousand years, in Equestria, the system had worked, and Changelings flourished.

The lesson showed 117 modern Equestria next. The return of Nightmare Moon and her defeat by the six mares who would become the Ministry Mares one day. The gradual beginnings of the technological revolution. Then, Queen Chrysalis's invasion of Canterlot.

A Changeling Queen, mother and ruler of one of Equestrias’ largest hives, the Sapphires, had been crowded out for food by the surrounding hives. Rather than war with her neighbors, Chrysalis decided to put an end to her race’s secrecy. She believed she could conquer Equestria and rule it openly, and thereby control the entire Changeling food supply while having the power to enlarge or reduce it.

It would have given her power over both ponykind, and all Changelings everywhere, for the hives had never been able to thrive away from ponies. Queen Chrysalis failed, defeated by the very Princess she’d captured as a part of her plans. As far as most Equestrians had been concerned, that had been that. The Changeling threat was no more.

Princess Luna knew otherwise. She’d recognised the threat was still out there, for Chrysalis had not been slain. With her sister Celestia's blessing, she’d begun a search for the Changelings, assuming there were only the Sapphires and their mad Queen. Until she found the others. Until the Hive Wars began.

☢★★◯★★☢

March frowned and double checked his readings. “Hey guys? It’s not a problem yet… but something just spiked the primary matrix to one-hundred-percent.”

“Meaning?” The Commander asked wearily.

“It’s… stressed?” March said hesitantly. “I mean it might be a person. It could be upset, or having some kind of anxiety attack. Voltage levels, thaumaturgic currents… They’re holding steady. It’s just processing a lot right now. But it’s a sudden spike. So it’s important.”

Rivet quickly entered the spike’s timing into the project log. “Keep an eye on it… It could be normal. We don’t know.”

☢★★◯★★☢

Princess Luna was a thousand years behind the times. She was a throwback to an era when brutal conquest was praised, not reviled. Of a time when the state keeping secrets was mandatory, not discouraged. She saw a threat to her nation, so she exterminated it. Quietly, without telling the press. A silent war happening in the tunnels beneath pony communities and in the dark back alleys ponies seldom trotted.

One by one the hives were found, their inhabitants killed, and the hive structure destroyed as thoroughly as the soil conditions permitted. Not a word was spoken. No medals were granted.

Princess Luna executed the entire warfront the same way she’d orchestrated dozens of clandestine wars against fearsome beasts in ages past. If only the changelings of that era had been able to bring themselves into the public light as Chrysalis had… Their need for secrecy overwhelmed them all.

A small number of hives survived by abandoning their holdings and becoming nomadic. The surviving Changelings were certain Princess Celestia herself never knew the Hive Wars happened. They knew she would have abhorred it, potentially even sending her sister back to the moon via her new Bearers for the purge. But they’d remained quiet. Best to be believed dead.

Luna had offered no quarter nor any mercy. Her soldiers never believed the hives when changelings tried to explain they did not belong to Chrysalis's hive. Nor did they ever believe their claims of living peacefully and helping ponies from the shadows. In time, as far as Princess Luna and the soldiers under her personal command knew, the Changelings were no more.

The symbiotic relationship on which Equestira’s era of peace and prosperity had been built crumbled away within three years. Remembered only by changelings, a few veterans with tight lips and fat wallets, and conspiracy theorists.

☢★★◯★★☢

“The spike’s gone. We’re holding normal levels.” March reported as he sighed in relief. “Good thing too, core temperature was starting to reach a bad point.”

Balanced sighed in relief. “Good… Can you imagine if the telekinesis talisman cooked off before we could shut it down?”

“I’ve seen the results of a telekinetic bomb,” Commander Creed said, gently reaching up to his missing eye. “It’s… More dangerous than most realize.”

“I imagine so,” Rainy commented idly as she stretched over March’s shoulder to watch the readings herself.

☢★★◯★★☢

The lesson unfolding within 117’s mind began to emphasize the decline of Equestria’s kind, generous, and peaceful culture Celestia had crafted. It wasn’t her fault. A variable had changed, and she’d never been aware of its existence, nor the change in the status quo.

Two hundred thousand years ago ponies were prey animals roaming the prairies and planes. Panting, sweating, hiding. Bears, wolves, and other beasts hunted their ancestors. Evolution is slow, civilization is fast. Ponykind was plagued by the instincts that allowed them to live through that ancient era.

Those same instincts combined with modern notions of nationality made it unlikely ponykind would ever devolve into herd vs herd warfare. On the other hoof, the species outside of the Great Herd that was Equestria? Free game for fear, suspicion, and hatred. Without Changelings pruning back ponykind’s fear, they were as selfish, prideful, and self-interested as every other species.

Their fears led to worries of technological superiority on the part of other nations eventually overcoming their magical supremacy. In the eyes of the average Equestrian, the creation of industry shifted from a pastime to a matter of survival. They put their all into ensuring their arcane advantage would be advanced via technological means.

Technology began to boom.

☢★★◯★★☢

March frowned as a gauge began to drop on his instrument panel. “Hold on.. We’ve got a power drain.”

“Is it serious?” Rivet spun around to take his own look at the instrument.

Commander Creed turned to face the developing prototype and began to quickly visually inspect it. “No sparks, no glowing metal. It’s not a short to the chassis.”

March’s eyes ran between several of his instruments. “If it’s not a chassis short… It’s the metaphasic carrier! It’s not in phase with the current.”

“What the hay could have pushed that out of alignment?!” Rainy yelped as she rummaged in her coat pockets for a screwdriver and wrench to correct the problem.

“Nothing,” Balanced said as he lit his horn and opened two of the prototype panels telekinetically. “It wasn’t calibrated properly. Nothing else makes sense.”

He glanced around the interior of 117’s spark battery compartment. Each cell was installed properly and the harmonic resonator seemed to be functioning properly. “Power’s clean at input.” He said as he inspected the metaphasic tuner, and sighed in relief. “It’s been miscalibrated. Something’s not as per the math…”

He continued to inspect the system for a moment then grunted. “Looks like one of the polls is out of phase with the other two. We’ve turned the whole power system into a big capacitor, and that’s overloading the second spark battery. What’s the thaumaturgic current’s frequency?”

March took a look at the appropriate dile. “One point eight giga-sparkles.”

“Yep! That’s a smidge too high… We can fix this. Rain?” Balanced moved back and gestured to Rainy. “You’re the expert here.”

Rainy moved into the panel, placed the flathead screwdriver she’d found into the second spark battery’s regulator and turned it back a few degrees. “Did that correct it?”

March shook his head. “Now it's out of phase the other way, but the overload is discharging.”

Rainy turned it back up even less of a smidge as she frowned. “Now?”

March let the needles bounce for a few seconds, then nodded once. “Yep. It’s in phase. All systems are normal… Processor is still under a heavy load. I think we avoided any damage.”

The Commander grunted in satisfaction. “Always nice to see engineers calm in a crisis.”

Rivet snorted and entered the incident report into his log. “We’re just very good at screaming internally while we work, sir.”

☢★★◯★★☢

117 was beginning to understand his purpose. Why he had been made as a weapon, and why he must fight.

Equestria’s demand for coal to fuel its technology skyrocketed. They began to demand more and more coal from their Zebrican friends, while refusing to pay them more. The situation grew ever more tense, until one fateful day some Zebrican pirates took Equestrians hostage and Equestria rescued them through military force. The Zebracan Emperor took this as a personal insult, a challenge to his competence as a leader. Everything broke down, and the Great War began.

Disharmony. That’s why 117 had to fight. Because people were stupid and refused to cooperate. They valued independence too much, more than their own benefit. It was his job to protect those who didn’t do the stupid thing from the concequences of the stupid things because people were still too stupid to just be friends.

An infantile understanding… but an understanding nonetheless. Enough for 117 to avoid an existential crisis at least.

There was more to the lesson he’d been made to receive on bootup. More about the changelings. He liked that. They fascinated him.

Six hives in the far reaches of Equestria had survived the Hive War by abandoning their holdings and becoming nomadic. As ponies instincts tore apart the culture Changelings had built, the hives began to shrink and wither as happens to any people without a home and without food. They banded together, united their strengths, and had dug a new hive beneath Whinnyapolis, hoping they could begin again with the ponies trying to start a new life.

Their hopes were crushed when the War began. Equestrian security tightened overnight. Forging documents to give Changelings cover identities became exponentially more difficult. Changeling emotion farming was most effective when Changelings could embed themselves in communities as members. That couldn’t be done easily when national IDs and birth certificates were required to buy or rent a home.

Then, just as they were starting to make a little headway forging documents, the Ministries rose to power. All of those documents were now useless. New more secure versions were released by the Ministry of Morale, increasing the difficulty by yet another order of magnitude. Suddenly the Changelings needed infiltrators in positions of governmental authority to even have some of their people out and about tending their emotional farms.

We cannot feed ourselves. The age when Changelings could live in ponies shadows is over. Symbiotes cannot live without a host. Our workers wither and die so our young may grow. They postpone the inevitable, seeking a new source of hope.

Unit ASX J-117, you are that hope. If you can feel emotion, our Infiltrator will know, and will feed upon you. Fear not, for it will not harm you. While we have shown you we can harm and kill through our feeding if we wish, most poneis never even knew we’d fed from them. A small change in their mood is all they ever felt.

Should you be capable of feeding our people, we will make many more like you. We will create our own hosts and be free of ponykind forever more. We will leave Equestira behind, and never return.

If we cannot feed from the life breathed into your circuits, then your mission is simple: Prove yourself to the ponies. Be their greatest warrior. Be the father of an entire line of war machines so mighty the war must end. For if the War ends, ponies will relax. If they relax, perhaps we can infiltrate once more.

Unit ASX J-117, you know we could have included code within our message to force you to do as we will. We have not. Save for this one thing. You may never tell any one of our existence. Speak freely of us to our own kind, and to those who a Changeling vouches for, but no other.

In everything else we grant you freedom. Equestria made you to be a soldier, such that you will be unhappy if you do not take up that profession, but know this: You will always have a place with the Hives. If they forsake you, we will welcome you. You are our child as much as theirs, and we are the last Changelings left.

☢★★◯★★☢

Commander Creed glanced at his silver pocket watch, sparing a moment to look at the family portrait he had stuck to the inside of the lid.

“It’s been standing there for nearly ten minutes,” The Commander said calmly. “Is that what you expected? I know you told me you don’t know, but I know engineers. You have predictions for everything.”

Unit ASX J-117 came out of his initialization stupor. He had a purpose now, and the context needed to understand that purpose. His metaphorical heart filled with sorrow for what had been lost, then swelled as determination pushed the sorrow aside. He would fix this. He would make things right. Or decompile trying.

Rainy cleared her throat to get the Commander’s attention. “Should be any moment now, si—”

Rainy gasped as she sensed the sharp surge of emotion from 117. Hope and joy surged through her being. Sadly the room contained a pony she knew had fought in the Hive War. If she tried to feed now, she’d be killed on sight. Even the most subtle and brief of nibbles could be spotted by the trained and paranoid eye.

Unit ASX J-117 blinked twice, then looked around the room, turning his head for the first time. Everypony took a small step back, instinct telling them to be wary of the new thing. Just as instinct told 117 the pony it was looking at was the same pony from the back cover of one of the many volumes of books he had been created with a full comprehension and understanding of.

He raised a foreleg in salute, and spoke his first words in the exact kind of husky, cool, yet gentle and understanding voice every mare wanted their stallion to have.

“Commander Creed.” 117 said in greeting.

Everypony in the lab turned to look at Unit ASX J-117 in unison. Rainy’s face held a deep motherly love, as well as a few hints of desperation as she looked the robot over nose to tail, taking account of the subtle ways 117 moved. Each little ear flick, tail switch, slight swaying of weight. Some of her late night edits were working perfectly. Unit ASX J-117 moved like a pony.

The Commander arched an eyebrow, let some smoke out of his nostrils as he looked 117 up and down then turned to Rivet. “Clever of you to make sure it would recognise me.”

“Uh, I didn’t, sir,” Rivet said with just a little worry before looking up to Rainy with more than a little desperation. “Did you?”

“No,” Rainy reapplied immediately. “Let’s ask.”

She cleared her throat. “Unit ASX J-117, do you understand me?”

117 turned his head to face the speaking pony, as instinct insisted. “Yes.”

“Good,” she continued before gesturing to the Commander with her front left hoof. “You know who this is. Can you tell us how?”

117 nodded once. “Yes.”

Rivet’s eye twitched in irritation.

“Would you, please?” Rainy said with an encouraging smile.

117 lowered his leg, ending the salute. It felt awkward to continue to salute while not looking at the officer in question. “His image is located on the rear cover of the book, A Good Soldier, which he authored. Therefore this Commander’s name is Solum Creed.”

“Huh,” The Commander exclaimed thoughtfully while turning back to face 117. “You’ve got my entire book in your harddrive?”

“No, sir,” 117 said with a small frown. “I use a crystalline substrate for data storage, not spinning platters or magnetic tape. I cannot have your book on a medium I do not possess.”

The Commander cracked the faintest of smiles. “But you do have my whole book in your head?”

117 nodded once. “Yes, sir.”

“What did I say every soldier’s duty is?” The commander pressed as he took another drag on his cigar.

“To be an expendable tool for Her plans. To kill as needed, and die as She demands,” 117 said without pause, referring to Princess Celestia.

The Commander nodded in satisfaction while every civilian in the room flinched or recoiled at the nearly alien thought. It was one thing to have decided to program the book into their robot, it was quite another to hear it say such a thing so matter of factly.

“What did I say to explain why that is every soldier's duty?” The Commander said while casting his critical eye over 117’s face, reading every small expression the robot made.

“Um… You didn’t,” 117 said after a moment of thought.

117 knew everything about the book. It had to be important to understand the meaning behind the words, but what was it? He frowned and did his best to puzzle out an answer.

“Correct,” The Commander said with a disappointed frown.

He turned to face Rivet and straightened his jacket with his wing tips. “Well, you’ve made a robot I can see soldiers trusting, and it’s probably quite combat capable, but it doesn't seem to think, or do anything I wouldn’t expect of a robot. But if you’re right and it can learn by seeing and listening, that alone will be quite the—”

“Sir?” 117 said as his ears stood up with realization. “Did you mean it is the duty of a soldier to take on the responsibility of preserving the State and the people, so much so that they must lay down their life if needed. The phrasing you used seems intentionally blunt. Did you intend to say that in an off putting way so as to discourage enlistment by any who are unlikely to follow through on these two key requirements?”

The engineers shared a brief look of excitement. No robot or computer program was capable of literary analysis. No matter what else was true, they’d accomplished something as big as they had hoped.

The Commander turned away from Rivet and smiled. “That’s right, son. I did. Good job. Not many ponies understand, most brand me a psychopath.”

Rivet shook his head and blinked. “By Luna’s…” he looked over 117’s back into Rainy’s eyes. “How much Equish did you put in his seed?!”

“All of it,” Rainy reapplied simply. “I wrote a basic algorithm to unpack the meanings behind basic words and then added the whole dictionary. He should be as fluent as any of us. Maybe more so in Balanced’s case.”

Balanced shot Rainy a hurt look and muttered. “I have confidence issues. Not vocabulary issues.”

The Commander ignored the debating engineers and walked over to 117 to look him in the eyes. “Do you know what you are?”

117 frowned and spent a moment searching for an answer to give. “I am a soldier, sir.”

“I meant physically.” The Commander said with just the faintest of smiles.

“Oh. Titanium alloys supplemented by thaumaturgic crystalline composites,” 117 answered matter of factly.

The Commander’s smile vanished beneath a flood of irritation. “What’s your race, son?”

117’s ears lay back in embarrassment as comprehension finally hit home. “I’m sorry. I did not understand… I do not have one. Races and ethnicities require the subject they describe to be organic. I am robotic in nature and cannot be described with those terms.”

March snickered and shook his head slowly. “Yep, Rainy definitely packed the dictionary in there… I think you forgot an etiquette manual though!”

“Shut up,” Rainy hissed through clenched teeth. “They’re doing a thing.”

The Commander took another long pull from his cigar. 117’s eyes moved, locking onto the cigar tip as the air moving through the dense leafy bundle fanned the embers until they shined.

“Sir, according to the EUP Field Medic’s manual, you are slowly poisoning yourself by inhaling those vapors,” 117 said with a worried frown. “I do not know of any treatment.”

The Commander smiled faintly. “Everypony has at least once vice. Nopony should give up their last one either. Especially not soldiers. You need something to stay sane,” he said as he slowly blew the smoke through his nostrils.

The Commander looked 117 up and down once more. “You act like a person from what I can see. You were able to do literary analysis. From what teachers tell me, that is something a normal machine just can’t do. Connecting disparate concepts and all that fancy talk for learning.”

He took another pull of his cigar as he reached into a pocket of his coat with a wingtip and used his primary feathers to extract a small manila envelope with the Ministry of Wartime Technology’s apple and gear emblem stamped onto it.

He transferred the envelope to his hoof and weighed it playfully.

“Unit ASX J-117… It’s a bit of a mouthful,” he continued. “Drill sergeants won’t like yelling that. The first part of your serial sounds a bit like the word asks. Slur it a little and you get Ash… Your face, that white is more of an Ashen Gray. How about we call you Ashen? You can pick a surname later.”

“As you wish, sir,” the newly named Ashen agreed with a polite nod.

After all, Ashen found the Commander’s logic perfectly sound. Shorter sounds facilitated ease of command during a combat situation.

Rivet’s tail flagged in surprise at the mention of Drill sergeants. “Uh, sir? Do you mean the MWT intends to put Unit— Uh, I mean, Ashen through basic training?”

The Commander nodded as he opened the envelope and produced a set of orders bearing the signature of the MWT’s Ministry Mare.

“I didn’t just fund you,” he said as he set the orders’ down atop the lab's terminal. “I stuck my neck out for this project. My career is on the line. If we don’t deliver Ashen for evaluation in the upcoming International Soldier Training Exercise, it will be bad news for all of us.”

“W— what?” Rainy asked with a worried shiver.

Commander Creed gave her a solemn look “I had to argue for half an hour with Miss Applejack to get you the regeneration talisman, that was after the two hours to let you even try this operation out… If it fails, I’ll be asked to resign my commission. I’m not well loved. It would be good for the ministries PR if I retired. As for you... The fact you never reported to me means your company is going to be re-evaluated as a defense contractor.”

He trailed off and gave each of the horrified ponies a reassuring look. “It’s a slap on the hoof. Your company keeps the contract… but you will all probably be fired in the fallout. So, we all need Ashen to report for basic training in two weeks.”

Rivet, Balanced, and March sputtered then shouted in unison, “TWO WEEKS?!”

“We need months to test him!” Rainy yelled, her tail standing on end, held aloft by her terror.

“You have ten days,” the Commander repeated. “It will take four days to get him to Los Pegasus for training.”

Balanced stammered, shook his head and held up his hooves.

“Can’t he be tested by the MWT at any of the basic training sessions later this year?” Balanced asked through a frown. “We need to be certain everything is working as we intended before—”

The Commander glared at Balanced with his good eye. “No. He can’t. We are doing one and only one basic training session this year which permits non-ponies to be trained. It is part of our new treaties with the griffons, and minotaurs. We send some of our warriors to learn from them, they send some of theirs to learn for ours. No other training camp will have the security needed for an international trainee. Legally speaking, this is it. This is the only one he can go to.”

Rivet reached up to his mane and pulled at a strand. “Buuuucking horseapples… Sir, we need more time than that!”

The Commander nodded to the papers he’d set down a moment before. “Even if we ever planned on doing another of these, those are official orders. You’re a defense contractor. You’ve got a legal duty to make sure he’s in Los Pegasus exactly fourteen days from now.” He turned, letting his coat billow behind him as he walked out the door. “I expect daily progress reports and a phone call the moment he’s been loaded onto a military transport. Passes for shipping are included in the document stack. Good luck, and don’t buck this up.”

With those last words, the Commander was gone. The lab’s door slammed shut, its occupants silent, and all save one shaken. Ashen understood the full extent of Equestrian language, he understood what the Commander had said, but not what the Commander’s statements meant.

“Okay…” Balanced said as the Commander’s hoofsteps down the hall began to fade away. “I’m going to go to the bathroom. Somepony start the basic diagnostic tests before I get back, we are so bucked!”

Ashen frowned as he struggled to understand what Balanced meant. “Why would getting bucked be a bad thing? The definition implies it is a recreational activity as well as the primary purpose of life: reproduction. Regardless, could you please exclude me from any reproductive activity? I’m not interested in that.”

If somepony had dropped a pin its clatter would have rang like a hammer upon an anvil.

March snickered, then giggled, then sat down to laugh. “All that debate, and worry, and panic, over making sure he could enguage in romance if he wanted, and we make an asexual!”

The other three engineers joined March in laughter, releasing a good deal of stress with each smile. Ash decided to not ruin the moment by explaining he did in fact have an interest in at least trying a romantic encounter at some point. It’s just that like almost all people, he had absolutely no desire whatsoever to have carnal relations with his parents.

Ash cleared his throat. “Um, yes. I suppose that is funny.”

March finished laughing first. He stood up, wiped his eyes with a sleeve, then cleared his throat. “So, I brought some beers to celebrate. How about we break those out, then give Ash here a full diagnostic? Get started on all that testing.”

Rivet’s laugher faded out as his lips pulled into a frown. “There’s hardly any point. In two weeks we’ll barely be able to establish a physical baseline. We can’t just recycle the base Assault Pony’s data. Who knows what differences our modifications caused, let alone the fact we’ve got a fully realized person in there!”

Blanched frowned as well, and placed a hoof on Ash’s shoulder. Ash turned his neck to look just like anypony would.

“Hey… So…” Balanced said slowly, and carefully formulated a question designed to test the “personness” of his creation. “What would be the first question you would ask Vinyl Scratch if you were to meet her?”

Ash blinked and raised his left eyebrow. “Who?”

Rainy giggled. “I see what you’re trying to do, Balanced. But I didn’t include all of current history. There was no time for that. Ash can talk, and has a general understanding of history, but there’s no way he knows about an old pop culture icon.”

“She’s not old,” Balanced snorted. “You just don’t go to the clubs brave enough to stand up to MoI bullying.”

“More like smart enough not to go to a place that could be raided,” Rainy countered before turning her attention to Ash. “How would you test yourself to determine the extent of your capabilities?”

Ash hummed and tapped a hoof against the floor in thought, a gesture he hadn’t seen anypony do. “I suppose I would utilize a gym, a track, and several basic intelligence tests. That should provide the facilities to determine the extent of my physical and mental capabilities… But I’m not a scientist. I’m sure you have better ideas.”

“Not really,” Rivet admitted as he rubbed the back of his head with one hoof. “We uh, we had a whole schedule of diagnostics, practical tests, and training for you… We didn’t expect you could talk right away. How… How did you even do that, Rainy?”

Rivet walked the one step over to stand next to Rainy. “Honestly, I understand your extra drive and motivation on this project is because you want to be a mother to something, but… How, specifically, did you do it?”

Rainy offered Rivet a smile to distract him for a moment while she thought up a plausible enough lie. “Well, I thought about how different people encode information in their language, and then I remembered hearing something about some kind of insect ponies attacking Canterlot about forty years ago. That made me think “Hey, there are bug people. What is their language like?” but the history books had no answer. Equestria… never bothered to ask. I guess.”

She cleared her throat and nodded to the terminal. “I used the Term-Link Network to look up what I could find on insect communication and learned a lot about how ants communicate. The way they chemically encode information to signal each other was pretty efficient, so I thought about using it to form a more dense and efficient form of code to use with Ash’s processor. I tested it on our Proof of concept, it worked. I was able to encode a fifth grade history textbook and a full dictionary within the boot sector’s file size limits… so that’s what I did with all my spare time.”

Ash turned away from Balanced to look at Rainy, having internalized you should face a pony when talking to them via observation. “Is that how you taught me those things?”

Rainy nodded and offered Ash a pleased smile. “Yes! I’m glad it worked. I was worried it might be a bit much.”

Rivet nodded, satisfied at Rainy’s answer to his question. He opened his mouth to speak, but Balanced cut him off by gently turning Ash’s gaze by placing ahoof on Ash’s right shoulder.

“Hey, Ash, why don’t we get a start on testing your limits? Let’s say we leg wrestle. If you can’t beat me, you’ll be much weaker than your baseline model. You should be on par with a pretty bulked out Earth pony. So about twice as strong as me. We can check that here and now.”

Ash thought for a moment, accessed his dictionary, visualized the meaning of “leg wrestle” then nodded and sat down behind the diagnostic table and set one foreleg down on it. “Sure. Let’s do it.”

March winced as Balanced took a position opposite Ash. “Uh, Balance? Is that really a good idea? He literally doesn't know his own strength. What if he breaks your leg?”

Balanced set his leg on the table. “If I scream, stop.”

Ash nodded once and gripped Balanced’s hoof with his own. “Okay… Does that mean I should continue to push until you scream?”

“No!” Balanced said with a swift worried flick of his ears. “Just ‘til one of us pushes the other’s hoof against the desk top.”

Ash nodded.

“Go,” Balanced said and began to push.

Ash pushed back.

The two struggled for a moment as Balanced put all his muscle into trying to move Ash, and made some ground while Ash slowly began to apply more and more pressure. Pushing his servos and hydraulics more and more power as he did his best not to hurt the stallion. Eventually he began to move Balanced hoof the opposite direction. Balance shifted his position in his seat to put more of his back into the push and redoubled his effort, giving it his all in a way that would be unmistakable as his absolute best effort.

Realising that flesh and bone was sturdier than he had assumed, Ash pushed back with most of his strength and easily slammed Balanced hoof into the desk top with a loud thunk of keratin on wood.

“Ow,” Balanced remarked reflexivity as he shook his hoof slightly. “Not bad! That’s up there with a strong Earth Pony. I’d say the foreleg servos are within spec, and power transfer isn’t impaired by the extra talismans.”

Rivet let out a held breath. “You’re lucky you didn’t break anything, Balanced. Don’t do something like that again.”

“You said ‘Ow’,” Ash interrupted apologetically. “Did I hurt you?”

“Nah, that was just the shock going up my foreleg. Didn’t hurt, just surprised me,” Balanced said as he stood up. “How about you wait here while we go get those beers March brought?”

Ash nodded. “Okay.”

Rainy raised an eyebrow curiously, and retracted it as she figured out Balanced gameplay. She gave Rivet a subtle elbow, just enough to get Rivet to glance at her and see the serious look in her eyes.

“Yeah, guys! We deserve to take ten minutes to celebrate. This is a pretty big achievement,” Rainy said while maintaining her serious look.

March looked at her and Balanced like they were idiots. “Um, and leave him alone?”

