Deep into a losing war, an inexperienced young tank commander and her crew battle the enemy - and sometimes each other - to defend the nation they call home.
It's been two years since the war began in the north. Two years of being pushed back, kilometer by kilometer, across Equestrian soil. The nation runs short of ponies fit to lead her masses, and casts her net ever wider in search of bodies for the furnaces of war.
Summer Meadows, the youngest daughter of a venerable unicorn house, is pulled from her officer training early and sent to the front to be a tank commander. She is, of course, excited at the prospect of serving her country and her princess at last, but there is one small problem: she doesn't know the first thing about being a tanker...
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A tank crew ensemble story set in a world in which Equestria finds itself in a losing war with a power-hungry neighbor, using hardware loosely based on the Second World War. It combines two things I love: ponies and tanks, in a never-before-seen kind of pony war story.
Summer Meadows sat looking out the window of the train car as the verdant Equestrian countryside, twilight in dusk, went by. She hoofed idly at a packet of papers sticking out of her breast pocket. The rolling hills seemed so green and full of life… looking at their picturesque beauty, it was hard to believe there was even a war at all, or that it had already been going on for two years.
She sighed and pulled the packet out, then pulled a smudged monocle from the same pocket, breathed on it, and rubbed it on her uniform jacket to clean it some before setting it on her face. Squinting through one eye, she held the papers close to the fading light from the window and read through them again, one more time.
The papers that concerned her were a set of orders; report to captain so-and-so, command of an element in something company in such-and-such battalion. She had read them at least ten times on this train ride, but she read them again, trying to make sure she wouldn’t forget anything when she arrived at the forward operating base.
Back at the military academy her instructors had said she could expect to be there at least a few years more, and yet here she was, being sent to the front with only a year of officer training, and none in mechanized warfare. Summer wasn’t sure how to feel about that. It wasn’t for lack of motivation; she loved seeing the tanks in the propaganda reels, their cannons firing, their tracks rolling over all kinds of obstacles – it simply wasn’t something they taught at her prestigious unicorn military academy.
She straightened the papers, folded them around her monocle, and slipped them back into her uniform jacket pocket, then sat back on the bench in the booth she had all to herself in the officer’s car to think. Her monocle eye ached from the strain of reading in the dim light.
Her family was of the old unicorn charge-with-bloody-horn-outstretched tradition; leaders of other ponies, strong and stiff-lipped fighters of all of Equestria’s enemies throughout the centuries. Most of them didn’t hold with the shape modern war was taking. Summer wasn’t entirely sure that she did, either, but this assignment had been her idea. In fact, her BBBFF had to pull some more strings than usual to get her this posting. Summer had found that surprising, since she had specifically asked for a far lesser posting than she was otherwise entitled, as a pony of her name and standing.
And it hadn’t been easy on her end, either; the rest of the family was aghast when they found out what posting she had set her sights on. Not only did she intend on being a greaseheaded armored officer, but she wasn’t even going to hold a commissioned officer rank?
Her explaining that the role still involved a command capacity hadn’t mollified them. She had begged and pleaded as hard as she dared to be allowed this chance, and in the end, they had allowed it, on the condition that she accept a lieutenant’s commission, with all the status and insignia, even though she would be officially acting in the capacity of a sergeant. She had the lieutenant insignia safely stowed in her waist pocket for safekeeping and wore her sergeant tabs instead.
Her brow furrowed, remembering. The car had grown mostly dark. It wasn’t that she didn’t deserve to be a commissioned officer from the start – she had gone to the academy, even if not for the full term, and she did belong to the old and noble Meadows family – it was rather that she didn’t feel entirely qualified to be a commissioned officer. Officers were responsible for far more ponies than themselves or their immediate squad, and she didn’t want to be someone that got ponies killed through her inexperience. She just wanted a chance to learn the ropes, dip her hooves into the workings of this relatively new branch of the equestrian military, and try command on for size with a smaller group, with bigger direct consequences for her if she made a mistake. She had heard that an ammo rack cook-off was mercifully quick for everyone inside; she shivered at the thought.
