"Hey... are you going to drink that before it gets cold hun?"
I resist turning my head towards the voice. Years of this nightmare had trained me to handle it, at least somewhat.
With that being said, I was already crying. Nothing to do about that I guess.
"Hun?"
Tears escalated into heavy breathing, the warm fire of the dreamscape doing nothing to comfort me when confronted with the biggest failure of my entire life.
"Hun are you all right?"
Oh no.
"Hun..."
A touch on my right shoulder involuntarily caused my head to turn. Looking straight into the mangled form of a pony I had once known dearly.
Her head was more similar to a cracked cantaloupe than what you would expect to sit at the end of a pony's neck. Blood and other liquids oozed from the flappy skin, skull fragments suspended from thin strings of sinew. Her "head" undulated and squirmed as she spoke.
"Ah there you are, I thought you'd fallen asleep for a second there."
She leaned in for a kiss, and the sloppy mess that was her face made contact with my skin. Every inch of my body revolted as it was reminded of the worst feeling its nerve-endings had ever registered in its long service time. The greasy, slimy flaps of skull and skin brushing against my fur, forming a revolting concert with the smell of powder and flesh emanating from her.
"Please... leave me alone" I uttered weakly.
"What? Honey what's wrong?" came her response. The escape of air from her exposed windpipe intensifying the horrifying odor.
Behind her stood now dozens of other ponies, all in various states of dismemberment. I couldn't stand to look into the eyes of those who still had identifiable faces, but I had done so in previous tours of this horror. I knew each and every one of them of course, otherwise my subconscious couldn't conjure them up.
"I SAID LEAVE ME ALOOONEEE-"
"-MMMMMMMMHHHHH"
I woke up screaming and covered in sweat, my fur damp with the cold perspiration that had become a regular occurrence when my body finally forced me to endure REM sleep. Removing the gag around my mouth, I gasped for air, sobbing quietly into my pillow. The gag had been a necessity for years, required to keep my screams out of the ears of my subordinates.
Minutes passed.
Finally, I composed myself and got out of bed, dipping my head in the water tray on the floor in an attempt to refresh myself. I eyed my watch and observed that I had slept for almost 10 hours.
"Where the buck is the Princess of Dreams when you need her..." I muttered as I exited the bedroom I had reserved for myself. Upon exiting, PFC Stern Eye saluted me.
"Good morning, Sir!"
"At ease boy..." I tiredly responded, his energy always a bit too much for me. He relaxed as ordered.
"Sir, Sergeant Partytime wishes to speak with you. Says he finalized the plans with the 'Ling commander."
"Thank you Stern, you can go to sleep now, I'm done relaxing for this week."
"Yes sir, thank you sir!"
Navigating through the apartment floors, I got to the spacious dining hall on the top floor that we had retrofitted to function as a strategy room. This was also where I kept my radio. Strewn across the mahogany dining table currently, was a large paper map of Manehattan. Various pieces of junk was strewn across it, remnants of yesterdays strategy meeting.
The most important of these pieces of junk, was the toy airplane at the corner of the map. We had managed to get back into contact with Rainbow Dash and her Third Wing, and had confirmed with her our plan to retreat. Since neither we nor she had any contact with High Command, we had agreed to help each other out. Apparently, one of my ponies was a protege of hers. I did not care to ask who. Half my platoon is wiped, replaced by members of Second Platoon as well as the Changeling defectors.
Her protege essentially has a 50 percent chance of being dead under my care. I couldn't risk the plan falling through because Captain Rainbow found out that what she came here for is no longer here.
"Ahh... good morning to you, Herr Sergeant." came the droning voice of the Changeling tank commander.
"Morning, Otto."
Despite only having known him for a little over a day now, I had formed a special bond with this Changeling. We were both old colts, eager to finally rest. But, we were also both too duty-bound to rest while those under us still needed us.
To put it simply, we both had a death wish, but couldn't let ourselves fulfill it before we had gotten our ponies to safety.
"I hope you are well rested mein Freund" he said, as he grabbed a cup of coffee from the table adjacent to the one with the map, drinking it in great gulps. "Today will be a very long day indeed."
"As rested as I'll ever be in this ruin", I moved next to him to get a cup from the thermos as well, pouring it into my stained steel mess cup, "You sure about this plan pal"?
"As sure as I'll ever be in these ruins", he said, chucking, but quickly became deadpan before continuing, "In all honesty Kammerat, this is the best we're going to get. We don't have ze time for a careful, elaborate plan. We must move".
He was definitely correct in that regard, so I nodded at him in affirmation.
"Let's go over it then" I said.
He conjured a small green dot with his magic to use as a pointer and began explaining.
"Our primary advantage is our armoured vehicle and air-support. But zey are also our primary disadvantage in a way."
I looked at him quizzically, raising an eyebrow, before uttering: "How is that exactly"?
"Nah ja, you are of course not familiar with Trimmel's theory of manoeuvre warfare are you..."
