Outside Little Buck Village,

Gaskin Frontier,

Southern Equestria

“Medic!”

Corporal Cravat’s head whipped around through the darkness in the direction of the call, but the echoes as the cry reverberated through the tunnels meant that it was very nearly impossible to be sure where it had come from. He’d heard the panic and desperation in the single word though. Somepony was hurt, badly. Feeling his own sense of anguish growing as he looked at the myriad of openings in the cavern as he tried to distinguish where the call had come from, the dappled stallion saw a flicker of light that illuminated a familiar orange face.

“Cravat, this way,” Private Flashover waved his hoof anxiously at the company’s medic. “It’s Trellis, she’s hurt bad!”

Relieved to have a direction to move in, Cravat ensured that his satchel was still securely slung across his back and bolted toward his friend. The two of them tore off through the tunnel until they emerged into yet another cavernous opening. Here, as in the first chamber, there were several slain hounds. A number of ponies looked to have suffered scrapes and cuts of their own in the fighting, but the dappled stallion’s eyes were drawn to one pony in particular.

Her once pink coat looked to have been gruesomely painted with deep crimson. Another mare was crouched over the prone unicorn, her hooves clumsily holding what looked like a scrap of clothing from one of the diamond dogs over Trellis’ abdomen. The injured mare was still alive, Cravat could see that much at least, but her face was concerningly pale, and her limbs were quivering as though she were freezing. Without wasting another second, the medical pony rushed to her side, his orange companion close on his heels.

The satchel was open and at the ready by the time Cravat was sliding to a stop beside the wounded Trellis. The young unicorn mare’s eyes lit up at the familiar face of the unit’s premiere medical authority. “I’m here, private,” the dappled pony assured her as he brought out several rolls of gauze. “Don’t worry; I’ve got you.

“Move your hooves out of the way,” he snapped at the other mare; not in malice, but to ensure that there was no hesitation. Even from here he could see that the wound was bad, and he would need to act quickly if he was going to have a chance at saving her life. The startled mare withdrew herself and revealed the grievous rend in Trellis’ belly.

Almost immediately, Cravat felt his own gut tie itself in a knot. Even as he used the rolls of cotton dressing to wipe away as much of the blood as he could, he knew that he was very likely about to engage in a futile effort. If he was in a properly outfitted operating room with a staff...Honestly, even if they’d been back in town with access to the local doctor's supplies things might be different. But out here…

His ears twitched at the sound of other pained cries from nearby. Cravat turned and saw a stallion being half-carried into the cavern by an anxious-looking friend. The wounded pony's foreleg was drenched in blood that looked like it was still flowing freely, in spite of what looked like some preliminary attempts to bandage the wound. In the back of his mind, the company's medic made a note to speak with the first sergeant about arranging for additional first aid training for the other soldiers. The rest of his attention was focused on how pale the wounded stallion looked, and how unsteadily they were walking.

Cravat’s face hardened as he looked back at the mare laying beside him. In another place, in another time...

But not here or now. The corporal set aside the gauze and his right hoof went back into his satchel, emerging a moment later with a pair of small vials. He tore the stopper off of one and leaned in close to the wounded mare’s face.

“Hey, Trellis. I’m here, okay? You’re going to be alright,” the medical pony lied. Somehow he managed to put a reassuring smile on his face too. “I bet that hurts though, doesn’t it?” The mare gasped and managed a very shaky nod. “Then here, take this,” he offered the opened vial to the unicorn’s lips. It was difficult, but she managed to get most of it down without too much spilling out of the sides of her mouth. Within seconds, the worst of her shaking had subsided.

“That’s better, isn’t it?” The mare nodded and mumbled something that might have been a ‘thank you’. Cravat uncorked the second vial. “Still bad, huh?” His voice very nearly cracked at that point, so he cleared his throat and offered her the second vial. “Well, I really shouldn’t do this...but I like you, Trellis. Here, have a second one.”