When Celestia had finished putting the sun to bed in the western sky, and the light from the lamp in the corridor of the car crept under the door, Summer Meadows lay awake, staring at the ceiling. The pale light of a waxing moon washed over the rolling hills of the equestrian countryside as she fretted over the same things over and over again. Eventually, the rumble and click-clicking of the train lulled her off into sleep.
/ - / - / - / - /
Summer suddenly sat up with a start. She looked around her, not knowing at first what awoken her. Sunshine filtered through the curtainless window in her private officer’s booth. She realized after a moment's wait that the train was slowing down. She scrambled to her hooves and quickly made sure she had everything she needed.
Equestria new model slate grey uniform with red cuff-trim, all in order – a little rumpled from her nap, but she quickly smoothed the worst of the wrinkles, cursing herself for falling asleep with it on. Sergeant’s rank tabs, fixed; she touched them again, just to make sure they were really there. Sidearm, check, strapped in its holster just behind her left shoulder. She made sure she had her good Cloudsdale-made field glasses stowed safely in their dark wicker case on one side of her midsection belt, and her tall wooden map tube suspended from the other side, strapped down tight so it didn’t bang against her legs. Her pack went on her back, the shoulder straps running down over her chest and the bottom of the pack secured to her midsection belt to prevent it sliding forward. She was glad of being a unicorn when putting it on; her magic came in handy for doing up the straps she couldn’t easily reach with her teeth.
When she was sure she had everything in order and in its proper place, she took a deep breath and set her black-brimmed field cap on her head, lowering it carefully so her horn found the hole made for it. With the train almost at a complete stop, she shouldered out the door and into the corridor.
She hurried anxiously down the length of the car, dodging around an older unicorn stallion, a captain, just then emerging from his own booth; she tipped her head at him respectfully and moved on, jumping off the steps at the end of the car without looking.
Her hooves splashing into cold mud shocked her out of her singleminded rush to disembark, and she paused a moment and looked around. There was no station; instead, the train had stopped at a seemingly random section of track along the line, around which seemed to have sprouted a small tent city, with dirty white canvas stretching on in any direction she looked. She had been told to expect this, but in all her overthinking her report to the company commander the previous night, she had somehow forgotten. No one seemed to be waiting for her arrival to show her the way to her unit, though, which she felt was strange. She checked her pocketwatch; it was ten minutes to ten.
Swallowing nervously, Summer stepped with care around the mud puddles and entered the forest of tents. Their canvas walls hung heavy with the fresh moisture of a recent rainfall. Among them bustled ponies going to and fro on their various business, the pulse of the camp running through the whole organ. So, Summer thought, dodging out of the way of two sweating stallions carrying a crate between them, this was the northern front’s section six command headquarters…
She wandered for a while, confused by the way the camp was laid out. Nothing seemed to make sense, and every dirty tent and muddy lane looked very much like another. Eventually, Summer gave up on finding the way herself and stopped a young mare carrying a box of machine gun ammo, the handle in her mouth, and asked, “Excuse me, but where can I find Captain Havoc, with the 5th Equestrian Armored Battalion?”
The mare’s eyes flicked from the cap on Summer’s head to the unicorn’s rank tabs and she set the box down before answering. “Begging your pardon, ma’am,” she said, with a carefully deferential dip of the head, “The 5th is over in that part of the camp. This area is for the 17th signal corps. Excuse me.” She indicated a general direction with a forehoof, picked up the box again, and hurried off.
Summer felt a bit miffed. Those directions weren’t terribly helpful, but she reigned in the urge to call the mare back. It was important that ponies respect her, and that wasn’t going to happen if she came to be known for grilling ponies who obviously had important things to do, no matter how well within the rights of her rank it was to do so. She might never see this pony again, but she should make it a habit with all her inferiors she met.
