Foreword: following some (very helpful) criticism I've made some changes to the first chapter. It's nothing too important, and you can read the rest of the story without seeing them, but I made the pace a bit slower and added some details about the main OC that will be in the story, Lieutenant Strong Spear. Happy reading!

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Chapter Two
...through bloodshed

“You are the strongest fighters our empire has to offer. You have been forged through fire and blood. You are my most proudest soldiers, and you will do everything necessary to protect Equestria and her ponies. You will NEVER retreat! You will NEVER surrender! And you will NEVER stop fighting until you breathe your last! Do you understand?!” Princess Luna barked, drilling the newest recruits in Canterlot Tower. Recruits were far from the absolute strongest fighters in the Empire, but they were all considerably well trained. No soldier was expendable, unlike in the vile Peace Fighters, who would constantly and actively sacrifice their own soldiers and use them like pawns.

If I ever see Shining Armor ever again he will pay for his crimes against the Empire and indeed all of morality Luna thought, pacing back in forth in front of the recruits. All of these soldiers would be soon pitted against the troublesome Peace Fighters, and it was up to Luna and her booming voice to deliver the welcome speech and basic virtues of the Imperial army.

“YES, MA’AM!” the recruits yelled in response.

Luna nodded and handed them off to the Drill Commander as her sister approached, her white coat pristinely shining in the artificial light and multi-color mane flowing freely. She, as well as Luna, looked as what she truly was; a divine Goddess, superior in every way and to every other being on the planet.

Except for her sister, of course.

“Thy sister, is all well?” Luna inquired, walking forward to meet Celestia halfway. Her voice had switched from stern and forceful to curious and concerned with just the flick of her mane. Princess Luna had always been the more mature and stoic one of the two sisters, and it had been an easy choice to make her voice the first thing the recruits would hear when embarking on their training. When time permitted it, Luna was a fan of going down to the training yards herself to yell and scream and shout at the soldiers-to-be.

“Is it ever? No... The Peace Fighters struck again, this time as a trap. We deployed 250 soldiers and a single airship to one of their nearby bases and fell victim to their ever-evolving tactics. The few survivors all reported a massive explosion which also claimed the airship, and a line of gasoline igniting and leading to a peace sign also made of gasoline. It seems the Peace Fighters spend most of their time finding clever ways to express their ironic names and ideals. First it was the statuette found made of guns and other equipment built on a corpse, then it was that peace sign carved in a wall with an energy katana, now it’s this one made by setting gasoline on fire. What oh what will Captain Armor and his band of delinquents ever think of next?” Princess Celestia wondered aloud.

“Perhaps one made of dead Empire soldiers?” Luna guessed, earning a glare from her older sister. “I am sorry.”

“No matter, you probably just won at least three betting pools from the front-line soldiers with that guess anyway. No, what I am really here to discuss is a manner in which we may defeat the Peace Fighters” Celestia said.

“Our airships proved very effective when not menaced by any manner of surface-to-air countermeasures” Luna suggested, beginning to walk with her sister to the nearest balcony.

“Yes but the airships are very slow to move, and as you mentioned only greatly effective when not menaced by anti-air countermeasures, and I don’t even want to begin to think about where they get those countermeasures. The Peace Fighters seem to be well-funded or at least very competent in their thefts, which brings me to my next point: 500 mid-sized crates of the new SPR-75 New-age Combat Rifles, 5 small crates of VEPR Solar-Pulse Marksman Rifles, 10 combo-crates of SP-SMGs and Solar-Pulse-Pistols, 2 crates of Intermediate All-Terrain Jeeps Model 87, and 1 crate of an Intermediate Multi-Role Tank Model 96 were all stolen from a shipping freighter on the Boaring Strait. Now, what this all means is that the Peace Fighters made off with 4,000 brand new SPR-75 NaCRs, 15 VEPRs, 50 SP-SMGs and 50 SPPs”” Celestia explained.

“Blast it! Do those foals have any idea how expensive those new SPR-75s and VEPRs were? Not to mention the two jeeps and tank? Everything else is trivial really but those SPR-75s, VEPRs, IATJ-87s, and IMRT-96 are nigh irreplaceable. We MUST get them back!” Luna exclaimed.

“Yes, I agree, and have already set plans to do just that, along with crush the Peace Fighters once and for all” Princess Celestia said.

“Then may Mother help us” Luna declared, opening the door to the balcony and letting her sister join her. Together they looked down upon Canterlot, watching ponies mill about in the streets and go about their business, though many had retired to their homes as the night was beginning.

Princess Luna raised her moon in tandem with Celestia lowering her sun, darkening the skies and crafting the necessary stars for that evening. Thousands of small white dots were scattered about the blue-black sky, many overshadowed by the glow of the moon and her creator.

“Excellent work as always, dear sister” Celestia complemented, admiring what her younger sister had done.

“Thank you, Tia. You know I try as hard as you do” the Princess of the Night replied.

“More so, I would say, given you must craft millions of stars to go along with the moon every night” the sun Goddess stated.

“Indeed. So, tell me about this plan to retake our stolen property and crush the Peace Fighters” Luna said, heading back inside with her sister. The dark Princess was keen to hear what her sister planned to do about the ‘revolutionaries’ they had been fighting for close to two years and knew that whatever it was, it would be interesting.

“Let us forget about them for now, Lulu, and simply enjoy each other’s presence, yes?”

“As you wish, dear sister” Princess Luna said with a smile.

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“Heavy-Biter Lead, this is Fighting-Hornet Lead, we are five minutes out and from what we can see the PF are dug in well; the artillery will soften them up but expect heavy resistance” the commanding pilot of the lead Dragonfly Rotary Aerial Vehicle Model 17 said over the radio as he lead the air cavalry charge. The Manticore tanks on the ground were backed by the infantry in IATJ-87s close behind.

