War of the Worlds; 2nd Wave

Crank, crank, crank!

Spike continued to tighten the bolt underneath his mech, which was currently in its crouching mode to allow for maintenance. The sound of the wrench became almost melodic.

He grunted as he found he needed to pull harder than usual on this particular bolt. A few more seconds of elbow grease forced the bolt where he wanted. He rubbed his forehead as he continued working... and remembering.

Ten years ago, the unexpected and unthinkable happened.

Equestria, and the world at large, had been invaded.

Aliens from Equus' sister planet, Amari, had invaded.

The first cylinder had crashed down between the Smokey Mountains and White Tail Woods, to the west of Ponyville. It had first been thought to have been a comet, but pegasus Guards who had been on patrol that night had seen it, and had reported the whole thing to their superiors, including the location of the crash site.

By morning, a company of Royal Guards, about a hundred strong, had taken up positions around the crash site. Aerial reconnaissance by pegasi had revealed that this was no meteorite or comet of any sort; it was clearly built by intelligent beings. Local villagers, despite warnings not to, came up to observe this curious sight.

The fighting wouldn't start for another two days, but the killing began right there. It began when the top of the cylinder unscrewed and fell to the ground. A large, boxy object on a sort of spar had emerged. Within seconds, it had begun to unleash a beam of energy with horrifying accuracy at the pegasi, military and civilian, who flew above the thing, slaying most of them within fifteen seconds. Only those who fled immediately, just after the lid unscrewed, or who landed, survived.

The commander at the scene had called for backup immediately. Local garrisons quickly came, bolstering their numbers up to about three hundred and fifty. Along with them came four large but obsolescent cannons, in addition to six ballistae. The commander had also, wisely, backed up somewhat from the crater, in the hopes that his command would not be immediately incinerated should the things emerge.

A loud hammering ensued from the crater. It went on, and on, and on. Given that any pegasi who tried to reconnoiter was roasted in mid-flight, no one could be sure what was going on.

A couple of bold pegasi, who had landed behind trees near the crash site - not that there were many of them, given how many had been blown or burnt down when the cylinder had crashed - caught the first glimpse of the Amari. Their overly large heads were vaguely equine, with a muzzle of sorts and two eyes, but there all similarities with ponies ended. Beneath the large heads was a web of tentacles, with at least twelve on each specimen.

Those two pegasi were fortunate indeed; shortly after the cylinder landed, a sort of box on a metal stick had emerged from it and roasted everypony else nearby.

This sighting was not given due attention at the time, because, shortly afterwards, it happened.

Spike continued tightening another bolt, again wiping his brow before checking a set of wires.

He had been there with Twilight when War Day occured. Many thought the name was rather silly, and perhaps they were right, but no one who had been there and survived that day would have called it anything less.

A large, round bulk, shaped like a ship's boiler, aloft on what seemed to be three tentacle-like legs, had emerged, quickly followed by three more.

All of them had held the same kind of box that the cylinder had used to roast the pegasi.

The slaughter had begun immediately. The heat rays lashed out, initially focused on those closest to the crater, regardless of what danger they might have posed. The commander, who had been at the front, was one of the first casualties.

The civilians had fled as fast as their legs and wings could carry them. Some of the Guards fled as well, but the majority stayed to fight it out, earth ponies charging with spears and swords and unicorns unleashing the most destructive spells they knew, with Twilight aiding in the attack.

They achieved little. Most of the spear-wielding soldiers were slaughtered, and those who got close enough to use their weapons found them dented, bent, or breaking upon being slammed into the machines; even the tentacles were strong enough to repulse the sharpest sword. And although the unicorns had managed to rattle the first machine and put dents into it, the others came to its aid within seconds, frying the unicorns alive before grabbing the earth ponies and pegasi, crushing them or bashing them against trees. They may have been hunks of metal, but they knew exactly what they were doing. It would be found out later that the metal the Amari used was highly resistant to magic, as were the Amari themselves.

The artillery had managed to fire. The ballistae accomplished nothing; their bolts only bounced off the fighting machines, except for one missile that got caught in one of the several "armpits" of the tentacles of one of the machines. None got off more than two shots; most were fried before they could shoot more than once, with one slow crew dying before being able to fire at all.

