“Them trees pass by so swiftly. Those Manehattenites are good engineers,” he thought to himself. “I wonder what my commanding officer’s gonna be like...” A stallion, with a beige coat and an orange mane, thought to himself. He was slightly taller in stature than most ponies and had quite the messy mane. His tail was dirty as well, and his whole self desperately could use a spa day, although his uniform was in good shape.

He briskly walked towards the little cabin his officer was sectioned in. He himself was only a Lieutenant First Class, barred from promotions because of his antics. Looking down the hallway, he saw the cabin. Stressing thoughts began filling his mind, “He’s gonna be like every other officer!” he murmured before quickly trotting past the cabin. He had been on the train for a while but was still too nervous to greet his new commanding officer. He needed something to relieve his stress.

Nearby the caboose’s door, he saw two chairs and a little table in between. He set down his full-to-bursting saddlebags, with a ton of information some enlisted ponies had given him on the little table, and sat down. He ruffled around in his bags until his hoof caught a familiar package.

“Camol Cigarettes: Built for the Bold,” it said on the front.

He took out a Camol cigarette from the battered box, and he noticed he was almost out, “I’ll have to get more in Severyana,” he quietly murmured to himself, before pulling out his lighter and one of his last remaining cigarettes. He breathed in and felt the stress melt away, and, after a second or two, he breathed it out, “Aaah, nothing like a good smoke! Shoot, I can’t believe some ponies are trying to ban smoking in places. Don’t they know it’s harmless?”

After a few minutes, he took his last drag of his cigarette. It was a brief moment of relief, and afterward, he felt very refreshed, ready to take on responsibilities from a Colonel. As he moved himself over to the cabin door, with his bags in tow, he breathed in and out and opened the door.

Sitting there on a seat, a light blue stallion was writing abnormally large letters on some paper. He soon noticed the door open and awaited an introduction.

“I’s First Lieutenant Blazin Glory,” Blazin Glory announced.

“Ah… The Lieutenant sent to me by command. I hope you know more about Severyana than I do?” Maxim asked, with notable concern in his voice, as he sighed in his thoughts, "Yes, he is going to be trouble for me."

“Well, unless you know less than a hound knows about hunting, probably not!” Glory exclaimed.

Maxim looked rather annoyed and mockingly replied, “I do know less than ‘a hound knows about hunting,’ so please enlighten me.”

Glory looked surprised but quickly sat down and pulled out a lot of maps and old documents from his saddlebags. He specifically focused on one map, which was of the region.

“So, this is where we’re going,” he pointed at the city of Princessyn. “From what I’ve been told by a soldier who came from that region, Severyana is like a headless chicken. And as every pony knows, a headless chicken can’t order supplies.”

Maxim tried to translate, “So, you’re telling me that the region is under-supplied?”

In response, Glory laughed, “That ain’t the half of it! From these documents here,” he pulled out some dusty, hoof-written documents, “it’s easy to see that no supply wagons or convoys have been sent there since…” Glory quickly scanned one of the documents, “Aha! Here it is!” he showed Maxim the document. It was an old report documenting a shipment of goods sent to Severyana.

“After 978ish, I haven’t been able to find a single document approving, or even taking count of goods sent to the Princessyn garrison, or even Severyana proper!” he said quite dismally.

“What!? Are you sure?" Maxim replied with equal amounts of abasement and shock.

“Well sir, that ain’t the half of it. I was poking my hoof around in an old archive full of military documents when I found this,” he pulled out a stack of papers documenting troop transfer to and from Severyana. “As you can see, ponies get shipped there, albeit in small numbers, but don’t leave. I’ve only seen five or six documented cases of ponies leaving.”

“So, we’ve got ponies who’ve been there for a long time. How many do you think are past their time of enlistment?” Maxim asked.

“Well sir, it’s hard to know. But my best guess would be a good portion of the garrison… err… 10%, at least,” Glory replied as he pulled out another document.

“Alright, now that I’ve gone through our abysmal supply situation, now we get to go through our equally bad officer situation. That is, I can’t find any.”

Maxim sat there, his mouth slightly open before he spoke, “Wh...What do you mean you can’t find any?!” his question being heard more as a statement.

“Well, I went through all them transfer orders in that big ol’ stack of documents, and I can say, with near one-hundred percent confidence that all of 'em left. Here, this little paper I wrote this morning shows the officer count in 972, and the percentage of transfers outta the region.” He pushed the document forward. It was very well detailed, to the point Maxim was impressed. From what he could tell, the region in 972 ALB had around 250-300 officers, but a more precise guess could be 280~. This was enough officers for a region of that size, or maybe too many. But the important thing was below. The loss rate indicated around a 95-100% transfer of officers to different regions.