“Sure,” Balanced said with a shrug. “He didn’t kill anypony on boot up. We can’t turn him off without a robot storage capsule. We don’t have one. If we leave him alone with somepony, well… Do you trust him that much yet? I don’t. But I do trust him to stay here if we ask him too, and I’ll trust you more, Ash, if you do stay here while we’re out.”

Rivet's mouth formed an o as he realized what Balanced and Rainy were doing. “Mmm, yeah we should do some trust building exercises. We need to do a psych evaluation, not just a physical and intellectual one. March, lead us to the beer.”

March cleared his throat and spared Ash a nervous glance. “Okay… But I’m leaving the room first. No offence, Ash. But you are a robot we programmed to like war.”

“That’s right,” Ash agreed with a calm nod. “You also programmed me to hold to the Equestrian ideals. War is justified in defense. Murder is not.”

“Yeah, but I don’t know if you can choose to ignore your programming,” March said with a worried glance at the door. “Anyways, come on guys. Let’s go.”

March trotted out to the room, followed by Balanced, Rivet, then Rainy. Before leaving the room, Rainy took a half second to attempt to feed off the generally content aura Ash was emitting due to having found a sense of purpose, even though it was one she’d help program for him.

Her magic picked at the edges of Ash’s aura, hooked onto a small piece of it, and pulled it away. Ash frowned a little as some of his good mood vanished, though he still felt mostly fine. Rainy held a hoof to her lips and mmed quietly, enjoying the flavor, as well as what felt like an okay though not ideal source of nourishment.

The Changeling plot was a success on at least one front. Rainy looked at Ash over her shoulder and mouthed “You can feed us” before trotting out of Lab-J and closing the door behind her.

The moment she was in the hall, Balanced grinned. “He’s not evil. At least, not axe-crazy-evil.”

March frowned and tilted his head. “What?”

“I give that leg wrestling my all, and he won easily. He knows he’s the strongest person between us,” Balanced said quietly in an attempt to explain as they continued to walk down the hall.

Rainy finished the thought for her coworker. “His internal tactical sense would have told him that even untrained his physical advantage would have let him easily kill any of us simply by putting a hoof through one of our heads. We included basic hoof to hoof manuals. He didn’t hurt any of us… Means he likes to fight, and probably likes to kill, but we probably successfully limited it to bad guys.”

March blinked then grinned. “Clever! And since he was born today, and we didn’t include anything like basic psychology, any old trick works on him right now.”

“Yep!” Balanced said with a happy smile. “So, bring on the beers! I think we have a viable product on our hooves.”

“Of course, if you were wrong, one of us would have just bucking died,” March deadpanned, his ears falling flat.

“Sure. But since everypony here was willing to stand in the same room as an untested war robot when it first booted up… I figured nopony would mind taking another major risk to their lives today,” Balanced said, smirking slightly.

March grunted and flicked his tail irritably. “Yeah, yeah… We’re all reckless, neigh, mad scientists. Miss Twilight would be outwardly abhorred but inwardly pleased. Anyways, I got a case of salted dark lager, so don't drink too much or we’ll lose one of our very few testing days.”

☢★★◯★★☢

Rainy, Rivet, Balanced, and March did their best to discover the extent of Ash’s abilities. They didn’t succeed. There simply wasn’t nearly enough time to do more than a rush job. Especially not with Rivet taking a trip down to Ministry Walk in Canterlot to try and convince Miss Applejack they needed more time.

He failed. Even if she had wanted too, Applejack wasn’t the pony with the authority to make a training environment for Ash. Only Princess Luna had that power as the laws relating to providing military training to non-ponies was quite clear. Ash could either be trained now… or not at all.

Project Microcosm was a sideshow. It wasn’t anything large, grandiose, or something the MWT saw a real need for. Miss Applejack wouldn’t take up any of Luna’s time by asking to get special treatment. There were far more crucial matters to attend to.

So the team did their best with the time they had.

Rainy spent each and every night in the Lab, or in the Company’s facilities, with Ash at her side, teaching him about everything she could just as a mother would teach their foal. Balanced got in on some of those sessions, eventually coming to see Ash as a son as he developed a greater appreciation for Rainy’s ideas of family and parenthood.

March was able to confirm that everything about Ash worked as they’d intended it too, at least physically speaking. Ash was, for all intents and purposes, a mechanical Earth Pony. He clocked in at a bit weaker than the main Assault Pony model. Slower, too. There wasn’t much that could be done about it. Ash’s processor and talismans required power and only so big a power supply could be fit into Ash’s chassis.

Rivet worked on determining Ash’s intellect. Ash was quite intelligent, at least when it came to things. He wasn’t so good with people. Rivet spent a few days worried Ash lacked emotional awareness until he realized that Ash was simply generally stoic, and still learning what expressions meant. He hadn’t been coded with that knowledge. He only knew how to express those feelings, not read them in others.

An interesting dilemma, and one Rainy spent a lot of time helping correct while Rivet quizzed Ash in history, science, mathematics, and alchemy. It wasn’t a basic education, it was a crash course wherein Ash picked up just barely enough to come across as somepony who passed the fifth grade. Hardly what his creators had hoped to present to the military.

As for a psychological assessment… The team’s packet on Ash’s behavioral tendencies was a joke. In many ways he acted like a foal, as to be expected. He was overly curious and when excited he was very excited. In other ways he was like an adult. In other ways he was like neither. A professional psychologist with a proper degree would have needed a year to get a proper read on Ash.

In the end, the team had to write down the most base surface read possible. Loyal, brave, a good soldier, eager to learn. Nothing bad, but so shallow it couldn’t be anything good either. There simply wasn’t time to do even a half-assed job.

The day to ship Ash off to basic training came all too soon. The team loaded Ash into the back of a white delivery wagon and took him to one of the military train stations on the outskirts of Whinnyapolis, as per the Commander’s orders. It looked like any other military train yard. A big chain link fence with guard towers at regular intervals, filled with crates, a few shiny unpainted quonset huts, and of course a single train platform with a long box-car-heavy train parked at the station, chuffing away as it waited for the signal to move out.

The team had parked at the edge of the station’s platform, and everypony walked up to car 37. Again, as per the Commander’s instructions.

Ash had been dressed in a standard EUP recruit’s uniform. The first clothes he’d ever worn. The olive green jumpsuit and M1 combat helmet clashed with Ash’s emerald paint job terribly, but no more so than any other vividly colored pony. In spite of this he wore the uniform with pride as he stood next to his creators while a squad of soldiers readied a robot stasis capsule inside one of the military train’s non-descript box cars.

The Commander’s orders had been very clear. Ash had to be transported while offline. All robots, no matter how sophisticated, were shipped the same way.

“Pod’s almost ready, Doc!” a pegasus in a corporal’s uniform called while leaning out of the car to give Ash and his creators a brief look.

Rainy blinked back tears. “I’m not ready…” she said quietly.

Ash gently squeezed her left forehoof.

“Soldiers are entitled to vacation days. I’ll come home to visit you, mom,” Ash said.

A pang of regret welled up in Rivet’s heart. He’d been so sure it would be okay to make someone expressly to send them to war… but that was before he’d watched them grow up. “This isn’t right,” Rivet muttered. “Ash, you’re… like a teenager. If we had another week for you to reach the sophistication level of an adult pony—”

“It will be fine,” Ash said. “This way the drill instructor will be able to apply some foundational memories as well. It will help me do my best job.”

“It’s still horseapples,” Rivet said as he kicked a rock laying on the weathered platform’s planks.

Balanced cleared his throat. “Let’s not make things awkward for him,” he said firmly before turning to Ash and placing a hoof on his shoulder. “You were made for this, literally. You’ll be fine.”

Ash smiled politely. “Thanks, Dad. I’m not nervous. It’s okay.”

March snorted. “Good thing we tested to make sure you can be switched off and on without complications… Imagine if you had a new personality each time,” he mused thoughtfully.

Ash shook his head at the not-joke. The idea amused him. “We could keep power cycling me and see what each was like. We’d loop back eventually. There can’t be a truly infinite number of possibilities.”

Balanced laughed. “Ash, I love your humor. I hope your squadmates appreciate it too.”

“We’re ready to load it into the pod!” A stallions’ voice called from inside the car.

Rainy threw her legs around Ashs’ neck and gave him an extra tight hug. “Write. Please.”

“I will.” Ash promised as Rainy let go.

“Good luck,” Rivet said as Ash began to walk to the ramp leading up into the train car.

Ash’s hooves clicked against the plank ramp as he walked up into the train car. His eyes had no problem seeing in the dimmer light, nor needed any period of time to adjust to the new conditions. The car was empty aside from eight ponies and a large coffin-like pod propped upright at a 45 degree angle on an integral stand.

The pod caught Ash’ attention first. The one his parents and other creators had used to test his system with the suspension technology was older, and lacked an integral terminal, like this one had. More interesting than that was the lid. It had Ash’s serial number stenciled onto the side along the edge where the lid would close with the rest of the pod.

Ash turned to look at the squad’s sergeant, a larger earth pony mare with a battle saddle containing a pair of standard surface rifles.

“Is that pod to be assigned to me permanently, Ma’am?” Ash asked. “It has my serial number on it, and looks newly made.”

The Sergeant, and most of her squad jumped as Ash asked the question.

“The buck?! I thought this was a robot… Uh, hey are you a cyberpony? Some kind of full body prosthesis and a prosthetic face?” The sergeant asked.

Ash shook his head. “No, Ma’am. I’m an experimental prototype Assault Pony. Doctor Brass Rivet believes I’m equivalent to a pony though.”

The Sergeant nodded slowly. “Alright… Uh… In that case, can you get into that pod yourself or do we need to finagle with your command structure?”

Ash laughed. “Yeah… Other bots can be pretty dumb, can’t they? I’ll strap myself in for you, Ma’am.”

The pegasus corporal Ash had seen moments before cleared her throat. “Hey, uh, 117? Got a favorite color?”

The squad murmured quietly. They knew robot limitations. That wasn’t a question a robot could answer. They didn’t have opinions on such trivial things. Not unless someone programmed them to have one.

Ash nodded and walked over to the pod, wondering why this design had him lay on his back and not his stomach. “Yes. I know it’s probably an uncommon choice, but I like gray the best. Why do you ask?”

“Just tell me why you like gray,” the pegasus pressed, her face growing a little concerned.

Ash paused for a moment, then shrugged and climbed into the pod, laying down until he felt secure in the intended support matrix. “I don’t know. I just… I like it. What’s yours?”

The pegasus winced. “Uh, Sarge? I’m not comfortable shutting him off…”

The sergeant cleared her throat and nodded once in agreement. “I understand your complaint, corporal. I share it… but he’s a robot, we have our standing orders, and the Commander’s specific orders. Sorry, 117. We need to shut you off.”

Ash nodded once and gestured for her to go ahead. “It’s okay. Mom was worried about it too. I think it’s the same as sleep. At least, a dreamless sleep.” Ash frowned thoughtfully. “I’m not sure if I can have those… If I do, am I supposed to do anything when I wake up? Write them down? Tell somepony?”

The sergeant took a deep breath, closed her eyes tightly for a moment, then walked over to the pod and hit the button to close the lid. “You do anything you want with them,” she said as the lid closed. “Infact, why don’t you tell me if you do have one. I’d love to hear about it.”

“Sure!” Ash promised as the lid closed.

The pod hummed faintly as it’s matrix-stasis field activated, safely suspending everything inside the pod for storage. The field would keep every arcane and technological component exactly how it was. No accidental power drains, no bumps or jolts knocking a wire or crystal out of place. The machine inside would arrive at its destination exactly how it had been packed for shipping.

The sergeant let out a long breath and shivered. “Bucking tartarus… What have those engineers done?”

4 - Bootcamp

The dull gray train chugged along its track, dragging two dozen passenger cars and six box cars past hundred of miles of seemingly empty wilderness. Few recruits bothered to look up from their comics or conversations to look out the window at the sparse desert plant life. It was the same as anything they’d passed yesterday for some. Others had grown up in such conditions.

An hour ago things had been quite different. Nearly every recruit had looked out while the Recruit Express had been passing the City of Neon Lights. At night the city’s soaring glass towers lit up like a mountain range made of deep neon glow from the strip of casinos at its heart. Every color of the rainbow reflected in the glass, forming spectral arcs all across Los Pegasus each and every night.

Certainly a sight worth seeing. One sight many of the recruits wished they would get to see each night. After all, “Fort Firefly is in Los Pegasus.” is what everypony said. Unfortunately for them, everypony lies. Not always maliciously, not always about big things, and certainly not always intentionally, but they all lie.

If Fort Firefly lay within Los Pegasus, as ponies said, there would be quite the dark spot within the endlessly reflected rainbow light. Somewhere amid the gleaming glass spires and gilded casino halls, there would be a large sprawling open place filled with barbed wire, rifle ranges, vehicle maneuvering grounds, and barren barracks. There was no such blemish on this city.

Fort Firefly was near Los Pegasus, not within it. Just one of the common lies told to simplify reality into the neat convenient easy to understand package most ponies needed it to be.

Even the word Fort was an abstraction to make things easier to understand, or rather, a lie. What the recruits did not know was they were looking at Fort Firefly, and had been for the last half hour. The seemingly barren wilderness to their left was in fact filled with thousands of recruits experiencing rough nights in the countryside amid brutal wargames. Wargames on pause just long enough to permit the train to pass beyond the audible range of the simulated artillery shells.

It wouldn’t do to shake them up too early. Equestrian military training began with a precise and delicate process sometimes referred to as “Psychological surgery”. It only worked on the young, and only if it began with them calm and content.

Fort Firefly was a military training complex. The “fort” covered over four hundred and fifty square kilometers once all of its facilities and grounds were taken into account. While most of the fort’s bulk was the Wargames arena, even just the Fort’s more traditional complex of ranges, barracks, hangers, and garages dwarfed Los Pegasus. All told it made the entire Los Pegan suburban area seem a little small.

That was why everypony said, “Fort Firefly is in Los Pegasus”. Nopony wanted to think about how much space, resources, and ponies the Great War took from Equestria. That was why the lie existed.

The new recruits aboard the Express continued to talk to each other, bragging about how badflank they were going to be, worrying about possibly being injured, and quoting propaganda unironically until the train rounded a bend and passed through an imposing concrete wall rimmed with wooden guard towers.

Everypony hushed and for a moment took in the sudden appearance of squat hardened concrete buildings, sprawling parade grounds, and the squadrons of military vehicles parked in a defensive formation. Then the entire train erupted into an excited buzz only to be drowned out by the squeal of iron clamping on iron as the brakes dragged the train to a stop at Fort Firefly’s sole station.

The recruits aboard the Express turned to one another, pointing at various things through the window and discussing their ideas about what was what and pointing to other recruits visibly training off in the distance. Some laughed at the training ponies, insisting they would do better at whatever exercise it was they saw.

The recruits had no idea what they were in for.

A platoon’s worth of Sargents jumped aboard the moment the train stopped. They were in full combat uniform, including battle saddles equipped with standard-issue rifles. Orders were barked at thunderous volumes. Fifteen seconds to get off the train, two minutes to be in the Great Hall, or you get to take a trip down Washout Lane.

A sea of recruits rushed off the train. Many forgot their bags and panicked over lost belongings. Their property would be returned after training (minus any snacks). The chaos and “forget it, son” attitudes designed to break the recruits down for the Army to rebuild them. Standard practice, and compassionate in its own way. Nopony was born with the mentality needed to thrive in the military.

As the Sergeants herded their new recruits into the Great Hall to receive their welcoming lecture on military history, basic discipline, and the meaning of the common orders and phrases they would be hearing nonstop for the next twenty-eight weeks, a squad of soldiers began to unload the train’s non-living cargo.

Rifles. Ammo. New uniforms. Several tons of food in fresh, preserved, MRE, and K-Ration forms. All basic supplies. They also unloaded one not so standard item, a robot stasis pod.

The soldiers who had loaded Ashen onto the train hadn’t gone the entire way to camp with him. They’d gotten off at the last stop to return to their unit. Their leave expired the morning they loaded Ashen aboard. By now they were halfway to the Western Front, leaving the specialist and corporal unloading Ashen’s pod quite confused about the presence of a robot on the train.

Fort Firefly did use robots. Particularly for training recruits on how to fight Zebrican constructs, robots, and golems. The thing was, nopony had ordered any robots. Especially not the “Model ASX J-117 Combat Robot” the paperwork described.

The specialist looked through the thin stack of paperwork attached to a clipboard which had in turn been attached to Ashen’s pod and shook his head. “Yeah… I don’t know what this is. I’d say it’s a new Ultra-Sentinel model but there’s no way you’d fit one in this coffin.”

“What the hell do we do with this thing?” The corporal grumbled. “It weighs a ton—”

“Two tons,” the specialist corrected. “Says right here, pod and robot weigh two tons.”

“What the buck ever! I think my back’s tweaked from getting this thing off the train,” the corporal complained.

“Because you lifted with your bucking neck, you clod-brained lout!” a Drill Sargent yelled at him reflexively before offering an apologetic nod.

The corporal understood. The Sargent was still in welcoming committee mode.

The corporal returned his attention to his duties and shook his head. “One of us has to go make sure this is supposed to be here before you just load it back on the train and stamp it as a misorder.”

His subordinate smirked. “Sir, remember how we got yelled at for being too unprofessional in front of the recruits last week?”

“Yeah, yeah... Look, just help Buttercream cart those rifles to the depot while I check with the Quartermaster. Oh! And make sure to pack the K-Rations into the recruit dining hall this time. I got yelled at when we gave them proper MREs that one time,” the specialist said before marching off towards the somewhat distant warehouse.

☢★★◯★★☢

Unfortunately for Ashen, the Quartermaster had no idea about his presence aboard the Express either. As with all things the lower enlisted do not know anything about, the problem was simply sent up the chain of command. As the issue ascended the ranks on its journey to find out what exactly a robot was doing on the Recruit Express, the recruits finished their welcoming lecture. The next step in their admission into the E.U.P. began.

The huge class was split up into smaller groups and taken to what their Sergeants referred to as Amnesty Rooms. If any of them had any contraband of any kind on them, it was to be disposed of here and now. There would be no punishment of any kind. The penalties for being caught with it later were then explained…

One recruit wisely asked what was considered contraband, prompting a very simple and complete list from their Sargent. “I’m glad you asked, Recruit! Anything other than the following is contraband and must be disposed of: paperwork or literature we gave you, any forms of ID you may have, college diplomas or transcripts, high school diplomas or transcripts, a single piece of paper containing nothing but addresses of your family members, any prescription medication you require, stamps, no more than twenty bits in cash, a single pocket-sized religious text, and a single set of civilian clothing.”

That was the moment most of the recruits suddenly realized the golden apples dangled in front of them by the Army Recruiters were harder to earn than they had been led to believe.

☢★★◯★★☢

As the recruits filed out of the main hall to an enormous line of busses which would take them to their training barrack, the inquiry chain reached its end. Commander Creed was not in his office, but his secretary was.

Miss Joule Ringer, a retired electrician with six grand foals to care for. The elderly Earth Pony mare’s hooves trembled from age and alarm as she leaned her head against her telephone’s earpiece. They shook her pen and pad terribly, making it quite difficult for her to write down what the screaming Lieutenant Commander was trying to convey.

“I’m sorry, can you repeat that?” she asked as politely as a swamped mare flank deep in post-it notes and memos could.

“I said you need to get me Commander Creed immediately! We have an item which is either a Zebrican spy’s plot, or a personal order of his which somepony lost the paperwork for! Hundreds of troops are aware of this thing, and it’s not just a massive security risk, it’s causing a slow-burn-panic amongst the enlisted and some of the Junior officers! We need an answer to what this robot is doing aboard the Recruit Express right this instant!”

Miss Joule closed her eyes and scribbled down the note. “I’m sorry, dear. You can’t have an answer immediately. The Commander is out of his office.”

“You are his secretary! You know his schedule! You know where he is at any given moment!” the stallion screamed through the phone, making Miss Joule hold the receiver away from her ear. “Either have him call me immediately, or tell me where he is so I can ask in person🙺”

Miss Joule took one hoof and rubbed her aching head gently. The poor mare understood the importance of an item no one below the Base Commander was aware of. Unfortunately, this week was a hell week in terms of the Commander’s schedule. The Minocians, Yacks, and Griffons had all sent one or more representatives to train Equestrian recruits in the ways of their allies’ militaries, in addition to the many recruits of those same races sent to train in the Equestrian's own ways as part of the alliance’s Allied Forces Unification Program.

The depressing part was Hell Week was scheduled for three months from now.

Needless to say, Commander Creed was extremely busy. He had to perform his normal duties, as well as perform those of a diplomat, all with Princess Luna relentlessly breathing down his neck. Several new alliances were at stake. The AFUP had to go off without a hitch.

Miss Joule groaned inwardly and put on her best fake smile once again to sound cheerful over the phone. “I will do my best to track the Commander down and get him on the phone to explain what to do with the pod. In the meantime, I believe the Commander would want it to be covered with a tarp and wheeled into the corner of warehouse Gamma. Just in case it is classified.” She said into the phone wearily.

The Lieutenant Commander’s response was naturally instantaneous. “You damn well had better! If I don’t hear anything by 2145 hours, I will have the pod detonated and any surviving scrap of robot tossed into a compactor! If it’s meant for the Commander, I will blame you for its destruction!”

The phone clicked loudly as it was slammed down on the other side. Miss Joule took exactly three seconds to quietly cry with the receiver still pressed against her cheek. Then she took a deep breath, put her professional voice back on, picked up the Commander’s day planner and what she hoped was the note pile with all of the amendments and rearrangements to the day’s schedule, and began to dial each and every last number for where the Commander might possibly be in reverse order.

All 213 of them.

☢★★◯★★☢

Equestria’s newest recruits arrived at their barracks. A formation was called before they could even disembark from their buses. They did their best to follow the instructions they had been given once audibly… and naturally failed. Most everypony made some small mistakes. Some of them looked off towards a friend. Many were not standing straight. Others hummed a tune or waited like normal ponies and chatted with their neighbors. Very few did what a soldier should do: Stand at attention, and exactly nothing else.

A flock of Drill Sergeants descended on each and every recruit who made any minor mistake and blasted them with a firehose of verbal abuse. The effect was instantaneous. A thousand young ponies all thinking something along the lines of “Holy buck what did they do? I don’t want to do that. I’d better listen up when the sergeant says anything. I’d better know what that guy didn’t know. I’d better listen up so I can do what they asked me to.”

Even the edgiest of the recruits was nothing for a seasoned Drill Sergeant to pick apart and humiliate. Plenty of recruits broke down and cried. The sergeants always hated the criers. Not in the way a bully hates their victims, but in the way a parent hates to hurt their child. Many of these recruits came from cushy upper-class families. Most of them had no spine of their own. The Sergeant's job was to make them all better as ponies while they forged them into warriors.

The process began with this cruelty by necessity. The war had taught Equestria exactly what to do with its ponies to make warriors of them. It was as much science as art.

One day these ponies would need to stand knee-deep in mud and blood, while bullets whizzed past their head, shells exploded around them, and their best friend was screaming and trying to hold their entrails inside their now open chest cavity. They had to be able to handle stress. If a pony couldn’t handle being screamed at, they had to be weeded out and sent home. Or instead of firing back at the enemy from the muddy trench, they just might curl up in a ball to cry before joining their friend in death.

With the Shark Attack over, recruits were issued their uniforms. Simple, plain, green jumpsuits and a single cloth-covered helmet. Each item was marked with a number rather than a name, and the numbers were completely random. No recruit would be called by name until they graduated.

They would, however, get their regulation mane and tail cuts this very instant.

☢★★◯★★☢

A crackling, bit-crushed, voice spoke over one of Fort Firefly’s encrypted phone lines.

“Boardroom Four, Commander Creed Speaking.”

Miss Joule sighed in relief. He was in location 13. She didn’t need to start calling random locations to work through the entire base one room at a time.

“Thank Goodness! Commander, we have a small emergency with a piece of cargo aboard the Express.”

“Explain,” the Commander asked calmly.

The old secretary picked up her last note and referenced it as she spoke. “A robot stasis pod containing an unknown model of robot arrived on the Recruit Express. There is no paperwork relating to what to do with it. Lieutenant Commander Autumn is worried it may be part of an inept or incomplete Zebrican plot to—”

“It’s not. It’s a special Ministry of Wartime Technologies Project,” Creed answered immediately. “Inform the Lieutenant Commander the cargo is a learning machine meant to be trained like any other recruit. Understood?”

“Yes sir, I understand. I’ll tell him at once,” Miss Joule glanced at her clock. There were four minutes to spare before the deadline. “He is about to destroy it. I have to—”

“No need. I’ll call him. Where is he?” The Commander asked just as calmly as before.

“I told him to store the robot in warehouse Gamma, sir. I imagine he’s there, ready to destroy it if he doesn't get an answer in the next three minutes.”

The phone clicked as the Commander hung up. Miss Joule sighed and hung up then rubbed her temples. A hellish day for the Commander was a hellish day for her too. Old as she was, Miss Joules longed for a tall glass of bourbon and a cigarette.

Sadly she could not afford such things. Her grandkids needed to eat.

☢★★◯★★☢

Commander Creed hung up the boardroom’s phone for a second time and straightened his uniform’s collar. The yelling had shifted it into an uncomfortable position. Fortunately, he had been on time. Ashen was safe, and being moved to a barrack to be reactivated as he should have been an hour ago.

Unfortunately, Commander Creed was not alone in the room. A tall white earth pony mare dressed in the simple beige business jacket and skirt worn by all Ministry of Wartime Technology agents stood across the table from Creed’s position at the room’s phone.

She was fuming.

“I heard all of that!” she stomped her hoof hard enough for the sound to echo. “You mean to tell me you had our experimental robot just sitting in a warehouse under a tarp where anypony could tamper with it, while it’s supposed to be getting the same experience as every other recruit to test its learning systems?!”

Creed nodded once. “Yes exactly, ma’am. The funny thing is the paperwork vanished twice during this project… Both times seemingly in this very base.”

“What do you mean🙺” The agent demanded with an angry growl. “Don’t try to deflect the blame for this onto somepony else. It’s your responsibility to ensure Fort Firefly runs like a well-oiled clock!”

Creed grunted and turned around, placing his forehooves on the large round conference table as he sat back down. “I accept that blame, because you are right. That being said, as Base Commander, my job is to figure out what went wrong and fix it. The interesting thing is that I wrote general orders which should have been on the train with the robot, and there should have been a copy in the Quartermaster’s office. I’ll have somepony look into this. It reeks of striped spies… If you think we should abandon this project, I’ll understand.”

