War of the Worlds; 2nd Wave

Spike sat in the middle of the room; nineteen other soldiers, all from the various races of Equus, sat with him.

"What's going on?" someone asked.

"We're about to get down to that," a dark blue dragon said, wearing an officer's clothing. When Ember had sent dragon volunteers, few had thought that dragons could be disciplined to military standards, but some few had actually managed to accept it and even rise within the ranks. This guy was just a lieutenant, but the way was open for promotion.

The lights in the room dimmed; the glow of a unicorn's horn lit the room.

"First, I would like to congratulate you all on your success," a white unicorn Guard stallion said, a patch where his right eye should have been and another on his sleeve that let everyone know he was a colonel. "It's been ten years since this project started, and M.A.R.S. has come a great way in that time."

He aimed his horn at a projector and let loose a short burst of magic. The projector started; a picture of space, probably from a telescope, appeared onscreen.

"What I'm about to tell you is top secret for the time being, and while this information may be released to the public later, for now I expect you all to keep your mouths shut about it, even to each other. I won't sugarcoat it, what I'm about to tell you all is bad news. We've been monitoring the position of the planet Amari in our sky. Sadly, we don't have any vehicles in orbit, though hopefully with the continuation and success of M.A.R.S., that will change. Professor."

Sunburst the unicorn stepped forward. Everyone knew him; aside from being the magical genius of the Crystal Empire, he was largely responsible, along with Twilight, Starlight Glimmer, and even Trixie of all ponies, for the great strides in technology that had occurred over the last decade. "Hello. As Colonel Javelin said, the news is... unpleasant. Amari is approaching the point in the planetary cycle where it is closest to Equus... the same position it was in eleven years ago, when astronomers first monitored gas explosions on Amari. Six months later, as we all know, the War happened."

A wave of panicked whispers filled the room.

"Quiet," the colonel said, and silence fell within two seconds. "That's better. Now, we believe that the Amari may be planning a second invasion; that's what M.A.R.S. was made for. Why they invaded back then, and why they'd invade again, is a mystery."

"It's possible that their planet may be suffering from an ecological collapse," Sunburst put in. "Or perhaps they're running out of resources on their own world. Either way, we surmise that Amari planned, then and now, not to simply colonize Equus, but to subdue it and make it their new homeworld. There are a number of reasons we believe this. First, the initial invasion strikes myself and many military officers as having been a pioneer mission; the invaders who died on our world were soldier-scouts, not colonists. Once the pioneers gained a foothold, which they were sadly well on the way to doing by the time they arrived, only then would colonists come. They didn't come in overwhelming numbers - in their minds, at least - in the Invasion; there were never more than perhaps a hundred Amari on the world at once, and, except for structures to house prisoners for feeding, they constructed little."

"You're saying we were fighting scouts the whole time!?!" an earth pony mare in front cried out. "What would an army look like!?"

"Calm down," Javelin ordered sternly. "Yes, the officer corps and world leadership believe this was so. I do not know what an army of Amari would look like, besides the fighting machines and handlers they brought."

"The technology used in the invasion seemed rather rudimentary as well," Sunburst continued. "Rudimentary in that, in our research on Amari weapons, we have come to the conclusion that the invaders could have brought much more, and perhaps worse. They wanted to conquer our planet for themselves, not render it uninhabitable for those who would have come afterward. In any case, our best telescopes are even now trained upon Amari."

A map of Amari came up; it wasn't very detailed, as the best, longest range telescopes weren't able to do much more than provide a sampling of the planet, but it was more than Spike had ever seen of Amari outside of art.

"The explosions are believed to have originated upon this mountain," Sunburst said, levitating a yardstick and pointing to part of the planet. "We believe that the gun, or guns, that they fired their cylinders out of previously had been positioned upon a very high mountain, one that makes even Mount Everhoof look like a midget. If it were high enough, and we believe it is, it could stick out very high into their atmosphere; by the time the Amari projectiles reached the top, they were likely only a short distance from orbit, which they would have reached very quickly. The mathematical calculations of hitting a moving planet in space is astronomical; even though our world is moving very slowly compared to other objects in space, the distance is extremely great; even at it's closest we don't believe that Amari has ever been closer than forty million miles from our own world, so their aim had to be astronomically precise."