The Changeling pondered for a moment, then seemed to recover his groove, and began moving the green-magic pointer around again.
"To elaborate a bit, we have ze advantage of shock on our side, but zat shock will only last us for a short while. If we do not take proper advantage of it, we will be overwhelmed by ze enemies superior numbers."
His magic marker reached the location of the toy car, representing the tank, surrounded by small dolls, representing hoof soldiers.
"Something you must learn to embrace when it comes to this style of warfare, Sergeant, is chaos."
"Chaos?" I asked.
"Genau, Herr Sergeant, chaos. We will be unable to keep up proper communications moving at ze speed that we have to. It is therefore crucial that every soldier knows ze purpose of ze plan, not just its parts."
I raise my hoof to my jaw, pondering, as I respond: "I think I get it... they need to be able to make their own choices, since we'll be unable to give them more than basic guidelines during the heat of the advance, correct"?
The Changeling lights up at my deduction.
"Very good, Sergeant. Correct. Each step of ze plan has a purpose, and associated with each stage we shall have a codeword, so that every soldier knows what to pursue should they have no specific orders."
The green marker moved to where our forces were on the map, and drew a jagged line through the streets of Manehattan, towards a green flag roughly one-third the way out of the city.
"Zis is Stage Grün. The name for ze colour in both our languages are similar, so I took advantage of zat."
I nodded at him, "Clever thinking".
"The objective here is to make it to Objective Grün, where we shall briefly recuperate. It is a VOPS re-supply depot. Poorly protected, as it relies on stealth, not force. I overheard of its location during a staff meeting last week."
He dragged over some toy ponies that had been painted over black, likely to represent changelings.
"Needless to say, it will not be completely undefended, but nothing we can't handle. VOPS agents are not adept at up-front warfare."
The black ponies were animated by the green-tinted magic field to march through the streets up to Objective Green.
"Nein... our main problem is going to be ze reinforcements. My estimate is they will arrive in around 2 hours, due to the secrecy around the cache and ze difficult terrain."
He stops to look at me for a moment.
"Your scouts have been very useful in finding a way through said terrain, by the way. Good job on keeping track of ze desolation."
Strangely enough, his compliment was oddly uplifting.
"I appreciate your compliment Otto, but I won't be happy with it before it gets us out of here."
He nodded approvingly, before continuing.
"As I was saying, we will have around 2 hours before reinforcements are upon us. I recommend we only zose hours sparingly. We cannot allow them time to pinpoint our movement before we've moved on. I have planned on us recuperating zere for only 30 minutes. Any units who take longer to find the objective will have to be left behind."
A frown crept unto my face as he reached the end of his explanation. I was about to object, but sucked it in. He knew what he was doing, I had to trust him a bit.
"With our fist gathered once more, we move on to Phase Blau. This is ze most critical phase, as it will be where they will start figuring out zat zey have been betrayed. We must pray zat zey do not figure out our target before we reach it."
The green marker now came to rest on a blue flag on the outskirts of the city. Objective Blau.
"This is a vehicle resupply depot", he raised a hoof to silence me as my eyes grew wide at his statement, "before you ask, no, zere are no tanks here."
My disappointment was immeasurable, and my day was ruined.
"What zere is, however, are logistic trucks for transporting fuel around to ze various tank formations surrounding the city. Our target is zose trucks, zey are our ticket out of here."
He took out some toy cars are placed them around the blue flag.
"This place is not lightly guarded. We will suffer casualties, especially because we must move exceedingly quick."
He reached for the toy plane, and smirked.
"Luckily, we have an advantage that zey do not. Fuel supply has been scarce, and according to Captain Rainbow, the Royal Equestrian Air Force has complete control of ze skies for now."
He pulled the black-painted ponies over from the green flag and placed them a fair distance away from the toy trucks.
"It is doctrine to keep crew and vehicles away from each other. Vehicles are prime targets for airstrikes, so we prefer to not keep all our grubs in one nest."
"We do the same", I said, nodding.
"This shall work to our advantage. We are on a strict time-schedule for a reason. Exactly 70 minutes after Phase Grün ends, Captain Rainbow will hit ze tents and barracks of this camp, throwing it into disarray but leaving the assets untouched. Hopefully."
He moved the normally painted ponies, and of course the tank, representing our combined task-force up to the blue flag.
"Hopefully it will be enough to allow us for a swift victory."
He put the ponies in the toy cars, and drove them off the map.
"Then begins Phase Rot. Ze objective is to drive, petal to the metal as you say in Equish, towards the south. It will take some time for the message about the vehicles being hijacked to come out, so we should be able to blaze right through the encirclement without being stopped. Of course, my Jungs will have to be behind the wheel, yours will be hiding in the back of the trucks."
As the green-tinted magic pulled the trucks off the map, he once more looked up to face me directly.
"Verstanden?"
"What?" I replied, confused.
"Ah, pardon me. Any questions?"
"Ah... when do we move?"
He smiled at me, fangs bared.
"You look like a fast briefer, so let's say 15 minutes, ja?"