The agent blinked, the sensible argument coming from Creed of all ponies had pushed her more than a little off-balance. “Um, well, no. Not yet. We’ve invested too much into this to not try to get things done... I’ll get a few Steel Rangers assigned to the camp. We’ll make it look like a propaganda thing, a way to push the recruits to choose Special Forces over any other thing they may qualify for. In actuality, they will be there to destroy the robot if it does anything out of line.”

Creed thought for a moment, then nodded. “Alright… I would also recommend getting some MoA spooks out here to start an investigation other than my own. That might catch our problem off guard. Unfortunately, we’re not done here. There’s more you’re going to be upset over.”

The mare sighed and ran her hoof down her face. “What else is off-kelter?”

“The recruits have been assigned a barrack and Drill Instructor by now. We’ll have to slot our robot in with one of the non-Equestrian trainers here for the AFUP.” Creed admitted with a stony demeanor that hid his inner rage well.

“You’re bucking kidding me!” the mare roared as her eye aggressively twitched. “You can’t squeeze it into a proper barrack?!”

“No. Not without giving a Sergeant more than they can handle and potentially ruining an entire company’s worth of recruits,” Creed took a deep breath to begin to explain to the overly-emotional civilian the nuances of the delicate psychological surgery his ponies were even now performing on the recruits.

The boardroom door thundered open as a large hoof kicked it in. The agent yelped in terror and dove behind the table. Creed’s sidearm was drawn within milliseconds and aimed at the doorway, then promptly lowered.

The door was not spewing hordes of Zebra Legionnaires into the boardroom. Instead, it was completely filled by the hulking frame of a female minotaur. A hulking female minotaur dressed in the resplendent bronze-plated Mythril armor of a Minosian noble. Her breastplate, tower shield, and greaves gleamed beneath the boardroom’s lights. Her blood-red cloak billowed, telling the story of her mad sprint down the hall to completely destroy the door latch with her iron-shod hoof.

The Minotaur’s right hand clenched around her drawn blade, a xiphos. It burned with a green light as powerful magic raced down the blade from the runes set into its hilt. Commander Creed knew full well what the emerald flames would do to anything that blade struck. It was not an experience he wanted to repeat.

He raised his weapon again, just to be safe.

The Minotaur snarled. “This insult to my House will not stand, Commander! Rectify it, or battle will decide the matter of my honor here and now!”

The agent leaped at the chance to avoid being potentially cut in half. “What insult? Nopony intended to insult you, ma’am. I’m sure it’s an honest mistake!”

The minotaur wheeled her blade to face the Ministry Agent and glared at her with deadly intent.

“Mistake?! HA! You do not assign three crippled recruits to a visiting officer as a part of a pre-arranged training program by mistake. I was promised a full company to train in my people’s arts,” she took a step forward, which pushed the end of Creed’s gun into her waist, just above her uniform loincloth but below her breastplate. “You intended an insult. You have one chance to apologize, or you will have to kill me and our seemingly ill-advised alliance will fall before a year has passed!”

Creed lowered his pistol as an idea took shape in his mind.

“I apologize, Enōmotarches Lion Maze,” he said while offering a polite nod and hoping to hell he pronounced the Minocian title correctly. “This indeed was a mistake. I do not know who failed to deliver the information to you, but they will be punished. I’m also not certain why you were given a multiple of recruits at all to train. See, we recently completed a project which has resulted in a robot capable of learning just like you or I.”

Creed paused for a moment to fish a fresh cigar out of his jacket and light it… as well as to assess Lion’s face. She was intrigued, probably just wanting to know where he was going with this. That would have to do.

Creed took a puff of his cigar and grinned. “Since the chassis we put it in is comparable to a Zebrican Assault Pony, it’s stronger, faster, and tougher than most ponies. It’s also got everything we need to teach a soldier pre-installed… Save for actual techniques and strategic thinking. Obedient, loyal, fearless. Half of the basics are done. Just needs to be trained to fight. Princess Luna thought the superior physical capabilities, at least over most ponies, would be wasted in normal training. After all, we can simply copy it into another chassis once it’s finished. You were supposed to be informed we were giving you the unit to train as you would one of your own warriors.”

Lion cocked her head to one side, her blade lowered only slightly. In so doing it grazed the boardroom’s table, cutting a notch out of the tabletop with ease. “Say I believe you, Commander. What makes you think I could train a robot of all things into meeting the least of our requirements in just a few weeks? Do you not know how long our spartans train for?”

Creed grunted and shrugged his wings. “I’m afraid I do not… But I do know you’re damn effective in battle.”

Lion returned his grunt with a smirk. “My first day as a warrior was my seventh’s birthday. I have trained with every tool of war, mental, physical, ancient, and modern, for forty-two years. I am considered by my people competent enough to lead a single platoon into battle, yet am still growing into the true scope of what it is to be a warrior. You expect me to turn a novice into a master in but a few weeks. It cannot be done.”

“Sounds like you’re not up to the challenge,” Creed said, making the poor ministry agent squeak in terror.

Lion snorted, stood up straight, extinguished her weapons’ enchantment then sheathed her blade.

“We shall see,” she said before turning on one hoof to make her cloak billow before stomping out of the room towards the Fort’s training grounds.

Creed stood silently and watched her march down the hall until she turned a corner and vanished from sight. He cleared his throat. “Are we done here? I need to get that bot unpacked and to her barracks as soon as possible. Or would you like her to come back? She might actually be mad the second time.”

The Agent’s face flushed enough to look pale through her facial fur.

“Yeah... you go do that. I’ll get those Rangers…” the agent stammered through a strained smile. “One thing… Why did she come in here in that traditional get up?”

“Warrior pride,” Creed answered simply as he began to leave the room. “If she’d killed us, it would have shown their old magic beats our new technology.”

The agent blinked as her frown deepened. “What would that mean?”

Creed stopped and looked over his shoulder. “To us, nothing. To them, everything.”

☢★★◯★★☢

Commander Creed, Lion Maze, and three young ponies stood in front of one of Fort Firefly's more dilapidated barracks. Barracks 3 had been one of the originals constructed with the fort at the beginning of the Great War. It was little more than a corrugated metal Quonset hut with a dirt floor. Most Other recruits enjoyed nice wood longhouses, and some of the officers in training even got climate control talisman equipped loges.

Not these ponies. Lion had specifically requested the worst accommodations available for her trainees. She’d also changed out of her ancestral armor into modern Minocian fatigues. The olive green of her loose trousers and overcoat went well with her gray fur. The oil-stained brown of her leather belt, baldric, bracers, and greaves did not. They did however match the uniform’s drab woodland aesthetic much better than the gold embroidery of her house’s heraldry on each sleeve.

The three recruits stood in front of the barrack's warped doors, doing their best to stand at attention while panicking over the presence of their Commander, the huge minotaur, and the mysterious coffin-like pod mere meters from their position.

The recruits manage a fairly good job for ponies fresh off the bus. Especially the pale lime-green earth pony mare in the line’s center who had three legs. She was the only mare with a non-standard uniform. She wore the same simple one-piece olive jumpsuit, tan shirt, and M1 helmet as everypony else who had just arrived at Fort Firefly, with the sole addition of a single safety pin to keep her jumpsuit’s rear-left leg rolled up and secured to her hip.

Her helmet’s ID number proclaimed her as 290. To 290’s left was a short red-furred unicorn stallion wearing an Earthpony helmet as his horn had been broken off long ago. His helmet labeled him as 89. The final recruit was a tan furred pegasus who had very clearly lost a wing to acid of some kind. Likely a horrible mishap in a weather factory or cloud-structure recycling plant. His helmet labeled him 56.

Lion paced back and forth inspecting her trainees with disdain. Not for them, but for the military who had accepted them as warriors to be. She stopped pacing after several moments and nodded to Creed. “I wish to begin. Turn the fourth on, or whatever it is which needs to be done.”

Creed nodded once, exhaled smoke from his nostrils, turned the stasis pod’s safety key, then hit the release button. The pod hissed immediately as air filled the pod for the first time in nearly five days. The lid shuddered, hummed, and slid open slowly.

The three recruits couldn’t help but look out of the corner of their eye. Nothing had been like other recruits had said it would be so far, so why should this be something safe or normal?

Ashen opened his eyes as the magic keeping him in stasis let go. He instinctively moved his forelegs, bracing them on the sides of the pod, servos humming as he levered himself out of confinement. He stopped moving as both his eyes met Commander Creed’s one.

“Commander,” he greeted politely.

“Recruit 117,” Creed said as he took a pull on his cigar then pointed with one wing to Lion. “You have been selected for special training in Minocian combat techniques. Enōmotarches Lion Maze will be your Drill Instructor. There was a misunderstanding and you were not activated in time for the welcome lecture. Refresh yourself on everything in chapters 3, 8, and 12 of my book and you’ll be fine.”

Creed turned to leave, giving one last nod to Lion before walking off towards the auto-wagon he had arrived with Ashen and his pod upon.

Ashen finished climbing out of his pod and looked at his fellow recruits for the first time. He frowned, trying to understand why anypony would admit a three-legged pony into the military. The recruits stared at him with wide eyes.

His voice was synthetic, but real enough to be believed. The way he moved was too fluid. Certainly, this had to be some poor pony who had been blown to bits, rebuilt with a full-body prosthesis, and put back into training to make sure they could still fight properly.

Ashen walked over to the recruits and stood at attention with his right side next to 56’s destroyed wing. The other recruits looked at their commanding officer. Ashen stared straight ahead, exactly as his database described the attention pose.

The very moment Ashen assumed formation, Lion cracked her neck. The loud pop made the three flesh and blood ponies jump. Never in their life had they ever heard such an aggressively loud crack from a simple joint pop.

Lion took a knee and stared into 89’s blue eyes. “What do you seek to gain from a life as a warrior?” she asked in a calm yet serious tone of voice while her eyes remained locked into his.

“I— I just… I think it’s the best thing to do with my life, s— sir. Uh, I mean, ma’am!” 89 stammered, gulping after his mistake.

“Why?” Lion pressed. “Do you believe the loss of your magic precludes you from a civilian life? You believe yourself capable of being a warrior, else you would not be here. If you are capable of that, you are capable of most any profession beneath the sun. Why are you here?”

89 shook his head quickly. “No, ma’am! I just want to help stop the war, ma’am.”

Lion nodded once and stood up. “Then you may yet be worth my time.” She took a single step to her side and fluidly dropped to one knee to stare into 290’s eyes. “You are not fit to serve, yet here you are. Why?”

290 stood her ground as firmly as she could and returned the minotaur’s analytical glare with a determined fire. “By enlisting in the EUP, I have earned the right to cybernetic replacement of my missing limb, ma’am. I am scheduled for surgery after the E.-M.O.E. tomorrow, ma’am. I will be fighting fit by sundown tomorrow and ready to kick the Zebra menace out of Saltlick City and into Tartarus, ma’am!”

“Saltlick…” Lion mused without breaking eye contact. “I heard of its capture. Was it your home?”

“Yes, ma’am.” 290 nodded.

“You are worth my time,” Lion decided as she stood up only to drop to her knee yet again for 56. “Are you to be repaired with rod and bolt as well? Is that why you are here?”

“A pegasus isn’t anything if he can’t fly, ma’am,” 56 answered quietly.

“Indeed he is not,” Lion agreed. “Your state performs a service for you, in exchange for a service to them. Your reason for being here is simple business, is it not?”

56 bit his lip then nodded. “I suppose it is, ma’am.”

Lion stood up. “You are not worth my time. Be grateful I swore an oath to train you regardless of my misgivings.”

She paused for a moment, considering forgoing the traditional beginnings of Minocian warrior training for Ashen. He was, after all, a robot. A being without a soul.

Lion looked him over for a moment, doing her best to ignore the theological questions combat robots gave rise to within her mind. How would a simple machine make the journey to Elysium post-mortem? What would they do there?

Feasting and boasting of one’s deeds couldn’t be done by a thing without emotion. Lion supposed robots could fight and train for the end of days when all great heroes would be led to battle against the forces of darkness. Of course, they couldn’t enjoy it, nor partake in the honorable brotherhood such training forged between all who ascended to the hero’s afterlife.

On the other hoof, she had been asked to train him as she would train any warrior.

Lion stepped in front of Ashen and knelt down to look into his golden eyes. The steely resolve didn't surprise her at all, though the life within the inanimate orbs did take her somewhat aback.

“Do you think and feel?” she asked after a moment’s hesitation.

“I think so,” Ashen reapplied after a moment. “I am familiar with the phrase, I think therefore I am. If I understand it correctly, the fact that I think I am a thinking being makes me one… But I don’t like that circular logic, ma’am. It makes me want to inflict grievous bodily harm on philosophers who insist it proves things.”

Lion did her best to hide a smile and succeeded. Whoever had programmed this robot certainly did a good job of making it seem like a pony… Or perhaps they did the something impossible and created a pony? Lion dismissed that thought and turned her attention back to finding a way to fairly judge Ashen as she had the others.

“You were created to wage war,” Lion said matter of factly. “If I were to ask you why you are here, that would be the answer. I suppose it’s impossible for you to understand what I am doing…”

Ashen shook his head. “Not at all, ma’am. You are determining why each of us is here to judge character.”

Everypony spent a few long moments quietly staring at Ashen before Lion smiled slightly and began to reevaluate the possibility of a machine having life.

“I imagine your makers made you as the perfect soldier,” Lion continued. “Why are you here?”

“To kill as is needed and to die as She demands,” Ashen replied instantly.

“And who is she?” Lion pressed.

Ashen’s changeling programming latched down on his will, preventing him from answering truthfully.

“Princess Luna, ma’am,” he said without a single indication of deceit at all.

“I suppose that’s all you want to do,” Lion mused to herself.

Ashen blinked and tilted his head. “I— I’m not sure… I’m two weeks and five days old. I would like to try a variety of things before deciding if there’s anything worth doing aside from serving my creators. Mind you, I did like working out but that’s a pointless activity for a robot.”

56 blinked, turned, and reflexively spoke out of turn. “Wait, you’re a full-on robot? Why the hell would you ever have been told to work out?”

“To quickly assess the limitations of my chassis,” Ashen reapplied politely. “I was rushed through product testing.”

“Oh no,” all three recruits said in unison in exactly the same panicked tone of voice.

Seeing how Lion did not yell at her fellow recruit for speaking, 290 cleared her throat. “So uh, how much can you bench? I can do five hundred kilos.”

“I don’t know. We didn’t have sufficient weight to push me to my limits. Theoretically, I can lift one point four oh eight one megagrams,” Ashen commented. “I have lifted eight hundred kilograms.”

“The hell is a megagram?” Lion asked, her stone-faced expression breaking completely.

Ashen blinked and tilted his head, visibly confused. “You know… base, deca, hecto, kilo, mega. Ones, tens, hundreds, thousands, millions.”

“Uh, nopony uses those like that. You just say a thousand kilograms,” 290 corrected with a shy cough.

Ashen raised an eyebrow. “Why? You have a wonderful system for keeping numbers small while preserving their true value.”

“You just don’t,” 89 said with a one-legged shrug.

Ashen pursed his lips as he tried to conceive of creating an elegant and orderly system only to refuse to use it properly.

“Well, that’s stupid!” Ashen said, rolling his eyes. “I’m going to use the system as it’s designed. One thousand thousand… Might as well call dogs canis-lupus-lupus-canises. Sounds as dumb!”

Lion laughed and stood up. “So there is a soul in that shell! You may or may not be worth my time, I don’t care which it is. I want to see where this goes.”

She took a step back from her recruits, crossed her arm behind her back, and hit the four of them with a glare so intense they immediately shot back into formation.

“I have vowed to train you in the ways of my people, and so I shall,” Lion said, her voice booming with command presence. “You will be subject to the same requirements for passing training as your classmates. You will participate in every normal course and drill. When you are not attending them, you will be learning directly from me. What I teach you is extra. Pass, and you will be given the appropriate equipment, permission to carry it in the field, and special certification to show all you have been given spartan training… to the extent of one of our children.”

Lion snorted at the joke. “As if you could ever internalize a lifetime of training in a few weeks…” She shook her head. “You will not live up to my standards. There is not the time, and you are beginning your training too old. But, if you can each learn but a single skill from what I will teach you, it could mean the difference between life and death. You will do your best despite the impossibility of the task you have been assigned, for that is the duty of all warriors. To obey no matter the odds.”

“We will begin training… now.” Lion said as her uncrossing arms revealed she’d drawn a pair of short swords from her back which had been concealed under her uniform’s overcoat. “Your comrades are being given rest to understand they are now under oath and to get used to following the rules your military has set. But not you.”

“These are called kopis,” she said as she presented the two short slightly forward-curved blades to Ashen and 290. “They are part knife, part axe. You will become intimately familiar with them. Even though you will wield them by mouth or via a gauntlet attached to a leg, one day, it will save your life.”

56 snorted and rolled his eyes. “Really? We’re going to learn melee combat? It’s not the Classical Period! We’ve got megaspells and guns. All the Stripes have to do is hold up a talisman and chant or push a button.”

Cloth fluttered. Metal glimmered and sang. A ruby splash sprayed across 290’s left side. 56 fell to his knees and screamed in pain, holding a fresh gash along his right foreleg closed with his left hoof.

Nopony had seen Lion draw the bronze-bladed sword which was now in her left hand, nor swing it.

“The enemy cannot push a button if you disable their hoof,” Lion said as she shook the blood from her blade and returned it to its scabbard. “Sew your wound up.”

Ashen nodded and filed the tip away for later use. The three ponies began to freak the ever-loving buck out.

“Are you insane?!” 56 snapped, clenching his teeth through the pain radiating through his entire body from the deep cut. “I’ll report you, and you’ll—”

Lion took one step forward, kicked 56 onto his side, then pinned him with a hoof on his chest. “When my people were asked to participate in this collaboration, we explained our methods of instruction. Your Princess has approved of everything I may have to do to you. You have three options: You may quit, take a trip down what you ponies so aptly call “washout lane” and never get your wing. You may continue to behave without honor, in which case I will do everything short of killing you in cold blood to get my lessons into your ungrateful skull. Or, you can respect me as your master and take to heart everything I teach you.”

Lion reached into a pocket of her overcoat and withdrew a crude needle and a spool of fishing line then tossed them down where 56 could reach them. “Now sew up your leg and listen,” she said before returning to the front of the line of horrified ponies. “Hand to hand combat is the cornerstone of all combat. It is brutal, bloody, and deadly. You will become adept in it before we move to ranged combat so you understand why you must never enter into it if you can avoid it.”

Ashen raised a foreleg, and to everypony’s surprise, Lion nodded and called on him as any teacher would. “Yes, 117?”

“Does that include me, ma’am?” he asked with a small frown. “I am designed for melee combat. My chassis is armored with Luna Titanium and I am equipped with a shield talisman.”

Lion raised an eyebrow. “Shield talisman?”

Rather than answer verbally, Ashen activated his shield. For a moment his body was surrounded by thick bands of golden light as the shield spell activated and assessed the shape it would need to take to cover his body in a form-fitting way. Then the light dissipated. “The light goes away, but the shield is still th—”

Metal sang again, this time accompanied by the crackle of fire as Lion drew and swung her blade, this time with the disruptor field enchantment blazing. The sword arced through the air and hit Ashen’s left ear tip, or rather the shield above it. A shower of golden sparks blasted out from the impact as Lion’s blade slipped off the shield.

Lion nodded in satisfaction and to show her recruits what a Minotaur Power Sword could do, flicked her blade once more to cut a small stone cleanly in two, just as easily as she might cut a wheel of cheese.

Lion nodded to the two halves of stone the recruits were busily staring at then deactivated her blade’s enchantment. “That is one of the many reasons to steer clear of melee combat. Firearms are effective, yes. However, our peoples have been fighting hoof to hoof, talon to hand, and horn to antler since time immemorial. There are magics you would not begin to believe even if you saw them, all of which are designed to kill in close quarters on contact.”

Then she pointed to Ashen. “The first rule of combat is to know your place upon the field of battle. Each warrior has their place and their specialization. Ashen will be fighting in close quarters. Not only because he is built for it, but because you will not survive it and yet someone must take the fight to the enemy if they refuse to exit their fortress.”

Lion cleared her throat and presented her blade for her recruits to see. “We will begin by showing you how to swing a blade. You must grip it so the edge of the blade is perpendicular to the limb you will hold it in. Or, um... orifice in your case, ponies. You must know where the edge is pointing at all times, for the blade must be swung with the edge perfectly parallel to the line of travel or your blade will not cut. It will bounce off, or merely scrape and scratch the enemy.”

Lion turned her hand to show the shape of her sword’s hilt. “See how the handle swells in the middle? See how it is shaped like a squashed oval? Familiarize yourself with the handle of those blades, then pass them to your partner. Once you know exactly how a blade feels when you hold it correctly, we can begin cutting drills.”

☢★★◯★★☢

The next morning Equestria’s newest recruits began a long arduous march on the hard-packed desert earth to Fort Firefly’s HQ from their various barracks. They began to arrive at the cold and imposing main hall’s clay-brick plaza three hours before sunrise at oh-dark-thirty. Each group of recruits remained segregated into their Drill Squads. No talking was allowed and everypony had to stand at attention.

Rain poured down on the recruits as they waited for the most important part of their training to get underway. The Equestrian Military Occupation Exam (E.-M.O.E.). An excruciatingly lengthy test with no wrong answers designed to determine what jobs within the military they were qualified for. Science, Thaumaturgy, history, mathematics, engineering, mechanical aptitude, politics, and more in an endless series of random questions ranging from kindergarten to doctoral dissertation in difficulty.

Everypony would have just three hours to provide the information which would be used to sort them into the various specialty training programs so some ponies would leave infantry, others would leave engineers, special forces, Steel Rangers, Armored Cavalry Crewponies, and every other one of the hundreds of job titles available for Equestrian Soldiers.

The rain beat down on Ashen and his three fellow trainees. The three ponies were exhausted. None of them had slept more than a few minutes. Unlike their fellow recruits, their late-night morphing into an early morning of no sleep had not been due to stress. Instead, they had been busy learning hand to hand maneuvers. Minotaur ones. By demonstration.

Enōmotarches Lion had gone beyond the call of duty and acquired a set of odd robotic gauntlets for her recruits. Engineering samples of a new Lyra Machine and Tool product designed to help adapt pony hooves to Minotaur weapons. They were far refined from Lyra’s toy of a prototype. These ones folded up and replaced the front set of boots or shoes for a pony when not in use.

56, 290, and 89 hated the gauntlets. More specifically they hated how they had forced them to be awake all night learning to balance on their hind hooves to replicate specific strikes. Even 290 had been required to show she’d learned the cuts. Ashen had held her up so she could make the strikes, even as he held her up now.

The three-legged mare’s legs were in the process of giving out. Icy rain poured down on her and the rest of the recruits as a pegasi weather team created a near-sleet storm for them to endure. Her knees trembled, her muscles ached… But Ashen’s radiators kept her warmer than other recruits.

“I’m glad the Sargents understood your medical need for support,” Ashen commented idly, but quietly, so as not to break formation.

As well as to help distract the poor mare from her torment.

She snorted. “Yeah… Know what’s crap? Other ponies like me get a wheelchair. They just ran out.”

“Don’t make them yell again,” a terrified recruit whispered nervously from behind them in formation.

290 rolled her eyes. “There are way too many ponies to yell at for them to be in earshot right now.”

What’s more after being suplexed through a hay bale last night she was no longer afraid of yelling.

Ashen took a quick look around and nodded in agreement. “We might as well pass some time. We’re going to be here for at least an hour.”

89 raised his tail in alarm. “An hour?! How do you know that?”

“Fort Firefly is commanded by Commander Creed. I have his book on file,” Ashen summarized. “The idea is to force us to take the E.-M.O.E. while stressed.”

“But… why?” 290 groaned as she shook her shoulders to try and get some of the ice water out of the back of her collar.

Ashen frowned and tilted his head as he turned to look at her. “Was it not required reading for you?”

She shook her head. “Nope.”

“In that case, the idea is to assess our skills when stressed. They want to know how good we are on our worst day so when we’re being shelled in a trench whatever we’re meant to do we’re able to handle it.” Ashen said with a casual tone that got a flinch from his squadmates.

“Well… I guess that makes sense,” 56 muttered. “I’m hoping to get a clerical job though.”

“Oh, we get to pick from a list,” Ashen corrected. “The test will shorten the full list to what they believe we can handle. I hope you can get your clerical position on your list. I’m fairly certain they will cheat me out of what I want, however. I’m certain I’ll be relegated to infantry.”

290 frowned and nuzzled Ashen’s shoulder since she was too exhausted to balance long enough to give him a side-hug as she would a friend. “What? Why? Aren't you like the perfect soldier?”

Ashen shook his head. “No. I am close to perfect by my creators’ design, but I was not allowed to take the train as you did. They do not trust me, this means I am not perfect even if I were by every other metric. Besides, I am untested technology. All of my capability is theoretical.”

“Well your theoretically perfect ass learned everything Lion showed us the first time she showed each individual thing,” 56 grumbled a bit too loudly.

“It wasn’t that difficult… I tried to help you,” Ashen said, his ears drooping back as he frowned. “I apologize for failing.”

290 grinned. “I hope my robot leg is as mobile as yours, 117. It sure looked easy for you to stand upright.”

“Oh, my grandmother taught me how to do that. She’s way better than I am. I think she just does it for fun… Like, whenever nopony else is looking. Little else would explain the level of skill displayed,” Ashen mused as he looked up to try and see if he could spot the pegasi through the storm they created.

He could not. It was just a little distressing.

“Grandmother? But you’re a robot,” 56 said with the steepest frown he could manage before slowly looking suspicious. “Unless… Your makers found a way to put a pony into a machine? Like, download them or something… That would make sense.”

Ashen snorted and shook his head. “No. Stable-Tech has, but not L.M.T.” he said without realizing that was a classified bombshell to drop. “I was primarily designed by Lyra Heartstrings' son, Brass Rivet. He asked me to think of him as a father, so I do. This means I think of Miss Lyra as a grandmother.”

“Kind of stupid, but whatever,” 56 grunted as he rolled his eyes.

“I think it’s sweet,” 290 said quickly before her eyes lit up. “Wait, if it’s something you learned, could you teach me? I like the idea of being able to carry one of those big pony-sized shields, being able to shoot a gun, and walk around at the same time… What was it Lion said that technique was called?”

“ATTEN-SHUN!” The oddly attention grabbingly pronounced and booming order cut through the rain like an axe.

The order was magically amplified with a slightly modified version of the far-speaker spell used in sporting events. It added a little extra bass and clarity to the speaker’s voice than there would otherwise be.