The cannons were another story. Perhaps by sheer fortune, one shot had slammed with the first machine's cockpit, killing the Amari controlling it and sending it crashing to the ground. Twilight, fueled by fear and rage, had simultaneously unleashed a bolt that somehow overwhelmed the machine's magic resistance, blowing a hole clean through it and sending it to the ground.

That was the sole success of the encounter. The aliens had responded by focusing their wrath on the cannons, roasting their crews and melting the guns so that their barrels drooped, as if in disgrace. Twilight had tried to shield the surviving soldiers and civilians as they withdrew, and had to teleport them, herself and Spike when the Amari began to overwhelm her shield. Sadly, she had not gotten all of the survivors, and none she had left would ever be found alive again. It had been over in a matter of minutes. The Amari, despite losing one of their number along with his machine, were utterly victorious, assuming one could even call the encounter a battle.

The Battle of White Tail Woods was only the beginning... and only one of the cylinders that had landed. Others had fallen even before the fighting started, with landings in southern Equestria, near Klugetown, and near the former Changeling spire in the Badlands. Others landed in dragon territory and near Griffonstone, with yet another landing in Yakyakistan. Most, though, had fallen in southern areas; it was hypothesized, then and now, that this was due to those areas being closest to the average climate and biome of Amari. Nor was Equestria the only one to suffer the same kind of rude awakening as was suffered in White Tail Woods; those Yaks who tried to destroy the invaders were annihilated down to almost the last of their number, with griffon forces suffering a similar disaster. Not even the dragons, who could bathe in lava as if it were water, could withstand the heat rays of the Amari, though they did have a higher survival rate. That last wasn't saying too much, however; four out of every five dragons hit by a heat ray perished then and there, with those who did survive mostly suffering terrible injuries.

To be sure, a couple of battles were won by Equus' native forces; a griffon vessel, Donnerkind, had managed to destroy two of the "Boilers," as the fighting machines were nicknamed, at Manehatten before being destroyed itself, with coastal artillery killing a third. And a unit of Guards defending Ponyville managed to kill a fighting machine when it began to cross the river there. The defenders were killed virtually to the last stallion and the town was essentially destroyed, but the aliens had, for whatever reason, chosen to withdraw afterwards. Similar successes had happened elsewhere, with a horde of dragons managing to melt one of the alien machines before being killed off themselves, and the yaks had toppled one machine in a mass charge, with the alien that emerged from its damaged machine being trampled to death.

Sadly, the heat ray wasn't the only weapon the enemy had.

After the first few days of the War, when these losses were occurring, the Amari began using cannons that fired canisters of black gas; this "Smoke" doomed anyone who breathed any of it; within seconds, artillery and unicorns would be down, writhing and choking on the ground, their guns and other weapons abandoned. The Smoke outranged virtually any ranged attack Equestria could make that was capable of damaging or destroying the fighting machines, which all but doomed a second defense of Ponyville and the defense of Canterlot.

The aliens' use of the Smoke on all fronts had caused mass panics in surviving cities, towns, and villages. Their inhabitants, sometimes only having heard rumors of aliens nearby, had bolted, often with nothing but their skins on their bodies. They would flee in a near-blind panic; ponies and others being trampled to death by their own people were not uncommon. Millions streamed out of cities; this was no orderly flight, but a stampede, a worldwide insanity that saw untold numbers running, without a goal or destination, eyes filled with fear, and instinct rather than morals being the guide of those caught up in the panic.

Discord had almost been killed when the aliens marched on Ponyville again. His magic had been almost useless against the machines themselves, which resisted even the chaotic kind of magic he brought to bear, and, as it turned out, even the Smoke was almost invulnerable to his powers. The best he was able to do was trip them up or block their path using something else, but the aliens were relentless. He had been badly injured, and only the intervention of Fluttershy and Spike himself had seen to the draconequus' survival.