She shook her head and set off in the direction indicated, thinking. They were recruiting them young now, weren’t they? That mare had seemed a sight younger than Summer herself, and she was only nineteen…
She picked her way among the identical-looking tents, asking for directions ever so often. The enlisted troops she saw were nearly all, without exception, earth ponies, and officers were almost always unicorns. The only earth pony officer she saw, while wandering through one infantry regiment’s area, was a pony she knew, vaguely; he had been a forepony on their neighbor’s vineyard estates. The few unicorns she saw in enlisted rank uniforms were either aides to command elements, or, in a few memorable cases, sorry-looking ponies doing menial work, demoted for some offense or another, the collars of their field jackets still showing lighter-colored where their rank tabs had been ripped away.
All was as things should be. After all, the more civilized, refined, and powerful unicorn race deserved to be above the muckraking earth pony masses, even in war. Whoever heard of an old noble family of earth ponies? The very idea was absurd. It was a unicorn’s natural role to lead the others, and in turn to strive to be worthy of leading. It was their job as unicorns to serve as an example to the little ponies under their charge, not lower themselves to those ponies’ level.
There were few pegasi to be seen, but that was not a surprise; Celestia had deemed their talents necessary elsewhere in the war. They were given work as couriers; as factory workers, where their floating facilities could turn out war material with less risk of disruption; and, of course, they helped ensure Equestrian air superiority in the skies.
With so many pegasi called away to such important duties, though, their control over the weather these days was spotty at best. As she found out, after asking one older enlisted stallion about it, the previous night’s rain had been entirely unscheduled. He had shook his head and muttered about what the country was coming to when even the weather wasn’t under control, and Summer had to privately agree – at least as far as the weather went. Princess Celestia knew what she was doing; she doubtless had a genius plan to kick the enemy in the flanks and send them running before too long.
After questioning one more soldier and confirming that she had indeed reached the area where the 5th Equestrian Medium Tank Battalion was located, Summer rounded a corner of a tent and stopped dead in her tracks. Before her was a tank, and there were more beside it. She had never really seen one up close, for all that she was assigned to command one. It was bigger than she would have expected from the newsreels and photos she’d seen, even the ones that were shown next to advancing troops. As for the ones she’d seen as a filly, well, everything seemed big at that age, and she had taken to downplaying the size in her memory as she grew older.
She wonderingly circled around the one in front of her. Its rectangular body squatted low on two tracks, and its blunted cannon barrel protruding from the turret exuded an air of menace. It was painted a light grey color, with smears of mud mostly washed off by the rain and numerous scratches just above the mud guards. Summer could hardly take her eyes away from it, but she managed to look at the rest of the tanks too, and count them.
In all, thirteen tanks squatted in a cleared area among the surrounding tents. Most of them she could only see by their turrets, hidden behind the bulk of others. Three that had bigger turrets and guns than the rest, and bigger hulls to match, were arrayed at the end of a gap in the tanks, a lane that ran down the middle of the collection and led straight to the edge of the camp. Near the end of the clearing was an open space with room for at least six more such machines; she figured those were out on a mission.
“Something you needed, sarge?” interrupted a gruff male voice.
Summer dragged her eyes down to a brown stallion in a disheveled uniform squatting and smoking in front of the machine she had just walked around. He gave her a stare that bordered on insolence, a look that said he would prefer if she was somewhere else. She felt like snapping back, but she stopped herself just in time. It wouldn’t do to make a scene or make enemies, and anyway, she had done some research on her post; as a commander of only one tank, and a sub-element one at that, the behavior of another commander’s crew was not her responsibility. Instead, she took a deep breath and let it out.
“Yes, in fact. Would you be so kind as to direct me towards Captain Havoc?”
He grunted and nodded towards a large tent pitched next to one of the large machines, much larger than the one she had just been looking at. She stopped and stared at its huge, rectangular immensity and its big gun for a long moment before starting in its direction. She ignored the rude stallion; as an officer you did not let the rank-and-file know what you really thought of them. Who said that only a year at the academy wasn’t enough training?