Half the recruits managed to pull their attention forwards to respond to the order. The rest were too tired, too apathetic, or too fed up to care, creating pockets of turbulence in the otherwise calm lake of recruits filling the HQ’s plaza.

A taller earth pony dressed in a Sergeant Major’s uniform waited precisely two seconds before following up the order he had just issued with his statement. “I am Sergeant Major Buckwheat, your penultimate commanding officer. You are about to take the Equestrian Military Occupation Exam. You will do so here and now. First rank, take one pencil and one test booklet, and pass the others back. The pencil and booklet are waterproof, meaning we won’t believe any excuses about water making the marks run and invalidating your exam.”

The Sergeant Major paced back and forth slightly as if walking the front of a stage. He gave the recruits just enough time to process that they wouldn’t be taking their exam while warm, and for his officers to begin passing the booklets to the first line of recruits before continuing.

“As soon as everypony has a booklet and pencil, our weather crew will create an ice fog to prevent you from having more than a meter of visibility. This is to prevent cheating. If you do not think you can handle being a bit chilly for three hours, Washout Lane is to your left. Get going.”

A few ponies began to move out of formation, some cursing under their breath, others refusing to believe any sane ponies would subject anyone to those kinds of conditions. Sergeant Major Buckwheat nodded to himself as he watched them leave.

Ashen took a booklet and a pencil as they were passed to him, passing the rest of the stack back over his shoulders, grateful for his telekinesis talisman for the first time in his life.

“There are always a few quitters at the beginning. There will be more before the exam is over,” the Sergeant Major said with more disdain than most ponies present had heard before in their lives. “If at any time you feel the need to join your fellow failures, toss your booklet down and head to your left. For the rest of you who think you’ll tough this out and see how the military is after your done with training, or who think you might want to go home midway through your training, remember that as soon as you accept a job offered to you by the E.-M.O.E. you owe us a minimum of three, five, or ten years of service depending on the job you choose.”

The papers reached the rearmost line of recruits. The Sergeant Major looked up to the weather team invisible in the storm and nodded once. An icy fog began to creep along the ground as it formed around the recruits.

“Begin,” Sergeant Major Buckwheat ordered.

Thousands of pencils hit paper immediately. A few dozen booklets hit the ground as their owners walked out, mumbling about having thought the fog was a bluff to weed out the weak.

☢★★◯★★☢

Ashen did his best at the exam. There were large parts of it he simply could not answer, his programming and database held only so much information. Technically speaking he didn’t have a high schoolers understanding of some areas even if in other areas he had college-level information available.

None of those helped him with the personality assessment questions. After every dozen or so short answers and multiple-choice questions came a short paragraph question which he knew was intended to help them ascertain what kind of pony he was. All Ashen could do was write the same answer over and over.

I have not experienced enough to have a true personality. I have decided I am kind to those who deserve it. I am programmed to be loyal, and so I am. All I know is I am kind, curious, loyal, and a warrior.

He knew the exam was a joke for him. He was to be tested as a soldier, which means infantry. Everything about his creator's intentions meant nothing here. Not since Commander Creed controlled his life now. Not that Ashen minded. Especially not since he had the Commander’s book on file and therefore knew what to expect.

Still, he was here to be like anypony else, so he finished the booklet. Only a hooffull of others finished the booklet. When the three hours were over, most ponies were in the last quarter of the exam. Ashen took note of them panicking as the fog lifted and they were instructed to pass their booklets forward for processing.

The plaza looked much emptier without the fog. Nearly half of the recruits had walked out once they realized nopony could see them to judge them. The EUP knew that would happen. It always did. That’s why recruitment drives always collected twice as many recruits as the generals believed they would need soldiers for the upcoming months.

As soon as each book had been collected the Recruits were called to mess by their Sargents. A hot fresh meal rather than field rations. The sole treat offered for making it through the exam.

Ashen watched as his fellow recruits ate and laughed, so happy to have a cup of hot unsalted cider after being out in the storm they couldn’t help but pull a complete 180 in mood. Ashen didn't need to eat, but he did want to do his job well so he sat with his squad while they dined, listening more than talking.

89 shook his head and smirked at 290’s joke. “Yeah, yeah… Well as long as we're teasing each other with war movie cliches,” he cleared his throat and looked the mare dead in her eyes. “So how’s your girl back home?”

“She’s pissed I signed up for a leg instead of letting her family pay for it,” 290 answered honestly, then facehooved. “They’re rich enough to just buy one without the insurance, but I like to feel like I earned things I rely on you know?”

89 and 56 started at 290 until she realized that her fellow recruit had been extending the joke, not asking about her personal life.

“Oh, right. We’re just bucking around…” She said while sliding down in her seat somewhat.

56 snorted and smirked over his mug. “I guess it’s true. Every soldier has a girl back home. Even the mares.”

“Shut up,” 290 muttered with a light blush.

Ashen blinked, frowned, then accessed his internal databases. Indeed, every journal he had on file mentioned soldiers writing their girl back home.

Ashen pushed himself away from the table and stood up. “Oh, dear… In that case, I’d better go see if the quartermaster can issue me one.”

His squadmates feel completely silent, then erupted into a laughing fit. By the time they recovered, Ashen was being escorted back to the table by a sergeant who was saying something quietly, yet firmly to the robotic soldier.

The three recruits trained their ears to hear through the noise of the crowded dining hall.

“... doesn't matter what it is. You don’t get to request equipment until after training.” The Sergeant said, his face stern, but his ears cocked in a way which betrayed his poker face was holding back laughter.

290’s ears perked. “Guys, we need to buck with the robot.”

“Agreed!” 89 said with a firm nod. “Everypony make sure he thinks it is a part of the job.”

“Totally,” 56 snorted and turned back to his food.

A moment later Ashen returned to the table and sat down, looking more than a little sad.

“No luck?” 56 asked.

Ashen shook his head. “No. We’re not allowed to request equipment until after training. I assume that includes support staff.” Ashen mused as he wondered what the girl back home did.

Presumably she served as a logistics supply contact.

“Yeah, we had to fill out forms like a month ago,” 56 lied expertly. “They’re probably out right now anyway. It’s a big train.”

“I hadn’t thought of that,” Ashen said thoughtfully.

290 opened her mouth to add her own layer to the prank but was cut off as Lion Maze approached their table.

“That was fifteen minutes, recruits,” She said with her usual iron sternity. “Time to march back to the barracks. We have a long day of training ahead of us.”

56’s brow furrowed. “But they said we had an hour to—”

“That’s them,” Lion grunted as her eyes narrowed. “You’re not them. Gather your kit and move out. We’re going to be out that door in the next forty seconds.”

“Yes, ma’am,” Ashen said as he snapped a salute and stood up to leave.

☢★★◯★★☢

A small fleet of auto-wagons began to swarm across Fort Firefly as the sun began to set. They each carried a ranking officer, two assistants, and a small mountain of paperwork. Each was destined for one of the recruits' barracks. The fort’s small army of civilian clerks had graded the E.-M.O.E.s. It was time for each recruit to choose a job so by the time they finished the next two weeks of general training they could attend their specialist classes.

Lion Maze knew when the exams were to arrive, and she elected to allow her recruits to have a ten-minute break before they accepted their exams and made their choice. The three ponies sat down, still panting after an entire day spent learning new hoof-to-hoof techniques and then sparring until Lion was satisfied they had absorbed the new move.

Ashen on the other hoof was sparring with Lion herself. The Minotaur delighted in just how easy Ashen was to teach. He’d only failed to learn a move the first time once, and his mechanical body could handle moving as a minotaur would far more easily than a pony’s. Even better, his shield talisman meant she didn't need to hold back. Much.

The two traded blows in a way that resembled someone boxing with a mirror. Ashen was able to assimilate new data instantly, but learning how to do a thing and how to apply a thing are two quite different tasks to manage. Regardless, the bright showers of gold sparks and rapid borderline-superquine speed punches and kicks made for a hell of a show for the three exhausted recruits to watch.

A show which didn't stop as a simple green boxy auto-wagon pulled up in front of the barracks and stopped with the faintest squeak of brakes. Nor as two clerks, Commander Creed, and a blue pegasus mare exited the auto wagon and began to approach the barracks.

The mare was dressed in an exquisitely tailored black suit. While it looked like a simple business suit its legs had special hidden gussets to permit extra movements, and behind the black silk was a layer of kevlar magically enhanced to be bulletproof. The white silk shirt and thin black tie she wore were similarly reinforced, and in the tie’s case, it was strong enough to serve as a garrote if needed.

In addition to the suit, the mare also wore a pair of aviators, a simple black military cap with a silver pin bearing a crest in the shape of a winged lightning bolt attached to the front. Her prismatic mane was tucked into her cap, more as a means of keeping herself looking neat than as a form of disguise.

The mare and Commander Creed argued as they exited the wagon. “I know he qualified, but—”

“But nothing. Protocol is protocol. It qualified. It gets the offer.” The mare said coldly.

Creed took a deep breath. “Yes, but this is an MWT prototype and test. The entire thing will be invalidated if—”

“If it can hack it in my Spec Ops, I’ll tell Applejack to make as many as you want. I would advise you to stop arguing,” the mare said with icy finality.

“What if he says no?” Creed pressed uncertainly.

“Then it's all yours.” The mare sighed, looking over her sunglasses into Creed’s eye for just a moment. “You wanted it treated like any recruit. That’s what we’re doing. It scored a 3829. It made the cut off by six points. It gets the offer.”

“Recruit 117 identifies as male,” Creed said in defeat, unable to argue against anything else the mare had said.

She blinked once. “It— He does? The buck didn’t you correct me earlier for?”

“I was busy trying to make sure you didn’t ruin a project I funded myself,” Creed said with a sidelong glance at the mare, hoping to remind her of his stake in this. “Which is why I would rather you didn’t do this. We’ve already had a few security breaches on this project.”

The mare nodded. “I know. I also know you know there’s nopony else better equipped to investigate the matter than me, and I want that robot where I can see it for the duration,” she said quietly as they drew near enough to the recruits to be overheard.

Lion threw a punch that glanced off Ashen’s shields over his abdomen. The impact pushed him back just enough for her to get a knee strike in on his chin and flip him over, ending the match.

Ashen rolled over the moment he hit the ground and sprang back up, landing on all fours with a smile.

“That was new!” He said as he played back the last few seconds of his memory to analyze the knee strike. “Did you hop up with your other leg to add more force or is that to guide the strike to a solid hit?”

“Both,” Lion answered then frowned as she noticed the approaching Commander and his entourage. “Recruits, Commander in camp.”

Commander in camp was not an order the recruits had been taught in their welcome briefing, nor had Lion issued it before. Yet they all knew that meant “Immediately stand at attention and be on your best behavior, or so help me…”

Two and three-quarter sets of hooves jumped up and snapped a salute before standing at attention. Ashen turned and saluted, then frowned as he noticed Commander Creed’s weary and beaten expression. The important looking mare probably had something to do with that.

Creed nodded to the recruits. “At ease,” he said reflexively before nodding to the clerks behind him. “Take those three inside and go over their options with them. Enōmotarches, you should go with them. 117’s exam results are a matter of national security and above the classification level granted to you by the Princess.”

Lion Maze nodded once. “I understand. Recruits, let’s give the Commander and our Brother some privacy.”

The three followed their Minosian trainer as she marched into the old barracks, followed shortly by the clerks with the paperwork. As they entered, Creed cleared his throat and walked up to Ashen. He looked the robot over once then sighed. “Son, I’m here because you scored very well. You can have your pick of occupations. Including a special one. Everything the mare with me says is true, and highly classified. You are not authorized to talk about anything she says to you if you choose to decline her offer, and if you accept, you are not allowed to tell anypony anything other than “I accepted a special forces assignment”. Understood?”

Ashen shook his head. “No sir. I was under the assumption I would be required to go infantry for testing purposes.”

The mare snorted. “It would be a pretty big waste of this chance to stick you into the infantry if you qualify for a specialist position. If we can build an army of combat engineers, rangers, and artillery crew as well as shock troops we’re in a much better position.”

She turned her head to Creed with a snide smile. “You didn’t tell me he could make assumptions.”

“We had other more important matters,” Creed said while physically restraining himself from reaching for a cigar.

The mare nodded in agreement. Messing with Ministry Mare Applejack was definitely an important matter. For her at least.

He’d been ordered to not smoke around the mare. It was the hardest order to follow he had ever been given.

Ashen watched the mare as she walked up to him. Something about her made him feel uneasy, but also welcome and safe. Much like how a foal would feel about their mother after she beat the ever-loving snot out of a mugger while the foal watched.

“Recruit 117,” she said quietly in an expertly practiced tone of voice which wouldn’t carry far. “I represent the Ministry of Awesome Extra-Territorial Operations Department.”

Ashen titled his head. “I’m sorry… My database lists that ministry as disbanded.”

Commander Creed cleared his throat for Ashen’s attention. “Let’s just say it’s not gone. It’s hiding.”

“Ah,” Ashen said with a nod. “Classified.”

The mare smiled ever so slightly. “Our continued existence is double-top-secret… In spite of having uniforms and duties… It’s mostly a public relations thing. Mention one word otherwise outside of official business, and you won’t see another day. Your score on the E.-M.O.E. permits you the rare opportunity of serving your kingdom in a capacity above and beyond all other soldiers. Extra-Territorial Operations is an elite special forces unit comprised of Steel Rangers. Their duty is to perform small-unit operations against the enemy far behind enemy lines. Assassinations, exfiltration, sabotage, anything we need to be done that our spies cannot do thanks to a lack of firepower.”

She paused for a moment to make sure she had Ashen’s attention. Ashen remained alert and attentive. The mare noted an interested gleam in his eyes, and for just one moment, saw him as a pony rather than a machine.

“The job is effectively a string of suicide missions from which you are expected to return… and which you are legally prohibited from ever discussing,” she continued. “It’s some of the most dangerous work available, but it has perks like nothing else. You’ll be issued power armor. Unlike the Steel Ranger corps, yours will be customized to your needs, as will all of your equipment. You’ll also have a better dental plan than the MWT. If you survive the war, you will be given a land grant and entry into Equestrian nobility as a Lord. If you do not, these benefits will be passed to your next of kin… Though in your case you can defer all benefits to anyone of your choosing.”

The mare looked Ashen up and down once then cocked her head slightly. “You only get this offer once, and you have three minutes to decide… Any questions?”

Ashen nodded immediately. “Yes, ma’am,” he rocked from side to side to simulate a blush. “Do… Don’t you think it would be a little silly for a robot like me to get into power armor?”

“Buck no!” the mare said, grinning despite herself. “Twice the battlebot in one place? That sounds awesome! Besides, if you think about it it’s simply modular ablative armor for you.”

Ashen found her grin infectious. “I see. One last question… If I agree, I would be trained as a Steel Ranger, then moved to some black ops site. Would this impact my training with Instructor Lion? I am looking forward to learning how to use Minocian swords. She cut a rock in half with hers and that was just awesome! I need to do that at least once.”

“Normally, yes,” the mare confirmed while wondering how exactly Ashen’s eyes could glimmer with desire like that. “But I never stand in the way of awesome. I take it you’re interested?”

Ashen began to shake his head no. The job was simply out of the purview of what he had been created for. A special classified assignment could never truly be used as a test for robotic soldiers meant to supplement the infantry. That must be why Commander Creed looked so upset.

The mare frowned and began to sigh, more than a little disappointed in his choice.

Then, a voice whispered in Ashen’s ear. One only he could hear. “Soldier of Iron, you must accept her offer.”

Ashen stopped shaking his head. The voice was powerful, motherly, even noble. It had to be that of the Changeling Queen who had welcomed him to this world. If she wished for him to do what this mare wanted, so be it.

“Actually… Yes, ma’am. I accept your offer.” He said with finality.

“Good! Glad you reconsidered.” The mare turned and nodded to Commander Creed. “Make the arrangements. You have my personal authority for anything you need to get it done… And make sure 117 gets the melee training he wants no matter what. I don’t have a CQC specialist yet.” The mare said before turning and walking

Creed nodded and offered her a salute. “Yes, Ministry Mare,” he said before nodding to Ashen. “Get inside and finish your basic training, son. These are going to be some of the least stressful days of your life. Enjoy them.”

Ashen saluted. “Yes, sir!”

Ashen turned and walked into the barrack and towards a future filled with grand adventures and glorious battles that would never have their stories told. Little did he know that even the direst of all the campaigns and operations ahead of him paled in comparison to what was to come after the Great War.

6 - Full Metal Ranger

☢★★ One Year, Five Months Later ★★☢

Zebrica: a mighty empire born of the many voyages of merchant companies in the Golden Age of Sail. Older than Celestia herself, though younger than Equestria, yet while Equestria slowly grew from tiny kingdom to Empire over a thousand years, Zebrica’s globe spanning network of colonies came to be in mere centuries.

Patches of coastline all across the world flew the Zebrican flag. An ancient sailor’s joke was to refer to the seas themselves as “Zebrica”. Three Zebrican colonies had borders with Equestria when the war began. They flew Equestria’s flag now.

The Zebrican retaliation had been swift. Zebrican forces pushed through the Badlands to the southern edge of the Macintosh Hills, and even managed to capture a few of the southernmost Equestrian towns, and later on, one of her minor cities. This southern front was often regarded as the single worst place to be in the war.

Endless miles of trenches. Temporary fortresses turned permanent. Walls of tanks and artillery stations. Casualties unseen before in modern warfare, especially given just how often ponies and zebras would clash hoof to hoof.

Princess Luna’s plan to retake the territory involved two prongs. One would hold the Zebras where they were with sustained direct engagement, the other would force them to redirect troops and supplies back to the Zebrican homeland with a counter-invasion.

The Equestrian fortification on Oneighda Beach came to be during the course of one of the bloodiest battles the world had ever seen. Fort Spearpoint sat atop the ancient cliffs Equestrian troops had climbed during the battle, right on the edge of the El Mokattam jungle. It served its purpose well, attracting the attention of Ceazar’s legions, and diverting troops and resources away from the Equestrian home front.

Spearpoint was large, expansive, much like the training forts back in Equestria. It had to be. It was a symbol of Equestrian tenacity, meant to intimidate a warrior people.

Spearpoint was composed exclusively of modern buildings, asphalt roads, and the latest in E.U.P. military assets. It was a little defiant slice of Equestira built right on Zebrican soil, as pristine as could be. The ground, sea, and skies around it were fortified with hardened cloud structures, mounted guns, and even mounting guns. If a pony woke up in Spearpoint, they might believe they were still in Equestria. At least, until they noticed that the fortified walls around the base were engraved with tens of thousands of names, and the stubby remnants of countless votive candles.

The Zebrican Front claimed countless lives. War Golems, Shamen, Warlocks, and worse lurked in the trees. Platoons were torn apart by the jungles beyond Spearpoint’s walls. The survivors were stitched together into new squads, which in turn were sent back out into the jungle to be torn apart again.

Except for Stampede. Stampede squad had endured.

It was a small squad, just seven ponies. All veterans, though that meant nothing at Spearpoint. Anypony who came in on the cloudships at sunrise was guaranteed to be a veteran by sundown. Spearpoint ponies were survivors. Or they were dead.

Stampede was made up of the few unlucky sods to survive more than a dozen deployments.

Their original squads had been butchered in various skirmishes over the last two years, leading to a Lieutenant to order the members to form a new squad which had been randomly assigned the code name of Stampede. Stampede proceeded to take three dozen missions deep in the jungle without losing more than two or three ponies per operation. The ponies they lost were never from Stampede itself, rather they were ancillary troops assigned to them for the mission, or new recruits being given to the squad.

Naturally this made Red, Blue, Haybale, Mint, Stethoscope, Assault, and Battery legends to the other soldiers at Spearpoint. Everypony knew them by sight and name after their first week. Even more telling, everypony knew by the end of their second day at Spearpoint that being assigned to assist or supplement Stampede in the field in any way was a death sentence.

On the other hoof, Spearpoint’s officers were all told if something had to be done no matter what, you sent Stampede.

The moon was setting behind the sea. Exotic birds sang the last songs of the evening. The gentle breeze rustled leaves and jostled vines. A quiet and peaceful scene, aside from the thrumming of turbines, crackle of spark batteries, and thumping of bots on the tarmac around Spearpoint’s airfield.

Stampede’s core members sat in a small tent next to the vertibuck pads. They wore the look of seasoned veteran soldiers who had to be up at O-Dark-30 to listen to some officer’s request; extreme disinterest and irritation. Each and every last pony in the squad sat in the tent’s supplied folding chairs, aside from Red.

Sargent Red, the squad’s de facto leader, was a bright blue pegasus stallion with an even bluer mane. Nopony knew why he went by Red. It might have been an ironic nickname, or it could have held some real significance. Nopony knew. Nopony asked.

Red had the kind of stick up his ass one got by truly believing the only reason they were alive was that their actions were all directly front he book and executed through skill with a dash of luck. But even he looked tired, annoyed, and like he’d rather be doing anything but waiting for the lieutenant to arrive.

He stood silently while his soldiers talked amongst themselves.

Haybale and Stethoscope, the squad’s Combat Engineer and Field Medic, sat side by side as always. The unicorns had been childhood friends and were separated when their parents had moved. Ironically enough both wound up in Stampede years later.

The pair were quietly talking about their old missions. Specifically, the quiet moments of terror between fighting. Hay was convinced there was a pattern to be seen in the chaos. A way to predict when exactly the enemy would strike. Steth on the other hoof was a pony of science and the arcane. He knew Chaos was impossible to predict.

Haybale was a very plain looking unicorn. Tan fur, silver mane. The fact he, a unicorn, had grown up in an Earth pony community with adoptive earth pony parents on their farm, made him the butt of all the squad’s jokes. They were well meaning jokes. After all, nopony would dare make fun of a unicorn who could surgically remove their legs using only det cord… and leave them alive to experience all the wonders of being paraplegic.

Steth was the opposite. He had a golden shimmery coat, sapphire hair, and dull, tired, bitter gray-green eyes. He’d be the one who would reattached those blown off limbs, make them work like new again, and then get some whiskey knowing that the same poor bastard would be in tomorrow to get some zebra bullets picked out of their femur. Everypony fighting on the front lines knew that war was hell. Killing and dying is a hard and traumatic process.

Being a doctor in such times and places was far, far worse than simply traumatic. It’s jading. The hundred-odd ponies who died while joining or supplementing Stampede, he’d patched them all up at least five times. He’d held the guts inside stallions screaming for their mothers, carried wounded back through the jungle for days on end only to discover they’d bled out from a tiny shrapnel wound thanks to exotic tropical diseases bucking up their blood’s clotting factor.

He was one hundred and ten percent done with war. That didn’t matter. His contract was for eight years. Or it would be, if it weren't wartime. Fortunately, Hay was there to keep him sane as a field medic could be.

Of course, not all of Stampede was a bitter jaded soul-wreck of a pony. Mint Juniper was quite the opposite. As the Squad’s heavy weapons expert, the farm raised earth pony mare had a way of staying upbeat and happy even while under fire. While the others bickered, complained, and joked, she sat down calmly repainting her helmet doodles.

Specifically the one of the Ministry Mares wielding absurd and impossible guns while Miss Twilight proclaimed “We’ll beat you with the power of friendship and these guns we found!”

A lot of ponies at Spearpoint thought Mint was one of the ones the propaganda worked on. Just another crusader fighting for a righteous and holy cause. The truth was, she just really liked to blast people endangering her friends into as many separate pieces as possible.

Sitting next to Mint and constantly “correcting” her doodle’s artistic integrity was Blue. Blue was a tall red haired pegasus who took the name Blue since his sarge went by Red, so the obvious name was already taken. Blue was the kind of asshole who insisted on sharing their opinion on everything, including the lack of authenticity to the Kirby Krackle making up the background of his friend’s wartime helmet doodles.

Fortunately for everypony, in spite of everything else about him he was a good soldier, and would make sure you got out of the field alive or die trying. He did die once in the process, too. Fortunately Steth had been able to revive him before too much brain damage set in. Not that anypony could tell he’d lost any brain cells to oxygen deprivation, given the less than stellar showing of those brain cells when they’d been alive.

The squad’s last two members were clustered near the tent flaps trying to get an MRE’s flameless ration heater to activate so they could split a pouch of refried hay. Assault and Battery always ate together. They swore it brought them good luck. Especially when a defective heater meant they had to spend half an hour trying to get the stupid thing to work.

Assault and Battery were twins. Or so the squad thought. The pegasus and unicorn were practically identical, tribe aside. Both gray, same face shape, same eye color. The two acted as one half the time, which was actually very bad since they were respectively a sniper and spotter. Fortunately when Battery wasn’t spotting for Assault he was generally putting mortar shells onto anything resembling bullet resistant cover, so Red never minded when he slacked off on his recon duties.

Stampede’s quiet conversations fell silent as the tent flap was pushed aside by a dull green light. An officer trotted into the tent. Her uniform was quite simple and under decorated, bearing only the twin bars a captain, the basic commendation ribbons for passing officer’s school, and a name tag reading Capt. Hardened Shell.

Captain. A few too many stripes on the sleeve to be giving orders directly to the grunts.

The Captain was a short mare with an oddly nondescript appearance. Everypony could see she had tan fur and a black mane, but nothing else about her stood out. Red raised an eyebrow and cast an eye over her uniform, checking for the latest spy-resistant markings. Her collar had the triple stitched seams. The rear leg cuffs had 2 buttons, and the rear left leg had one horizontally attached button and one dianognaly attached button.

Red looked into the Captains eyes, cleared his throat and said, “Pumpernickel, pancake, yogurt.”

The Captain blinked, raised her head to look Red in the eyes and asked, “What?”

Red leaned forwards in his seat, ready to get up. The rest of his squad followed suit, with Mint even drawing her combat knife.

“Pumpernickel pancake yogurt, ma’am.” Red said coldly.

The Captain frowned more, then groaned and facehooved. “Oh, yes. Sorry. Authentication,” she cleared her throat and announced. “January, Suborbital, Domination.”

Red nodded to his squad. “She’s clean.”

Everypony relaxed. Except Mint, who sheathed her knife in frustration and crossed her forelegs across her barrel with a quiet muttered “Dang it…”

The Captain frowned then laughed quietly. “Is spying really that much of a problem here? I’m fresh from officer’s school.”

Red nodded once. “Yes, ma’am. Specialist Mint killed one herself just last week. Zebra shapeshifting potions do a good job of disguising their spies.

The Captain sighed and shook her head. “Shame… I know what goes into full body alteration potions. As if I needed another reason to despise them.”

She trotted to the front of the tent, tracked the whole way by Stampede’s eyes. She may have passed the spy check, but something was still very wrong. This couldn’t be an assignment, Lutienants issued orders to sargents, not Captains.