The Smoke had smothered the defense of Canterlot; barely a shot could be fired before the hateful canisters landed and slaughtered the gun crews. The palace and just about all of the city was burned or melted. The only good thing that could be said was that most of the citizens, including the Princesses, had evacuated, so there were few left for the Amari to kill once their near-effortless victory was achieved.

By this point, it seemed as if nothing could halt the Amari; the heat ray and the Smoke were too much for nearly any defense. And, in what would prove to be the final days of the War, the aliens used fast, light flying machines to devastate defending armies, either by firing their four light heat rays, or, more often, by unleashing clouds of Smoke at low altitudes to smother their opponents. All seemed lost. Huddled in a small, abandoned village north of Canterlot, Spike, Twilight and their friends considered the possibility... no, the almost-certainty... of the end of the world.

Then, Providence intervened.

For, one by one, in the order in which they had landed, the Amari became sick with diseases native to Equus. Either their homeworld had no bacteria, or their scientists had destroyed them long ago, but the Amari had no resistance to the diseases of this world. All eventually died, their fighting machines stationary and silent at last, their flying machines crashed or grounded, their weapons still. Where all of the world's efforts had failed, the smallest forms of life that the Creator in His wisdom had formed succeeded. Twenty days after the first landings, all of the aliens had perished.

The world's nations could only sigh in relief... and begin to tally up the damage and loss. Millions were dead, either as a result of the Amari weapons or from the mass flight and starvation that had followed.

Spike pushed with his feet, moving the roller he was on out from under the mech to grab another wrench, one for five-eighths, before rolling back under it.

In the ten years after the war, Equestria and much of the world had dragged itself out from under the ruins of society, rebuilding as much as they could. Naturally, having just weathered an alien invasion, having been almost helpless before weapons they didn't understand, the greatest fear was of another invasion.

Scientists from around the world had studied the Amari and their devices as the common people worked to rebuild their homes and towns. They found that the Amari fighting machines, and indeed all of their technology, had an almost total lack of magic inside them; that explained why physical projectiles had been the only effective means of resistance. The Amari themselves lacked magic entirely, with the only exceptions being those who had fed much during the invasion.

That was another horrifying point about the invaders; some natives had been captured and survived their ordeal, and those able to do so through their trauma told of the aliens drinking the blood of those they captured, and leaving the blood-drained corpses to drop, lifeless, to the ground when they were done. Ironically, it was also partly through this process that they had died off; the bacteria in the blood infected the Amari.

The question of being able to copy Amari heat rays and technology - though pointedly not the Smoke - was answered. Some of it could be copied, but only in an inferior capacity to the originals, due to the general lack of industrialization and the haphazard nature of technology on Equus. The amount of electrical circuitry and the level of preciseness in Amari engineering simply could not be imitated on a scale to equal the original fighting machines and their weapons. Given the lack of electricity on the planet in general, only those scientists who were just beginning to experiment with electricity had any idea what all the circuits did, and even then they often had to guess.

Heat rays, within seven years, were successfully copied. Some designs tried to power the things with magic, but, as with most Amari tech, magic did virtually nothing. Native designs that were designed to use magic rather than electricity were powerful, but the point was made in testing these "Rainbow Rays" upon captured and intact fighting machines once more that magic did barely anything. The copied heat rays of course did damage, though less than hoped for. As for flying machines... there, the Amari badly outclassed anything Equus could do. Native flying machines had to be designed, tested, and built, with any Amari tech being added only after the design was complete. That had led to several failures; predesigning a machine to hold a certain technology after it's construction proved to be a misguided effort.

Of course, heat rays had to be mobile in order to counter any future invasion; the mobility of the "Boilers" was not lost on any competent military members. Eight years after the invasion, the first legged machines were built. After another year of testing, rebuilding, and redesigning, the Mech Mk. I, the kind of machine Spike was currently working on, was released. It housed a single pilot and had a single native light heat ray, along with a couple machine guns on each side for additional firepower. It was designed for speed rather than durability, with the result that it would definitely not hold up to a direct hit, but it was fast, and could maneuver quickly, and it could be quickly produced, at least quickly from a viewpoint of a native of Equus. The idea was to deploy many of them at once against a landing zone, spread out, and try to swamp the invaders with sheer numbers. Death was expected, much of it, but if you had, say, fifty Mk. Is against four Boilers, the latter were going to go down.