The young unicorn mare was able to drink down the second potion with very little issue. She sighed and smiled up at the dappled medic. This time, her words were much more audible. “Thanks, Doc…”

Cravat winced inwardly, but his smile remained in place without any indication that it was anything other than genuine. “No problem,” he whispered as the mare slowly closed her eyes and lay her head down. Her breathing began to slow down rather noticeably, drawing a concerned look from the other mare beside her and Flashover. The dappled stallion wasn’t looking at either of them though. Instead, he withdrew both of his hooves and slowly began to wipe away the blood that was covering them. His eyes never left the pink mare as her breathing continued to slow. The slight hint of a smile on her lips disturbed him slightly. She didn’t know that she was dying. In her mind, she was just going to sleep, and would soon be waking up safe and whole in an aid tent.

She wouldn’t of course. Nothing that Cravat had available to him would change that. At least she wasn't in pain anymore.

His gaze went to the other mare. “Stay with her,” he mumbled as he collected his things, “she shouldn’t be alone for this.” Without another word, he stood up and started to wounded stallion he'd spotted.

“Whoa, Cravat, where are you―”

A sharp look from the medic silenced the unicorn stallion’s objection. “I’ve done all I can,” he said coolly. Then he took a breath and swallowed. “Go find a blanket or something to wrap her up with for the trip back.”

For a moment, Flashover said nothing. then he nodded. “Yes, corporal.”

The dappled stallion winced again. Flashover only referred to his friend by his rank when he was upset with him. Which was fine with Cravat right now, since he wasn’t feeling very happy with himself at the moment either. He quickly distracted his thoughts by busying himself with stripping the ineffectual bandages from the leg of the wounded stallion and getting out a proper tourniquet to finally stem the bleeding.

Behind him, he could hear the orange unicorn stallion consoling the mare who was watching over her dying friend.

“We've recovered seven civilians from the caves so far, Top,” a topaz stallion reported to the translucent jade mare standing outside of the tunnel network that the canines' had dug to use as their den. Shillelagh, first sergeant of Company B, 2nd Light Hoof, nodded in acknowledgement of the preliminary report that she was receiving from her platoon sergeant and waited for him to continue. “Resistance is rather significant.” His tone grew slightly more grim, “in all, thirteen casualties have been reported. Two of them won’t be able to return to duty for several days. There was also one fatality: Private Trellis.”

“Understood, Sergeant LeFarrier, thank you,” the crystalline non-com dismissed the other sergeant to see to his platoon and left to go make a personal inspection of the situation, now that she knew what to expect. It was going to take some time to conduct a thorough sweep of the whole tunnel system, but Shillelagh sincerely doubted that they would find any more of the town's missing ponies. Alive, at least.

Given that the disappearances had taken place over the past month and a half, and how poorly diamond dogs tended to treat their equine captives, it was genuinely doubtful that even a third of them were still alive. Honestly, the crystal mare was impressed that they had managed to recover as many as they had. That was going to be of little consolation to the families and friends of those who had not made it, she knew, but it was the hard truth of the matter.

As was the rather low casualty rate that her ponies had suffered. While thirteen casualties meant that, on paper, nearly a third of the committed forces had been wounded or killed in the rescue operation; that overlooked all that 1st Platoon had had working against them: charging into an unmapped cave system, in complete darkness, with no firm count of how many threats they’d be facing? Things could have gone far worse.

Especially given how admittedly unprepared their detachment had been today. Shillelagh would have preferred to have engaged with the entire company, properly divided into clearing teams with adequate unicorns between them to provide illumination. Unfortunately, that had not been a viable option if they had wanted to have any chance of eliminating the canines or recovering any of the missing townsponies. It had been pure chance that their vanguard had spotted the pair of diamond dogs disposing of the corpse of one of their latest captives to have expired due to their maltreatment.

Unfortunately, the vanguard had been spotted as well, and the canines had dashed off for their warren. At that point, Shillelagh realized there was a very real possibility that the diamond dogs would execute the remainder of whatever captives that they still retained and leave the area, now that they knew they had been discovered by Equestrian military forces. Waiting for reinforcements could have meant that nopony would be saved, and that was not a final report that she would have envied giving to the Captain. For that matter, it wasn’t a report that she wanted her CO to have to give to the town’s mayor. It would hardly have been something that their company could have been blamed for, but still…

...The first sergeant knew, perhaps better than anypony here, what it was like to lose friends and family to enslavement.