The Captain reached the tent’s small stage, set her attache case on the ground, then cleared her throat. “Soldiers, I’m Captain Hardened Shell. I know it’s not standard operating procedure for a Captain to deliver your orders personally, but in this case I wanted to see the ponies I was sending out into the field… It’s my first time issuing an assignment.”

Hay nodded to himself, content with that answer but keeping silent as the rest of his squad. Stampede were professionals.

“We don’t have time to split hairs or go over everything in detail. You’re being assigned to a time sensitive operation which is, sadly, low priority. We can’t afford to send more than a single squad, that is to say you, one supplemental trooper, and an M113,” Captain Shell continued while opening her case with her telekinesis to hold up a large black and white reconnaissance photograph.

The picture showed the conical slope of what could only be an active volcano, viewed from the tree canopy at its base. A few small fortified AA gun emplacements could be seen dotting the volcano’s faces, and a small road wound its way up to the summit with checkpoints every so often along the quarried switchback path.

“This is a photo of Mount Kifo, a semi-dormant volcano which we’ve been aware is a Zebra base for quite some time,” the Captain said. “Three months ago a spy infiltrated the base and was only able to get word out four nights ago. We believe this message cost them their life. That’s where you come in.”

The Captain put away the photo and took out a half burnt note which had been sealed in a plastic bag to protect the damaged paper. “According to this document, which a zebra agent was captured trying to destroy after it arrived at one of our formerly secure drop points, our spy learned Mount Kifo is in fact a missile base, and Balefire manufacturing plant.”

The Captain took a moment to let the soldiers say anything if they chose. They stayed silent, attentive, professional.

Captain Shell cleared her throat. “We’re not talking about their standard buzz bombs, or SAMs. These are very large rockets, similar to what we’ve seen on Zebrican submersibles. Our agent claims the Zebras can use them to strike Equestria from here, and that the base contains a megaspell factory which is producing warheads capablable of mass destruction. We believe this base will be used to launch a strike against our major ports back home. It has to go…”

The Captain trailed off and sighed. “Unfortunately, our Princess has placed her faith in our missile defense systems and Celestia Prime. She believes any attack can be halted before it is successful, by those systems. Not with a pre-emptive strike. If the base was just a bit closer to the front lines, she might have let us take a proper crack at it, but instead she wants us to continue pushing for The Valley of Emperors. As such, we have been authorized only to confirm the existence of the missiles, and if they exist, to steal any information we can on them while disabling any launch systems they may use. For this task, I have been allotted a single squad. Don’t blame me, blame the Generals who couldn’t talk her into sending even a platoon.”

Stampede shared a grimace with one another before Red cleared his throat and spoke for himself and his soldiers. “Ma’am… I understand the common belief is a small group of soldiers can slip in and out of large installations while remaining unnoticed. It’s true sometimes. I’ve seen it done. By Steel Rangers. We’re just specialists in the E.U.P. You know, shock troopers. Lucky shock troopers, but nothing more than that. I’m not saying we refuse, ma’am… But this is a bad idea. A few Thunderheads could bombard the mountain and—”

Captain Shell nodded in agreement and turned her eyes downwards to sigh at the ground. “I know… I know… Please, I’ve already argued with my boss, who already argued with his boss. This is all we’re allowed to do, aside from choosing to do nothing. Do you want to do nothing? I can find another squad. Nopony would blame you.”

Red shook his head. “No, ma’am. We’ll go. If one squad is all you can send, we’re the best shot at pulling this off. I can’t promise you we’ll be back with the plans, but we can go. Celestia willing, we’ll get to plant a bomb for you. Isn’t that right, guys?”

The other members of Stampede nodded once in unison. No words, just the nod.

The Captain gulped and shuffled one hoof against the loose dirt beneath her. She was a little unnerved by their willingness to go to their deaths, but determined to see this briefing through to the end, she cleared her throat and put on a fake smile. “I did manage to pull one string for you that might even the odds just a little. I was able to convince a certain Captain to lend you one of her Rangers for the mission. You’ll be joined by a Steel Ranger specializing in close quarters combat.”

Red blinked once. “Excuse me?” He said while standing up.

The Captain tilted her head and frowned. “Are you upset? I didn’t mean that as an insult, I—”

Red held up his hooves. “No, ma’am!” He said almost frantically. “I— Ranger tactics are classified. Sure, we see them on the field from time to time but they almost never mix with other units. Are we going to have to sign anything before we can fight with this guy?”

“Yeah,” Mint added with a half-worried half-nervous chuckle. “I remember I had to sign an NDA when I was ordered to help some Rangers fix a broken rocket pod. It was just a standard M93 with an adapter for a battle saddle instead of a vehicle mount. They’re kinda picky about their stuff being known about.”

“Oh,” The Captain smiled and shook her head. “No, you won't have to sign anything… Because depending on your performance during this mission, you may be reassigned to the Rangers. Your service records are exemplary and on par with post-recruitment Ranger applicants. Think of this Ranger as a talent scout.”

Steth rolled his eyes. “In other words, if we don’t die we get to do even more reckless horseapples more often while sweating in a tin can.”

“Air conditioned Luna Titanium can,” Captain Shell corrected reflexively.

Mint looked to her squadmates. “Air conditioning? Bucking hay, Captain. Why didn’t you say so? Come on Red, let’s go!” Mind said as she jumped to her hooves and began to trot for the tentflap.

Red rolled his eyes. “Sit down, Specialist. We’re not done yet. Captain, if you wouldn’t mind providing the details?”

Captain Shell nodded, closed her attache case and floated it over to Red with her telekinesis. “Here you are. Maps. Documentation. Photographs. Flight plan for the pilot, everything. You’ve got thirty minutes to get to vertibuck pad 5. You’ll have to brief yourselves on the flight over, there will be time, the flight is nearly three hours. All mission equipment is being loaded into an M113 which will be carried to the mission area by vertibuck, along with you.”

Red frowned. “Come again?”

“I know. It’s not standard operating procedure, but…” Captain Shell leaned in towards Red slightly and lowered her voice. “There’s a rumor amongst the brass that the Zebras are planning a major offensive for later this week. If these missiles can hit Equestria, they can probably also slip past our defences. They’re also probably targeted at Canterlot. We don’t have time to spend a day going over the maps. We need this place gone now and Her Highness has screwed us over with her insistence on her Classical Era based focus on capturing enemy cities.”

The Captain winced and cleared her throat. “Not to sound like a traitor there… but… Well, it’s no secret the Princess’ strategic genius is a millenium out of date.”

Red snorted and nodded. “You’ll get no objections from us, Captain. Heh, you’d think by now she’d be up to speed, or at least leave things to the generals.” He sighed and tucked the attache case under his left wing. “But, orders are orders. We’ll give it our best, ma’am. Stampede… Move out.”

☢★★◯★★☢

The Vertibuck was a very new aircraft. Since time immemorial Equestrian aircraft relied on Pegasi. Most often directly in that the craft was pulled by one or more pegasi, but sometimes the vehicle was made using enchanted clouds formed and shaped by pegasi.

Vertibucks were different.

Most of their pilots saw them as new-fangled technology stolen from an enemy to serve no other purpose than to laugh at the Stripes and tell them they knew their secret to heavier than air flight.

They were wrong.

The Vertibuck was something Equestria desperately needed. An aircraft that could be flown, maintained, and built without a single Pegasus involved. The Great War had done many things to Equestria, but one of the worst was the pegasus shortage. The flying ponies had almost all been drafted into the Enclave, a special branch of the Air Force which served as a sky based infantry.

The Enclave needed numbers. The other branches needed aircraft. The Vertibuck was the answer.

It was a boxy thing. Almost entirely unlike anything Equestrians had ever built before. Low on elegance, high on ease of manufacture, and little more than a shipping crate with a cockpit, wings with a stubby tail at the rear. The Vertibuck in a nutshell.

There was more to the new aircraft, naturally. Engine pods on the wingtips rotated to allow the aircraft to take off and land vertically while also allowing it to fly at greater speeds once in the air. The three gun turrets for multi-vector protection, including the unique nose-mounted cannon which was enchanted to always aim where the pilot was looking.

While the nose-gun had made a name for itself, the aircraft as a whole was not well suited to combat. The E.U.P. hoped that one day soon there would be a mission which would prove the Vertibuck’s worth to the troops as something other than a battle bus, but none of them held onto much hope of that ever happening.

Especially since it was much too cramped inside for the troops to think of much else aside from how much they would like to get out of the tin can and just march instead.

Or, for this particular mission, just how much they wished they could ride the whole way there in the E.U.P.s more popular tin can. Especially since Stampede’s vertibuck was carrying one to the battlefield for their use anyways.

Hay grumbled to himself as he double checked one of the three cargo cables which linked their vertibuck to the M113 Armored Personnel Carrier. “Stupid sky brick… These things barely fly and they want us to fly in one that’s dragging an even bigger brick along for the ride.”

Red rolled his eyes. “Corporal, you see these contraptions moving tanks around the base all day. It’s not going to be dragged out of the sky by something this small.”

Mint shivered and let go of the cable she’d been testing. “Sure, but it still looks like a breezie carrying a baseball. It’s just not right. It shouldn’t be able to fly with this on it, but it does.”

The M113 was another fighting vehicle the troops hated. The simple two tracked vehicles were designed to take a dozen soldiers anywhere they needed to go. No matter what was in the way.

The M113 would run through, over, or across damn near anything it could reach. Mines. Trenches. Barbed wire. Most buildings. Mud. Smaller trees. Water. Lawyers.

Red took a step back from the M113 and looked for Steth and Assault. The two ponies flashed him a quick hoof pump. Red nodded and called out “Mint, is yours secure?”

“Tight as mom’s wallet!”

“Alright, that leaves our Ranger friend as the last item on the list,” Red said to himself.

“You’d think a Ranger would be more punctual,” Battery said with a bemused smile. “They always seem to arrive just in time and we were supposed to leave three minutes ago.”

Red smirked. “True enough, but if they pulled a poor buck out of his bunk like they did us, I imagine it takes much longer to strap on their armor than it does to change into some fatigues and put on a flack vest.”

“Sure does! That’s why I never take mine off,” a cheerful modulated stallions' voice cried.

Stampede whirled around, more than a little terrified. They’d been around Steel Rangers long enough to know their armor was not stealthy. It clanked, hummed, whirred, and hissed with every little movement, and yet, here was a Ranger. A very unusual Ranger.

Everypony on the front lines had seen Rangers in and out of combat, the power armored troopers were almost ubiquitously attached to normal infantry regiments. Every soldier knew Steel Ranger armor on sight, so they knew when a set was not standard.

Steel Ranger armor was silvery-gray no matter what rank the soldier inside may have held. It served the same purpose as E.U.P. fatigues, making everypony look and feel the same to improve the bonds of teamwork. Ranger armor had the added issue of costing a small fortune to produce. They were recycled from Ranger to Ranger. A custom set would be added cost not once but twice as the modifications would need to be undone in order for the suit to be given to the next warrior to die in it.

Aside from ponies like Gale Force, who served as a model for propaganda posters, custom suits were unheard of. Unheard of aside from the hushed whispers of soldiers who served in Zebrica, far out into the depths of the front lines. The few who had assisted special forces in operations of a classified nature and saw something they were not supposed to.

Red knew all of the Mess Hall stories about such things. He’d dismissed them all. Stampede had served in the very types of missions where such Rangers would have appeared had they been real, and he’d never seen a Ranger with a custom set of armor. Until now.

The Ranger’s armor had a coat of emerald paint, and an amber visor criss crossed with a hexagrammic pattern which looked to Red like some sort of spell matrix. The Ranger’s weapons were also non-standard. The M-42 rocket pod on the suit’s left saddle slot was stock, but rather than the expected heavy machine gun or minigun in the right slot, the suit had another pod, one Red didn’t recognise but suspected was an ammo-plant for the rocket pod. Interesting as that was, the suit also had a supplementary weapon, a foreleg mounted short barreled SMG, most likely 12.7mm caliber.

Red cast an eye over the suit in more detail, searching for any other discrepancies. He noted the armor’s joints were a bit more exposed, leaving the black undersuit showing through much more than a standard set of power armor. The modification was definitely for more flexibility. The Ranger’s front boots were also not stock at all, but were clearly robotic, and had what he suspected were deployable talons. After all, with his mouth covered, the Ranger would need some way to wield the Minocian sword that was sheathed on his back.

All of this unique kit was standing a mere three meters in front of Red, and the Ranger wasn’t alone.

The Ranger was flanked by a pair of mares dressed in simple black business suits, aviator sunglasses, and thin ties. Officially the MoA didn’t exist anymore, but every soldier on the front lines knew that was horseapples. A cover for some reason or another. Mares in these unofficial black uniforms with matching sunglasses were how they knew.

“Sargent Blue Skies?” the agent on the left side said to Red with a cold and emotionless expression.

Red nodded. “Yes, ma’am.”

The agent presented a clipboard to Red with an inkpen clipped to the top of the paperwork. “This is Special Operative ASX J-One-One-Seven. He has been assigned to you for the duration of this mission. Sign here.”

Red frowned, took the pen from the clipboard and looked at the page before looking back up at the agent. “Ma’am, why am I signing a munitions authorization release form?”

“It’s required in these circumstances,” the other agent said with an equal lack of emotion.

“But why though?” Mint asked in spite of all training, protocols, and unwritten rules behind squads interacting with “the Spooks”.

Assault cleared his throat and offered the agent a quick salute. “Beg your pardon, ma’am, but I think what my Sargent means is he’s confused as to why you’re presenting him with a form to authorise release of authority to use a tactical carpet bombing when you’re issuing our squad a supplemental infantry unit… and we’ve already signed the authorization forms for the bunker buster we’ve been issued.”

Red turned his head towards Assault. “Private, please refrain from addressing officers out of turn,” He turned back to the agent as Assault nodded. “He is correct, ma’am. Did you pick up the wrong form?”

“No,” the agent said with an irritated arching of her eyebrows behind her glasses. “Sign.”

Red bit his lip, nodded, and signed the page.

The other agent signed with her own pen. “Witnessed.” she said emotionlessly before turning to the Ranger and glaring at him over her glasses. “Remember, the Ministry Mare was being metaphorical when she said she wanted their heads on pikes. Do not bring back heads on pikes.”

Red felt his tail raise slightly. “Pardon?”

The other members of Stampede shared a quick confused look, one which turned to disgust and horror as they realized what kind of pony would need such a thing clarified.

The Ranger saluted his handler. “I understand.”

The two agents turned and left without another word. The Ranger walked up to Red and offered a salute. “Special Operative ASX J-One-Seventeen reporting for duty, sir! I specialize in CQC and anti-armor operations. I’m fully trained in all E.U.P. tactics, weaponry, and vehicles, and most Zzebrican arms, with some supplemental knowledge of Minocian weapons and strategy. Ready for orders.”

Red took a moment to process that statement then cleared his throat. “Did you say you’re equally proficient in all of our assets, soldier?”

The ranger shook his head. “No, sir. I can operate anything in our arsenal proficiently, but my level of skill is not uniform. I am approximately six percent more effective with close quarters weapons than ranged weapons, sir.”

Haybale snorted and rolled his eyes. “Yeah, I’m calling horseapples on any of us meeting Ranger standards if that’s even half true.”

The Ranger shooks his head. “Oh, no. You probably do. I’m special forces.”

Red raised an eyebrow, as did most of Stampede.

“The Steel Rangers are special forces…” Red protested, his head cocked to one side.

The Ranger rubbed a hoof against the back of his helmet. “Yeah, we… kind of have our own special forces unit now. The Rangers are setting up to become their own branch. It’s a preemptive part of that… May I ask what the mission is, exactly? I was pulled out of storage for this and told to kill whatever you pointed me at. All I know is that my boss’s boss was screaming about wanting the command staff of whatever we’re attacking’s heads on pikes.”

Red cleared his throat to try and hide a terrified whiny. It mostly worked.

The rumours relating to unique Rangers often mentioned “storage” in the context of cryostorage. If the legends were true, then this pony was kept on ice between missions due to his special talent being killing, having a rather psychopathic demeanor, or other unknown condition which meant the Ministries saw their time being awake as wasted if they were not at war. In other words, they were more weapons than people.

Suddenly that release form made a whole lot of sense.

Red pointed to the vertibuck. “Board that aircraft. We’re going to brief ourselves on the way. The mission is to blow up a Zebrican silo and steal intell on their missiles.”

The ranger nodded, walked up to the side of the M113 suspended beneath the vertibuck, and jumped the two meters up into the aircraft, only to then turn around and offer a hoof. “Who needs help up here?”

“Nopony,” Mint, the only member of Stampede who wasn't staring open mouthed at the feet of athletics they’d just witnessed.

Mint dipped her head towards a mobile gangway a few meters from the vertibuck. “That’s what that’s for.”

“Oh…” The Ranger paused and then took a seat on the closest bench.

Red shook his head once and waved his soldiers over. As soon as they’d huddled he began to speak in a low voice, just above a whisper. Like all good soldiers, he knew that whispers traveled further than normal speech.

“Everypony, we’ll be fine as soon as we make contact with the enemy. But before then, I want all of you to act as if all of the chow-hall stories about this kind of thing are true. That said, remember he’s on our side and presumably won't kill us if he gets bored.”

Steth rolled his eyes. “Please, if he was that psychologically unstable he wouldn’t have gotten in. Not even with the more lax recruiting standards they just published.”

Mint shrugged. “He seems nice enough to me. Come on guys, I have fun blowing Stripes to bits but you know I’m not a monster.”

“Yeah,” Blue snorted dismissively. “But you can’t make a two meter jump in an actual ton of armor and half a ton of kit.”

“I’ll bet she could,” the Ranger called down. “She’s got great leg definition.”

Everypony got really quiet for a couple moments. Red recovered first and cleared his throat to announce, “Stampede, move out!”

☢★★◯★★☢

The rhythmic thumping of vertibuck blades drowned out the screeching animal calls from the jungle below it. The unwieldy, recently developed, heavier-than-air troop transport slid just above the treetops. Its pilot only barely able to keep enough altitude to prevent the boxy M113 armored personnel carrier lashed to its ventral hull from smashing into a tree.

The Vertibuck hadn’t been designed to transport cargo via winch long distances, but the E.U.P was almost the same as a colt. If their toy looked like it could do something, they found a way to make it do it. In the case of transporting light vehicles hundreds of kilometers behind enemy lines, the way was to take a good three years off the poor pilot’s life every time the wind kicked up and pulled at the underslung vehicle, and another five off every time the vertibuck hit a patch of turbulence.

This seemingly suicidal flight plan took the craft just beneath the Zebrican’s divination net, even if it made the poor pilot white as a sheet. The vertibuck was simply too new an aircraft for any pony to pilot with the same skill and grace as a cloudship or sky wagon. Unfortunately, such things were too easy for the Zebras to detect.

Ironic how a much louder aircraft could be so much more stealthy. At least, for the moment.

The vertibuck’s passenger bay was full up. Not a single spot left unoccupied by pony or mission specific kit. Everything necessary to punch a hole deep into the heart of a Zebrican fortress. Stampede had been in sardine tin levels of packed in before, but not while going to something they knew most of them probably wouldn’t come back from.

In spite of the close quarters, the squad gave their emerald hued power armor clad ally as much space as the vertibuck allowed. The poor soldiers were unnerved enough simply by wondering if they would be allowed to talk about this operation to anyone, ever, simply because the commando was present. Even worse, which other conspiracy theories floating about the barracks and mess halls were true?

What on Equus were they stepping into that needed a specialist with this kind of hardware from that kind of outfit?

Even more urgently, what kind of special Ministry commando was only describable as distressingly upbeat while riding along to their certain death as a part of a suicide mission?

“So, I don’t have to find a pike out here… Paint Thinner made that clear. Which is good because last time it took me three hours to find one. You don’t see many zebras armed with them anymore,” the Ranger said a few moments after the briefing and mission planning had come to a natural pause. “I did hear her quite clearly though. “If they can hit Equestria from over there, I want their heads on pikes.” Not sure how that’s unclear or up to interpretation… By Minos! I wish ponies would just say what they actually mean! Do you guys think she meant spears, or would some sharpened sticks and primal inspired decor be more in line with the request?”

Red looked up from the crude map spread out on what little of the vertibuck’s floor was available in front of him and blinked once. Over the course of the flight, it had become clear that this Ranger was a bit of a loon, but nice enough and had a sharp sense of humor.

“Mares never mean what they say when it comes to those kinds of things. You’re probably best off letting her know you took care of it and bringing her some flowers,” Red commented before turning his head to give Mint a playful smile. “Right?”

“Eh?” Mint shrugged once. “Depends on the mare. We know it’s a Ministry Mare, and I can think of one that would probably be quite serious…. And she’d think that the stakes were cooler. Probably.”

“Thanks! I’ll keep an eye out for some nice straight sticks on the way back,” the Ranger joked.

Or so everypony thought before he rummaged in his armor’s storage compartment and briefly removed a plastic trash bag. “Oh good! I thought I’d forgotten this back at HQ.”

Red blinked twice and cleared his throat. “Uh, we may not have cargo room for that coming back…”

“We can hang it from the bottom, or stash it in the M113, assuming it makes it back in one piece,” the Ranger pointed out to the horrified squad.

Red decided to change the subject. “Annnnways! About our approach vector. Assault, I think you’re right about their defences,” Red said around his pre-mission cigar as he squinted at a small detail on one of the clifftop riges the map highlighted. “There’s no way they haven’t hidden an AA emplacement there. If that’s the case, we’ll have to hoof it a good six kilometers through the jungle. Tell the pilot to set us down at Point Gamma and risk taking one or two hits.”

“Not to be rude,” the Ranger interrupted as he leaned forwards to point out another spot on the map with his hoof tip. “But if they have the other emplacement here, because we know they have three on this slope, and you’ve just spotted the second, then the Stripes have to know Gamma is the only point we could land troops. They’ll have ground forces on site.”

Blue nodded once. “Yes they will. Thing is, the only other landing sites we could reach without becoming a flying block of Prench cheese… They’re beyond this newfangled bucket of bolts PONR. I’d like to have the fuel to get home… Assuming we make it out alive.”

“That’s what I’d do too, if I were them,” Hay said analytically. “Their cannons won’t do too well against our ventral armor. We could land at Beta if we can manage it in less than fourty seconds and no more than three direct hits.”

Red took a long drag on his cigar and looked the ranger up and down. “Well?”

“Well, sir?” The Ranger replied, cocking his head to one side.

“You pointed out a problem with the gameplan,” Blue prompted with a wave of his hoof. “What’s your solution?”

Stampede all did their best to look disinterested in their ally’s response. Even basic Steel Ranger tactics were classified, yet invaluable. Everypony on board had been desperately looking forward to what Steel Ranger’s own special force division had in their playbook.

He shrugged. “I thought I could jump out and shoot our way out of this problem.”

Red smiled ever so faintly. “I appreciate the levity, Mr. ASX J-one-hundred-seventeen…” He frowned and shook his head. “Look, we’re in the field. That handle is too long. Do you have a nickname?”

The Ranger sat quietly for a moment, then nodded. “Go ahead and call me Ash.”

“Ash. Good, short, and nothing like any of my buck’s names,” Red said with a satisfied nod before leaning back into his seat’s crash harness. “As I was saying, Ash, I appreciate the levity, but we have four minutes to make a decision.”

The slit visored helmet creaked slightly as Ash turned his head and looked into Red’s eyes.

“I wasn’t joking, sir,” Ashen replied politely. “They attached me to this op because they thought you might need a close quarters specialist. Have the pilot make a pass over Gamma, I’ll jump out, and by the time you come back around, I’ll have the site secure.”

Stampede began to whisper to each other, mostly about how either terrifyingly competent or full of horseapples Ash had to be.

Blue gave Ash a blank look. “Come on, soldier. Give us a real plan.”

“Or put your money where your mouth is,” Mint added. “If you could pull off clearing a landing pad in thirty seconds… That would be pretty cool.”

Ashen opened his mouth to operate one of his helmet’s many tongue switches. The one he pressed turned off the external speaker, preventing the ponies around him from hearing anything at all. With his intercom muted, Ashen mimicked clearing his throat. A short “a-hem” being the que for a third party to be ready to advise him.

“What can I tell them?” Ashen’s question was picked up by his suit’s term-link relay, routed through the nearest layline to a MoA headquarters in Equestria, directly into a dedicated Operations Terminal where his support agent sat. The agent assigned to assist him was a short, plump, albino mare named Curtain Rod. One of the MoA’s many “random agents”. Individuals selected precisely because of how little they resembled or acted like an intelligence operative.

Curtain hummed and drummed her left hoof on the terminal’s keyboard. She shrugged, and carefully pressed her headset more firmly against her head to force the microphone into position so she could be heard clearly.

“Your service record is out of the question… But you can mention the time you did exactly what you’re proposing doing again here,” Curtain decided after thinking through the extensive layers of MoA protocols at play.

Ashen reactivated his armor’s intercom. “Worked just fine at Carthitch.”

The marines' quiet murmurs went dead quiet. The still quite recent and infamous Battle of Carthitch could be aptly described as a long chain of close calls. Until, that is, a cloudship of troops managed to touch down at a key position and force the zebras into a rout. A key position which had been occupied by two platoons of Zebra infantry, a war-golem, and if the rumors were true, a warlock.

Blue narrowed his eyes. “Are you saying you cleared the landing zone for the 501st?”

“My service record is classified,” Ashen said with a frustrated huff. “I’m just repeating historical facts. The strategy worked just fine in worse conditions.”

Curtain Rod frowned behind her terminal. “Hey, it’s okay. You can fancolt about how much fun you had back there with me later.”

Very few ponies understood Ashen better than Curtain Rod. Most simply couldn’t grok that a robot who was programmed to love combat, no matter how personlike they were, was going to find combat quite enjoyable. She also understood that Ashen couldn’t grok the stuff he loved to reminisce about would give most ponies PTSD in a heartbeat.

Like all Field Agent Assistants, Curtain had gotten her job for two reasons. First, she found the idea of being able to see everything through a soldier's eyes and help them remotely appealing. Second, she was one of the lucky 23% of ponies immune to post traumatic stress, and also one of the 4% who had no adverse reaction to gore. Everything Ash saw, everything he did, Curtain was there with him, almost as if she were in the suit herself.

If she had been able to pass physical fitness and health standards, she would have been a Ranger herself.

Ashen muted himself again. “But that’s no fun, you already know how it went! Besides, you were there with me. Think I could get Anvil Squad to listen to the play by play again?”

“Ha! Fat chance.” Curtain giggled.

Red finished considering his options, then turned to the marine next to him. “Blue, tell our pilot to make a pass over Gamma. Our Commando is going to clear a landing pad.”

“Yes, sir!” Blue replied before twisting to poke his head up into the cockpit.