She stepped around the huge tank and pushed her way through the damp tent flaps into a warm interior, almost cloying with its heat. Three electric space heaters were positioned in the corners of the tent on top of boards to keep them off the wet ground. Close by, a ubiquitous army generator could be heard running. The center of the tent was occupied by a large wooden table strewn with maps and uneaten food, and in the corner was a canvas screen on a crude wooden frame blocking off a corner of the tent. Otherwise, the room was unfurnished, except for the scarred blue stallion sitting motionless on the opposite side of the table.
Summer stood to attention and cleared her throat politely. He started and seemed to only just notice her, and she thought she saw a hint of puzzlement in his eyes, but he marshaled himself quickly. “Who are you? State your business,” he barked authoritatively.
Her well-rehearsed speech deserted her. She felt that she had probably lost it somewhere between the signal corps and the engineering corps on the way here. When in doubt, salute and report. “S-summer Meadows, sergeant, reporting to Captain Havoc? I’m assigned to this battalion, sir.”
He looked blankly at her. “Really? You?” he said, and Summer got the feeling he didn’t believe her. Just then, someone knocked on a tent pole behind her, and she turned to see that an earth pony courier had arrived. “Excuse me a moment,” Havoc said to her, and she nodded acknowledgement.
The courier pushed past Summer, dropped a telegram on the table, and saluted. The stallion leaned over and read it, and as he did so, Summer watched a change come over his bearing. “This should have been on my desk yesterday,” he reproached the courier crossly. “Report this mishap to whoever’s in charge over at the signal station. Dismissed.”
The courier nodded nervously and backed out, brushing past Summer on the way out. When the pony had gone, Captain Havoc checked quickly between her and the telegram slip with a carefully schooled expression. “Right. Summer Meadows. The new tank commander. Assigned to our newest machine. Hmm.” He looked at her closely, and Summer got the feeling he was counting the stitches in her collar. “And you’re a unicorn. How… unexpected.”
Summer shifted and stammered out, “I-I have my orders right here, if you’d like to see them.” She didn’t like the way his eyes narrowed, and too late she realized she had spoken out of turn without thinking. So much for military school.
She swallowed and slipped the packet of papers out of her pocket, and he came around the table and held out his hoof expectantly. She paused to try and extract the orders from the sheaf, and the captain lost his patience with her and snatched them out of her telekinetic field. She barely managed to catch her monocle by the chain before it fell in the mud. Havoc scanned swiftly through the papers, and Summer bit back the protest she was about to make. When he stopped reading, he looked up and stared at her thoughtfully.
Summer wanted to fidget anxiously, despite a lifetime of enduring close scrutiny by her betters. She imagined what he might see: a slight young mare with a light green coat, a pink mane hanging in slightly wavy curls down her neck and around her ear, a pink tail hanging down straight with a curl at the tip, and sky-blue eyes under the black brim of her officer’s field cap. His expression grew a mite more thoughtful when he saw her cutie mark of a compass and a compass joined by a red ribbon, and she subtly shifted around to try and hide it.
After an unbearable silence, Havoc said, “That cap is supposed to be for commissioned officers, you know,” in a too-casual tone. Summer, remembering she was supposed to be acting as a non-commissioned officer, wrapped it in a blue telekinetic aura to take it off, but he stopped her. “No, no, keep it on.” He smiled humorlessly in a way she didn’t like and handed her packet back, folded in a completely different way. “Consider that an order.” She let the telekinetic field on her hat dissipate and returned the papers to her pocket, wondering what he was playing at. Havoc walked by her, and as he did, she saw his cutie mark, a collection of miscellaneous characters usually used to indicate invective in comic form. He pushed through the tent flaps and started yelling for an aide.