Not for the first time in her life, a subtle shiver rippled along the nape of the crystal pony’s neck as distant memories from a bygone era briefly attempted to assert themselves in her mind. Experience, and a need to keep herself focused on the mission at hoof, allowed her to beat back the intrusive thoughts. First Sergeant Shillelagh took a deep breath and headed towards another of the cave system’s openings and the ponies that were beginning to emerge.

“First Sergeant!” The cry from overhead drew the crystal mare’s attention. “First Sergeant Shillelagh!”

A dusty brown pegasus stallion was approaching swiftly from the north, angling himself down to the ground and the waiting jade mare. Upon recognizing who was coming her way, the crystal pony snapped soundly to attention and raised up her right hoof in a prim and proper salute for the newly arrived Lieutenant Whirlwind. The young officer―though everypony in Equestria was ‘young’ compared to the crystal mare, she supposed―returned the salute a little more abruptly than was perhaps polite, but Shillelagh let the slight slide, as the lieutenant had clearly been in a hurry to reach her. “Yes, sir?”

“A dispatch came in an hour ago, First Sergeant,” the pegasus informed her, taking a small folded scrap of paper out of his saddle bag and passing it to her. “Bronco Company is being reassigned. Canterlot wants us back home to take on replacements and supplies within a week. You need to get your ponies rounded up and back to camp in an hour if we’re going to be able to leave in time to make that deadline.”

Shillelagh’s jaw set in a grim line, but she managed somehow to keep from looking outright disgusted by the news. Her eyes skimmed over the missive in her hoof, and the information there only made her more irritated. “Envoy escort duty?”

“It looks that way, First Sergeant.”

“If the urgency is so great that they need us to move as quickly as they’re telling us to, I find it hard to believe that we’re the only unit available for the task.”

The pegasus shrugged. “I couldn’t say one way or the other. I just know what orders the Captain gave.”

“Aye, sir,” the jade mare nodded. She folded the message up and tucked it into her own satchel. Then the crystal pony saluted the lieutenant once more and sighed. “I’ll do my best, sir.”

A much more prim salute was returned this time, now that the officer had been able to catch his breath. “I know you will, First Sergeant. Carry on.” He broke off the salute and then leaped up into the air with a few deft sweeps of his wings and zipped off back to camp, leaving Shillelagh to find some way to organize the rest of her detachment for the abrupt change in plans.

“Sergeant LeFarrier!”

If First Sergeant Shillelagh thought that she was the only one who wasn’t thrilled with the unexpected change in assignment, she’d have been very wrong. Five miles away, in an olive drab tent nestled among the snug little bivouac tucked in next to the frontier town of Little Buck, there was a much more irate pony who wasn’t quite so reserved when it came to expressing her frustrations.

“Are they bucking serious?! One week to go nearly two hundred miles, and we haven’t even broken camp yet? Major Gladius has lost his Celestia-banished mind! Don’t they know that the railroad hasn’t even reached this podunk little hamlet yet?! It took us ten days just to get out here in the first place,” the cobalt pegasus mare snapped at the unfortunate pair of ponies whose only crime that warranted this abuse was to have been the poor fools unlucky enough to have delivered the company’s new orders. The little yellow pegasus mare that had been the courier of the dispatch found herself to be the target of most of Captain Corsair’s glaring, as well as her veritably frothing tirade. The gray unicorn stallion standing next to the messenger was no stranger to such displays though, having served as the commander’s executive officer for nearly two years now.

“Ma’am, I don’t―” the pegasus messenger began, trying in vain to plead her innocence for any culpability in the dispatch’s contents.

“Of course you don’t bucking know,” the captain sneered, earning a wince from the courier, “but the paper-pusher that drafted these orders sure should have!”

“In fairness to the major, Ma’am,” the exec, Lieutenant Lumiere, bravely waded into the conversation, used to fielding such outbursts from his volatile CO, “the message he sent along with the official orders suggested that the timetable wasn’t necessarily his doing either.”