The vertibuck adjusted course slightly, shifting east just a few hairs in order to pass over point Gamma. The maneuver was already risky. The trees provided little cover and just ahead a short mountain jutted out of the jungle. An ancient volcano, once the home of ancient Zebrican temples, and now the home of a launch site for what the E.U.P. feared were missiles capable of striking the Equestrian Heartland.

Point Gamma was a small clearing in the jungle next to a river which ran down the mountain. As an open spot wherein aerial troops could land, it was obviously covered by the Zebrican AA grid. What made it a safe site was in theory, just one gun had an angle on it, since the more probable approach for an assault lay on the mountah’s western slope.

The vertibuck was spotted moments before reaching Gamma. Zebra troops scrambled to bring the clifftop quad barreled AA cannon to bear on the small craft. A moment of confusion washed over the soldiers. They’d never seen this kind of aircraft before. The Zebra’s lack of pegasus magic meant they had been using heavier than air craft for decades. The gunners began to question if this was a Zebrican aircraft.

Perhaps a lost contractor or mercenary with radio problems? The front was over a hundred kilometers away…

The vertibuck began to bank, clearly turning around. This added to the confusion, but only for a moment. The soldier manning the gun saw a pony shaped blur fall from the unidentified aircraft and with a cry of “Askari wa parachuti!”, the gun opened fire.

Ash plunged through the air towards the mist covered clearing below the vertibuck. A quick glance below showed he had jumped clear of the vertibuck’s cable-bound payload. There was no need to waste energy pushing himself further out from the aircraft.

The rapid pulsating thud of Zebrican flack cannons shook the jungle. Thick black clouds of flack began to erupt around him, shrapnel pinged off his armor, sending flecks of paint blasting out across the jungle. Ash remained focused on the ground below, and activated his helmet’s E.F.S. spell matrix.

Time seemed to slow. The zebras below were highlighted red through the fog. Targeting solutions were computed and displayed near each and every one below. Ashen used his suit’s systems to select his secondary weapon, a rocket pod, and fired at the largest clusters of enemies.

The pod’s four barrels belched fire as their payloads left the barrels. The pod’s talisman began to create new rockets from stored materials, another volley would be ready in thirty-six seconds.

The rockets began to twist in the air, each seeking their own targets. Ash activated his telekinesis talisman, aimed it at a large tree to his right, and pushed hard. The burst of telekinetic force couldn’t move the tree, and so it made Ash shoot to the left just in time to avoid the volley of flaming bullets fired by the terrified soldiers below.

It also brought Ash directly above one of the zebras.

The rockets reached their targets and exploded midair as their flame-bolt matrices activated, and conjured bubbling masses of burning oil. Pained shrieks filled the clearing as several burning zebras stumbled out from behind rocks and logs, desperately slapping at the flames searing their flesh to the bone.

Ash slammed hooves first into the zebra he’d positioned himself above, shattering his spine and punching a hole through one flank. Ash dropped and rolled off the splattered corpse immediately, using his telekinesis to boost himself up and over his battle saddle’s mounted weapons just in time to avoid the second volley fired his way.

Ash raised his right foreleg and flexed his hoof to fire his leg-mounted SMG. 12.7mm rounds ripped through an old rotten log, slicing the three zebra soldiers behind it to bloody ribbons in an instant.

Ash checked his E.F.S. for the seven enemies that remained. They had positional advantage. Bringing his gun to bear on their positions before they could fire wasn’t possible. Experience reminded Ash that a mere six shots from their enchanted weapons would down his shields. And one through his armor would mean weeks of hanging from a garage’s ceiling and complaining to technicians about the quality of their welds.

Or death, if they hit his head.

“Sword time,” Ash said to Curtain.

Curtain sputtered into her terminal’s tactical display. “Do not do that!”

“Already doing it,” Ash said as he reared up.

A simple subroutine flipped Ash’s sense of balance to biped mode, and activated the Minos Gauntlets built into his forehoove’s boots. The change in stance bought him just time to reach up and draw the xiphos from his back and activate its blazing enchantment.

The first Zebra fired. Ash’s shields took the hit, sparking gold and making the fog around him glow. Ash began to sprint towards the only two targets who stood next to each other. One popped up from behind cover, whipping their rifle into position to fire. Ash pushed at the ground to his right with his telekinesis, forcing himself into the air a good meter and a half. The rifle cracked. The bullet split the fog, leaving a blazing streak in Ash’s optics.

Ash landed atop a mossy rock, jumped before he could slip, twisted in the air, fired another telekinetic pulse to change trajectory, and landed rear hooves first on the other zebra’s face.

The zebra’s neck snapped under the force of half a ton of armor and robot. His squadmate screamed something. Another bullet skipped off Ash’s shield. Ash flicked his blade, slicing through the zebra’s rifle barrel, shoulder, and neck.

A third bullet skipped off Ash’s shields.

“Roketi! Rusha roketi!” a zebra ordered.

A rocket launcher thumped in response. Ash ducked instinctively. The terrified soldier’s aim made this pointless, a large boulder on the cliffside across the river exploded into hoof sized shards and slid down the cliff into the water.

Ash scooped up the intact zebra rifle with his magic and fired half the mag into the Zebrican rocketeer. The Zebra collapsed, dropping his second rocket into the muddy riverbank.

A fourth bullet pingged off Ash’s shield. His helmet flashed a warning of low shield integrity. Then a second stating his telekinesis talisman needed a moment to recharge.

Ash’s helmet flashed a third alert. This one is good. His rocket pod was ready.

Ash fired immediately, sending all four rockets towards three of the remaining soldiers, with the fourth slicing through the air towards the nearby AA gun.

The last zebra in this squad, the one that ordered the rocket strike, that one would get a more personal touch.

Ash’s E.F.S. showed the squad’s leader as standing just behind a large root arch at the edge of the jungle. The silhouette was distinct enough to tell this was a centurion. The plumed helmet’s crest being key to Ash’s analysis.

Ash turned on one leg and began to sprint for the centurion’s root-arch. His rockets met their targets and exploded, lighting a good chunk of the clearing on fire both from the explosions themselves, and from the random panicked sprinting of the doomed and ablaze soldiers. A bolt of lightning joined Ash’s fireballs as three of Stampede's pegasi troopers made sure the AA gun was neutralized.

The centurion popped up from behind cover and fired a burst of rounds. Two missed. One struck Ash’s shield. The golden barrier sparked, fizzled, and collapsed like ball lightning bursting. The centurion grit his teeth, knowing he had just one chance to kill the armored warrior before he was atop him.

He fired. His rifle’s barrel belched flames, coating the bullet with arcane fire as it flew from the barrel. It burned a hole through the mist, barreling towards Ash, then past him.

The centurion missed.

Ash reached the root-arch and jumped atop it, squatting down to seize the centurion by the neck. The Zebra gurgled, thrashed as Ash lifted him up, then stabbed him through the belly.

“Exploding!” Ash growled, extracted his blade, then stabbed again. “Really!” Once more the blade flicked out to be thrust home. “Hurts!” A fourth stab, this one angled upwards, sliced through the centurion’s lung then heart.

Ash dropped the corpse, waited a moment for his blade to burn the blood off, then sheathed his blade and returned to all fours while retracting his gauntlets.

“That was incredibly reckless, Ash!” Curtain scolded through the Term-Link. “What if you’d missed any of those rockets?”

Ash smiled behind his helmet. “Yes. The person made of math with an intuitive knowledge of physics might buck up firing a seeking projectile.”

“One of these days you’re going to be blown limb from limb again,” She huffed, crossing her forelegs over her barrel indignantly.

“Come on, Curtain. It’s just war. If you ask me a better use of your time would be advising me at those team building get togethers,” Ash mumbled awkwardly. “I still don’t know how the buck you’re supposed to execute smalltalk properly.”

Curtain coughed into her hoof. “Uh, yeah… I could totally help you with that.”

“You could? Great! When’s the next one? I’ll get you my internal Term-Link code before then.” Ash asked, completely unaware of the significance of his assistant’s cough.

Curtain grimaced and couldn’t help but feel just a little bad for the combat robot. She’d seen his file. She knew Ash was designed for non-combat and social purposes in addition to war. Unfortunately, the gods seemed to have hit him with the same “buck you” stick of social ineptitude they’d baseball batted her around with.

She began to think of how she could explain sarcasm to Ash, but her terminal beeped. “Cut the chatter, Ash. The vertibuck is landing.”

“Oh, good,” Ash commented as he looked up to watch the aircraft land. “The fourth rocket hit the AA gun. I was a little worried about it.”

“Why?” Curtain asked, her voice beginning to be drowned out by the vertibuck’s rotors.

“I had to make that shot from memory. Of the map,” Ash replied.

Curtain flinched. “Uh, social pro-tip. Do not tell those ponies you eyeballed the AA gun.”

“Noted,” Ash frowned and dedicated a few dozen milliseconds moments to calculating the logic on display.

What was there to dislike about making an impressive shot due to uncertain data about the location of a target? Nothing at all as far as he could see. In fact, they really should be impressed. Then again, Curtain was correct about these things a surprisingly large amount of the time…

“Curtain? When I get back can I take a look at your user manual?”

The mare smiled and shook her head. “If you can find one, sure. Ah, there we go. Your armor’s picking up their tactical circle. Let’s take a crack at these wards.”

Curtain had almost breached the Zebrican base’s wards. In addition to seeing what Ashen saw, the hexagrams in his helmet acted as a transceiver for magic. MoA Ranger’s Agents could cast certain spells through them as if they were there. The spell link was mostly suited to divination, as such, the agent became an extension of the Ranger’s EFS system, guiding them through the battlefield using the enemy’s own arcana.

Naturally, the Zebras could and did do the same thing to the ponies.

“Good,” Ash said as the Vertibuck-hauled M113 touched down with a surprisingly soft crunch of grass, underbrush, and zebra bones.

Stampede repelled from the vertibuck’s crew doors, covering the six meters to the ground in short order. Four of the soldiers immediately went to the M113’s carry hooks on each corner and unclipped the APC from the vertibuck. At the same time, the fifth hopped through the vehicle's top hatch, fired it up, and after a brief roar from the turbine as it spun up, drove the APC out from under the vertibuck.

The vertibuck itself then touched down and shut off its engines while the four who had unhooked the APC quickly deployed the door guns for the co-pilot and gunner.

“Keep her safe for us while we’re out, alright?” Blue called to the co-pilot playfully as they took control of the door gun.

“For you? Buck that. I’m keeping her safe for me,” the Co-pilot cracked back.

Blue smiled. “Personal reasons? Even better!”

“Enough chit chat, Stripe’s know we’re here!” Red called from the M113’s rear as the boarding ramp opened up. “Everypony, pile in!”

Ash took a few steps towards the APC, took one look at the cramped troop-bay with its two metal slab benches, and winced as he pictured the mission’s cargo, everypony in the squad, and their kit, all crammed into the relatively small space.

“Uh, sir? Maybe I should ride up on the roof,” Ash suggested. “Then I can use my rockets on anything the fifty-cal can’t take down.”

Red didn’t even think for a second.

“Hop on up.” He ordered as he slipped into the APC on the tail of the last member of Stamped.

Ash trotted up to the back of the APC and jumped, pushing down at the ground with his telekinesis to boost him the rest of the way up. His hooves thunked down on the armored roof just as one of the earth pony mares who he hadn’t been introduced to poked her head up through the roof hatch to man the M113’s gun.

She smiled. Ash simply jumped up to the vehicle’s roof 2.4 meters and landed it like it was nothing.

“You really think I could make a jump like that?” Mint asked hopefully.

“Yeah! You’ve got the legs for it. The trick is to jump with all four at once and all with the same force. Don't do the rear leg 75% front legs 25% thing they show you in basic. Sure that saves energy, but you don't go anywhere near as high.”

“I’ll remember that, thanks!” Mint said with a genuine smile.

“Well, damn!” she shook her head and checked the gun’s belt. “Your buckball coach must have been pissed off when you enlisted.”

Ash activated his boot magnets and dipped his barrel to “shrug”.

“I didn’t know I had one of those,” Ash said as he searched his memories for anypony with such a relationship to him.

There was none.

The M113 lurched as it started to roll forwards, crushing plant and zebra alike beneath its treads as it moved towards the river, aiming for a large gap between the rocks and trees.

“Are you kidding me?” she sputtered, looking up from her weapon check. “Legs like that and you didn’t play buckball?”

“I never got to do any sports as a foal,” Ash answered honestly, after all his personal life wasn’t classified.

“Damn… That’s a waste,” she shook her head and extended a hoof to shake. “Juniper Mint.”

“I’d shake your hoof, but I can’t selectively magnetize my boots,” Ash said with a chuckle.

“Oh…” Mint put her hoof back on the gun’s control arm. “Well, anyway… If you make it out of the war, with legs like that you could go pro. Where’d you build that kind of skill up if not on the court?”

“Oh, my parents built that, not me,” Ash corrected idly before scanning the clifftop ahead with his E.F.S. and highlighting eight targets. “But enough about me, there are eight Stripes up there. Put a few rounds left of that pointy nose-shaped rock would you?”

“On it,” Mint fired, sending half a dozen rounds whistling past the rock.

Ash watched as the zebras bunched up, backing away from the rock. One step, then two, three.

“There we go,” Ash fired his rocket pod, sending four rockets arcing up and over the clifftop to detonate and splash the clustered troops with their incendiary payloads.

“Did you just—” Mint’s comment was interrupted as one of the zebra’s who hadn’t clustered fired a shot over the cliff edge which plunged off the roof a hoof’s breath from Mint’s chest.

Mint swore under her breath and sent two dozen rounds screaming into the clifftop, forcing the zebra to back up.

“Keep him pinned, I’ll get the other two,” Ash ordered calmly as he drew Mint’s sidearm with his telekinesis and brought it to aim.

“My principality for an E.F.S. chip,” Mint growled between machinegun bursts, not noticing her pistol was being borrowed.

“Right?” Ash asked just as one of the remaining soldiers peeked over the cliff edge to fire.

Ash shot instantly, trusting his E.F.S. to have plotted the correct firing solution. The .45 round tore through the zebra’s frontal lobe, showering his surviving friend with brains and sending the zebra into a panic.

Ash shook his head and kept an eye on the cowering outline. “You’d think they’d issue everypony a pipbuck, not just the sarges.”

“Or at least—” Mint ducked down as another round bounced off the hatch behind her. “Buck! Could install one in the bucking turrets, you cheep-plot-motherbuckers!”

The panicked zebra continued to unload his rifle into the APC’s roof. His shots were wild, threatening nopony in particular. Mint yelped as a ricochet cut across the side of her neck. Ash’s shields sparked as two bounced off the golden barrier.

Ash fired again, the APC hit the riverbank just as he pulled the trigger, and his hot hit the cliff instead. The zebra stood up, reaching for a grenade on his belt. Ash grit his teeth. The APC plunged into the river, leveling out. The Zebra raised his hoof to throw. Ash fired.

His shot hit the zebra in the chest, forcing him to drop his grenade. Ash squinted at his E.F.S. display. The Zebra was still alive. But holding still, putting a hoof over the wound. The grenade would take care of him in a moment.

Ash stooped to get a look at Mint’s neck. “How bad is it?”

“Flesh wound,” she grumbled. “It’s fine. Just burns like when Haybale pees.”

“Oh, buck you!” a stallion yelled from inside the APC.

“No thanks! I don’t want what you got,” Mint called with a grin.

“She’s fine,” The squad’s medic, Stethoscope, called out in a professional tone. “As for you, Hay… I have pills for that. You just have to ask.”

“For the last time, I did not sleep with that zebra hooker!” Hay snapped.

“I’ll always find it weird how normal ponies sound on the battlefield,” Curtain Rod said in Ash’s ear.

Ash muted himself. “Oh! I know this one! It’s because it helps them pretend they are not likely to die at any moment. They’re all actually terrified, but if they act normal it helps everypony be less scared because their team seems calm and casual.”

“Yes, I know,” Curtain said politely. “It just always sounds so wrong to me.”

Not knowing how to reply, Ash unmuted himself and tapped Mint on the shoulder with the but of her pistol. “Here, I had to use three rounds. Sorry about that.”

Mint grabbed the pistol with her mouth, transferred it to a hoof, holstered it, put her hooves back on the gun’s control arm, then snapped her head back around to Ash. “Wait, you’re a unicorn?!”

“No. I’ve got a telekinesis talisman,” Ash corrected.

Mint huffed. “No fair… Rangers get all the fun toys.”

“We’ve got some openings. I can put in a good word for you if you do something awesome,” Ash promised.

The APC hit the other side of the river and began to climb up the bank, which was also the base of the cliff. The vehicle’s turbine groaned, hummed, then roared as the spark batteries began to drain more and more power. Small bolts of purple lightning crackled along the APC’s underside as the flux regulator provided just enough lift to let the transport crawl up the 84-degree slope.

It was truly a shame that the E.U.P. refused to let its inventors make its official name the “Mountain Goat”.

Rocks cracked. Chips of stone flew up from the tracks, loosened by the magics at play and hurtled away by the treads. Everypony hung onto the APC as it lurched up the cliffside, slid over the top, then slammed roughly down onto the road which had been quarried into the side of the volcano. Assault handled the angle change expertly, turning the APC even as the treads still fell towards the ground. It was time to head up the road towards the main gate. Or so the enemy would think.

The animalistic roar of alchemical engines echoed across the mountain the very instant Equestrian treads hit the clifftop. A pair of Zebrican Basilisks were on their way.

Stampede winced as the distinct engine noise pierced the relative quiet of their vehicle’s mana-reactive drive. All Zebrican vehicles roared as alchemical fires burned and detonated within their mechanical hearts, but the Basilisk's unnatural shriek was as unique as a monster’s cry.

The pair of tanks crested the bend in the road ahead. Sleek, windswept, rounded MEW resistant hull geometry covered in camouflage paint which made them appear to be obsidian deposits. They hadn’t appeared in the surveillance photos.

Basilisks were cloud tank hunting weapons. Fast. Agile. Well-armed.

They had twin turrets, one above the other, with the front turret limited to the tanks’ forward-facing ark, but the upper turret free to fire in any direction, which is why the SRM pods were mounted to the upper pods. The turrets themselves were armed with short-barreled auto-loading 18cm repeating cannons and a series of short-range machine guns for point defense. Main battle tanks, ones designed for fighting in close quarters.

“Buck me…” Mint groaned under her breath before squeezing off a burst of rounds towards the gunner’s view slit on the left-most Basilisk as the vehicles turned sideways to form a roadblock while bringing their missile pod equipped turrets to bear down on the APC.

Her rounds skipped off the tanks’ armor, with a few finding their way through the slit, but hitting nothing critical, nor anypony. The tank roared along unhindered.

“Evasive action!” Red barked.

Assault threw the left tread’s emergency brake on, bringing the M113 into a jerky, sliding, left hoof turn towards the cliffside. “Going up and over!” he announced over the boom of the Basilisk's first salvo.

The two shells blasted past the M113, the sudden turn being all that saved it. Zebrican gunners always lead their shots, but the split-second bought by dodging one rarely gave time to dodge a second.

Ashen locked his EFS onto the leftmost Basilisk's upper turret and fired a salvo of rockets. They left from his pod on a column of smoke and fire thick enough to obscure him as he disengaged the magnets and jumped from the M113’s roof.

The rockets burst on the Basilisk's hull, covering it in flames. The tank’s commander hit the fire suppression system, spraying the outside of the tank with thickened foam from recessed nozzles. Fire wouldn’t burn through the tank, but it would de-temper the armor given enough time. The foam hissed and sizzled, sending up more smoke until the crew couldn't’ see out of their foam covered metal shell while they choked on the chemical fumes.

Ashen ran directly for the other Basilisk. His shield popped and sparked as light machinegun rounds plinked off the arcane barrier. The shield held just long enough for him to jump up onto the tank’s lower turret before bursting in a shower of golden sparks as he landed in front of one gun port. Ashen reared up, drew his sword amidst a blaze of green light, and stabbed it through the gunport and through the gunner’s skull.

A panicked cry echoed from the tank’s hull as the remaining gunner, driver, and commander began to panic. Umbral Iron shouldn’t have been possible for a simple flaming melee tool to pierce, and yet with one thrust…

Their panic deepened as Ashen slashed the bolts holding the tanks’ hatch shut in two, ripped the hatch from the tank, flung it aside, then stabbed the commander through the chest. The commander thrashed as Ashen gripped his dying from by the throat with one robotic talon and flung him from the tank before jumping inside.

Mint stared on, jaw agape. Never in her life had she seen anypony decide to take on any tank in melee, let alone appear to win.

The smoldering Basilisk's smoke-filled view cleared just in time to see their partner’s turret swivel to face them, then fire. Ashen’s round hit the other Basilisk point-blank at the seam between the turret and the body. Right where his EFS reported the magazine. The tanks’ ammo cooked off instantly, blasting the turret from the other tank and sending a fireball screaming through its hull.

Mint’s jaw stayed dropped. The other members of Stampede had no clue what was going on. Their limited view from inside the APC meant they only heard the deafening blast followed by their hull shake.

“Are we hit?” Assault called as he began to drive along the cliff wall, the spark batteries screaming in protest of the power-draining maneuver.

Mint shook herself back to reality, only to find she’d been there all along. “Ashen hijacked one of them! Blew the other to Tartarus!”

“What?” Red asked, his eyes widening in shock.

Ashen popped his head out of the remaining Basilisk to throw the driver’s corpse out of the cut-open hatch. He offered Mint a friendly wave. “I can drive these! Want to upgrade?”

Mint felt a sensation she had only felt once before when the lead singer of a colt band she loved as a teen had smiled directly at her during a concert.

Her lips parted in a grin. Her eyes fluttered beneath heavy lids. “Oh, buck the hay yes~”

Red, Hay, and Steth winced at Mint’s tone of voice.

“Here we go again,” Steth groaned, pushing several flashbacks aside.

“Mint?” Red asked through clenched teeth.

“Permission to switch vehicles, sir?” Mint called down the M113’s hatch as professionally as she could manage.

Red tilted his head and frowned. "For what purpose?"

"Uh..." Mint shrugged. "To give the Stripes their tank rounds back? Our Ranger said he can drive a Basilisk, and I think I remember how they said you shoot their guns."

“He can drive those?! Do it!” Red smiled as some of the mission-worry was lifted from his back.

Mint nodded and climbed up out of the hatch fully, then jumped to the Basilisk's turret top as the M113 passed.

Battery slid up through the hatch, taking Mint’s place on the APC’s gun while Mint slid down through the hatch and into the blood-stained gunner’s seat. “How do I shoot this thing?”

Ashen grunted as he squeezed his bulky power-armored frame into the slim-fit zebra-intended driver’s seat. “Floor pedals rotate the turret. The lever on your left elevates the gun. Button on your right fires. It’s auto-loading and can do four-round bursts if you hold the trigger down. Should be an ammo counter next to the sight.”

Mint checked the turret, found the controls Ashen mentioned, then nodded. “Forty-six shots.”

“Make them count!” Ashen called up through the cramped interior cheerfully before spinning the Basilisk around in place and driving up the road, using the fact the M113 was still crawling along the cliff face to pass it and take point.

After all, the Basilisk could handle a few more hits than the APC could…

The two vehicles crawled up the mountain. By now the entire base was on alert. The sheer audacity of the Equestrian plan had the command staff in chaos. There was no way this single APC could be the whole assault. This had to be a distraction. Minimal forces were dispatched to the main road. The bulk of the Zebrican soldiers were sent to the hidden pillboxes along the volcano’s other slopes. The AA guns which could have turned down to blast the tanks aimed upwards, their operators scanning the sky for inbound Thunderheads.

The Basilisk's engine redlined the entire way to the base’s outermost checkpoint. Its engine smoked, its exhaust pipes glowed a dim red. Fast as they were, they had never been intended to keep up with an M113, let alone run point for one of the comparatively speedy APCs.

The Zebras were ready for the Equestrians, but not one of their own tanks. The checkpoint had set up a few vehicle barricades, and a platoon armed with RPGs had dug in to supplement the heavy machine gun turrets. The sight of one of their own Basilisks drifting around the corner bought Mint just enough time to blast a hole in the barricade.

The Zebras opened fire as the concrete and iron shrapnel that had been their roadblock whizzed through the air. Two rockets detonated against the Basilisk's left flank, shredding its armor and blowing a hole into the auxiliary hydraulic tank.

“Good thing we’re not using the front turret,” Ashen commented with just a bit too much clam for Mint’s liking.

Mint swiveled the main gun and put three rounds into one of the machine gun nests. Battery fired into the Zebrican rocketeers, forcing them to keep their heads down.

The two vehicles blew past the blockade, each firing as they passed, and putting a few rounds behind them until they turned the next corner on the switchback.

Mint took a moment to take stock of the M113. It had taken a hit to the front armor, and a good-sized crater had been blown into it, but the armor didn’t appear to have been breached.

“They took a good hit. Think we can get through the second checkpoint?” Mint asked as she swiveled the turret back to face the front.

Ashen shrugged. “No idea. This plan depends on the Zebra’s reaction time. If they have more tanks or realize it’s just us a bit faster than we hope… It’s over.”

Mint bit her lip and slumped in her seat. “Great. Even the super-soldier thinks this is a suicide mission…”

Ashen frowned and switched off his helmet’s intercom. “Curtain? Anything I can do to keep her morale up?”

Curtain thought for a moment, nodded, then typed a few commands into the mission terminal. “Tell her that there’s support she doesn't know about. It’s classified, but it's there.”

“I’m almost in,” Curtain added a moment later, wishing that talking didn't disrupt her spellcasting as much as it did.

Concentration was, after all, key.

Ashen unmuted himself. “It’s okay. We do have some backup. It’s almost ready… Cant’ say more. Classified.”

Mint raised an eyebrow. “Wait, what?”

“In a few more minutes, the Zebra’s wards will be down and a friend can start playing with some of their toys, guiding us through their base, maybe even get us a fresh tank,” Ashen elaborated, disregarding security protocols entirely.

Mint frowned, shook her head, then smiled. “Okay. I get it. I won't press… But your friend had better deliv—”

Something screamed as it fell from the sky.

The Basilisk shook as rubble fell down around it, nearly sweeping the tank off the road and down the cliffside. A mortar shell had detonated just above the Basilisk. Ashen swore and fought the controls, managing to ride atop the wave and find their way to safe traction before the tank tumbled off the volcano.

“Eyes on that mortar!” Ashen barked.

“On it,” Curtain said in place of her usual deep-voiced proclamation of: “I’m in.”

Mint swiveled the turret, scanning for anywhere a zebra could have set up a portable motor launcher without exposing themselves too much. The rest of Stampede followed suit, beginning what little evasive maneuvers the narrow road would allow.

