The next morning brought bugles, as would be expected on a military base. Essentially, they conveyed the instruction to get our flanks out of our tents and ready for battle. I groaned as I hauled myself out of bed and pushed the tent flaps open. Great. The weather was OK, but my mind wasn't hugely receptive to this either.

I popped out of the tent and sighed, groaning as I rubbed my back. I'd spent so long sleeping in tents in sleeping bags that finally getting a proper bed to support my spine when in Bridlewood had been quite pleasant in terms of change. And now I was back in sleeping bags.

Brilliant, especially since I suspected I'd be porting a lot of heavy gear about today. Though I was pretty strong, it would still be quite the weight.

"Morning, Hitch!" said a familiar voice. I looked over to see Sunny wandering along, following behind Zipp. "How'd you sleep?"

"Could have slept better," I said. I sighed at that, keen for some more rest, but hopefully some coffee would get my brain going again.

"Oh well. At least you're awake!" she smiled. I noticed Sunny seemed oddly chipper considering the circumstances, but it's possible that was a defence mechanism to shield her mind from the upcoming horrors of war. Given the movie and Make your Mark imply she has manic depression, this is hardly surprising as a defence strategy.

I sighed. "Yeah. I am. And I have no clue what I'll be doing out there today."

Sure enough, we stopped walking and entered the big tent for breakfast before we were deployed into combat. Not much to write home about, to be absolutely honest, but then again the purpose of breakfast is to get the mind running and the body ready for the tasks it is about to perform. Hence the word, which is a compression of 'break the fast' from the previous night's sleep.

Once we were done with all that, we were processed once more to the command centre, which had a large map with lights on it. I could only assume this was a common thing that military groups had on them, or otherwise it seems quite unlikely that they somehow fabricated this for just today. I mean, that would be silly, wouldn't it?

I sat there, waiting for my orders as several others got their orders first. Our army was being split up into numerous groups in order to assault several targets at the same time with our troops. Zipp was the first to receive combat orders, and soon set out with her fellow soldiers. Something about an airfield, if I remember correctly. The war's over so these plans have been declassified, meaning I can freely discuss them with civilians such as yourself.

Once she was gone, the Colonel guy turned his attention to myself, Pipp, and Misty. An odd combination, I must admit, but I can only assume he put us together for a very specific purpose.

"Misty, Hitch, and Your Royal Highness," he said.

"Just Pipp, please," Pipp said. "It'll speed things up dramatically when we get onto the briefing."

The Colonel nodded. "Very well. Misty, Hitch, and Pipp, you have a rather different objective." He then looked over and spoke to one of his fellow soldiers. "Confirm visual on Whisky Target?"

"Confirm visual on Whisky Target, over."

The map then updated to show a rather strangely shaped building in the city itself, which seemed to sit in the commercial district. I could only assume this was Whisky Target in the military phonetic alphabet, which sure does make communicating easier.

Thankfully, the Colonel clarified for us that this was, in fact Whisky Target. "This is Whisky Target, or as you may know it the ZBS Building."

Nothing to do with alcohol, then.

"It's been taken over by Gulfstream and his troops, and he's using the network to play incessant propaganda. We must stop these broadcasts and play him at his own game."

A sensible strategy. Cut off the enemy's mouthpiece and they will be rendered unable to speak. Propaganda can only push a pony so far, as history has demonstrated, and there comes a point where a soldier will lay down arms out of sheer exhaustion.

But how did we three fit into this situation?

Luckily, the Colonel had his own answer. "You three will break into the building, take control of the broadcast equipment, and then read the following message over the network." He handed Pipp a piece of paper.

Pipp took out her phone and took a photo of the message, before putting it away under her wing. This might seem like a weird thing to do, but it's actually pretty sensible. If she were to lose the piece of paper for whatever reason, she would still have the speech on hoof to read, albeit off a screen. "Got it!"

Opwinden then said something that even I struggled to understand. "Remember to move quickly; hostile numbers could be high and OPSEC could be tight to nonexistant."

Oh, great. They have their own version of Pentagonese. This was going to make things hard to understand.

"In Ponish please," Misty asked. Glad to see somepony thinks the same way I do, or else we'd probably be asking each other for clarifications the entire day.

"You might have to shoot your way out," the Colonel clarified. He then pointed to a nearby wall, which had a locker attached. "The equipment in there will be critical to the completion of your mission. Best of luck."