Blazin Glory knew what the Colonel was thinking and said, “It’s astounding! But I figured out why.” He pulled out an old newspaper.

“THE PRINCESSYN TIMES” it read on the front.

“SCANDAL! EQUESTRIAN OFFICERS STEALING OUR MONEY?”

The newspaper was about some money laundering scheme, stealing government funds from a group called “The Guild of Pegasi.” Maxim briefly ran his eyes over it before he looked up with a curious expression, “Is that all your evidence?” From what he understood, the weather may have gotten drier, and some ponies would be sore about it, but Maxim was confused why Glory thought this was significant.

“No, Sir. In fact, I needed you to read that so I could bring out this.” One could easily tell that he had been working for some time to make a good impression. It was working.

Blazin Glory proceeded to bring out a document detailing Severyanian opinion of the Equestrian Officer Corps throughout the 970s. "In the 70’s, them newspapers ignored them. Honestly, not a terrible thing. But, unfortunately, some damned Equestrians decided to ruin it all by making up some dumb scheme to steal money. After that, the local papers couldn’t get enough of our officers. Nopony likes being harassed by the locals, but you can’t blame 'em. If they’d have stopped though, I think it could’ve blown over."

He continued, "Just when everything was calming down, a group of Officers made a fool of themselves at a bar, and started a bar fight. A lotta ponies got hurt, including a good few from a local militia, the “Forest Brothers” as they call themselves."

Maxim interrupted, “And who are these “Forest Brothers?” he asked.

“Good question, Sir! Well, them’s were the military when Severyana was an independent kingdom. Some deal with Celestia took place where they got to keep their Duma and a reduced form of their military.

“A bunch of Forest Brothers got hurt, but they did win the fight. They decided to spread a whole bunch of lies 'bout our troops, and the locals ate it up. After that, most locals couldn’t stand our troops, and especially not our officers, made their lives Tartarus. So, those who had the authority to leave, well, left.”

Maxim listened to this with heavy interest, “This is troubling news indeed. I must ask, however, what role do these ‘Forest Brothers’ play in Severyana today?”

“Well sir, they are 'posed to fight banditry, but otherwise, I have no idea. Since there’s been little exchange of documents from Equestria and the garrisons in Severyana, I just can’t get ahold of any details.”

“Hmm… That’s quite troubling,” Maxim said, whilst relaxing himself.

*Knock knock knock…*

Somepony was at the door. Maxim was about to scoot over from the window to the door, but Blazin Glory scooted much quicker and opened the door before Maxim could even get off his seat. Outside, a mare stood with a cart full of confections. She hastily and excitedly said,

“Hello folks! Is there anything I can get’cha today?”

“Y’all got any coffee?” Glory asked.

“Yes sir!” she said, quickly pouring a black cup of coffee. “Anything else?” She forced her voice to be more chipper than she really was.

Maxim quickly spoke up, “May I have a spot of tea?”

“Of course!” After the coffee was poured, she grabbed a pot full of green tea with her magic and poured it into a paper cup. “Is that all for you guys today?” she asked.

Neither of them said anything for a moment, “Nope!” Glory quickly said, before shutting the door on her. They both relaxed quickly, Maxim enjoying his tea, whilst Glory gulped down his piping hot coffee. Maxim shot him a dirty look, to which, Glory replied, with a chuckle, “Sir, it’s better if ya don’t taste it!”

The two sat there for some time, one with an empty cup of coffee, and the other, sipping tea.

“What brought you to join the Equestrian Officer Corps?” Maxim asked, with a good bit of curiosity, yet some notes of judgment in his tone.

“Well, Sir, I went to college down near Dodge City, but I figured I didn’t wanna deal with cows and apples all my life. And when I figured out they’d make ya an officer if ya went to college, even if it were for something like cow care, I joined right away!”

Maxim sat there, thinking, “That’s how he became an officer...” He said aloud, “Alright, we should get onto the next piece of information. We need as much time as possible before we get to Princessyn to plan.”

Blazin Glory quickly moved his cup to the other side of the table. “Where’d we leave off?” he mumbled to himself, until he remembered and quickly pulled out a manila folder.

“I am happy to say that our history lesson is over, and it is finally time to talk about the present.”

Maxim shifted in his seat, preparing for the next onslaught of information. Blazin Glory put away the papers covering most of the table back into his saddlebags, before pulling out a few pages from the manila folder, along with a detailed map of the region.