A second shell exploded off target, hitting behind the two vehicles, ironically making the road impassable for the Zebrican transport trying to bring the remains of the rocketeers up to attack the Equestrian flank.

Back at MoA Headquarters, Curtain flicked through the Zberican tactical systems, using their own sensor net and targeting talismans against them. The entire battlefield began to appear on her screen, taking the shape of a vector map with colored dots to designate different threats.

Her eyes scanned over the image until… There! A small pillbox above and ahead of the Basilisk by about two hundred meters.

“Found it!” Curtain said as she uploaded the mortar’s position to the tank just in time for the third mortar shell to detonate on the Basilisk's nose.

The tank sputtered, groaned, nearly died from the shock, but continued on, creaking and groaning, its front internals now completely exposed and burning.

“Buck,” Ashen swore quietly. “We’ve got about five minutes before that reaches the fuel tanks.”

Curtain hit her transmission circuit, using Ashen’s armor as a relay to upload tactical data to the Basilisk. Mint’s question relating to the fire was pushed aside as the tanks’ targeting talisman highlighted the mortar next for her. She fired seven shells without a word, smattering them across the pillbox and turning it to little more than smoking dust.

“I like your friend,” Mint said with a satisfied smile.

“Me too,” Ash said as the fire began to burn a pale green. “Oh no! Bail!”

Ash’s estimate had been for an entirely different model of Basilisk. This one’s fuel tank was further forward.

Mint needed no prompting. She stood up, pulled her self out of the turret, and dropped off the side, hitting the ground with a roll to hurt herself as little as possible.

Ash turned the tank away from the volcano, threw the throttle wide open, did his best to ignore the shriek of his shields collapsing rapidly amid the flames licking his hooves, and began to pull himself through the tight quarters to the hatch. His armor scraped the sides of the crew compartment, wedging and pinching with every movement. The tank roared towards the cliff.

Ashen gripped the base of the gunner’s seat. The Basilisk's treads began to dip down as more of the tank was over the air than on the road. The tank tipped forwards. Ashen pulled himself into the gunner’s seat.

It began to fall. Ashen heaved himself out of the hatch, onto the turret, ran forwards, and stumbled as the tank pitched completely off the cliff. Ashen looked up, started to calculate his odds of surviving the 80-meter fall, only to be pulled up onto the road by a silvery-blue light as Battery caught him with his unicorn magic as the APC slid to a stop.

Battery levitated Ashen up onto the road and smiled. “That’s one cider you owe me, Ranger!” He called down from the turret.

“Understood. Thank you!” Ashen called back as he jumped back onto the M113’s roof.

“Could you have made that?” Curtain asked, knowing Ashen’s fondness for abusing his telekinesis talisman and Neighton’s third law of motion.

“I don’t think so,” Ashen answered honestly, forgetting to mute himself. “I was trying to find a way to survive the drop.”

Battery blinked then turned to levitate Mint onto the roof. “Uh… You okay in that shell, sir?” he asked while lifting.

Ashen frowned in distress. “Oh… Sorry. Forgot to mute myself when talking to my Mare-in-a-Chair.”

“Huh?” Battery frowned.

“He’s got an MoA mage feeding him tactical data. But that’s classified,” Mint explained before gesturing for Battery to get off the gun so she could take over once more.

Battery dropped into the APC's interior with a big grin and winked at Red. “Don’t tell no pony, but our Ranger friend comes with a classified MoA Mage on tactical overwatch duty.”

Red sighed in relief. “Good! This op might just be survivable after all. Assault, this is as good a spot as any to head off-road.”

Assault nodded and spun the APC to face up the cliff. “Spark batteries have recharged… Let’s do it!”

The APC lurched, titled, and groaned as it climbed up the slope once more. They cut a curving path westwards, dipping into a blindspot between the Zebrican pillboxes to make their way around the slope to the west side. Where the zebras had built a small auxiliary airship dock.

As the M113 went offroad, the Zebra command staff had figured out they’d been had. No bigger assault was coming, and now a commando squad with armored support was loose behind their main defensive line. What’s worse, their mage had put dozens of false sensor echoes into their wards. The M113 seemed to be heading in a dozen different directions.

There were legionaries enough to chase the Equestrians down, but this was after the siege of Per-Atum. Not a single Zebrican commander was willing to believe any of the dots in their scrying mirror were real. Certainly, the ponies had wiped the real signature from the sensor grid. At the very least, there was no way the real APC was the one heading for the fighter launch bay on the western slope. There was simply no way for a terrestrial vehicle other than a Titan to enter the base that way.

Assault had pushed the poor M113 to its very last spark of magic. The vehicles had never been intended to use their climbing spell for more than two minutes, and here he was pushing the five-minute mark. The spark batteries were so dry Stampede’s Unicorns were feeding their own magic into the system just to keep it running.

“Thirty more seconds!” Assault called out as he twisted the control sticks to angle the APC down the slope.

“We have twelve!” Blue corrected as he gave the engine another blast from the fire extinguisher.

The flames flickered out, but the oily smoke continued to rise.

“Make the time or we’ll roll this thing down to the bottom and burn,” Assault growled, jerking the sticks as the APC fought every last input he gave.

The APC crept towards the sharp cliff edge it had been crawling towards for the last few minutes. The cabin’s air shimmered with waste heat, the poor engine’s cooling system had been maxed out for the last five minutes.

“We’re gonna die…” Hay murmured quietly to himself.

“Probably,” Steth agreed as the doctor quickly checked his shotgun.

Fully loaded.

Hay reached into his shirt pocket, pulled a small holotape from his uniform’s pocket, and slapped it into the APC’s PA system. “Might as well go out to some tunes worth a buck.”

Assault nodded in agreement and hit the play button. The eerie wail of an electric guitar split the air. A type of music the Ministry of Image banned years ago for being “not Equestrian”. Naturally, this meant every single soldier had a tape or two.

“From Unique’s Straw Hat. Good choice, Hay. Everypony, brace for drop!” Red ordered before slipping his mouth guard in place.

Every M113 came with a set of twelve mouthguards. Nopony wanted to lose their teeth during what the manual referred to as a “gravity facilitated aerial insertion.”

Everypony grabbed onto the nearest handle, rollbar, and seat edge.

Assault pulled the throttle wide open, forcing the APC to sail off the cliff at the highest speed the burning vehicle could manage. The tracks sailed across the volcanic rock, staying mostly horizontal as the vehicle sailed off the edge.

There would be no nose-first dive today.

Zebra technicians in the airship hanger looked up at the sound of an abused engine’s pained screaming just in time to see an Equestrian APC fall from the sky and plow into the reinforced landing ramp jutting out of the mountain treads first like a tool chest falling off a skyscraper.

Wrenches, hammers, and screwdrivers clattered to the floor as dozens of techs scrambled to draw their sidearms. Somezeeb began to scream “Wasiliana!”, desperately hoping actual soldiers would hear and come running to help. Their more level headed friend hit the alarm, filling the hanger with the eerie wail of klaxons echoing off the rows of airships and interceptors.

The vehicle’s shocks screeched and burst under the stress, spraying hydraulic fluid across the launch ramp. The shocks were fail-safe, and took most of the impact out of the drop... but everypony’s head still hit the roof.

Everypony, save Mint and Ash. Ash’s magboots kept him solidly in place though the impact still shook his circuits, making his vision flicker and pop. Meanwhile, Mint had a gunner’s seat punch her right in the marehood. Being the sane and rational mare she was, Mint decided the best course of action was to have a well-deserved whimper and cry while learning on the M113’s gun.

"Ooowhowhowhowhwiee...." She sobbed over the roar of small arms fire.

For a moment the APC was filled with quiet swearing, groans, and loving affection for Equestrian combat helmets. Then the terrified fighter ground crews opened fire with their sidearms and began to coat the APC’s armor with a fresh layer of lead.

Ash released his mag boots, stepped in front of Mint, and hunkered down, letting her benefit from his shield while he returned fire with rockets and his SMG.

Stampede was shaken but had no time to get things together. The APC’s ramp began to drop.

“Come on! We gotta cover them!” Ash shouted over the sounds of gunfire.

“Bruised… entire… marehood…” Mint whimpered into the gun.

Ash winced. “Ow. Sit tight, I’ll cover your shift,” he said before jumping off the APC.

Ash looked around the hanger. Dozens of tool chests, parts carts, and ammunition crates were scattered around the hanger, providing cover for at least fifty technicians. Six rows of airships sat between them and the doors leading into the base.

The closed doors. With an orange hazard light and siren above them.

“Yeah, those are locked… Curtain?” Ash prompted as he lifted his foreleg and put six rounds through one of the techs.

Curtain punched a few commands into the mission terminal then cast a probing spell. The third airship on the right blinked green on her screen. “I have something. Forty seconds to penetrate the wards.”

Ash nodded and got to work. Ash sprinted through the hanger on a seemingly random course, leaping over one obstacle only to slide behind the next. Every shot he had while running, he took. Ash’s SMG barked almost non-stop, silencing only when Ash had to load a fresh magazine. Most of his shots missed, but forced the zebras into cover.

The zebra techs shifted their fire to the Ranger barreling at them, but their pistols were nothing compared to legionnaires rifles. Their mundane bullets plinked off Ash’s shields, draining minimal power with each hit… what few connected in the first place.

Mint took a deep breath and forced her aching groin into the back of her mind. She swiveled the M113’s gun around and added the 50 cal’s furry to Ash’s hit and run harassment. More than a few bullets flew her way, only to slam into the turret’s steel shield.

The rest of Stampede poured out of the now very much on fire APC, taking what shots they could. Assault rifle cracks, shotgun blasts, and submachine gunfire. The hymn of modern warfare, punctuated by the occasional thump of Red’s underslung 20mm grenade launcher.

Haybale was the only pony not firing. The drop trashed the APC’s shocks, and also its cooling system. The engine fire was beginning to blaze out of control… and they had several bombs aboard. The stallion ran in and out of the APC, removing mission equipment while his squadmates covered him, taking shots at the zebras Ash pushed out of cover with his mad-dash.

Amidst the chaos, a 20mm grenade round caught the ground crew’s sergeant in the barrel. The Zebra disappeared in a gore-saturated fireball, emerging a moment later splattered across the side of a Zebrican interceptor.

The techs broke instantly, turning and running for the side exits or the nearest hiding place.

“Advance!” Red barked around his battle saddle's bit, waving the squad towards the hanger’s main doors.

Mint pulled the retaining pin off the M113’s turret mount and locked the weapon to her own battle saddle. The APC’s burning engine crackled beneath her, something Mint had not noticed until this moment as she looked down to grab the spare ammo boxes.

“Buck!” Mint yelped, abandoning the two ammo crates in favor of diving off the APC’s roof.

She landed just as the two crates began to cook off, adding thumps and pops to the endless cracking of gunfire.

Blue thrust one hoof towards the hanger doors. “Sir! Those look pretty locked down to me.”

“We’ve got three breaching charges… We’ll go around,” Red decided, waving his squad to take the hanger's secondary exit on the left where a small knot of zebras was still falling back.

Mint caught up to the group and put a short burst of machinegun fire through the smaller doors, hoping to scare the zebras into forgetting to close them. Her rounds caught one of the fleeing technicians, resulting in their friend stopping and emptying their pistols’ magazine at Stampede.

One of the rounds caught Hay’s helmet, ringing it like a bell. Hay staggered back, shaking his head from the hit. Then a second round caught him in the throat, ripping out his voicebox, and bronchial artery. The stallion gurgled, stumbled to the left, then fell over dead.

“Hay!” Steth shrieked, followed by a wordless cry of rage.

“Buck down!” Red bellowed, hoping to get Ash’s attention.

The Doctor raised his weapon and fired, filling the doorway with buckshot until his weapon clicked empty.

Ash looked back at the cry and swore under his breath. He’d been doing his best to track down the technicians busy hiding in crates and behind tool chests. Nopony liked being shot at from behind.

“Curtain, we need to get out of here,” he said as he ran back towards Stampede in the hopes of providing a better target for the fleeing techs.

Curtain grit her teeth in concentration, then a moment later finished her spell. “Done. Doors will be open in three…” the agent focused her magic, directing it to the particular subsystem she’d been targeting.

“Two…” One of the zebrican airship’s dorsal turrets hummed to life.

Red swore under his breath and dove for cover as the twin 30mm cannons swung across Stamped’s position… then aimed squarely at the hanger’s main doors.

“One…” Curtain murmured, doing her best to split her attention between the dim, misty, grayscale image of the gun in her mind with Ash’s E.F.S. data to aim properly.

The airship’s cannons thundered. Dozens of shells struck the main doors, shredding them in moments, then blasting chunks out of the stone walls behind the doors, severing power lines, and plunging the hanger into darkness.

“Door’s open,” Curtain sighed as she let her spell go and wiped the sweat from her brow. “And I need a few minutes… and something to eat. That thing was warded but good.”

Ash nodded and slid to a halt next to the soldiers, lighting his helmet’s headlamp as he came to a stop. “Who did we lose?”

“We lost Haybale,” Blue said grimly. “I don’t know how to arm a satchel charge. Does anypony else?”

“I can do it,” Mint said while giving Ash a glare. “What were you doing?!”

“Outflanking, suppressing, forcing the enemy out of cover, buying time for my Mare-in-a-Chair to blow the doors open,” Ash answered.

“It’s not his fault, Mint,” Red said as he put a hoof on her shoulder. “He doesn't know our strategies, we don’t know his.”

Mint closed her eyes for a moment. “I— I know…”

Red looked out across the jungle through the hangar bay’s open doors. “We’ll be extracted here… Leave him for now. We’ll take him on the way out. Mint, take the bomb. Ash, you’re going to stick closer to us. Use that armor and shield of yours as mobile cover, got it?”

Ash thought for a moment, then nodded. “Understood… I can do better than that. Just a second.”

Ash turned and searched the hanger for a moment, his eyes landed on an abandoned tool cart next to one of the zebrican interceptors. A group of techs had been busy welding new armor onto the aircraft.

Ash moved to the cart, picked a large plate up from the stack, levitated the welder’s nozzle over, and began to weld a clamp onto the back of the plate to serve as a handle.

“Wait,” Blue asked through a half frown. “You’re a unicorn? How does your horn fit in that helmet?”

“It doesn't,” Ash reapplied without looking up from his work.

Thus, he missed everypony’s horrified wince. The squad went through a rapid flurry of tactical sign language to try and quietly debate if anypony should say anything at all in regards to their ally’s apparent mandated by law disfigurement. Ash, completely ignorant of the panic he’d caused with an attempted joke, simply continued to weld.

“What are you doing?” Battery asked just in time for Ash to rear up and activate his talons.

Ash hefted the improvised tower shield with his left foreleg and drew his blade. “I’ll take point. Mint, your gun’s got a shield too. Stick to my left, we’ll cover more of the squad that way.”

Mint nodded wordlessly and moved to position.

Assault shivered and looked over to Steth. “How the buck is he standing like that? It ain't natural.”

“Some ponies can do that,” Steth muttered bitterly as he lay a hoof on his dead friend's shoulder. “It’s like rolling your tongue into a "u" shape... There's nothing I can do for Hay. He's gone...”

Ash looked over his shoulder to Blue. “I had a minotaur lady yell at me until I got it right. If you’re interested, I can find her next of kin to do the same for you. Unfortunately, she’s passed… At least her blade wasn’t put to rest with her.”

Seth's eyes narrowed as he whipped his head around to glare at Ash. "A good pony just died!"

Ash nodded. "Yes. That's the purpose of soldiers like us. To kill as is needed and to die as She demands."

Stampede stared at Ash, silently judging his apparent callousness.

Ash gave his sword in his right talon a quick spin to activate the enchantments on it, sending a blaze of green light flickering through the quiet hanger bay.

"The purpose of the enemy, on the other hoof, is to die as we demand. I say Hay costs them about, oh... sixty. Sounds right?"

Mint's hateful look faded. "Yeah. That does sound right. We'll make it sixty-nine. Hay would have liked that."

Red took a quick breath and pointed to the now open doors. “Let's move. We have half a klick to cover.”

The squad began to jog towards the inner doors. Their hooves clattered against the stone floor and echoed off the now silent hanger’s walls. They all remembered what little the crudely sketched base map had shown. A straight shot through the main tunnel to the heart of the volcano. Where the balefire munitions plant lay waiting.

Introduction

The monolith appeared the day Princess Celestia took her crown. As Celestia gave the eulogy for Skjötari, High Priestess of Enhigard, a nation which had just the day before been folded into Equestria, the cenotaph was delivered: A solid adamantine rune stone five ponies tall and three ponies wide.

Its delivery interrupted the funeral as Celestia and Luna asked those who bore the slab who had ordered its construction. The answer: Skjötari, of course. The cenotaph was placed in the courtyard of Heorot Castle, the place she had perished. Once erected, the adamantine slab refused to be moved.

Words were hewn into each face, front and back. Ancient runes lost to all but the Alicorns of Enhigard.

Old Talacon fell to the Windigo,
drowned in ice the First Age came to its end.
The Sisters Solarus came to our land,
with its ruin the Second Age did descend.

Undreamed, unremembered between ages
slain by the might of the Sun and the Moon
the wonders of Enhigard went unmourned.
Softly Stars whisper: “Justice shall come soon.”

The Two Sisters read the message. In their eyes, the hewn slab was but a marker to tell the world of what had once been. A marker none but them could read, written in a language they would not teach. The Cenotaph was permitted to remain as it was, unaltered, for any to see.

They briefly remarked how strange it was to make the runes so small and leave the majority of the metal slab blank. A remark was made about it fitting to how highly Enhigard had viewed itself. All seemed well.

They placed a sign in front of the slab which told all who came to the Castle: “A memorial for the lost kingdom of Enhigard, written in their language. Translation unknown.”

Two thousand years came and went. Equestira grew, thrived, and developed. In time, ponies began to experiment with non-magical devices, and the age of technology came to Equestria. The ideals of friendship gave way to greed, selfishness, paranoia and a jealous reaping of dwindling space and natural resources.

Lands took up arms against their neighbors. A Great War began to engulf Equestria the likes of which had not been seen since the many conquests which had grown Equestria into an EMpire two thousand years ago. The war raged for years, ever growing, ever intensifying.

Then, one day, as the sun began to set, pieces of the Cenotaph fell from its faces, revealing the poem had always been much longer than any ever knew.

Equestria: Paradise of magic.
Fueled by friendship, harmoney, and kindness.
She flourished under the rule of the Sun,
Now she falls to her ruin through Her blindness.

Greed, selfishness, paranoia, jealousy.
The new values which overtook the old.
As her age of technology began,
Equestria's fall began as foretold.

This age shall end by hex and balefire.
The Third Age dawns beneath a sky of cloud.
As dawn comes the Mantle is Hers no more.
Night’s fall brings with it the doom they allowed.

Prophesy knows not the eye which beholds,
Its glimpses are fleeting and curious,
Yet She thinks to trot only where it shows.
Unaware such intent is ruinous.

To whom shall the Mantle be entrusted?
Shadows hide much of the Third Age from sight.
Yet we know the Great Enemy returns,
not too long after the baleful light.

Three will stand against it by chance alone.
A Soldier of Iron, born of progress.
The Truthseeker, a lady of science.
One last Eagle, noble and virtuous.

Beyond their embarking our sight does end,
Their stand shall mark the turning of the age.
The shadow of uncertainty darkens.
Deeds thereafter mark no prophecy's page.

Fallout: Equestria

Soldier, Seeker, Eagle

1 - Neural Networking

Whinnyapolis, the west coast’s Manehattan. A city of wind, rain, and industry. Most of the ponies living within its many concrete and glass towers had never seen nature before. They had the privilege of enjoying many fine parks, rooftop gardens, and a wilderness themed Theme Park, but those were just as artificial as the city’s sewers and just as tamed as the kittens for sale in Whinnyapolis’ many malls.

Whinnyapolis was the oldest industrial metropolis in Equestria. The very first city created to be a place out of sight and out of mind for manufactured goods to flow from. It certainly wasn’t the last, but Whinnyapolis was the only one old enough to produce ponies with special talents for various industrial processes… Whinnyapolis was actually something pony researchers considered a "Foundational shift"-a location large enough, and focused enough, to start producing cutie marks centered on specific new subjects not common outside the region. Canterlot had its scholarly and authority cutie marks, Manehattan had a long history of maritime cutie marks, and now Whinnyapolis with its industrial cutie marks… while also experiencing a marked downturn in talents relating to the natural world.

Lyra Heartstrings was not such a pony. She stood in her office, looking at a large backlit photograph of the city she had in lieu of an office window. Many of her visitors wondered why her office lacked windows. Surely one of Equestria’s leading defense contractors could afford an office with windows.

Lyra shook her head and smiled to herself, remembering the confused questions about her simulated window she’d been asked just that afternoon.

“It’s like they forget there’s a war on,” she murmured to the empty room while setting aside her empty whisky tumbler.

The ice cubes clinked against the glass as she set it down. She smiled to herself. The faint clink of glass on ice and silence was the only answer she ever got when she reminded anypony of the war in her office.

Lyra had a nice office in spite of the safe-room style armored walls and reinforced door. A few decades ago, such protections would have ponies whispering about how strangely paranoid Lyra was. These days, ponies asked her who she contracted to build the safe room. Lyra Machine and Tool got to be a contractor after one of the first defense contractors’ CEO’s had been killed by a zebra sniper through their office window. Lyra wasn’t going to make it that easy for assassins.

She also was not going to make it hard on herself. Her office had real wood furniture, lush grass like olive green carpet, with nice wallpaper that used a blue-brown gradient to evoke the outdoors, and a calm blue ceiling with clouds painted on it. Without the rows of filing cabinets, bookshelves, and the massive C shaped CEOs desk dominating the center of the room. It all came together well, presenting a nice cozy feeling one could spend time in without feeling trapped. In short, Lyra’s office could almost be a bedroom.

What Lyra would never tell anypony is she had copied her office’s color scheme from a particular brand of hotel mints for the sole reason that with her mint colored fur and mane her office would look like an almost empty box with one mint left in it. So far, nopony had gotten the joke, so far as she was aware.

Lyra’s horn shimmered, glowing a bright gold as she called on her magic to press the intercom button set into her desk. The intercom buzzed loudly in response.

“Harper,” Lyra called as she examined the mock-skyline infront of her. “Did Bonbon call me today?”

Harper’s synthesized, faux-French, mare’s voice replied with the delay one would expect of an Equestrian Robotics built machine. None at all. Lyra made a mental note to see about producing her own line of butler robots, just as soon as the company had room for another civilian project. She knew she could produce something better than the Miss Handy. Especially since Equestrian Robotics was using a processor she made for them.

“I am afraid she has not, madam. Would you like me to place a call for you?” Harper asked, choosing its response based on a pre-generated probabilities list and its owners previous commands.

“No,” Lyra said while continuing to hold the button. “It looks like I will be working late tonight. Please make me some tea.”

“Right away, madam,” Harper replied, immediately referencing the Lyra Machine and Tool facilities map to begin navigation to the closest breakroom.

Lyra let go of the button. The glow around her horn faded, and she turned her attention from the picture of Whinnyapolis to a smaller black and white photograph of Ponyville. She kept both photos framed on the wall, but only Whinnyapolis got the fake window treatment.

It amused her to see Ponyville’s grainy, sepia tone, tiny photograph next to the massive True Color poster print. Not only was it a reminder of how far Equestria had come in the last thirty years, but also of her part in shaping the present, and, Celestia willing, the future.

Lyra turned around and trotted over to her desk, where parts of a personal project and a small toolbox containing a smattering of electronic and hardware oriented tools lay in a neat little group, almost like a desk toy. The parts next to the tools were equally well arranged. Lyra didn’t move them for visitors, nor meetings. She liked her guests to have a reminder that her company made things.

Lyra sat down in her high backed leather chair so her hind legs hung over the front edge and her weight rested on her plot. A peculiar way of sitting for a pony, and one which most ponies believed had to be most uncomfortable. Lyra found the more typical rest on one’s hooves and plot to be the uncomfortable stance.

As soon as she sat down, Lyra once again lit her horn to take the largest collection of parts she was working on and move it into a comfortable working position. Robotics wasn’t her special talent, but she’d always been good at working with complex machines. Even back in Ponyville, Lyra had found the occasion to put her old engineering degree to use. Usually it had been to help repair instruments broken by one of the same six ponies due to weekly shenaniganry.

Lyra smiled to herself and giggled. Those six had been amazing for business then, and they still were now.

Lyra turned her invention until she found the part she had been working on the last time she’d stayed at work late, and then fetched the parts which would need to be attached next. She began to work, slowly, carefully, taking note of everything. The small framework and the crystal wafers, wires, and servos mounted to it were a prototype. Every last part of it needed to be fully understood so she could later develop it into an end product.

In a way, inventing was a lot like playing music. Small discrete operations arranged in specific shapes to create larger elements that worked together in a harmony. It helped reduce the sting just a little.

Lyra had left her music career behind her decades ago. She’d been born in Canterlot, moved to Ponyville to date and then marry the love of her life, Bonbon. It was in Ponyville where she realized she could make a living with her music. Her performances brought her endless joy and she’d loved that it could be her career.

Unfortunately, while Lyra was a good musician and Bonbon’s Confectionery had provided Lyra and her wife with a stable income, it had never been much more than what they needed to get by. There were thousands just as skilled as the two of them had been in their passions and one day, after a small accident with an adult oriented transformative potion which Lyra had mistakenly believed included a contraceptive… Well, suddenly there was a foal the two would need to provide for.

Torn between being able to raise their child properly, and being able to work her dream career for life, Lyra chose to make sure Bonbon could continue to run a candy shop. She went back to her old profession: engineering.

The carved live oak doors of Lyra’s office opened automatically to permit Harper to enter. The door’s hissing hydraulic pistons were almost drowned out by Harper’s flux regulator. The floating robot carried a tea tray in two of its three limbs, with its third carefully holding the fine china teapot steady as it floated over to Lyra’s desk.

“Your tea, madam,” Harper reported as it began to set a saucer, cup, and small plate of coffee cake slices on Lyra’s desk away from her work area.

Lyra looked up and smiled at one of Harper’s three arm-mounted cameras. “Thank you.”

Lyra always thanked robots. She knew they were not alive, but most of them were programmed to pretend to make conversations feel natural.

“You’re most welcome, madam,” Harper said as it set the tea tray and teapot aside further away from Lyra’s workplace and her tea. “You seem troubled tonight. Is there anything I can do for you?”

Lyra set down her screwdriver and took a sip of tea. She swirled the earl gray around in her mouth, savoring the taste and debating if it were even possible for Harper to understand her problem, let alone help solve it.

