My Little Operator: Warfare is Tragic - Loonies

Chapters

Full Metal Jackets
Thin Red Lines
Tears Of The Sun

Full Metal Jackets

Before the war, before the wars, they called me Sky and left out the family name of Raider. When I joined up it seemed like that’s all they cared about, some of the others gushing or guffawing over it until I got my nickname. ‘Sturmpony’, because of how I handled the heavy guns during the mock-assaults during basic. The colt who coined it thought he was a mighty clever pony, but when it comes to that I can’t rightly disagree. It fits, but more importantly it stuck.

I didn’t find much use for it though until a while after I’d completed basic and been tossed into the 82nd “All Equestrian” Division of the Air Corps. After a bit of processing, filing, interviewing and coin tosses I found myself in the 502nd Air Assault Regiment, Apple Company, Third Platoon doing scut work at Equus Air Base in Canterlot and learning exactly what it felt like to be a green-wing amongst veterans. They gave me a battle saddle fitted with 7.62 machine rifles that weighed more and hit less than it ought to have, but I didn’t complain. It was better than having to lug around one of the heavy mortar pieces, or one of what should have been a fixed 20mm gun like someponies I knew.

I found myself drilling under Sergeant Bucking with the rest of the greens and some of the less than stable vets for a few months, easy enough but boring garrison work more than anything else when we weren't pretending to blast apart Lunar Republican dissidents and itching for a chance to do it for real. As it happened, luck, if you could even call it that, was on our side and it wasn’t long before I got my chance to spit lead at the worst of them.

I remember the first time, staring into the eyes of one of them. Eight and a half years ago, back before the ‘popular’ uprising was even being considered. The mare was still in the moon and the New Lunar Republic was anything but. It must have been fifteen, twenty years old at that point but only then starting to get back out in force after the crackdowns of ‘76. The 502nd pulled the short straw to support the mechanized assault at Littlehorn. The Equestrian Guard was there, and they even had some of those gold armored Royal Guardsponies with them to make sure that whatever punches we threw landed hard enough to put the NLR down for good.

At least, that’s what we hoped for. Some of the more fervently devoted amongst us, myself not included, offered up prayer to the Princess, the real Princess, that everything go off without a hitch but I guess Celestia must’ve been busy that day. We all knew it’d be a rough ride, but I don’t think anypony expected things to go just as badly as they did. We took off from Equus fields before the raising of the sun, a bad omen in and of itself but a necessary one to ensure we’d get there in time. Someponies were still laughing and joking, but the further west we flew and the further north we crawled they got quieter and quieter until we were cruising along in total silence.

It was about five hours later and six kilometers away from the rally point outside Littlehorn that Lieutenant Glider spoke up again. It was a navigations adjustment, changing the heading by a few degrees and starting a slow altitude drop until we were brushing against the tips of the cloud cover. He had a bit of strain in his voice, which should have been telling given how hard as nails he usually is but which went unnoticed at the time. I was still too wrapped up in my own thoughts to give it much heed. I was green as an alfalfa monster and fresh out of basic, still shaky with my wings enough that more than a few ponies had asked me if I’d rather been born an Earth Pony.

It was another half hour, maybe more, maybe less when we started to bank left, circling towards the target zone. Lt. Glider called out, said there’d been a slight change in plans and that Apple Company was going to break up and start the pre-assault recon runs while the rest of the 502nd kept orbit over the staging grounds. When we finally broke cover and cut down towards the ground it became frightfully apparent why everything had been jumped up a good two hours.

Somepony had been careless or seditious and the Loonies were already in the field, all over the place, dragging their bastard flanks out of whatever slit trenches they’d been mucking around in, pulling their Bickers and their field-mortars up with them. There were a few skirmishes breaking out already in the southern fringe where the first of the Guard were brushing against their ad hoc defensive line, but it wasn’t even a fraction as bad as it was going to get. Already our armored columns were pushing up, making double time to get there before the Lunar Republicans could trot the rest of their force and whatever reserves they could muster into place. Before I got too low for proper visuals I could see just over one of the hills, where the muck-suckers were setting up. Must have been a few hundred just in that cluster, which was a heck of a lot more than we’d been briefed on. Hay, we’d have been just as surprised to see more than three dozen in any one place, let alone the hordes they were fielidng.

Only a few of the recon squads were on the ground when the anti-air opened up. Hidden in the apple orchards and wheat-fields in the west and the north, we never even saw them in the early low altitude fly-bys and there’d been no reference to them in the intelligence reports, not that we weren’t expecting them, but like the numbers of bodies on the ground we never suspected they’d have quite that many barrels ready. There were probably a dozen units, a few 88s but quads for the most part. It was light out already and they had a perfect line of sight to draw a bead on us. Must have cut down a dozen pegasi before the first wave scattered well enough that they were dropping at a slightly less alarming rate. At the very least most of us had survived, but with the flak filling the air there was no way the rest of the battalion, let along the rest of the regiment, was going to be able to drop below the bits of cloud cover we’d pushed into place until the guns were knocked out, which thankfully wasn’t my mission. First Platoon got called up for that and I thought, just a bit guiltily, that I was glad it was them and not me. Pegasi and anti-air don’t mix well, you see.

I and the rest of Third Platoon were moving up towards the artillery keeping some of the Guardsponies flanks down, recon temporarily forgotten while we worked on the air control problem. We’d gotten radio communication with the mechanized thanks to Sergeant Bucking, and word was that Captain Gallopson was down there with us running the show and leading from the front. There was still a lot of confusion on the line though, so we were more or less going in dark. Sgt. Bucking asked for volunteers to take point, and I threw my hoof up right away. I don’t rightly regret it, but in retrospect it wasn’t the best decisions of my life. I found myself a few minutes later up at the front with a scattergun between my muzzle and some 7.62s strapped to my sides to replace the thirty cal I’d been lugging around. I’d tried to get the firing bits for both in place but after nearly choking to death I realized that it wasn’t working and I decided I’d rather have the scatter in case things got hairy up close, which given the lay of the land was more likely than not.