“‘At the urging of Brigadier General Maniple, advocating for the Earl of Bitter Creek of the Ministry of bugger-me-if-I-care!’” The dark blue winged mare snarled in a droll parody that the lieutenant knew sounded nothing at all like their battalion's commander. “I’ll believe that some overbred idiot like Maniple doesn’t understand what’s being asked of us, but Gladius sure should,” she growled, “which means he should have been explaining that when they were nailing down the timetable for this circus!”

Lumiere glanced at the courier who had delivered the orders and was currently pretending that the other two officers didn’t exist as she continued to stand quietly near the entrance flap of the tent. “Why don’t you go and grab a bite in the mess tent? I’ll have an acknowledgement drafted for you to take back in a short while.” The yellow mare nodded quickly and saluted the pair of officers before ducking out rather briskly. With a bit more privacy, the lieutenant returned his attention to his commander.

“Happy now?”

The indigo flier stretched out her wings and sighed as she settled back into the chair behind her small field desk. “Very,” Corsair nodded, smiling to herself. “I doubt they’ll say anything to Gladius directly, but word should spread around battalion about the ‘fire-spitting captain of Bronco Company’s latest tirade, and that Celestia best have mercy on whoever pisses her off,” she chuckled to herself, but her features soured a few seconds later. “Joking aside, I really don’t like it.”

“Neither do I, Ma’am,” Lumiere agreed, “and the others aren’t going to be very happy either. They’ve been pulling a lot of extra duty shifts since we got here, trying to find those mutts. A forced march for seven days isn’t going to do much to help morale.”

“I know,” Corsair nodded, frowning. “Neither is being sent out to the far corners of Equestria for who knows how long,” she snorted as she picked up the orders that they’d received and looked over them once more. “‘Escorting a delegation to Saddle Arabia…’ but there’s no mention of how long this mission is supposed to take...” Which was a little puzzling, since these sorts of dispatches usually came with an anticipated end date. Those preliminary timetables often fluctuate based on how the situation developed, true, but that was just the nature of the beast. However, in this case, the orders had simply said, ‘until further notice’. Corsair couldn't recall ever seeing such a provision like that before.

Surely they weren’t being dispatched to set up a permanent Mission in the area; that wasn’t what the Frontier Corps was for. Supporting outlying towns like Little Buck, or conducting short term relief efforts for their neighbors was the typical purview for units like hers. Which left Bronco Company’s pegasus commander scratching her head about the true nature of their orders, as both of those sorts of assignments were conducted often enough that giving an estimated time to complete the mission shouldn't have posed any issue at all.

“Maybe the envoy we’re supposed to take along with us will be able to tell us more? It’s their mission, after all,” her lieutenant offered with a shrug.

Corsair’s frown deepened slightly. She wasn’t all too fond of bringing along a civilian counterpart. It tended to muddy up the usual chain of command. The regulations with regards to how the ‘shared’ command of such endeavors worked were extensive and meticulous, and were supposed to cover every reasonably conceivable situation that might arise. However, real life was rarely so black and white, and hooves always seemed to get stepped on despite everypony’s best intentions.

Ideally, Corsair maintained absolute control over the ponies assigned to her company, as per usual. Whatever Court representative that accompanied them served as an ‘advisor’ only, offering suggestions about how best to use available personnel to execute the mission, whatever it happened to be. While Corsair was not exactly required to do anything that was asked of her by the civilian official, she was ‘strongly encouraged’ to cooperate. It cut down drastically on the whining her superiors would doubtlessly be hearing from the nobles who wanted to know why the recommendations of their ‘experts’ were being ignored by a muddling military officer who couldn’t possibly comprehend the 'broader political implications' of their 'bumbling, uninformed, actions'.

Things changed if there was a ‘diplomatically sensitive situation’ though. In such an instance, the envoy themselves became the de facto commander of the unit, and Corsair was subordinate to them until everything was resolved. Where things got fuzzy was that it was the envoy who got to declare when such a state existed, and Corsair had no authority to rebut it. In the eyes of the government, the pegasus officer was just a soldier, not an expert of political matters. This, in the feathered captain’s mind, gave the civilian attaché far too much power, since their authority to assume control was so open-ended.