While his attention was occupied, she sidled over to the operations table, throwing one quick peek back to see if he had noticed. She realized she was pushing her luck for how much insubordination she could get away with in one day, but the maps beckoned to her, singing sweetly of the things they held; she just couldn’t resist. He hadn’t noticed yet, so she fitted her monocle and peeked at the maps laid out over the surface.
It was all there; local topography, friendly positions, enemy positions, notes about current terrain features, known minefields, and she drank it all in like a thirsty sponge. She may not know armor very well, but maps were her enduring passion, and she had spent many a lonely day as a filly growing up on the family estate wargaming on her own. It would be interesting to compare what she saw here with her own regional maps she had brought with her, she thought, as she reached out a hoof to move a paper aside to see an artillery position better.
The captain cleared his throat behind her, and she jumped guiltily, wondering how much trouble she was in. He was waiting impatiently at the tent entrance with an orange stallion hovering behind him, and she hurried over to his side. Havoc instructed the waiting aide, “This is Sergeant Meadows, the new tank commander for Third Platoon here in D Company. Go show her to her machine – you know, the one that arrived two days ago – and then round up the assigned crew so that she can get acquainted. Dismissed.”
He had definitely seen her officer’s commission, but she hoped he hadn’t read any of the letters from her brother. Most ponies might get the wrong idea about the two of them. There was no time to worry about that, though; the orange pony had indicated that she follow and was already moving off, not bothering to see if she would come. She hurried to catch up. As the aide led her down the lane through the middle of the tanks, some of them with earth pony crew sitting indolently on and around the machines, she realized that she had not even registered, in the moment, that the captain was an earth pony.
All the tanks of the battalion had an air of quiet menace, of sleeping savagery barely restrained, crouching in their three loose groupings according to their platoon; the two big ones flanking the captain’s huge tank, the group she had gone by when she found the battalion, and another similar group on the other side of the lane. Both non-command platoons were composed three-fifths of the shorter, squatter model of Equestrian medium tank, and the remaining two tanks were of the taller type. The aide led her past the tank she had first seen; the brown stallion waved at her without looking up. She turned her nose up and marched on. They walked around the second-to-last tank at the far end of the platoon, and Summer saw her tank fully for the first time, previously hidden from her view behind a machine the same size as it was.
She knew it was hers long before the aide told her it was. It wasn’t just that its light grey paint practically sparkled in the sun after its recent shower, lacking the dents and chips and scratches every other tank here had. It wasn’t just the self-satisfied, preening air that it seemed to repose in. It was how, unlike every other tank here, it seemed to want her, to need her. The rest felt indifferent at best towards her, and some seemed downright hostile, but this one was hers. It needed her, and she felt in that moment that she needed it.
So wrapped up in admiring her machine was she that she didn’t even notice the aide had moved off, presumably to find the crew – her crew. She shook herself and brought herself back to the present. She moved around the tank’s right flank, inspecting it. The national armored forces roundel on the side of the hull was cold to the touch. It was of the larger medium type, but not as large or as rectangular as the captain’s tank. Its gun seemed like the biggest of any tank there, barring the captain’s, and Summer beamed with pride. Of course it was better; it was new. Everything about the machine seemed in order; not that she would really know, but it still felt that way, anyway.
She noticed that some hatches on the back, that presumably accessed the engine, were open, and she thought she heard someone banging around there. Then she heard voices from the other side of the tank, and she moved to investigate those instead, taking her time to run her forehoof over the welds on the rounded nose. She stopped to flick off an imaginary speck of mud and peeked around the front left mud guard.
Two mares were sitting and playing cards on a large wooden tub set between them. The mare that sat facing her was a darker green than Summer, with a messy grey mane shot with streaks of red. She was smoking a crumpled-looking cigarette and looking intently, but impassively, at her hand.
The other mare, who had her back to Summer, was small, practically a midget, with rippling muscles, a tan coat and blonde mane, and both it and the tail done up in a dense braid. Summer could see on her flank a cutie mark of a turnip with a worm poking out of it. They were conversing, although the green mare was being very quiet and letting the other do most of the talking. The topic at hoof was the relative merits of stallions, and Summer felt her face burn to hear it.