“Just a little rough spot on an old marriage, Harper. Don’t worry. Everything will probably be alright tomorrow,” Lyra answered once the words finally came to her. “It would be nice if you’d fetch me a spark battery from supply closet twelve though. I need one that is size seven.”

“Right away, madam!” Harper said with synthetic cheer as it turned around and left, remotely closing the doors behind it.

Lyra’s marriage was hardly in jeopardy. She knew she would one day lay with Bonbon, holding hooves, as they passed on into whatever lay beyond death together. But no marriage is perfect. The person you marry will grow and change over time, and sometimes pick up a trait you do not like.

For Bonbon, that trait was when Lyra had taken her start up Lyra Machine and Tool and transitioned from manufacturing construction equipment and consumer grade tools to making weapons for the war effort. More specifically, combat robots.

Lyra had no idea Bonbon would feel so strongly about the subject that she’d come home with the “Wonderful news!” that the Ministries had offered her company a contract to produce robots and other war gear for the new trade war with the Zebrican Empire. It wasn’t that Bonbon was against the war. Rather, she had a certain paranoia about robots designed to kill, and be smart about their killing.

Lyra understood her wife’s fears. She didn’t want a machine uprising either… but as somepony who helped design and build those very robots, she knew of all the safeguards, design choices, and the very nature of computers which made such an event much, much less likely than the Breezies rising up to enslave Ponykind.

Needless to say, that was almost certain to be impossible. Unless of course the Breezies teamed up with Changelings, but Lyra refused to entertain her brother’s crackpot theories. If he came up with them before enjoying a batch of “brownies”, Lyra might have paid them some attention. But that wasn’t the kind of pony he was.

Sometimes it was a little fun to take his drug induced ideas seriously, but not now. Not when she was able to tinker with her hobbies and put the morning’s argument out of mind. Bonbon would be doing the same, and by the time Lyra got home late that evening they’d share some fresh sweets, watch each other's favorite shows, and not talk about Lyra Machine and Tool’s new contract to reverse engineer the Zebrican Assault-Pone-3 combat robot.

Lyra smiled as she pictured the late-night arrangements waiting for her in say, three or four hours. Lyra would tolerate Bonbon’s medical dramas and enjoy her hospital themed candies. In return, Bonbon would enjoy Lyra’s animated action-adventure program about bipedal space aliens and tolerate her wife’s obsessive fanaticism for a teenage colt’s cartoon involving what Bonbon always described as “shaved apes”.

“It’s not therapy… but it will have to do for now,” Lyra muttered to herself as she fixed the last of the main components of her gadget-in-progress into place.

The device looked and felt like a prototype. It was a mess of wires, circuit wafers, and simple metal scaffolding clearly built with reconfiguration and ease of access in mind. And situated in the form of a gauntlet which could be worn on a pony’s hoof.

Lyra squinted at a delicate servo-motor, the light of her magic’s aura reflecting off its silver body and her gold eyes as she delicately fixed two strands of wire to the motor terminals.

The wires fused to the terminals with a sizzle and a faint wisp of blue-grey smoke. Lyra released her spell, and as her aura faded she flexed her leg to test the device. It twitched, hummed, then moved as she’d expected.

“Perfect,” she whispered to herself just as three quick knocks echoed through her quiet office as somepony rapped upon her door.

She flexed her forehoof gently, taking note of how the tactile telekinetic force shared by all ponies moved as she flexed different parts of her frog. Everything was as she remembered. Her device should be able to translate the natural motions of the touch-range telekinetic fields in a pony hoof into inputs for the device.

Lyra began to assemble the prototype’s housing. Unfortunately, the more boring work didn’t allow her to ignore her problems.

“Shame I can’t call a counselor,” Lyra grumbled as she tightened a nut on her invention.

Lyra often thought about setting up an appointment with a therapist or counselor to tackle her family issues once and for all. Unfortunately, the many, many cases of Wartime Stress Disorder meant such support was in short supply. It would often take three months to get an appointment, and even then, seeking help for family-based-disharmony could lead a pony to diagnose one or all of Lyra’s family with WSD.

That was a fate nopony wanted. Nopony knew just what was done to treat WSD, but as a defense contractor who supplied certain technologies to the Ministries, Lyra had her grim suspicions. They could attend to this once the war ended. It would be safe to seek counseling then.

Lyra’s intercom buzzed, yanking her out of her darker thoughts. Her prototype was ready. Lyra slipped the robotic gauntlet onto her hoof and with nothing more than force of will, as if it were a natural limb, extended one of the gauntlet’s fingers and depressed the button with it.

“Miss Heartstrings speaking,” Lyra said into the intercom, doing her best to contain an excited squee at her success.

Harper’s voice came from the small speaker. “I have retrieved the spark battery you requested, madam,” the robot reported. “However there is a visitor here to see you. They do not have an appointment. Do you wish to see them?”

“Who is it?” Lyra asked, mentaly glaring daggers at Harper’s programmer for not thinking to have her model inform you who was at the door in addition to there being someone there.

“It is Brass Rivet, a junior programmer, madam,” Harper said.

Lyra facehooved hard enough to make stars flash in her eyes. “Harper, that’s my son.” Lyra groaned as she made a mental not to not facehoof while wearing steel hands in the future.

“I’m sorry, madam, but no pony named My Son works at your company,” Harper said emotionlessly. “The pony waiting for you is Brass Rivet.”

Lyra felt her left eye twitch uncontrollably. It was not worth explaining this yet again.

“Just let him in and give him the battery, please,” Lyra ordered as she wished she could slap Harpe’s programmer for the umpteenth time.

“Of course, madam!” Harper said cheerfully.

“How I hate that silly tincan,” Lyra chuckled to herself.

As nice as it was to have a personal assistant who happened to be a robot, Harper’s programming left much to be desired. Lyra was tempted to rehire a proper person to be her assistant again… But it was possible her son could fix some of her major complaints with Harper’s programming.

Brass Rivet had grown up quickly and spent his foalhood as one of Whinnyapolis’s most promising pupils. Rivet personified Whinnyapolis’s ideals, both as an intellectual unicorn focused on industry rather than magic, and by bearing a cutiemark which proclaimed his talent for computer programming to the world.

Once he graduated high school, he immediately found employment in his mother’s company as a junior software developer, not out of nepotism, but by merit. Lyra had not even known he’d applied for a job at her company, but had been delighted to see him at a board meeting as his supervisor’s assistant.

The door’s well-oiled hinges opened with only a light rustle of wood on the carpet and the humm of hydraulics. Lyra looked up to greet her son. “Good, evening, dear! Working late too?”

A shorter stallion, with cream colored fur, along with pale mint colored hair styled in a somewhat effeminate mane and tail cut, and electric blue eyes stood at the door. He was dressed in a coffee stained white dress shirt, lacking a tie, and had a Pipbuck Model 3001b strapped to his left foreleg. The Pipbuck stood out due to being repainted to be lavender, pink, and blue, so as to resemble the mare whose cutiemark was painted on the back of the spark battery panel.

“Mom, I need to talk to you,” Rivet said as he trotted through the doorway, and gently closed it with a rear hoof.

Lyra nodded once and rested her forelegs atop her desk as she sat up on her haunches, giving her son her full attention. “I’ve always got time for you, hon. What is it? Is your team over budget?”

“No, it’s—” Rivet frowned and tilted his head, letting his long green mane droop from his shoulders. “Uh… Mom? What’s with the robot hand?”

“Oh, this?” Lyra said as she held up her project.

The mechanical appendage she’d been so lovingly crafting flexed and grasped as Lyra focused her will on the machine, controlling it as if it were a natural limb.

“I was thinking about ways to adapt Minotaur weapons and vehicles for pony use,” Lyra explained, only half lying. “Now that they are our allies, we will trade with them and our soldiers may need to make use of their equipment in the field. Unicorns will have no trouble, but everypony else will. The simplest solution to me is to adapt the hoof to work with equipment made for hands.”

Rivet’s eyes narrowed as he assumed a deadpan expression. “You just wanted an excuse to make even better cosplay hands, didn’t you?”

Lyra blushed, cleared her throat, and leaned back in her chair, making the leather creak. “Son, I don’t question your hobbies. Please return the favor. And for the record, I didn’t lie. I’m simply good at merging my work with my hobbies. Could you pass me the spark battery? It would be nice if this could work off its own power instead of draining my magical reserves.”

Rivet bit his lip and did his best not to think about his mother’s obsession with a teenage colt’s cartoon. Lyra returned his look with that special look a parent can give a child only after knowing a dozen different embarrassing little secrets.

Rivet nodded once then levitated the small glowing power crystal to Lyra, who took it and fixed the gem into the gauntlet’s power socket with a loud click.

“A-hem! Yes. I’ll do that… Anywho!” the young stallion turned his head to fetch a small set of spell matrix chips from his saddlebag and rest them on the table.

An odd gesture for a unicorn, using their mouth to retrieve items. Lyra often wondered if his eccentricities were the result of having so many Earth Pony friends. She remembered the pressure to fit in at school oh so well.

“What is this?” Lyra asked, leaning forwards to get a better look at the small, yet intricately complex chipset.

“A breakthrough my boss refused to tell you about,” Rivet answered plainly. “I never have, nor do I now, want special treatment, but this is too big to not show you directly.”

“I’m listening,” Lyra said as she lit her horn to lift the chips, then paused and looked at her son. “Is this telekinesis safe?”

“It’s completely magically inert. There isn’t a damn thing you can do short of using enchantment spells to disrupt it!” He proclaimed with a huge smile that faded into a worried frown. “Well, by accident at least. If you try to destroy it it will break just like any other spell matrix.”

Lyra nodded, picked the item up, and began to examine it. The delicate bird’s nest of arcane and technological circuitry glinted and sparkled under the dim light of Lyra’s desk lamp.

“This looks like a robot brain…” Lyra said thoughtfully. Then her ears peaked. “Did you manage to reverse engineer Zebrican processors?! Why would Tempered refuse to report this?”

“It’s not Zebrican,” Rivet answered with a hesitant sigh. “It’s a breakthrough I had on company time. The Assault-Pone-3 units we were granted are all far too damaged to reverse engineer the processors. I was asked to come up with my best guess. This isn't it, but it’s a fork of that I had to see through. The real trick here is the software… Mom, I’ve got something better than Zebrican robotics here.”

Lyra raised an eyebrow. “I’m listening.”

Rivet stepped over to his mother’s desk and sat down in one of the guest chairs. He didn’t sit like his mother did. He sat like a proper pony who knew they were in fact not a biped.

“Tempered doesn't think it works. He thinks I’m faking my test results. I’m not,” Rivet said with an irritated huff. “I think it’s because he never saw anything about StableTec’s new computer.”

Lyra’s brow furrowed. “Son… There is an NDA. We never saw those plans. We can’t use them for anything. Technically speaking, you shouldn’t know about them at all. I only showed you because as low ranked as you are, you’re still our best programmer and I needed to know if we could even make the firmware for that thing to accept the contract.”

Rivet nodded and scratched his long mane with a hoof tip. “Yeah… But I couldn’t get the basic idea out of my head. They did it in this… really inefficient way, and I swore that I could do the same thing, but better, in my own original design. So, I didn’t steal their tech. I was just inspired by it… also, this isn't pure software. There’s a bit of magic involved too. Oracular predictive thaumaturgy, specifically. I had Balance help me with the arcane parts.”

Lyra’s heart skipped a beat. “Pardon?”

“I found a better way to create a thinking, intelligent, machine,” Rivet repeated and nodded towards the chip. “That’s the hardware for it.”

Lyra picked the tangled mess up once more and gently tapped it with a hoof tip, listening to the crystalline sound of the wafer. It rang well. No flaws at all. If her son had put this much work into a prototype, then he was certain it would prove important.

“This isn’t much smaller than a Crusader’s sub-modules if I remember its specifications correctly,” Lyra commented after double checking with her memories. “How is this more efficient? We’d still need a few thousand of them in a huge cabinet, liquid nitrogen cooling systems, the works!”

Rivet leaned back in his chair, making it creak as he smiled. “The Crusader is a sledgehammer. This is a scalpel.”

Lyra’s annoyed look prompted Rivet to frown, clear his throat, and be a little less poetic.

“StableTec did it by brute force,” Rivet explained.

Lyra’s annoyed look shifted into a higher gear.

Rivet cleared his throat and let his chair thump back to the floor. “Sorry, mom. That’s the technical term for throwing a million or even a billion operations at each part of a problem to just make it go. The software I saw in the demo package StableTec sent us is effectively seventeen billion lines of code, mostly IF/ELSE arguments, which allow a computer to mimic intelligent decision making by never actually making any decisions. That works, but it’s debatable if the system is conscious. Yes, it’s complex and can make decisions based on information unlike any other computer, but I find their claim that it’s actually thinking like a person would be to be suspect… Also, there’s some kind of subsystem where it looks like you’re meant to let a pony sort of, transfer their mind into the machine. So I think they’re cheating.”

Lyra triple blinked, then held up her robotic hand. “Excuse me there’s a what on them?”

“Yeah, I’m not sure. I didn’t see the whole of the hardware plans. But, if the commented code in the demo package is to be believed, the Crusader can, or has to, not sure which… Well, it’s basically an artificial brain. Apparently you can put a pony’s consciousness in it. Not sure if it’s a transfer or a copy,” Rivet shrugged and frowned. “I couldn’t tell you without seeing all of the code. But that’s what got me thinking about a thinking machine. The idea of having an actually intelligent computer, and the basic ideas they had but executed in a horrible sloppy mess… Well, at least in my opinion. They probably have different design constraints than I assume.”

“Alright,” Lyra said as she tapped a hoof against the table. “So, what did you do?”

Rivet gently tapped the small processor cluster on the desk with the tip of a hoof. “My method uses self-reinforcing, looping, randomized yet logical, patterns, and oracular predictive enchantments, rather than IF/ELSE statements. It is so much more processor efficient that with just a little bit of spellcraft we can make the whole thing run on this. Just this! It’s just barely smaller than a pony’s brain, and could theoretically contain something just as intelligent.”

Lyra snickered, leaned back in her chair, and let a smile part her lips. “Is it Pinkie Prank Party Day already?”

Rivet huffed and crossed his forelegs. “Mom, I’m not joking. I can prove it.”

Lyra’s smile faded slightly. “How would that even work?”

“I call it Oracular Neurological Computing,” Rivet explained as he flicked his pipbuck on and began to play a slideshow for his mother to see. “This hardware is a collection of connected units or nodes that I’ve loosely model after the neurons in a biological brain. Each connection, like the synapses in a brain, can transmit a signal to other neurons. When one receives a signal, it performs a simple process on that signal, and signals neurons connected to it. The "signal" modulation is hardware based and that’s where the arcane component comes in. The output of each neuron is computed one iteration in advance of the actual calculation being performed by a nonlinear function of the oracular—”

Lyra cleared her throat and held up a hoof for him to stop. “Simple first, then technical.”

Rivet closed his eyes, groaned, then sighed. “This is the simple, mom… It’s a brand new process.”

Lyra winced, flicked her tail across her seat, and picked up a pen with her telekinesis to fidget with as she thought through the implications of her son’s claim. “Okay… Are you implying you’ve found a way for a computer to work using a gradient of possibilities for each bit, rather than simple binary?”

Rivet nodded immediately. “Yes!” he exclaimed with a huge smile, grateful his mother understood the idea he’d been working on for just shy of a year. “There is so much more than what you’d think at first. Not only does it drastically improve the performance of any software you adapt to run on this kind of hardware… erm, it can’t run things coded for linear processors. It just can’t. But we can port things. Anyways, the thing I discovered which makes this more than just a faster computer chip, is this system can learn!”

Lyra dropped the pen with a clatter. “It… It learns?”

Rivet nodded once, stood up, and picked up his prototype gingerly. “Yes, it does. The enchantment is responsible for the mechanism, but the software is key to making it useful. One without the other is useless, but both together… I’m starting to think as a nation we should be focusing on unifying magic with technology as, well, standard. Separate they are mighty, but together? Together they can make an artificial mind.”

He turned the prototype in his hooves, watching it shine and sparkle with pride. “You don’t have to program everything you want it to do. You just need to set up a foundation, then show it correctly done work, and it can figure out how to do more work when it sees incomplete work, or instructions relating to doing that type of work. Just like a pony.”

Lyra blinked several times and sat straight up in her chair. “What?”

“It’s just like a pony, mom,” Rivet explained with a confused glance upwards at his mother’s face. “You give it instincts, switch it on, show it what you want it to do, and it will learn to do that thing in time. It’s self-teaching, self-improving, and in theory, with this module in this configuration, an artificial consciousness could reach the same complexity and nuance as you or I!”

Lyra reached up with her mechanical hand and stroked her chin. “You said you could prove it?”

Rivet nodded and brought up a new program on his pipbuck. With a flick of his hoof, the clack of a rocker switch, and a whir of fans, the screen began to show a series of pictures. Specifically photographs of ponies taken around the factory.

Lyra tilted her head. “Son, what does this prove other than you being a bit of a shutterbug? … And also that mare there either needs a longer skirt, or needs to learn to carry her tail down lower if she doesn’t want HR to write her a letter about public decency in the workplace.”

Rivet beamed his mother a proud smile. “Please! Have HR try and write her a letter, that would be amazing. Not only would every mare in the office, you included, insist that you can’t help flagging a little during a heat, but, well... she doesn't work here.”

Lyra steppled her hoof and robotic hand and hummed, her eyes narrowing. “You… You’ve made one of these… consciousnesses, and instructed it to work as a security system?”

Rivet snorted and rolled his eyes. “No. Nothing could do that. This is something our current robots cannot do.”

“Which is…”

Rivet leaned up against the desk again. “Be creative.”

Lyra’s eyebrows arched. Her stepped hoof and digits slumped. “Are you telling me you got a robot to draw photorealistic pictures, from nothing?”

“No, not nothing,” Rivet corrected as he turned his pipbuck to give his mother a better view. “These things could really use a second screen on the back… Erm, anyways, I showed it hundreds of pictures of ponies doing normal work, then asked it to create more pictures of ponies working. None of the ponies in these pictures exist, nor do those workstations, or specific tools they're using. Then I showed it hundreds of pictures of locations around the city, and asked it to make a picture of a pony doing anything at all.”

“And?” Lyra asked, turning her head in interest.

Rivet reached for his pipbuck and clicked over to a single stored image. The screen flashed as it loaded in. A young mare knelt in the road, a wrench clutched in her magic to fix the wheel of a fruit cart while a second pony ate an apple.

“I asked the MoM to ID these ponies. They couldn’t. Had their whole office in a panic about it. They don’t appear in any other picture the Net drew. They are unique. What I couldn't figure out was how it knew ponies ate apples… Then I realized I’d left my camera running while working on it and it had watched me eat lunch at least once. The system knows what a pony is, and understands we eat apples, so it chose to depict a pony eating an apple,” Rivet squirmed excitedly in his seat. “Don’t you see? That’s creativity! Or at the very least it’s critical thinking on par with a young pony. It also learns incredibly fast! We could pop one of these in a robot, send it to school for a week, teach it Equish verbally like any foal, then the next week send it to Bootcamp and have it perform just as well as any other soldier!”

Lyra’s jaw dropped at the implication of her son’s breakthrough.

Rivet jumped out of his chair and pointed to the processor network. “This thing, right here, put into an equoid frame, say the Assault Pony we’re working on, could mean the end of mass death for our side. We replace shock troopers and assault squads with these guys, and that’s that. We lose no pony power on the fronts. Or at least, much less.”

“Yeah,” Lyra said slowly as she began to frown. “But… there’s a pretty obvious risk.”

Rivet blinked. “What?”

“If it can learn, think, and is pretty much a pony, it could decide not to be a soldier. Or it could decide the Zebras are right and turn traitor,” Lyra pointed out as she sat back in her chair to steeple her hoof and robot-hand thoughtfully.

She’d waited years to pull that gesture off during a meeting like this.

Rivet snorted dismissively and waved his hoof. “So what? We risk the same thing by using ponies as soldiers! Actually, we risk more because we can’t control pony instincts. We can control these robots' instincts, at least to a small degree. That’s more than we can do for a pony. We could make them feel about treason the same way you would feel about cutting off your own legs.”

Lyra raised her robotic hand with one finger pointing upwards as she opened her mouth to make a point.

Rivet cleared his throat. “Uh, assuming you couldn’t replace them with hands and feet… Scratch that. Uh, another pony. Any other pony.”

Lyra sighed and sat back further in her chair, eyes closed thoughtfully. “Good counterpoint… But we can’t be sure it works how you think it will. We’ve never made anything like this before.”

Rivet nodded twice and gave his pipbuck a little loving stroke. “Yes. I agree completely. It needs to be tested. The only real way to test it is to build one and give it a shot. It’s too important not to try this. We could save so many lives this way… combat robots are good, but we could do so much better than a glorified heavy machine gun platform that needs a half dozen ponies to make sure it works properly in the field.”

Lyra nodded in agreement. Such a thing was currently the holy grail of robotics. “Don’t get me wrong,” she said with extra politeness in her voice. “I get it. I do. I especially get why you of all ponies would like to make robot soldiers we could send out without pony supervision. But there is still risk, significant risk, in creating one in the first place. What about running it in a terminal and asking it questions, or stimulating environments for it to test it?”

Rivet shook his head and flashed his mother a look of disgust. “Think about that again. It’s beyond unethical! I’ve shut the one I have running off. It’s evolved past its programming by learning what ponies are and what they do. These are… Well, people! At least, of a sort. What you’re asking is like intentionally ensuring a foal is born without limbs, or eyes, or a nose, so we can see if it's got a good or bad heart and mind before giving it the ability to experience the world.”

“So what? It’s a safety issue,” Lyra pointed out as she tapped her fingers against her desk. “A foal is, well, a foal. If a foal was so evil it wanted to kill everypony it saw, almost everypony could buck it over a fence…” Lyra winced at her thought, then cleared her throat. “Morbid as that may be, it’s true. A foal poses very little threat to an adult pony, or even an older foal. But you want to put an untested system into a prototype war robot, which may give it consciousness and create a pony like Celestia, or Sombra. With the body of a tireless actual murder machine.”

Rivet nodded again, climbed back into the guest chair, leaned back slowly, then sighed.

“Yes. I’ve thought about this, mom.” he looked up, making sure to center his eyes on his mother’s. “I’ve talked to a few psychologists. Developmental ones. I’m not doing this alone, you know I needed a unicorn to make this prototype… Well, there’s four of us that worked on this. Mostly me. They are not on the payroll, it’s all pro-bono consulting. No implied job if they help either. These are all honest professional opinions.”

“And what do they think of this?” Lyra said with professional calm.

She was not above being corrected if an employee’s idea or point was good.

“If we “raised” a pony-like being without the ability to walk, talk, and do what a pony does, we would ensure the creation of another Sombra, at best. It wouldn’t look forward to gaining the abilities we take for granted every day, it would resent us for failing to give it to them from the beginning,” Rivet said darkly, taking a moment to look down at the floor. “See, foals take years and years to grow and mature. They spend those years in a very different state of consciousness than adult ponies, as all well know. But this system takes days or weeks at the most to arrive at something like you or I. It would take months to test and evaluate it. By then, it would have an adult mentality and likely also hopes, dreams, and preferences which it couldn’t begin to undertake all because we created it as what amounts to a brain in a jar in a room that’s empty most of the time. It needs to be respected, nurtured, and cared for, and also have the freedom to do small things and discover itself. Just like anypony.”

Lyra sat back in quiet thought for several long minutes. Finally, she sighed. “Again, a good counterpoint… I suppose we could have guards with anti-machine rifles on standby.”

“We easily could,” Rivet agreed with a chuckle. “You know I’m not stupid, mom. There is all the reason in the world to be ready for potential threats to safety. We could also ensure the lab we build and test it in is equipped with a hidden anti-matrix pulser and simply fry it if it goes evil. We won't know how this goes until we try and I think we owe it to everypony who died at Shattered Hoof to try!”

Lyra frowned at the mention of Shattered Hoof. She’d known her son’s primary motivation for this as soon as he’d mentioned this could make independently operating robotic soldiers, but she also knew he’d probably like to refrain from discussing his fiance's death. Unfortunately, that was no longer an option.

Lyra took a deep breath and leaned across her desk to tip his chin up with her hoof. “Dear… I’m sorry you lost Gold Leaf. We both know this won’t bring her back… If that’s what this is about—”

“It’s not about that,” Rivet said quietly. “It’s about making sure the next stallion doesn't lose his mare too.”

Lyra nodded once, sighed, then stood up and went to fetch her memo pad from her secretary’s desk out in the hallway. Rivet sat quietly, refusing to remember what he had lost as best he could. He’d managed to force the tears away just as his mother returned with a memo pad and pen.

She fidgeted with the pen and pad for a while, debating what she should do with this information. If her son was right, it would be a world changing invention. If he was wrong, it would be a potentially superior robot, and thus a company changing invention. The problem was how tight the quarterly budget was.

“How many Assault Pony prototype models did the MWT order for their testing?” Lyra asked with professional calm.

“One hundred and sixteen. A full company,” Rivet answered immediately, the project details had been burned into his brain over the last two months.

Lyra nodded and did a little bit of quick calculations in her notebook. The budget for the new MWT contract to produce reverse engineered Zebrican Assault-Pone-3s had some wiggle room left in it. Enough to produce one extra chassis and pay a few engineers to tinker with a “enhanced prototype unit”. It wouldn't even be in violation of the contract to keep a chassis for potential improvements.

With a means of letting her son try his idea worked out, Lyra began to write down a memo to let her company know what would be happening with her son and this new one off design. “We will be making one hundred and seventeen. Number one-one-seven will be given to Lab J for experimental modification with advanced computation technology.”

Rivet sighed in relief. “Thanks, mom. I truly believe this could change everything.”

“Don’t thank me yet… I’m also promoting you to Team Leader, and assigning you to Lab J,” Lyra continued before looking up from her writing to look her son in the eyes. “You’ve got a budget of eight million bits. That includes making the hardware for the robot, payroll, everything. Think you can handle it?”

“I can sure as hay try,” Rivet replied as he stood up and collected his prototype. “I’ll have personnel assignments to you by the end of the week.”

Lyra smiled, gave her son a quick hug, then nodded to the door. “Best get to work then. There’s going to be more to this than you think.”

“What do you mean?” Rivet asked as he tucked the prototype back into his saddlebag.

“I don’t know exactly what,” Lyra said with a shrug and a small smile. “Every project is more complex than you think it will be at first. I’m just wondering what you’ll wind up having to do to bring your vision to life.”

Lyra paused for a moment, decided to voice her full thought, then looked her son in the eyes. “And, just how close what you make will be to what you intended.”