The Dragonfly Rotary Aerial Vehicle Model 17, or DRAVM-17 for short, was a mid-sized aircraft best described as a cross between the helicopters of old and a dropship. It was shaped vaguely like a pistol bullet, with the cockpit in the round front, and a single massive rotor in the middle of the squared-off rear end. The rotor was supported by small maneuvering thrusters on the round front and two slightly larger propulsion thrusters mounted on both spires that trailed off at the rear of the vehicle, and the DRAVM-17 was fitted with a 15mm Solar-Pulse chain-gun capable of firing at 1000 rounds per minute and two 16mm rocket pods fitted on the two stubby 45-degree-angle wings on the side, each pod carrying 8 missiles. The DRAVM was armored with one-inch thick titanium alloy which also lined the airships, though in obviously thinner quantities.

The DRAVM was slow moving, and favored more firepower than speed.

The Manticore Light Support Tank Model 101 was the opposite, however; it favored more speed than firepower, fitted with a 30mm light Solar-Pulse cannon and two twelve-cylinder Solar-Containment-Field engines.

Solar-Containment-Field engines were the brainchild of researchers at Celestia’s Institution of Solar Excellence, and each and every engine was helped created by Celestia herself by imparting a fraction of the power of her sun to drive the engine. SCF engines never needed fuel, and their power source will last about a fourth of the time the sun itself will last. MLSTM-101s were revered throughout the Armored Corps for their speed and agility on the battlefield, and many veterans of the Corps were opposed to the implementation of the new IMRT-96.

“Understood, Fighting-Hornet Lead. We’ll make them think Tartarus is a better place” Heavy-Biter Lead responded as the artillery cannons some miles back began to fire, their magnetically-fired heavy slugs slamming into the PF base with more kinetic force than explosive. Massive plumes of soil and root and rock were thrown into the afternoon sky only to rain back down upon the PF soldiers.

Fighting-Hornet Lead and his small squadron gunned their thrusters and strafed over the base, unleashing their missiles and guns on the stragglers.

The jeeps stopped some distance from the base and the soldiers inside piled out, their hooves kicking up dust from the desert floor as they rushed for the base, their SPRs mounted to their sides and ready to fire as the tanks smashed through the fences, their cannons thundering and machine guns blazing as they all assaulted.

The Peace Fighters soon reorganized, however, and began to fight back proper. SPR-16s and SP-SMGs flashed bright, leaving the pilots of Fighting-Hornet and indeed the soldiers on the ground temporarily seeing spots, even with the intense light from the sun, reflected off the desert floor.

On the ground, Commander Tactical Strike led his unicorns and fellow earth ponies against the underground bunkers of the PF base, his Solar-Pulse-Shotgun held in the grip of his iron hooves as the flamer units brought up the rear, pulsing the triggers of their flamethrowers to strike fear in the hearts of the PF soldiers. From the maw of each flamethrower a jet of fury belched into sky, and the bulky fuel tanks and visors on their masks that shined orange in the summer sun added to their terror. The fuel tanks were constructed out of the same titanium alloy the Princesses loved so much, and as such were nearly impenetrable by conventional firearms.

The Princesses had learned their lesson during the Mid-Morning War.

Fighting-Hornet Lead hovered over the base along with his squadron as they patrolled the remains, keeping their eyes peeled for any PF soldier hiding in the debris of the battle.

“Fighting-Hornet Lead, this is Commander Strike, let it be known that we have entered the PF base and are clearing it out. Make sure the following are included in the after-action report: Peace Fighter unicorns use illusionary magic to hide themselves or booby traps in holes. Already lost two guys to these featherbrains” the Commander stated via radio.

“Copy that, Commander Strike” Fighting-Hornet Lead replied.

For a while all was quiet outside the base, though occasionally an explosion or two from the bunker teams could be seen affecting the ground topside, and at some point later two PF jeeps attempted to escape from the base and were promptly destroyed. During the breaks Fighting-Hornet Lead began to form the structure of the AAR to file to the Princesses back at Canterlot.

“Peace Fighters sure do love their ambushes” FH Lead lamented as his eyes scanned over what he had written thus far.

“Fighting-Hornet Lead, this is Commander Strike, we have cleared all the underground bunkers except for one last room, which appears to be a large hangar of some type. We are entering now, understood?” Commander Strike eventually declared over the radio.

“Copy, Commander Strike.”

“Charges going off in 3, 2, 1! Move it, get in there!” Commander Strike yelled.

“Clear!”

“Clear over here, too!”

“Room looks clear... Then what the heck is this place?”

“Sir, look! Lights are turning on and... Oh sweet Goddess, what is that?!”

“Good Celestia... Fighting-Hornet Lead, we’re going to need support groundside. There’s something down here and it is not happy with us!”

Fighting-Hornet Lead was about to reply when a deafening shriek of metal warping filled his ears, assaulting them like a soldier assaulting a base. He instinctively ripped his headset off his head and rubbed his ears, which made him fail to see the ground buckling and collapsing in the dead center of the base.

When he finally looked up, Fighting-Hornet Lead saw a massive machine, seemingly a tank, climbing out of a hole it made in the ground. The tank rose up and its front half stuck in the air before it finally transferred over and slammed back down into the earth, the treads in its twelve tread pods digging into the soil as the massive engine propelled it.

The last thing Fighting-Hornet Lead saw was a rail gun charging on the turret before it fired directly at his DRAVM.

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Author's Note

So I think the chapters from the Empire's point of view will be more uptight and militaristic, and the chapters from the PFs point of view will be more relaxed.

Legal note: Princess Celestia, Princess Luna, Shining Armor, and all related characters belong to Hasbro. Commander Tactical Strike and all related characters belong to me.