Spike raised a claw.

"Yes?" Javelin said, pointing a shod hoof at him.

"Where do we think they'll land this time?"

"A good question, Spike," Sunburst answered. "Sadly, the highest level military planners are unwilling to go public with their plans. Unfortunate, as I would love to give you a good guess and the Amari showed no sign of understanding us when they came.

"We do believe that they will try and hit world cities and capitals, same as they did previously," Sunburst continued. "All evidence points to their desire to break our spirit, to make us accept our place in the new world order as their livestock, and the extermination of anyone who doesn't get the idea. They had no regrets in killing us then, given they made no attempt to respect us at all; no burials for those they drained of blood, no monuments of any kind, aside from the destruction the waged, and no preservation of native structures, including grave sites. They saw us only as intelligent food to be bred and eaten as they saw fit. Let that sink in, so that you'll remember your loved ones should the Amari invade us again."

A hippogriff raised her claw.

"Yes?"

"Do we know how they communicate? Do we know if they even realize they were defeated the first time around?"

"We have a confirmed source of long distance communication, via highly advanced radio. The other is... theoretical, though it would explain a lot." Sunburst was quiet for a moment. "Understand, this is purely a theory among scientists, and even we are highly divided. But the majority, myself included, believe the Amari could communicate telepathically. All they needed for short distance communication was for one Amari to send a thought to another. It would explain why they acted in the kind of unison they did."

Spike remembered the first fighting at Ponyville. The alien machines had all been lined up and were moving forward like a wall of death. Then, when one was killed by artillery, they all almost instantly fired their heat rays at the exact same place, barbequing the artilleryponies alive. When they withdrew, their movements were too... alien. Too organized if they were taking time to verbally talk to one another. The thought of mental communication made him shiver. No wonder the aliens all seemed to target world capitals at the same time, despite the order of their landings; they could coordinate their campaigns near-instantaneously.

Before he reached the logical question, the same hippogriff asked it for him; "Could they read our minds?"

"A very good question," Sunburst answered. "We believe the answer is no; we did surprise them here and there, which would have been impossible if they could detect native brains and translate their thoughts. We believe they could only communicate telepathically with each other. As for talking to others... they had heat rays for that."

"So they know that they were defeated."

"Know their pioneers died, you mean? Yes, though I wouldn't have phrased it as them being defeated, given we were on the brink of defeat ourselves."

"Of course, one might think that all of the enemy invasion force dying by disease is a win by default, professor," Javelin put in.

"Perhaps. But we know they had radio communication. They would have had time to tell of their defeat to their own people back on Amari before they died, and to tell them why. We can only expect they'll be better prepared this time. They'll try, and probably succeed, at inoculation or at otherwise blocking disease as a factor; we can't expect them to just drop dead this time."

"W-won't that mean they'll have... bigger guns this time?" the mare from earlier asked in a nervous voice."

"We can only assume they will. We don't know what those 'bigger guns' will look like, but we believe that their fighting machines will be improved designs compared to the previous attack."

"What about their immunity to magic, professor?" Javelin asked pointedly.

"We've been studying that. Amari tech is almost impervious to magic, and we've come up with some answers as to why. First, all Amari fighting machines were designed to resist heat. We've found pods within their landing cylinders, presumably where they hibernated during the voyage to our world, all protected against heat. They obviously wanted to survive re-entry. But it goes further than that. We believe that the planet Amari... has no magic. I don't mean that they lack the ability to cast magic; I mean that their world has no magic whatsoever. No magic sites, no magical energy field, no internal magic in their bodies, nothing. The materials we found that were otherwise identical to our own, such as steel and copper, had no magic in them at all, which explains why we couldn't levitate them; they had to be physically carried."

There was a poignant pause. A world without magic of any kind, anywhere? It seemed too... alien. That was the only word.