After all, when you were operating inside another nation’s borders, what didn’t have the potential to become a ‘diplomatically sensitive matter’? Everything from how close the camp was to the foreign town, to how large your patrols were, to what weapons could be brought along had the potential to be viewed as ‘diplomatic matters’ where the other involved nation was concerned. Which meant that, effectively, the envoy got to make whatever call they wanted to, and Corsair couldn’t legally argue it without getting into a lot of trouble with her own superiors for violating regulations.

If their assigned envoy was an asshole, this whole mission had the potential to become a thoroughly miserable experience. ‘Until further notice.’

“‘...Ours not to make reply…’” the winged company commander said under her breath by way of a mantra before turning her gaze back to her executive officer. “Go and draft the confirmation for the receipt of our orders for the major and then make sure Lieutenant Butters has everything in hoof getting the camp torn down.” She rose up out of her seat behind the desk and began to pack away what few possession she had in her command tent so that the ponies loading the freight wagons didn’t manage to lose any of her things. “Once I’ve finished packing, I’m going to pay my respects to the mayor.”

“I’m sure she’s going to be thrilled,” Lumiere noted in a slightly sour tone.

Corsair snorted in derisive agreement with the appraisal of her second in command. “I’m going to not so subtly suggest that she write a strongly worded letter to the provincial governor about this. It’s pure chance that we managed to have just found the diamond dogs that were threatening the ponies here.

“Honestly, that’s the part that pisses me off the most about all of this,” the pegasus said as she closed up her trunk of personal belongings. The rest of the tent’s contents were simply generic office materials, and she trusted her soldiers enough to pack them away without too much trouble. “We can’t know for certain that the dogs’ll leave the area after this. Without a proper sweep of the valley, they could be back in just a few days and start abducting ponies all over again!”

The grey unicorn lieutenant nodded his sober understanding, intoning, “‘Ours not to reason why’.” Which prompted a grimace from his commanding officer and a resigned nod. After a few seconds, the younger officer cleared his throat. “Ma’am, if I might suggest? I believe that it will be possible to break off a couple squads from first platoon as a ‘rear guard’ to linger in the village for a day or two…”

Corsair tapped her hoof idly on her desk as she considered the stallion’s words. A ‘couple squads’ would be better than a fifth of their entire force. While a score of ponies would have hardly mattered to a proper Line Company whose roster strength often rested north of three hundred, it was no small number for a frontier group like Bronco Company. Which meant that it would be fairly obvious to the Major when she reported to Canterlot that she was missing some ponies.

She knew Major Gladius personally. He was a good officer, and had a level head on his shoulders. Had the orders that she received come directly from him, there was no doubt in her mind that he would have both thoroughly understood and supported her actions. Indeed, that exact caveat would likely have been written into her orders.

However, in this instance, it was clear that the major was not the pony pulling the strings on this assignment. Brigadier General Manipal, inexplicably, was taking the reins on this. She’d never met the general herself, but she’d known enough ponies who had, and their assessments of him were far from encouraging. He, more likely than not, wouldn’t be quite so understanding. The orders she had read had requested her entire contingent to be in Canterlot, and the timetable that she’d been given to work with bordered on the farcical. It was very likely that Manipal would not be quite so understanding as the major.

Perhaps if Captain Corsair had held the general officer in a higher regard, she would have even cared about his opinion where her command decisions were concerned. “Do it,” she told her XO, “leave behind two squads, comprised of our wounded and some ponies to ‘look after them’ during their convalescence. We can cite that we had to leave them behind, otherwise we would have been slowed down by them too much to meet the timetable that we were given.” The two officers shared a conspiratorial smile and the gray unicorn nodded his agreement.

“Yes, Ma’am.”

If Manipal didn’t like it, that was too bad for him.

“Dismissed, Lieutenant,” she said, returning the salute of the junior officer as he took his leave to carry out the orders that he had been given.

Author's Note

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