Misty then trotted over to the box and pulled some stuff out, and before long she looked like a spy. Since when had she had this sort of gear available to her? I know Pipp and Zipp have stealthsuits in one episode of Tell your Tale, but this seemed like an odd thing to have, given those suits likely wouldn't have a hole for a unicorn horn cut in them.

But she seemed pretty happy to have it again. "How did you find this?" she asked.

"We stole it off you," Queen Haven said. "The least we could do was steal it back when we left the city behind."

The Colonel then turned to brief us one final time. "That will probably be useful for navigating the building. Stealth operations, silencers on. Avoid direct contact if possible. Hitch, Pipp, your equipment is positioned there. Best of luck to all of you."

To my complete lack of surprise, I was carrying most of the gear. After a short ride on the tanks, we made our way across the landscape and tried to proceed as fast as possible.

I looked around and started to whistle a tune as we moved along.

Pipp shrugged her shoulders. "This is one case where being able to fly would be super handy!"

I glanced over, and shook my head. "I think a chopper would be too noisy as an approach!" And it would have been. It'd basically be ringing the dinner bell for any anti aircraft batteries in the city. "This isn't Mogadishu!"

Pipp looked at me in confusion. "What's Mogadishu?"

You know, it's only that catastrophic military engagement that redefined Ranger combat doctrine and rendered an entire nation reluctant to intervene overseas. But there wasn't time to lambast her lack of historical knowledge. "I'll explain later."

Something I did appreciate about the road we were taking was how it gave us excellent views of the landscape below. This rocky outcrop sat above the main level of the city, which allowed us to look down into it. And what I saw wasn't the place I had fled from a while back (I'd completely lost track of time by this point).

The streets were filled with roadblocks and the outer edge of the city was plastered with defences. Pillboxes, machine gun nests, minefield, the works. The place was clearly pretty well defended, though I doubt the civilians still in the city appreciated the vast numbers of soldiers on the ground clogging up their streets.

"He's turned the place into a fortress," Pipp said, breaking the silence once again.

"Well, every fortress will crack," I said, optimistically. "They said Fortress Europe could never be breached. And yet here we are, moving in to conduct our very own D Day. Or should that be Z Day?"

"That would confuse those of us who used to be British or American," Pipp said. "Zipp says it the British way. It's really weird!" And with all suspicion now gone as to whether Pipp was British or American before this all began.

I shrugged. I was about to speak, but Misty got there before I could make sound. "Before we get needlessly bogged down on stuff that doesn't matter, let's keep moving and do a superb job of clearing out this tower."

A series of explosions suddenly opened up, and we saw something happening near the defences.

"Well, that's our cue," I said. "Let's go, and hopefully this'll be less awkward than last time."

Author's Note

This chapter, which is roughly in line with the other chapters on military preparation, includes a couple of military conventions. One of these is the use of the phonetic alphabet, which was introduced in 1965 by ICAO. It works by assigning words to letters in the alphabet to make them easily distinguishable. A full list can be found here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NATO_phonetic_alphabet

Pentagonese is the term used to refer to military jargon used within the upper ranks of the US Military. Whilst some of it is needed specialist vocabulary, in other cases terms appear to have been invented without need; an infamous example is lugnuts being referred to as 'hexagonal engine support bolts'. As The United States Department of Defense Fact File puts it, 'if someone insists on being called AdcomphibsPac, the Fact File should explain to those not gifting in garblespeak that he's talking about the administrative office of the communication services for amphibious forces in the Pacific. In fairness, though, the British military suffers from a similar problem, with a widely publicised incident where the Minister for Defence asked an officer to stop speaking in acronyms as he couldn't understand what was being talked about.

The Battle of Mogadishu was a military engagement that was initially intended to be a quick snatch-and-grab of enemy leaders but rapidly devolved into an urban stalemate as US forces became pinned down and unable to withdraw. The resulting engagement saw American troops in combat for approximately 18 hours- the longest continous combat operation since Vietnam. The battle has since become a cautionary tale about deploying into battle with inadequate recon or air cover, and even led to US armour being redesigned to bring back backplates- a feature of armour plating that had been phased out in the 17th Century.

D Day, of course, needs no introduction, but the fact that British and American people pronounce the letter Z differently does produce some confusion. Dr. Seuss' books use the US pronunciation to produce some of the rhymes, which can be lost when read using the UK convention.

Next time; building breachers!