Like I’d said before, that AA was intense and all over the place and it seemed from down there like they had just about every angle you could imagine pre-sighted and filled with fire. Not wanting to catch sudden and ignominious deaths, were forced to buck it through the muck like good and proper ground pounders, but such is the lot of Air Assault a good nine times out of ten. We had the benefit of coming down within their fairly broken line though, so they weren’t expecting us quite as badly as they might have, but that didn’t seem to lessen their response or slow their reaction when they finally did notice us. I was in one of the trenches when the first of them came up hollering and spitting piss and vinegar at us from some poorly dug cross-line.

She was a dark grey coated mare, light brown hair and a cutie mark like a moon with some diamonds around it. Her eyes were greenish but not vibrantly so, and her muzzle was snarling around a 5.56, tongue pulling at the trigger. She was scared, surprised, pissed and probable jacked up on Moon Dust and her shot went mercifully wide though it damn near gave me a heart attack and offed me nonetheless. She’d had the drop on me, and only by the grace of the Goddess had she missed me. I thought that maybe Celestia was looking on us after all, right up until the point my training kicked in and I pulled my tongue against the trigger.

There was a flash, my head snapped up hard. I could feel a dull pain in my neck and I wondered for a while whether the scattergun might have been a bad choice without a better integrated harnass. I’d closed my eyes without realizing it, but when I opened them I saw that I’d gotten on target with exactly the sort of accuracy the Loonie had mericuflly lacked and… She’d dropped, just like that, like she wasn’t even a pony, just a ill-balanced sack of apples or a bale of hay tumbling down from the rafters. One second she was alive and charging and the next she was... Gone, half her face splattered across a dirt wall and the rest leaking out into the mud. I stared at it, for a lot longer than anypony ought to have stared at it, just trying to catch my bearings and figure out exactly what I’d just done.

The rest of first squad shuffled past me while I was dazed and laid out on my haunches. Usually just hanging back and switching off point ponies would have gotten more than a few complains or sly jabs, but they knew I was going through something rough and that I needed whatever time, however short, I could get. I hate to say that there was a time I was as green and fresh to the corps as that, but we’ve all been there and it’s one of those definitive moments we all have to bash through alone. There were quite a few others that day, though most got the comfort of never having to get that close to their targets, afforded the relative niceties of long distance sniping or impersonal blankets of fire.

After about a minute Sergeant Bucking came up and hoofed my shoulder, patting my helmet and helping haul me back onto my hooves. We trotted up together, neither of us saying a word until second squad linked back up with us near a fork in one of the trench networks. Overhead the flak was still bursting pretty heavily, and we could feel the tremors and hear the dull roars from the artillery nests we were creeping up on. Resistance was surprisingly light, with hardly a single patrol between us and the target. Third squad had run into something small at some point, but they didn’t lose anypony and they managed to clear things up on their end quick enough there was a chance the Lunar Republican troops didn’t hear over the sound of their guns firing at the armor. A chance, but not a very likely one.

We regrouped, first three squads on the left flank towards the AA, the last two squads taking the right towards the wheat fields. I found myself on point with first squad again, scattergun in mouth and heavy rifles on my side. Somepony had handed me a satchel of pineapple grenades that hung off my saddlebags but I questioned the need for them if ‘stealth’ was still the name of the game. Up there, at the tip of the spear just waiting to stumble into the first machine gunner with a line of sight on your head is enough to put anypony’s nerves on edge, and I was nervously stopping and throwing a hoof up in warning every so often, taking long and unnecessary moments to screw my eyes up and try to take in all the details of our barren surroundings. There was mud underhoof, some dirt to either side and branching forks every so often, and that was it.

Well, that was it until the Loonies got wise. Somepony must have spotted us the closer we crept in, and the Corporal leading second squad is the one they ran into. They’d snuck up on us after we’d cleared and crossed an intersection, hitting the center of our formation and tearing a swathe straight through them with explosive charges and scything fire before we even had a chance to respond. Corporal Neighlson took a couple rounds to the hoof and at least one to the flank, while his weapons pony got a face full of buck shot that sent pieces of him going every which way. Somepony else that had transferred into Apple Company a few days before from the reserves was clutching a grenade they’d tossed in, holding it to his chest and neighing like a madpony. Bless his heart, but he rushed them with it outstretched when he realized he was done for, like some mad dash suicide run. I winced and turned away, bringing my scatter gun up to bear on them while the rest of the squad turned to face the attackers.

By the extended grace of Celestia though, he tripped on a rock and the grenade flew out of his hands and hit one of the Loonies square in the eye about a half second before it burst. Pulped him straight to the moon and took a chunk out of either of the mares to the sides of him, which left two or three more for the rest of the platoon to clear up. Corporal Neighlson, despite his wounds, hauled the reservist up and shook his hoof, the two supporting each other as they pulled back towards the medics near the rear. Apparently the grenade had sent some shrapnel into his head, but I heard that he’d pulled through and went on to keep fighting the rest of the day. Normally good news, but after something like that he should have gotten to head back to the reach echelon and rest for a spell, not tossed right back into the grinder before his wounds had properly closed up.

That’s the way of war though. Underponied and overtaxed, that’s how the PAC was. We did our best though, so don’t let anypony say otherwise. It’s just… I wished that maybe they’d toss some of the work we did over to the Equestrian Guard, let the Earth Ponies or the Unicorns take some of the rough stuff for a while. Sure they had all sorts of hell on their own, but the Air Corps always seemed to be the ones leading the charge. There are all sorts of rhymes and nicknames about the trend to. “Dire Flyers” or “If you fly you’re first to die.” Morbid, right?

Anyway, there we were, creeping through the trenches again, wings itching to unfurl and get us back on track but stuck slogging dirt to free up the mechanized elements. We were under real fire for the first time, the Loonies knew where we were and for a while at least they had us outnumbered three to one. Bad odds, but we were willing to take them. The ambush had just been a probing attack, it turned out. Squad after squad started to rush us at irregular intervals, a hodge podge of ponies trying to gun us down from randomly fixed positions. Given what we were used to facing this was a joke, like they weren’t even trying. We were wading our way through greenhorns and raw recruits, not the hardened pony killers that usually made up the New Lunar Republic elites like the Shadowbolts or those Goddess damned Knightmares.