"Then how did Twilight get her kill at the first landing ground?" he asked out loud.

"That's a good question, Spike. From what she was able to remember, her spell didn't just pack heat, but also, for lack of a better term, physical force. As a result, the spell was able, unlike other spells used that mostly tried to stun or burn the machines, it penetrated. But even then, it was only due to the amount of force she put into the spell; only another alicorn would be able to match it."

"Anything else you'd like to tell us, professor?"

"Only to be on your guard, all of you; the Amari are, well, alien to us, no pun intended, so they may well prove to be unpredictable."

"Right then," Colonel Javelin said. "First platoon, you'll be deploying under Lieutenant Azurite of the Dragon Lands."

The dragon lieutenant stepped forward as the image onscreen changed to that of Ponyville and it's surroundings. "Should enemy launches from Amari be detected, we'll be deploying to the southwest of the town," he noted, using a pointer to show just where. "As Professor Sunburst said before, we believe world capitals and other major cultural sites will be their primary targets, so our intention is to catch the aliens as they move on Canterlot. Ponyville is also located roughly in the center of Equestria, which makes it a great place to stage out of in case the enemy lands elsewhere. The rail network has expanded massively since the War, so wherever the enemy lands, we'll be able to board a train within the hour and be on our way. We'll be joined by the Fifth Armored Brigade and Tenth Aerial Squadron; conventional forces, including Royal Guards, quick-firing artillery, and Rangers, will also be on station. Local command will be under General Falchion of Equestria, with Field Marshal Shining Armor of the Crystal Empire in command of the overall defense of Equestria. It's hoped that the mix of different defense units will maximize our defense against the Amari."

"Why not just combine all our mechs together?" a pegasus stallion asked.

"Because we only have one type of mech currently in production," Colonel Javelin answered. "If the Mk. 2s were out of prototype stage, we might do just that. But due to problems in testing, it'll take months for them to start being produced, and even then they'll be too big to just mass produce them. That's why we're cooperating with the Tanks and the Flying Corps. Between the steam-powered land ironclads now just being produced, aeroplanes, and re-equipped conventional forces, we hope to be a match for the aliens this time around. But I don't want anyone in this room thinking this'll be easy; it won't be. Remember, the Amari have had ten of our years to prepare another invasion; they'll most likely have better tech than they did previously. Hopefully, if their planet suffered the kind of collapse Professor Sunburst was talking about, they'll either be too dead or too busy trying to adapt to changing conditions in their own backyard to invade. But that's the best case scenario for us, and we can't rely on that happening. Consider yourselves on alert condition yellow unless codeword 'Sunflower' is received. Dismissed."

With that, the gathered soldiers began to disperse.

"Well, Spike, what you think?" Smolder asked as they walked toward the mess hall.

"It sounds bad. I wish we'd been told all this sooner. For all we know, some poor kid in the observatory is coming over right now to tell us he saw gas spurts from Amari. Seriously, we had to wait until now?"

"The generals had a reason for doing that," a gray earth pony stallion named Nickel said. "There needed to be a real threat of invasion for this stuff to come out. Furthermore, even if the Amari did launch right now, we'd still have about six months to prepare; we've got plenty of warning."

"Easy for you to say," Spike replied, still upset. "You grew up in Baltimare, one of the few cities to be untouched by the Invasion, except for the Great Stampede. The war barely affected you."

"Just because my hometown was spared doesn't mean I know nothing of the invasion," Nickel snorted, his nailed-on horseshoes clacking even harder on the floor as he stomped his hooves. "I've studied everything about the Amari and their tech."

"Which means nothing when compared to personal experience," Smolder snapped. "I barely lived through the War. I had to watch dragons, the mightiest race on the planet, be killed like it was nothing. My brother Garble was one of the few to survive a heat ray to the chest. As it was, only pony medicine and zebra potions kept him alive."

"I'm not making light of experience, dreadful or otherwise. But our leaders aren't all idiots, and Lieutenant Azurite strikes me as competent."

"Brilliant would be better," Spike mumbled.