“Sir, I gotta warn ya, all of these are guesses at best, but it's all I could find,” he warned him. “Now, we should start on our supply situation. It’s utter cow shit. No pun intended. The army hasn’t sent a single gun there. I can only guess we’re running an extreme supply deficit. The worst thing is, we've got no idea how bad it is.”

“That is an issue we’ll have to solve when we get there,” Maxim commented.

“Sure is, sir. Now, onto our next problem.”

“Hold on, Glory, I have to ask, is there anything but problems?” Maxim abruptly interrupted.

Glory looked at his Colonel awkwardly, “Uh… No. If we did, I would've already said it.”

Maxim sighed in great disappointment, “Continue on then.”

“Alright sir. I will summarize what I know. Until now, there has been no contact from the Equestrian army to our garrisons in Princessyn. To the north, the Griffimsk naval garrison has been requesting resupply for years and has alerted command of a bandit issue. That’s probably why we can’t get any messages from Princessyn.”

He continued, “To the south, there’s the other naval garrison of Petershoof. From what I’ve read, it ain’t doin too hot either, and I suspect it’ll be as bad as Princessyn. Further south, there was a detachment of soldiers stationed in Krupochinko to fight the bandits, but they were transferred to Manehattan.” Although Glory tried to say “Krupochinko” correctly, it was quite obvious to both of them that he wouldn’t be able to say any of these names correctly.

“Did the army just abandon the city?” Maxim asked in some amazement.

“No sir, instead they stationed half a company of Royal Guards there,” Glory replied.

“You mean the ponies who still use halberds? They sent them to fight bandits?” Maxim said with abasement.

“Yes sir. And they ain’t doin too terribly. That’s the whole reason this train can run to Princessyn without gettin blown up,” Glory hastily replied, trying to defend the Royal Guard.

Maxim huffed, “Well, alright then. What other garrisons must I be aware of?”

“Northern Severyana is garrisoned more by the Forest Brothers. They control the garrisons of Krasivsk and Zayatsk and supposedly have a minor garrison in Stavichi to help guard the roads in the north. In the south, I’ve heard they control a few more in Muffinskoye and Taraskiy. These are to protect the railroads and roads. But from what I can tell from the reports in Petershoof and Griffimsk, they aren’t doing their job.”

Maxim was extremely surprised, “Glory… Where did you find all of this information? I thought we couldn’t get anything from Severyana.”

“You’re almost correct, sir. We can’t get anything from Princessyn, probably because of the bandits. But we can get information from port garrisons and some old documents I found in archives saying where troops were garrisoned in the past,” he responded.

“Ah, I understand. Continue,” Maxim commanded.

“Yes, sir! Alrighty, so those are all the garrisons. We are supposed to have three thousand troops, eight hundred in Griffimsk, although five hundred of them are under the Navy. We’ve got another thousand in Petershoof, with half of them being with the Navy, and finally, we have our garrison in Princessyn, which is supposed to have twelve hundred. I suspect we’ll have half of all that at best. Any questions, sir?”

“Not yet,” Maxim replied.

At first, Maxim quite disliked the Lieutenant for his undignified speech, but his persistence in acquiring information had already proven useful. He decided, at the very least, to chat with his Lieutenant. As the afternoon wore into the evening, the two were quite enjoying each other’s company.

Maxim found Glory’s down-to-earth attitude refreshing, while Glory was glad to have an officer that cared for proper military conduct. Some time passed, with much chatting. Maxim was getting to know this “Lieutenant Blazin Glory.” He found, much to his immense surprise, that he quite liked him, even if his accent was infuriating.

Finally, the chatting began to die down, as Glory glanced around, looking for a bed. Maxim chuckled a little bit, something he hadn’t done in some time, “You know, Glory, that these benches are probably the best we’ll get tonight?”

“I know… I was just hopin' for maybe a bed hidin' out near the ceiling or the floor.”

“Sorry to disappoint you, but that is sadly not the case, Lieutenant,” Maxim replied, as he laid a saddlebag down on the far end of his bench before laying his head down on it.

At this point, there was very little light in the cabin, with the hallway light barely illuminating the space.

“Sir?”

“Yes, Lieutenant?”

“Do ya think bandits’ll blow open a hole into this train?” Glory humored himself.

Maxim let out a single laugh, “Let's hope not.”

The monotonous sound of the train upon the rails slowly but surely cradled Maxim and Glory to sleep. Tomorrow, they would need to buy food for the last day of the journey. Thankfully, though, the day's briefing was finished.

Author's Note

Hello! Thank you so much for reading these two short chapters of my book.
Hopefully next week, I'll have posted the next chapter!