Mostly Earth Pony mares, with a few higher ranking looking Unicorns but not a single pegasus yet. What was even stranger, to the point of Sgt. Bucking pointing it out, was that we’d only been fighting ponies that far. That in and of itself was worryingly strange, since the Loonies loved to pull other species into their fold. Griffons and Zebras mostly, though I’d heard tell of Buffalo turned to their cause and even the old war stores and legends about dragons coming down and burning up whole airborne divisions in their barracks on the eve of big assaults. I heard a lot of that went down in places like Burning Vales and Riot’s Ravine but I never personally knew anypony to come out of those postings alive. It was less a station and more an execution as some of the less pleased among them said.

Everything about the op was… Unsettling, I guess. If I’d had my say we probably would have pulled back and waited a while until more loyalist forces could be drummed up to put the place under siege, but Apple Company had a mission and we weren’t going to just pack up and leave halfway through. Lance Corporals also never got their say, but that’s secondary.

Thin Red Lines

Fourth squad hit the main force just before we did. The sudden confusion must have overwhelmed enough of the Lunar Republican commanders that they jumped the gun, so to speak, and flooded their western extensions with whatever reserves had been hanging around in the immediate rear. They still weren’t any better trained but there were enough there that fourth and fith got all sorts of hell. They said that anypony who survived the first few waves found themselves wading chest deep through dead, trotting over anywhere between dozens and thousands of Loonies depending on who you ask. Part of me’d like to believe the latter, given how rough a time we were having just pressing through the left. We were probably fifteen to thirty minutes off the mark, leaving the other assault high and dry while we crept past the patrols that the rebels’d sent our way.

Most of them went like the first few, they’d get the jump but we’d toss a few good shots their way and they’d fall or fall back and we’d keep cantering forward trying not to catch one in the muzzle unless we really needed to. They got wise enough to start setting up machine gun nests at chokepoints, least that’s what Sgt. Bucking thought. I think they’d had them set up the whole time, but I guess the ego boost of thinking we were kicking enough flank to warrant that sort of reception is nice. I was still on point for most of it, though I’d switched off with Private Glaze right after the first hold up and shifted back to cover the rear of our squad and keep in sight with second squad and Corporal Sprouts.

He was a good pony, one of the few Pegasi that hadn’t been born around Cloudsdale or any of the other air cities. We’d talked a bit, on other ops and during our layups at the air base. Apparently he’d helped till a few orange groves out by Manehatten for some big company, making sure the weather systems around the groves were kept in check for maximum growth. When he’d joined up with the Air Corps they’d tossed him in with the Weather Recon and Environmental Control Squadrons. WRECS was rough work, he told me, but apparently it was a heck of a sight easier than Air Assault. Not having ever having been on a WRECS crew I took it with a bit of salt and only slight reservations.

Sprouts nearly bought the farm right before I switched back up to point. First had passed through the wreckage of a barrier that looked to have been hit by one of the long range shots the Guard artillery was tossing at random, probably blasted long before we’d taken the field. When he and second squad started inching forward though the Loonies dropped down on them. It was like they were coming through the trench itself, buried in the walls and digging through. One of them that had been creeping up top dropped down right behind me and tried to slash with her bayonet, but she missed and sent my scattergun clattering off into the mud. I backhoofed and tripped all overmyself, rearing up on my haunches and trying to hoof at her face while I whinnied and neighed like a foal. My hoof got stabbed but the ironshods bounced the blade away, and I managed to land a hit across her muzzle that sent her clutching for her face.

I finished the job with the battle saddle, opening up on her before she could get back up and try my life again. First squad started pulling back and settling in to see what in the hay was going on, but it was already over. Sprouts was next to me, blood in his mane, a mare and two stallions crumbled up around him. One of the company medics that had come in with us helped patch a wound where the bullet had grazed his skull but he was good to keep moving, though not up front. He got pushed back to the rear and I got pushed up to the front and then we were underway again, though this time I was a bit shakier in the nerves and trying to keep lower the ground.

My wings were still itching to get up and out, twitching as the feathers got ruffled against the battle saddle harness. Sergeant Bucking knew it, knew we were all itching for the air no matter how brief it might be, and up to that point it seemed like hoofing it wasn’t doing us much good. A smaller force facing heavier resistance had already cleared up to the objective point, and there we were only a little over halfway to the mark and already nearly losing ponies left and right. He ordered us to stop after a few more minutes and another close run in, this time with another gunner nest that opened up on us but thankfully missed everypony long enough for me to buck a grenade it’s way. A radiopony trotted up next to him and he got on the horn with some of the Guardsponies out in the rear and the rest of Apple Company hitting the anti-air batteries. After a few minutes he turned back to us and told us all to take a seat around him while he began drawing with his hoof and a stick in the dirt.

“Alright everypony, listen up.” he said, after glancing around to make sure all the squads were close by. “Talked to the colts over in the tanks and our troopers out in First Platoon. They and the Second have gotten it fierce, but they’re reporting that some of the 88s and a few of the quads are down already. Skies are open enough now that we can risk a quick jump.” That bit got most of us to give up a worried, questioning cheer. Sure, we’d be getting up in the air again but there was still the very disheartening chance of getting shot to pieces in the process. I choked down the fear rising in my throat and offered to go first, but the Sergeant shook his head and shuffled up the order. The third was moving in first, then the first and then the second.

“Remember, bellies to the dirt. Curl your hoofs up so they don’t snag, and don’t go for a straight shot. If you need to hit the dirt and hole up. We’re in a hurry but I’d rather you not die to stay punctual.” That got a real laugh out of us, and helped put us at some ease. The Sergeant was good like that, not a hardflank like some of the other Platoons like the fifth had. I’d only met Sergeant Fritters once, but he’d put the fear of Celestia in me right quick. One of the old breed, as some would say. A stallion that’d been through the grinder longer’n Celestia had reigned somepnoy had once joked. He was tough as nails and ate ironshod for breakfast, and I was infinitely thankful that I’d been drawn in with Bucking’s lot.