The tan mare suddenly plunked her cards down on the tub, stood up, and crowed, “Ha!” in triumph. The green one set her cards down and smiled slightly. The tan mare looked down at the cards, paused, then angrily yelled, “What?! Not again!” and flung the tub to the side. Cards flew everywhere. She looked about to kick the green one, and the other mare was clearly tensing up to fight. Summer decided it was time to intervene and stepped around the mud guard, clearing her throat.
The instant the green mare saw Summer, she snapped into a perfect parade salute. The tan mare started to spin into the kick but noticed, just in time, the green mare’s reaction, and spun around as if she’d kick the newcomer, too. The green mare lowered her forehoof after the appropriate interval and nudged the tan one, prompting the latter to throw a loose salute of her own. Summer was in awe of how incredibly quickly the green mare had gone to standing in a perfect parade stance, but she picked her jaw off the ground and put on her most serious officer face.
“Name and rank?” she snapped. You had to be short with them at first, show them you were business. Only once they understood your resolve was strong could you be nicer to them if you wanted to, or so one of her instructors had said.
“Minty Twist, Corporal, Gunner,” the green one answered instantly. Now that the wooden tub or the other pony no longer covered it, her cutie mark appeared to be something on a red circle, a typewriter perhaps, or a cash register. She had a light Manehattan accent in how she said her y’s, o’s, and r’s.
“Turnip Sprout, enlisted soldier, Cannoneer,” the other answered, sounding almost intentionally not as prompt, in a strange countryside twang that Summer automatically associated with groundskeepers.
Summer's mouth quirked slightly. “Greetings. You may call me Sergeant Meadows. Are you two assigned to this, er, machine?”
Turnip only nodded, but Minty answered a clear, “Affirmative.”
“Good; I am the new commander. I look forward to working with you ladies. Now, as you were, but don’t go anywhere.” She released them from standing to attention with a wave of her hoof and was about to call out to the engine compartment when she was spared the trouble.
A grey head stuck out from on top of the hull, behind the turret, and looked at her. It was followed a second later by a grey body, as an athletic mare hopped down from the back of the tank. Her mane was navy blue and kept in a short bob, and her face was streaked with grease darker than her fur. She blew away a curtain of long bangs to reveal captivating dark red eyes as she saluted her superior officer.
“Supercharger, Corporal,” she said in an artificially gravelly voice, then, in a more normal tone, “I’m the driver.” Summer felt like there was a joke she was missing, and she didn’t care for it. The mare’s sides looked wider under her jacket than they should be; Summer hoped to Celestia that it wasn’t what it looked like.
Summer wasn’t sure where to go from here, so she said, “I see. And what were you doing up on the… up there?”
“Just improving engine performance. It’s not quite done. This big boy won’t reach his full potential otherwise, you know?”
“You know, ma’am,” Summer corrected.
“Of course. Ma’am.” The grey pony contrived to make it sound like a bad word when she said it, and Summer frowned.
“Good.” Summer briefly contemplated this information. Improving the engine. Were there regulations on this sort of thing? Was she supposed to allow this? She had researched what she could, but the book of regulations, probably in another bureaucratic mix-up, was only given to her at the last minute, before she got on the train. There were any number of things she could have missed when she had skimmed it. She decided the safest course was to let both that, and the purposeful insolence, slide for now; an improved engine wouldn’t hurt, would it? She ended up saying, “Very good. Carry on.”
Supercharger nodded and jumped back up onto the tank and disappeared behind the raised engine access hatch, evidently not very concerned by the new commander. Minty smoked silently, staring into space and leaning against the tread, and Turnip spat a foul black slime and gave Summer a sidelong look that she was sure she wasn’t meant to notice before beginning to gather up the strewn cards off the wet ground.