Of course other designs were in the works; the Mk. 2 some were talking about was much bigger, with heavy heat rays (according to rumor, some of the heat rays used by the invaders would be incorporated into the design) and thick steel armor, in addition to numerous magazine-fed cannons and a number of machine guns. There was some talk over whether it would be a true mech; some rumors said it would be essentially giant tank, with caterpillars to match. Furthermore, tanks were no longer just a science fiction invention; caterpillar-tracked armored units with conventional cannons were being built, powered by steam and heavily plated. These were just coming off the works, though; Spike heard that only 12 had been built over the past week, and these, as with all the machines already constructed, were undergoing teething troubles. The jump in technology had been an intense one, as medieval ideas of armies and artillery had to be scrapped and factories replaced individual workshops. That last had put a severe strain upon small businesses, but it had to be done if Equus was to survive another invasion. A Mk. 3 was supposedly on the drawing board, though this was mere rumor.

It was due to teething issues that Spike was currently fixing his light mech in the first place. The mechs did work, but they had an annoying habit of breaking down if maintenance was not constantly done.

From Princess' assistant to grease monkey, he thought wryly. Who'da thought that ten years ago?

When the leaders of Equus had gotten together after the attacks, they had all agreed that they needed to unite against another possible invasion. Out of it came M.A.R.S.; the Mechanized Armored Resistance Squadron, also known as the Mech Corps. Spike had been one of the first to sign up for it, despite Twilight's protests. Those protests were a bit muffled in Spike's mind, and in his opinion, for good reason; few of his friends had survived the second onslaught against Ponyville without some kind of injury.

Twilight had lost her left foreleg to a near miss by a heat ray; she now had a prosthetic, with built-in Amari technology. It was... eccentric, as it had a habit of not working right sometimes, though thankfully none of its malfunctions had proven fatal or injurious. Rainbow Dash had lost her wings, and likewise had to be given prosthetic ones. They were made mostly of native tech, as opposed to Twilight's mechanical leg; constructed of light metal, they allowed her to still fly, though she had taken years to get used to them.

Applejack had been flung aside by a fighting machine's tentacle during the fight, and had suffered severe injuries. Of course, like most Apples, she was back on her steel-shod hooves not long afterward, though even today she occasionally complained of side-aches. Pinkie had nearly been broken by the invasion, and while she hadn't been physically injured, she had had emotional meltdowns for about half a decade afterward. She had recovered, partly due to constant and kind-hearted counselling, but she still had bouts of depression.

Rarity had seen her boutique and home burned down with the rest of the town, and her financial difficulties had forced her to sell her shop in Manehatten to rebuild the one in Ponyville. It had been painful to see Rarity and her little sister crying for their lost home and friends; that had never fully stopped, and the two sisters would still occasionally cry their eyes out at night, binging on ice cream and films. Fluttershy had been emotionally traumatized by the invasion as well. Surprisingly, she had recovered much faster than poor Pinkie and had volunteered to be a medic in M.A.R.S., even though her friends, fearful of the effects of seeing more blood and death would have on her, had tried to talk her out of it.

It was Twilight's injury, which at the time of M.A.R.S.'s foundation had not had its prosthetic, that had convinced Spike over the advice of his friends, to join the defense initiative. He never wanted to see his bigger, adoptive sister ever suffer again, and this was the best way to ensure that Ponyville, Equestria, and Equus would not fall again.

In the ten years since, he'd grown; not into the muscular buff hero he'd imagined when rescuing Rarity from diamond dogs all those years ago, but tall and strong enough, with wings strong enough to carry him. He almost as tall as Celestia now.

"Hey, Spike, you done yet?" called a female voice.

"Not quite, Smolder," he replied, still tightening the same bolt. "This thing likes to break down when I so much as look at it funny."

"Then don't look at it funny."

"Ha ha." He rolled out from underneath and stood up. "What's up?"

"Commander's called a meeting in five. We're all wanted as members of the platoon."

"Right, lead the way."