Third squad went over and things were going fairly well. Wings were unfurled and seeing it made my own do so subconsciously. If anypony noticed they didn’t say anything. Wings are an elephant in the room like that. Everypony knows it but you learn not to point it out because all Pegasi are in the same boat when it comes to the embarrassment. Unicorn and Earth Ponies tended to make jabs about it, but there was a bit of safety in the almost exclusively Pegasi Air Corps. I was still stiff when Bucking raised his own wings and a hoof up and signaled for first to make the leap. I was in the middle of the flight, scattergun holstered over my back near my saddlebags with the 7.62s’ firing bit in my mouth.

When I took flight and crossed over the lip of the trench all hell had already broken loose and punched us in the throat. The AA was a sight weaker than it was when we’d first fell down to the soil but it was thumping away in earnest at us, aiming low to the ground and trying to hit us with the shrapnel falling down. I looked back and saw that Corporal Sprouts had taken some to the wing but he was limping through the flight and doing his best to keep pace. Ahead of me Bucking dodged an airburst shell that had buried itself in the dirt, and I got a face full of the smoke trail from it that sent me coughing and sputtering and reaching for my mask in case it had been gas.

My flight wobbled but I managed to secure it, someponies that had noticed me doing the same. When the Loonie spotters up in the artillery line got sights on us and started sending down burst and actual gas shells our way I was relieved, the seals already pressing tight against my face. Bucking issued an official order for it over the comms, his voice coming in strained and distorted from all the fragmentation interference in the air. I think we’d lost somepony to the early shelling, and a good part of third squad got knocked out of action by the sustained fragmentaries, but it was the incendiaries that really played hell with us.

The first of second squad managed to get into cover at a trench a lot closer to the artillery lines than the Lunar Republicans would have liked when they started landing them in the growing gas fields. A hoof full of shells were all they really needed for everything to get blown sky high, and my own flank was singed by the backblast. I immediately hit dirt, landing hard against a trench wall and nearly breaking my shoulder, sprawled out in a pile of a few other ponies that had taken cover. Sprouts slammed into me right after that, head slamming my stomach and nearly making me vomit from the sudden pain, but he was the only one from third squad that seemed to make it in with us. Overhead a whooshing tail of flame jetted by and then dispersed.

I was still a little woozy when I got up on my hooves, but I was a sight better than Sprouts was doing. He’d bumped his head on me and the ground enough to daze him, and somepony who’s name I think was Private Dancer was hoofing the side of his face trying to snap him back into it. He started to come to right in the nick of time too. We’d turned up a mess of dirt and dust and raised all sorts of hell and thunder when we’d crashed, and I’m guessing that half the Loonies knew exactly where we’d gone to ground.

Artillery shells were starting to creep closer from behind us, the barrage marching back towards the Lunar lines trying to clear out any of us that had gotten away. Sprouts had rank but he wasn’t in any position to lead so I took up control of the squads and we pushed forward, dodging through the partially collapsed trench walls and communications tunnels they’d dug in. We only ran into two patrols, both of them huddled up in cover facing the wrong direction. We got the drop on them and didn’t lose anypony, thank Celestia. Sprouts was doing better all the time, but I was starting to worry he might have gotten a concussion.

We ran into the fringes of second squad mixed with some brave ponies from the third that had managed to hoof it over the nopony land and get there before us, but the numbers weren’t looking too good. By our guesswork the third had lost more than half, the first had lost one or two and the second had lost about that just in the AA and artillery barrage alone. Hay, we hadn’t even started hitting the lines yet, and that didn’t count anypony we’d lost up to that point. The Lunar Republican positions were tough nuts to crack, I’ll give them that, but it just wasn’t right what they were doing to us.

I managed to get us into position right behind where second squad had holed up, and I was greeted by the sight of Corporal Punishment in more or less one piece. He used to head up fourth squad, but got switched out to head second once Sergeant Steedly was promoted up. Bad deal with the Corporal, never getting promoted. He’d been in longer than most of us and had enough experience to put even Lieutenant Glider to shame, but nopony wanted to lose a chance to crack “Corporal Punishment” jokes up at HQ. He took it in canter though, and never let us hear his complaints though I’d heard rumors that he used to raise hell about it back when he’d first been passed over for Buck Sergeant.

Corporal Punishment was telling me that they’d been pinned down by heavy gun nests from a trench or two over, but that Bucking was leading a party through one of the cracked open communications lines to try and undermine the positions. Radio contact with them was sporadic, but we kept up fire enough to make sure that the Loonies couldn’t get out from under their holes and notice them sneaking up. At least, that was the plan. Somepony up in their lines must have been trying to do the same because they ran into each other in the middle. They made a real mess of themselves, and wounded ponies from the team started trickling back towards us after a while. Only about half that went out came back, but Sgt. Bucking’s luck had held out and he was one of them, though he was limping from a grazing shot that had taken out a bit of one of his hooves.

He nodded at me as he filed past and another the reconstituted second/third and the remainder of the first moved up, Bucking taking up the rear despite the complaints of our only remaining medic. The wounded were left behind, huddled together to wait for any of third that tried to link up with us. Over on the other flank, the fourth and fifth came back into contact. They were all ready to smash the western extension, and we were just about in position to do the same. Bucking gave the word, and we charged in.

I’d thought the jump down and the short flight over had been rough, but now they really were letting us have it. The artillery was coming down in sheets, literal sheets, razing everything across the nopony’s land. Bits of wreckage from skycarts and fragmentation from all the shells was spread out all around, bits of shredded wood and strips of barbed wire wrapped around fallen ponies, puddles of water and geysers of black dirt kicked up next to leafless sticks they called trees. I could see the Loonies, gasmasked as we were through the fog, wisps of gas still clinging low to the earth. Tracer rounds too bright to see in the daylight whizzed past, winging ponies next to me and dropping the ever luckless Sprouts to his haunches. Cries for medics and covering fire went unheeded, and we did all we could just to gallop past the carnage and get to the target without buying the farm.