That business settled, Summer decided she wanted to check out her first command while she waited for that aide to find whoever the last pony was. Telling the two mares to carry on, she took her pack off and leaned it against the track. After stretching her back to work out some of the soreness from carrying that heavy thing on her back all this way, she climbed laboriously onto the bow of the tank and opened the first hatch she came to.
Wisps of smoke curled out at the edges of the hatch, and at first she was afraid that her command had somehow caught afire all on its own. She sniffed – it was only tobacco smoke. She looked down through the cloud of smoke, wondering who was doing this in her tank, and met the face of a terrified pink mare with a maroon mane. A government-issue cigarette hung from her agape mouth and there was a sheet of paper and a pencil on the floor in front of her, in between the driver’s yokes.
“Oh, I SAY!” Summer burst out, then she stopped herself and moved on to a better tack. Sharp, that was the way. “Name and rank?”
“C-Cashmere, sir,” the pony stammered, then broke off in a fit of coughing. Somehow, the cigarette stayed in her mouth – it must be a talent. “Enlisted soldier and qualified radio operator,” she wheezed, when she had got her breath back, in a groundskeeper twang not unlike Turnip’s. Her voice was startlingly soft.
“Well, come out of there at once! What were you doing, hiding and smoking up MY tank with that foulness! OUT!” Summer stamped her hoof angrily. There was being short with the ponies, yes, but this personally angered her. Smoking was an evil habit, not to be encouraged. Old dogs, so to speak, like Minty clearly was, would never stop, but it was unacceptable to have the inside of her tank smell like the stuff, and she had to make that clear to the others on no uncertain terms.
Cashmere jumped up and scrambled half out of the driver’s hatch. She had wide sea blue eyes and her mane hung in a straight curtain down her neck. Her head drooped; as well it should, the scoundrel! “Um, well, um…” she mumbled, then broke off coughing again.
“Well? I Can’t hear you!”
Cashmere’s voice quavered as she said, “I was writing a letter. To Turnpike, you know…”
Nearby, Turnip looked up at them sharply in the middle of picking up a three of clubs with her teeth.
Summer tapped her hoof on the hull impatiently. “Get out. This instant. You still haven’t answered me what you’re doing in my tank.”
“Um, well…”
“If I may, sergeant,” Minty broke in, “She just wanted a quiet place to write to her family. She’s a part of the crew as well, so I didn’t see a problem in allowing her the use of the tank.”
Summer stared at Minty for a second. She knew exactly what Minty was doing, and it made her feel a little ashamed of using the same tactics the instructors at the academy used. Pounce on the nervous, the afraid, and use them to send a message to the rest of the cadets. She was often the one who tried to shift the focus to herself and protect the other pony, and it was unsettling to find herself on the other end of the power dynamic.
“…I see. But no more smoking in my tank, and that goes for all of you. Are we clear?” Cashmere and Minty both nodded and said “Yes, ma’am”, although the latter did so with a noticeable twitch in her eyebrow, and Summer decided to consider the matter closed. “Go find something to clean with,” she ordered Cashmere, “I don’t want to see a speck of mud or dust inside or outside this tank.”
Summer stepped up onto the roof of the turret and looked furtively around her before opening the commander’s hatch. “I’m just going to be in here for a while,” she said to no one in particular, and felt a bit foolish for having done so.
Cashmere had already hurried off, and the others had turned away to do something else as well. She detached her map case from her belt and gingerly lowered it inside, then maneuvered herself in, being careful not to let her field glasses case snag on the opening. Then, she closed the hatch and sat on her seat, the commander’s seat, in exhilarated silence. She was finally here, in her very own tank! And the tank seemed pleased about it, too. She inhaled the faint smell of fresh paint, grease, and metal shavings and tried to be at peace for a moment.