"Few of the soldiers and warriors who fought the Amari survived to tell of it. We should be thankful that Colonel Javelin survived the defense of Canterlot and has lived long enough to teach a new generation of soldiers to resist the Amari."

"Hey, I'm glad he's still here," Spike said, waving his right claw in a sort of slow-down motion. "But too many aren't. We won't survive hitting them head-long; I hope the yaks that are part of this platoon realize that."

"We must indeed fight using our intellect," Nickel agreed. "If we develop our weapons further, we may stand a chance of winning."

"If only we could just build more," Smolder complained. "How many Mk. 1s do we even have?"

"Maybe three hundred overall," Nickel admitted. "Most still going through teething troubles to some extent. Production of more mechs... is still slow, though it's becoming more efficient and the new Mk. 1.2s have fewer problems."

"Splendid," Spike snarked. "Now we only have to half-worry about our mechs falling down when they walk."

"It's new tech, Spike. We've advanced hundreds of years' worth of technological progress in just ten years; of course we have problems... and we're always working to iron out the difficulties."

"Can't they build mechs, tanks, and whatever else we've got without us needing to fix the junk they send?"

"We need it as fast as possible, Spike. Sometimes stuff goes wrong, but we need to keep making it anyway because it's what we have. It's not like the developers are sitting in their rooms trying to make their designs an annoyance to us."

"Coulda fooled me," Smolder said, chuckling darkly. "I wonder how one of the idiots who design our stuff would react if I went up and threatened to barbeque his hindquarters until he got all the wrinkles out."

"Please tell me you're joking. They'd court marshal and dishonorably discharge you for sure. Then when the second invasion began, you'd be stick behind the oh-so-thin gun shield of a quick-firer."

Smolder groaned, but said nothing else as they reached the mess.

Shining Armor stood in the tent next to the Royal Observatory in Canterlot. "I'm pleased with the progress you've made, gentlecolts," he was saying to the developers before him. "I must congratulate you on your success."

"Thank you, Field Marshal," one of the scientists, a gray unicorn stallion, replied.

"I must express my disappointment, however," he went on, "for the fact that many of your devices have major flaws. The complaints of my troops make it clear that your designs, while functional, are plagued with problems that force them to clean up the mess you failed to deal with when initially designing your vehicles."

"You can't blame us for that, sir!" a blue pegasus stallion said angrily. "We've done our best to make you functional weapons to fight the Amari. And we've come so far within the past ten years, it's like technology itself has been on steroids; we keep discovering more and more, and the more we discover, the more we can fix these problems."

"I understand that. But if you'd taken the time to design something without problems in the first place, then we wouldn't have to fix the things ourselves."

"Your troops complain too much," a green earth pony replied. "They should be glad they have weapons that work at all, instead of being lazy and blaming us for their inability to read manuals."

Shining did not let his anger show on his face. "They are not lazy by any means. They've been training hard, and will continue to do so. But when their mechs topple over because one leg suddenly stopped working, or when something jams and the entire machine has to stop so the pilot can find and fix the issue, or when a steam tank stops moving because its engine or boiler was too small for it, then you can't just blame my soldiers. The fault lies in the design. Like I said, I'm happy you've designed weapons that work... after a fashion. But they need to work all the time, instead of breaking down at every excuse to do so."

Th earth pony stallion was about to complain again, but was silenced by his gray colleague. "We will do better in the future, sir. The Mk. 1.2s have been working much better than previously, and we intend to improve even further."

"Good. Especially since the Mk. 1s are already light machines and are expected to take heavy losses in any event. We simply aren't up to the standards of the Amari, and will have to use tech still inferior to their own."

Just then, a light-brown earth pony entered the tent. "Sir."

"You are dismissed, gentlecolts." After the scientists had left, he turned to the messenger. "Yes?"

"The astronomers, sir. They just witnessed a green flash from Amari about two minutes ago."

Shining again did not allow his emotions to surface. "Are they sure?"

"Yes, sir. In fact, according to them, it was much bigger than was observed eleven years ago."

"By how much?"