Bayonets fixed, we dropped into their trench line with all the organizational skill and coordination of a newborn foal. It was a melee down there, a bloody brawl that was joined in from all sides, frenzied and violent beyond reason or comprehension. Everypony was kicking and hoofing and bucking every which way, and the few shots that were fired tended to go wide or hit comrades and enemies alike. I only got a single shot off with my scattergun before it was torn from my mouth and tossed to the ground again, some Loonie stallion slamming into me and bowling me over immediately afterwards. Ironshods fell on me, kicking into my sides and winding me before the body mercifully seized up and fell onto my bruised chest, a hole through his light blue head. Bucking pulled me up and handed me my fallen gun, nudging me forward to the other side of the trench as he followed after.

A mare fell on me as I turned a corner, stabbing forward with a long bolt action she was levitating. She missed and went wide, stabbing into my filter and making me rear up in fear and anger, stomping down on her rifle and cracking it’s walnut stock in two before I pushed forward and caught her in the throat with the bayonet on my own weapon. I fired, and she fell off, tears pricking at my eyes from the sudden flashes of chemical release. I was shaking and Bucking was pushing ahead alone, the rest of the battle calming down around us as the Loonies fell dead in droves.

I found myself on my curled up into a ball on the floor of the trench, clutching around my bloodied and muddied scattergun next to the Lunar Republic Unicorn I’d dropped, rocking back and forth and trying not to scream. That’s about the time I realized that it doesn’t ever start to come easier, not when it’s that close, despite everything they’d told me in training and even before that. Sergeant Bucking came back, a new cut on his muzzle, gave us all a few minutes to tend to ourselves while the medics from our newly reunited squads tended to our few wounded and tagged our many dead. “Fifteen minutes,” he said, “Smoke ‘em if you’ve got ‘em, then we’re out.” before he called the radiopony back up to get on the line with Glider and tell the mechcolts they could start pushing up.

While I was recovering, someone was pulling Sprouts out of a ditch and finding that he still had a pulse, and somepony else was going from gun to gun packing the barrels with explosives.

When Sergeant Bucking called the Platoon to fall in on him, the guns were already primed and ready, Private Privy holding a detonator switch in his mouth and looking expectantly towards the Sergeant for word to blast them. Behind us the mechanized infantry and armored columns were pushing up and slamming whatever resistance remained, working in a pincer to take out the rest of the trench fields behind us and work on hitting the AA to the side.

Bucking nodded to Privy after we’d gotten a good while out into the wheat fields beyond, and hot air brushed against my flank and mane when he pushed down with his tongue and sent a line of Loonie artillery right back to the moon where it belonged. Privy had a pleased as punch look on his face and was nearly prancing in such excitement that I didn’t bother to tell him to bring it down a notch and keep his eyes on the wheat for ambushes. With all the hits we’d taken I found myself folded out of the firth squad and put into temporary command of the third, Private Privy, Private Hoofser and Lance Corporal Trotsky beneath me.

For a while after we’d hit the trench we didn’t get much resistance. Bucking figured it must have been the loss of the outer lines, the Loonies freaking out and pulling back to their inner fortifications in a panic so that they wouldn’t get caught out in the open with the Air Corps ready to hoof them in the bits. We laughed, to help put our minds at ease, but the unspoken and more likely story was that they were still out there, hiding, waiting. I found myself getting jittery, swinging my 7.62s from side to side and trying to get a bead on every wind-swept bit of wheat that dared to move in my periphery. I noticed that Trotsky was really nervous a few minutes into the brush. He was whimpering a bit under his breath, still shaken up from what’d happened during the assault, and the sounds of the battle around us on the breeze weren’t helping to calm him down.

He was chewing on the bit and ready to pull, and when a field mouse scurried past he opened up with his 5.56 battle saddle and tore the poor thing to pieces. The colt wouldn’t emptied his box mags into the dirt around the body if I hadn’t have clopped him one between the ears and snapped him out of it. Trotsky was blubbering and Bucking was yelling, all piss and vinegar trying to figure out what was going on as second squad starting to shooting rounds off in every outbound direction thinking we were getting hit. Somepony yelled out a ceasefire, Bucking or the Corporal Punishment in the second.

I spat at the ground and walked up, raising a hoof muzzle high towards Bucking and making a small hand signal to him. “Misfire, our bad.” I said, and he nodded and stalked back off towards point. I had Privy help me take care of Trotsky, slap him around a bit and douse him in some water from the canteens to get him back to us. After about half a minute he was good enough to walk, and I had the Private keep a close eye on him in case he’d start cracking up again. Someponies just couldn’t be trusted with combat, a sad fact of life in the Corps, but Privy was one of them and so was Hoofser. I took point and had Hoofser in the rear, Privy and Trotsky pulled up close in the center while we followed the rest in.

To our right and our left First Platoon was wiping out the rest of the AA with the support of the now in-range Guard cannons, and to our right first squad from Fourth Platoon was setting up to help up in the sweep, keeping our flanks secure from anypony trying to hit us. Unluckily for us that’s not what they tried. They just waited, shut up in spider holes for us to get right in the middle before they opened up. Third squad had just entered into the kill box when they jumped up, firing wild and half blind through the wheat stalks trying to hit as many ponies as they could.

Bucking was hollering up in the front for suppressive fire, everypony hitting the dirt hard and trying to to get a line of sight out. Rounds burst the cover around me, kicking up dirt and splashing me with a bit of blood when Trotsky got hit next to me. It wasn’t a lethal wound, just a through and through on a rear hoof but he freaked out and started rearing up and neighing, crazed from all of it. Somepony jumped out of cover in front of him and ran him through with a bayonet on one of those cruddy 7.62 bolt actions the Loonies were using, but I hit the firing bit hard and shredded him even as Trotsky was falling back. Privy was trying to inch forward, get close enough to see what he was shooting at when a few stray rounds buried themselves an inch away from his face.

