Homeland In Jeopardy

Akula966 Presents...

Homeland In Jeopardy

Prologue

Horseshoe Settlement, Baltimare. 1751 ANM

Quiet and green. That was life in Equestria nowadays. Nature had come in and reclaimed most of the old buildings built near the settlement, and the whole outskirts of the settlement were surrounded by old vehicles, wooden boards, sheets of metal and other materials into a barricade around the place, preventing anyone from getting in our out... without permission.

“Piece of shit…” Viral Velocity muttered under her breath. “There’s no .338 left in here.” She noted, scouring around for anything she could fit into her SR-1 Marksman Rifle. Things were quite rough ever since the Gold Poison hit. Lack of food and drinkable water, constant raids, rapidly decreasing ammo supplies and even lowering morale was causing the Horseshoe Settlement's residents lives to become hell.

“Save the effort, V.” Akula the Changeling noted. “It’s not like we have that much time these days to go out to attempt supply runs. These ponies are barely getting by scavenging what they can from the corpses of the unfortunate assholes who try to come in here.”

Blaze Blade racked his KSG, having found enough spare shells to fill the tube. "Thank the goddesses for 12 gague." He thought to himself.

“Well at some point we’re going to have to, we can’t protect them if we don’t have shit to do it with.” Viral stated, still on the hunt for more rifle ammo.

“I know that, we’re doing all we can. Us, Lily, and Vortex are all these civvies have right now. The least we can do is make sure they are safe.”

Just as the changeling finished his pep talk, the local alarm sounded as yet more gunfire roared off in the distance. The crimson pegasus groaned as she pulled out her MP7 which was also starting to run dry. “Again?! This shit doesn’t stop!”

“An unfortunate truth of the world we live in, V.” Akula pulled the charging handle on his AK-M. “These days, reason is hard to come by. Set your weapons to semi-auto. Aim for the head. Pick your shots and make them count. Let's go, Agents,"

The changeling led them out of the armory towards the sound of the firefight, Lily was waiting for them outside. A dark blue unicorn mare, and one of their two companions at the settlement. “Done? I hope so, over here. Meet me at the gate guys.”

“Another attack, do these bastards ever rest?” Viral exclaimed.

“Sure doesn’t seem like it.” Lily replied.

Priority Highlighted, Proceed to the marker. All of their Intelligent System Analytic Computers, or ISACs for short, spoke to them, connected to the Smart Watches they wore around their dominant front legs and the ISAC Brick they wore on their right or left shoulders.

“Thanks for stating the obvious ISAC.” Blaze groaned.

The three of them chased after Lily, a bang going off in the vicinity as the screams of endangered civilians became more audible. They rushed through the market and over a railing, their other fellow agent, pegasus stallion Flash Vortex, was being pinned down.

Viral, Akula, and Lily took cover behind the 2nd floor railing while Blaze jumped down to directly support Vortex. Akula was the first to open up with his AK-M, a quick triple tap downing an idiot in the open flailing a magnum around like a foal.
Blaze covered Vortex’s right flank, popping a propane tank that an unfortunate soul happened to be standing in close proximity to. Two more targets were down range, one firing wildly with a Rifle and the other glassing the area with a scoped weapon. Viral had two shots left in her SR-1, she lined up the more pressing target, and sent a .338 through the scope of the other sniper, she shifted her focus to the second target, who had now taken partial cover. She waited a moment for the bastard to poke around, when he popped up a shot blasted through the shoulder and out the other side, he collapsed quickly.

“That’s all I got, boys.” She exclaimed

“More than enough.” Vortex shouted back.

A few more invaders pushed in, but with Blaze pushing up with Vortex they were put down with relative ease. Lily, Akula, and Viral jumped down to join them in pushing back the attackers. Suddenly, as Vortex was moving to new cover a stray shot popped him in his right foreleg. He collapsed behind a burning carriage, but was otherwise okay. Viral drew her pistol and moved over to check on him while the others covered and cleaned up the rest of the invaders.

She dragged him into a nearby building as the rest of the team retreated with them, and backup from the settlement reinforced the perimeter to buy them some time.

“You’re gonna be fine bud, just lie down.” Viral softly reassured her fellow pegasus.

Lily got to work talking to the reinforcements to get the defenses back up as she attended to him. They didn’t have much left to work with.

“How much longer are we expected to keep this up?” Blaze questioned with a tinge of anger.

“As long as it takes.” Akula responded in kind. “It’s our damn job, you should know that.”

“I do.” the unicorn stallion replied matter of factly.

Lily returned to the group quite hastily.

“Some of those bastards got away, we weren’t expecting another attack so soon. You three okay?”

“We’re fine, but we’re running dry just about.” Viral noted. “That was the last of my .338.”

“Fuck, if this keeps up we’re going to have to relocate.”

“Are the civilians willing to make that hike?” Akula asked, concerned that some of the ponies they were protecting would rather stay than be forced to move.

“They might not have a choice.” Blaze muttered.

Lily used her magic to move a ladder that had been knocked over during the attack.

“We’re stretched too thin to protect every pony here.” She barely got to finish her sentence before the alarms rang out. “...Not again.”

“Fuck.” The three others groaned in sync.

"Where do these bastards keep coming from?!" Viral roared now, almost out of ammo and really in need of a break.

“Get to the waterfront!” One of the civilian militia members cried out, causing Lily to raise an eyebrow.

“That can’t be right…” She claimed, the four of them rushing over to the docks. The rain was pouring down now, it was pitch black out, and it made it impossible to see anything. To be safe, Lily pulled out one of her turrets to scan to the sea for targets. A flash of lightning broke through the clouds, and in the distance a ship's outline could be barely made out. Viral and Lily’s jaws simultaneously went slack, Akula was stunned and Blaze cried out in your typical 'what the hell is that?!' fashion. It didn’t help that each of their watches went out, as did Lily’s turret. Something had knocked them out. Most likely an EMP. Lily let out a silent curse and began to fiddle with her watch, until it came back online. Now only showing a set of coordinates... coordinates she made out fairly quickly.

“This is a distress code… with coordinates for… Ponyville. How is that possible?”

No one else had time to react, as the distant ship began to open up its long range cannons to rain down on the community.

“Get down, every pony get down!”

Two shells hit on either side of the dock where the four of them were positioned at.

“So what, does shit not work until someone answers the distress code?” Viral questioned.

“Sure fucking seems like it,” Akula noted.

“Ponyville isn’t that far away… maybe we can get over there and see what is happening?” Blaze put up the idea. It seemed like the right move.

“Some pony has to stay, we can’t just leave them all here! Whatever happened… it needs to be fixed. Go.”

“You can’t be ser…” Viral was cut off by more shell impacts.

“I’ll do what I can here, just go. Go!”

“Lily….”

“I said go!”

Akula and Blaze were already backpedaling away from the dock.

“V, come on!”

“Son of a…”

Viral got up, turned to fire a couple shots with her sidearm and ran to join the others. They never saw Lily or Vortex ever again. But nevertheless... They had a job to do... and they began the long and grueling journey to Ponyville.