"They didn't tell me. They just sent me to report this to you."

"...Alright. Dismissed." The soldier saluted, and left.

Shining was busy for about another hour or so for more information. During that time he was not idle; he was busy signing paper work and writing down new suggestions to the R&D teams (including suggestions that they fix design flaws in machines that had already entered service).

Again, the messenger came. "Sir."

"What now?"

"Another green spurt, sir."

"Already? Last time, they were a day or so apart."

"Yes, sir. About an hour and five minutes on the dot."

"Same size as last time?"

"Yes sir. The observers believe the spurts are at least twice as big as last time, though they think that the size of the blasts maybe not be fully indicative of the size of the invasion force. Apparently the Amari built more of their planetary guns since the previous invasion."

They must really want this world. "Thank you. That'll be all."

Again a salute, and the soldier left.

At least two cylinders from each blast, and possibly more than that. And they're launching much more quickly than last time.

An hour and five minutes later, the soldier came again and reported essentially the same thing. Again, Shining politely dismissed him.

How many are they sending? How much of it will our troops be able to bear?

Each nation had its own military by now, of course. But the majority of those troops were "conventionals" or "regulars," i.e. foot/hoof soldiers and artillery. They were armed with quick-firing breach-loading cannons and heavy rifles, the latter ostensibly being powerful enough to punch through minor armor and at least do some damage to an Amari fighting machine, if not wreck it. Enough soldiers firing at a fighting machine could potentially add up minor damage until the machine was taken out by heavier equipment. Machine guns had also been produced, with the same idea. But the regulars would be highly vulnerable; it was expected that at least half a unit would die even in a successful defensive engagement. While their artillery was much better than the muzzle-loaded monsters of the previous War, they would be hideously vulnerable to being fried by heat rays if the Amari weren't taken out over a mile away. The only thing going for the artillery was that it could fire up and over obstacles, but direct fire and direct hits were what was needed, not lots of near-misses. The latter might have proved useful against other native militaries, but not against the Amari.

What could be done for the regulars had been done; some dragons had allowed scientists from all over Equus to study their scales, in the hopes of producing some sort of light armor that could survive at least some damage. Gas masks, with oxygen tanks able to provide breathable air for about an hour, had been provided; hopefully, by the time the oxygen ran out, a battle would be over and the troops able to get out of any Smoke clouds. Artillery would be camouflaged on routes the Amari were expected to travel once the invasion began, and extra oxygen tanks would be on store for their crews in case of prolonged engagements.

But it was clear that regulars wouldn't be enough. The Amari had been highly mobile during the War, and as such the world would need mobile weaponry of its own. Hence the Tank, M.A.R.S., and Flight initiatives. The latter had some success, though no one expected a native aeroplane to withstand a direct hit from a heat ray. The former were expected to be able to do that, and hit back with heavy ordinance of their own.

Both the tanks and mechs had their issues. The Mk. 1s of each program were lighter than any general would have wanted, given that they needed heavy armor and heavy weapons alike. The Mk. 1s would have to serve as scouts or be deployed to overwhelm and outflank the enemy via numbers.

Naval initiatives had also seen some success. The sacrifice of the Donnerkind was a memorable episode, and one of immense pride for the griffons, and each nation had tried to build a naval fleet that had both heavy armor and heavy guns that could blow fighting machines to bits. However, most military commanders accepted the likelihood that the Amari would primarily stick to land fighting and avoid coastlines, given how many cities and industries were constructed inland, as were so many capitals; while some naval engagements were expected, most of the fighting would be done on land, hence the focus on aerial and land units.

Mechs... well, while they were mobile, the walking machines had many issues. One was balance; a mech had to balance just right at all times or it could come tumbling down during its march. Mk 1s were designed to be fast, and could move over terrain that tanks would have a hard time in, but that mobility was about it; their light heat rays and machine guns couldn't match a fighting machine one on one in an even fight. That was why they would be deployed en masse, to make the fight as uneven as possible, and to Equus' advantage.

I just hope we've built, and will build, enough to deal with the Amari once they arrive.