I bucked a grenade off into where the bolt action pony had come from and Privy did the same, hoofing his away near where mine had gone. It burst a few seconds later, sending up a jet of red dust and the scream of somepony badly hit. A dizzy and soot-faced Loonie rushed us right after, limping along on bloodied limbs before Hoofser put her down for good, making her drop the levitated grenade she was holding. It went off next to Trotsky, blasting away whatever chance we had of getting him to a medic and making Hoofser nearly sob. Privy was already moving next to him and trying to push him forward to finish clearing the hole when I pulled away and called out to the fringe of Fourth Platoon, but from the sound of things they were in the same sort of hell we were.

Bucking came rushing back towards us with the rest of first squad while I was trying to find the Privates, whinnying out of breath and turning to fire his Cheery Lake back where he was running from, the incendiaries hitting home and burning whole sections of the field before sputtering out in the wet wheat. “Zebras! Zebras!” he was yelling, trying to get everypony to pull back in for a defensive block. Sure enough I looked up back and there were stripes in the smoke trails, shapes that looked like rough, more angular Earth Ponies fading in and out and opening up with those damned 7.62 ZKs they loved so much.

I did my best to suppress their movement, firing in wide arcs with my own saddle-mopunted 7.62 heavies, but they were good at hiding and they knew when to move. At some point Privy moved up behind me and started hoofing out grenades from my bags and his, Hoofser crouching up to my side and plinking off shots with his 5.56 service rifle on semi-auto, trying to make every round count and getting good results for it. Sergeant Bucking was near the center of the unsteady square of ponies, alternating between reloading and firing his Cheery Lake and yelling into the radio for “Some thrice-damned fire support!”

We’d finally found out where the Loonies were keeping their betters, and they were giving us all hell for the trouble.

Tears Of The Sun

The first of the Zebra insurgents broke through one of our lines right before the first of the Guard artillery started landing. Fourth squad was already reeling, and when they got charged their defenses collapsed in on themselves and the stripes managed to get a hoof-hold in there, crawling belly to the ground in some places to keep out of the way of return fire.

I’d already trained my gun on them when the first shells struck, pulverizing a clutch of Zebras crawling out of a spider hole and rending them into a fine red mist and a few scraps of smoldering meat. The smell as strange but vaguely familiar, and it made my stomach flip to think about. I fired a few shots into the smoke trails and got a few yelps of pain in response, but in the confusion I’d no way of knowing if I’d gotten a Zebra or somepony from my own Company in the fire.

The artillery barrage was a welcome, awful, indiscriminate mess. If I hadn’t heard Bucking order it himself I would have assumed it was the Loonies opening up with a hidden battery to try and crush us before we got through their next lines. Fifth squad was hit directly across their center by the shells. Five ponies huddled together, bunkered down and killed all at once. I and a Privy found them when we were galloping for cover, throwing down right in the middle of it. The Private retched violently when he realized it, and I managed to choke down the bile and shake instead, pushing my head down towards my hoofs and trying to block as much of it out as I could.

It didn’t work, and I found myself firing into the wheat again not five seconds later, a Zebra stumbling into view with a wounded pony holding a scattergun between his muzzle behind him. She was covered in blood and mud and filth and if she didn’t have wings I’d have shot her for a Loonie in a heartbeat. Looking closer when she got down next to me and Privy, I noticed her nametag read Lance Corporal Shetlia, from Fourth Platoon, second squad. Hoofsers was behind us, knocking down anything trying to creep up on us in the brawl, and looking over his kill-box later I think he might have hit a few ponies. Wounded, thankfully, not killed, but all the same I didn’t bother bringing it up with him. It was no use shooting his nerves any further, he’d been through more than enough.

Shetlia didn’t say much, just hooked in with our firing positions and did her best suppressive fire with her own 7.62s, letting loose with cluster shots from an air-to-air flechette cannon strapped to her back, the shots meant for fighting griffons and dissident pegasi shredding wheat and zebras straight to hell and back, depositing the remains in bloody heaps here and there. It was terrifying and beautiful all at once, and I found myself fearing that gun’s damage more than even the insurgents erupting from the brush around us.

The speed of the ferocity was what made the ambush so bad. It wasn’t even that long an engagement. Five, maybe seven minutes tops from start to finish and then it was over. They burst up, fired off their shots, bucked us in the face and got shot down. I didn’t even notice it was over until Sergeant Bucking came up out of his own cover hollering for everypony to pull in. The artillery had ended and I’d been so wrapped up in firing at nothing that I didn’t even notice it until Shetlia was tapping on my helmet and getting up to trot back towards her own torn to hell squad forming up around their own Sergeant Dashler.

I mouthed “Thanks.” and she waved a hoof back at us, Hoofser smiling like an idiot and Privy matching the expression. When we trotted up to the rest of the Platoon, Bucking was already going around with his squad’s medic and checking to make sure everypony who’d made it through was in good shape. Bandages, poultices, wraps and sutures almost all around, and a good deal of autoinjector painkillers and antibacterials to boot. The dead numbered somewhere between five and six. Added to what we’d already lost and of the thirty two ponies of Third Platoon that had swooped down earlier in the day, only nineteen were left. Thirteen dead and we weren’t even near though the grinder yet.

Bucking had a look in his eyes that I’d never seen before when he finished the sound off. He looked sad, angry, violent and ready to break just like everypony else. He was a rock for all of us, an anchor point in the clouds that we could hook onto and save ourselves from collapsing with. When everypony else was freaking out and dying off, he was there to yell out to us and get us into shape, keep us together but most importantly to keep us sane. It was a lot to throw at his hoofs, but he shouldered it well and seeing him ready to break like that was almost more than I could handle myself.

The expression was gone almost as soon as I noticed it, a mask of shaky resolve tossed up to hide it, but I knew what I’d seen and I was shaken. For the first time that day, I started to wonder if anypony was going to make it out of Little Horn alive. Most of my original squad had been shot up, same with my transfer in. I wondered, why was I still alive, when everypony else around me was taking a dirt nap already.

The rumble of the mechanized Guardspony column shook me out of my thoughts, and I noticed that the wheat was being crushed behind us under the tracked treads of the armor, the engine roar a dull roar all around us. Up ahead Bucking was already moving on point, threading his way through the crater-pocked, artillery-wrecked and dead-strewn field, trotting towards Little Horn proper. To our west the sounds of heavy artillery and light fighting was interspersed with a few fiery explosions of detpacks and blasting tubes telling the fate of the AA emplacements.

As the flak started to die off up in the air a few sections of heavy cloud were parted, scouting squads of Pegasi from the other Companies in the deployed 502nd starting to glide down and make visual confirmation that everything was clear. That sight more than anything else is what kept me trudging forward with Privates Hoofser and Privy behind me instead of ditching out and taking my chances at deserting. We had real support now, reinforcement. We might all still die but at least maybe it wouldn’t be in vain.

Maybe.

We managed to clear through the rest of the wheat without much incident, though Specialist Trundle in one of the support squads from Canter Company that had flown down to reinforce our push managed to trip into a spider hole and smash his radio to pieces. Nearly snapped a hoof while she was at it, but she managed to limp away with a sprain and a scowl but thankfully not much worse. Somepony called up a medic, but he just laughed at her and trotted back to Corporal Punishment’s squad behind Bucking’s pointponies. For the first time since we’d landed the platoon was deployed in numerical formation, first squad at the head and the tatters of fourth in the rear, bought up by the Canter Company fourth and fifth.

To our east, Fourth Platoon’s third squad was moving up, and First Platoon’s fifth squad brought up our western flank, the lines extending all the way to Second Platoon tossed over to the eastern fringes, and Fifth Platoon stalking on the fringe of the anti-air battery fields to the west, everypony pushing forward in a massive sweep to crush anything stupid enough to still be skunking around in the brush.

There were a few odd hazards spread out between us and Little Horn proper, a Loonie squad opening up fire from deep cover here, or a few scattered mines buried just beneath the dirt there, but for the most part it was an easy advance. A sniper opened up on Sergeant Bucking’s first squad from an old willow tree at one point, though the heavy weapons crew attached to his unit managed to blast it all to bits and pieces before they could even rack the bolt for a second shot, and the smoke and fire from the burning tree convinced another sniper lying under an overturned cart near where the fields opened up into pasture to toss his rifle down and throw his hooves up in surrender.

Somepony, I couldn’t tell who, peppered him with shots from a battle saddle and we marched past his corpse, splayed out with a 7.62 bolt action at his back, the same type of decades old surplus weapon I’d seen so many Lunar Republicans clutching in the trenches. We were back to fending off the fodder, and that put a lot of ponies nerves at ease, just a little bit. Once we started running into stolen automatics and higher end rifles we’d be in trouble again, but for now we were having a cupcake walk of a time.

The only real and honest attempt at resistance the Loonies made during the approach on their main line fortifications was at a small stable and half collapsed barn near what was probably once an apple orchard but was by then a small clear-cut field of stumps, rocks and bales of hay stacked up next to some old and broken down pull-carts. Sergeant Bucking, wary after the sniper, had pulled up the Platoon on him, ordered us to cover and to train weapons on the buildings. He seemed reluctant to order anypony to jump up and check it out for hostiles, so I threw my hoof in the air and volunteered third squad for the detail.

He had a look of relief on his face when he waved us on ahead, whispering out orders to the other squad leaders to track our advance and be ready to open up if anything turned awry. One of the medics from Canter Company’s reserves trotted up and followed us close, staying a little lower and moving a little more cautiously than myself or the Privates were. Ironically, or perhaps obviously given the big red cross on his helmet, he was the first one to get shot, a bullet cracking across his steel pot and making him spin around in shock and disorientation, dazed and confused and probably concussed from the blow but still mercifully alive and largely uninjured.

More shots rang out from the windows on the still standing side of the barn, and heavy fire stuttered out from somewhere unseen in the stable, the flashing strobe of muzzle fire obscured by the glare from the sun. Shots skittered close enough to make me neigh, and a glancing shot grazed my shin and got me hollering at Celestia to “Clop them with the sun!”, a bit of welcome blasphemy that Private Privy echoed when he got a sniper round through his saddle bag and across his flank.

The weapons crew in first and just about every other gun in the Platoon opened up all at once, pouring inordinate ordinance into the Loonie positions, a lucky Cheery Lake shot, likely from Bucking, hitting one of the remaining support spars on the second floor and sending the whole thing collapsing in on itself, burying whoever’d been shooting at us under a ton or two of moldy wood and leaky pipes. A medic for the medic came up, dragging the colt away, the sight and circumstance of which got me and Hoofser laughing so hard we started snorting while he did his best to patch up Privy and myself.

A pair of Loonie Unicorns broke cover from the stable about then, levitating up heavy 7.62 machine rifles sans saddle, trying some half-flanked attempt at a glorious charge before they got cut down to little bits a half second and a full chortle later.

Sergeant Bucking past us by, grim faced and still as determined not to lose quite so many ponies as he’d been, shooting me and my temporary squad a confused look that sobered us up right quick. We fell back into line after second squad had worked it’s way past, nodding to them and reloading our weapons as we inched ever closer to the real fight.

I could hear some of the members of fourth squad behind us complaining about having to hoof it through the mire like some run of the mill Guardsponies, flapping their wings in agitation and looking up at the sky and the 502nd’s other Companies making landings in the fields all around the fortified town, flying with relative impunity now that the flak was down for good, dodging only the occasional 88mm or sniper fire if they erred too close to the Loonies on the rooftops.

Personally, I was just happy we weren’t fighting for our lives anymore, at least not for a few more minutes. If that meant being grounded while doing it, that was fine by me.

We knew that as soon as we breached the perimeter and jumped the walls that Little Horn was going to be hell, but we didn’t expect the sort of ferocity we met even before we’d cleared the siege lines we’d drawn around the settlement. It was getting dark, only an hour or two left before the damned orb would be up and the Loonies would be in their twisted element, but even then the light burnt fierce, thrown up from the sheer volume of shells and muzzle blast and mortar rounds exploding across the sky and tearing into the ground. It seemed like all eyes and every gun was trained on us as soon as we kicked up from the temporary resupply and reinforcement camp, shots whistling past and some tearing into ponies in the center of the formation even before we’d gone out of sight of the Guardsponies’ armored columns.

Corporal Punishment got clipped in front of me, and I nearly caught a 20mm flak shell in the face, dodging only because I was trying to avoid crashing into some poor mare that had lost half her wing and was dropping fast. A medic on the ground was already moving towards her before she crashed, but we all knew that for her, it was over. You didn’t come back from an injury like that, not as the same pony, and almost never as a sane pony.

We were a few dozen feet in the air but already starting to scatter when the first Griffon opened up on us. They’d been perched high up in the clouds, higher than even the support companies had been holding station in, probably waiting to ambush any passing bomber squadrons or artillery support wings that might move into position there. They waited until we were in the perfect position before coming down too, near to the ground enough that we wouldn’t be able to maneuver out of the way and close enough to the wall that all they had to do was keep us pinned long enough for the anti-air guns to zero in on us.

They dropped down in dives, screeching bloody hell at us and firing those dual-mount 20mms they slung over their wings, claws stretched down to try and tear us out of the sky if they got close enough. They were on us before we could bring a single gun to bear, one of them slamming into Privy and knocking him down to the ground, rolling and tumbling in a mad and futile melee. I tried to aim my saddle down, to strafe them, but a Griffon wing caught me across the nose and sent me tumbling down as well, fumbling with my firing and reloading bits and training to level out before I crashed.

I was too low though, and I wound up hitting a hay bale, pain cracking across my wing but the impact softened enough that it didn’t shattered like I’d feared it would. Up ahead a few feet the Griffon that had knocked Privy out was already tearing his saddle off, shredding the barrels with just a flick of it’s claws. I was winded, disoriented and shaky hoofed but I managed to line up the sight and buck fire into it’s beak, stitching rounds up across it’s feathered breast and pulping it before it could sink it’s talons in and finish the job.

It fell and so did I, bowled over by the impact of the second Griffon that had hit me, it’s 20mm barrels raking across and cutting my cheek and chest, the weapons hot from firing so recently. I did my best to get onto my back and buck, but it rolled me over and fired down, the shell impacting and detonating next to my hoof, burying into the ground instead of my chest. Privy was on him in an instant though, knocking his hooves against it’s back and tail while it tried to deal with both of us at the same time, giving me enough time to jump up and bite down on it’s neck, thrashing hard to try and snap it.

I heard a crack, but it was from Privy, his barrel chest caving in under one of those damned thick Griffon feet, sending him flying backwards and coughing up blood into the dirt. The bird’s beak was pecking at me, trying to gouge out one of my eyes while it’s claws did their best to dig into my barding, cracking against the steel plates and leaving long, jagged rents through the plates and cloth. It was screeching and roaring at the same time, thrashing all around as I beat my hoofs against it, still straining to try and crack it’s neck when it went limp on top of me, gurgling and vomiting thick blood onto my face, making me nearly retch as the corpse slid away, a desperate looking Private Hoofser standing with a long fighting blade in his mouth, dripping with Griffon blood and trailing a few sticky feathers.

I nodded at him in thanks, gesturing over to dying Privy and shaking my head. We both knew he wasn’t going to pull through, not from something like two collapsed lungs and who knew how many crushed internals. We cantered up to him, doing our best not to put him through any other pain, Hoofser sticking him with a syrette of morphine. Under any other circumstance I would have said something, anything, to try and comfort him but I did’t. I was so burnt out from the fighting, from the dying, from the sudden and violent nature of everything that I couldn’t even feel his death. I put a hoof on Hoofser’s back, looked up and jumped back into the sky and he followed, leaving a brave and faithful soldier to his death. I still think about it, sometimes. Even after Zebrea it’s still the worst thing I’ve ever done, and I know that to this day Celestia won’t forgive me for that.

Back in the air things weren’t any better, the battle raging ever fiercer as the fighting climbed ever higher, darting and dashing aerial combat, back mounted guns firing off in the middle of sidewinder duels, everypony doing their best not to get caught by the Griffons in vertical motion. We couldn’t outrun them, we couldn’t out climb them and we certainly couldn’t out dive them, but the one thing we had was that we were damned speedy with our corners and we could dash around a curve better than anything else in the sky.

The Griffons were thinning out, but at a tremendous price. I counted at least five of them in the air, all around, probably more but maybe even less. They’d already decimated my squad, they’d obliterated two squads in Fourth Platoon and they were working their way through the rest of us in single combat, racking up well in excess of fifteen kills and showing little signs of slowing down when we finally managed to get the upper hand. I think it surprised all of us even more than it did the Griffons, Lt. Glider and his personal retinue streaking down into the middle of the fray, hopping mad and burning fast on some kind of madness that nopony could quite understand, appearing like a flash with a streaking trail of crackling thunder and coiling smoke behind him and his troop, biting down hard on the bits of those frightfully powerful flechette cannons, bursting the first bird they saw into a fine cloud of bone, feathers, blood and grit and flying on straight through.

I stopped, in the middle of an engagement with a Griffon that had pulled towards me when I’d come back up, saved during my shocked paralysis only by another shot from one of Lt. Glider’s troop’s cannon. The air combat was still going on, the Earth Ponies and Unicorns were still tearing each other to pieces below, the sky was still filled with flak and we were still being bled dry by the sheer fanatical force of will of the Loonies, but for a second there none of that mattered.

A living legend, a living saint of Celestia herself was in the middle of it all, killing everything that so much as dared look our way.