Right away, there was a big problem getting in the way of that peace. When she tried to sit up straight in her appointed seat, as she was intended to, her horn hit the hatch on the roof. It forced her to crane her neck downwards or to the side to accommodate it; apparently, the commander’s cupola was not built with unicorns in mind. She was barely able to see out of the vision slits at a very oblique angle if she pressed her head to the hatch sideways far enough back that her horn fit inside horizontally, but it simply would not do for combat operations at all. Maybe this was what Captain Havoc had meant when he had commented on her race; tanks were obviously just not built with projecting forehead horns in mind.
The rest of the interior was roomier than she thought it would be by reputation, but still cramped. It was painted an ivory white color on the walls and underside of the roof, and there was only a single lightbulb on the roof of the turret, turned off. What dim light there was inside came from the vision slits in the commander’s cupola, the driver’s vision port, which was cranked wide open, and a few other vision slits in the side of the hull and turret. Besides her seat, which was nothing more than a cushion on a metal shelf in the back of the turret, the turret had a gunner’s seat slung below her in the left side of the turret, and she thought she could see a lighter spot in the paint inside the turret ring where another seat, on the right-hoof side, had been recently uninstalled. The cannon breech and its gun cradle filled most of the ventral space inside the turret, and it was a bit of a squeeze to slip down around it to see into the forward section of the hull, where the driver and radio operator sat. Cashmere’s abandoned letter sat temptingly in between the steering levers, but Summer left it there and squeezed herself back to her rightful position, the commander’s seat. She decided she ought to practice using the cupola, since she might have to use it in combat.
A moment later, the hatch was pulled open without warning, and Summer, who was pressing her head against it sideways, lurched up and directly face-to-face with Supercharger. Summer was struck speechless for a long second. “Er… hi,” she eventually managed to stammer. “I was just… ahem.” She pulled back and cleared her throat importantly. “What is it?”
Supercharger moved back as well, her amused expression turning serious. “Fritter from Wee Parisprite – er, that’s tank number twelve – just came by. Lieutenant Sweet Tooth wants you for a briefing, and Fritter said it was extremely urgent.”
Summer looked around; this didn’t bode well. “Where at?”
Supercharger pointed beside Summer at the next tank in line, the machine that was in many ways a twin to her own. Unlike hers, it had a short-barreled cannon and a long antenna that split up into multiple strands at the end, and a small gathering of ponies clustered around the front. Summer heaved herself out, eased herself to the ground, and hurried over.
“Sergeant Summer Meadows?” asked a hot-pink colored earth pony stallion with a white mane, wearing second lieutenant collar tabs and a field cap like her own.
She snapped a salute. “Yes, sir!”
“So NICE of you to join us at last,” he said. “Now, gentlecolts,” he said, turning to the group at large, “Our time is short. Second Platoon was providing armor support to a vulnerable point in our line across the river, but they got jumped this morning by a whole heap of those new Crystal Empire machines. Lieutenant Bubble Pop withdrew her force to the nearest shelter rather than lose any of her tanks, which I don’t need to remind you –” he looked significantly at Summer, “– can’t be replaced easily, and now they’re pinned down in a shallow valley with no way out.”
Summer looked at each of the other three ponies. Two of them were mares, and the last pony was the rude brown stallion from earlier, which surprised her. They must take all types now if that sloppy fellow was also a tank commander. She would never be caught looking so disreputable, that was for sure. Something that didn’t surprise her, though, was that they were all earth ponies. Instead of field caps, they wore grey berets, and she felt a little out of place.
“The river at the end of the valley is too deep and silty for them to cross, and the valley is surrounded by enemy tanks. The lieutenant was able to get out a radio transmission about ten minutes ago, so we know they’re still alive for now. Equestria cannot afford to lose a tank platoon in this sector – we must make an effort to rescue them. We are going to go, and First Platoon is going to stay here and act as the unit reserve. I’ve already had this plan approved by Captain Havoc. Now, they are pinned down in here –” he pointed at a location on a field map he had laid out over the bow of his tank, and Summer put on her monocle and peered closer at it in interest, “– and we are going to break them out by attacking the encircling enemy tank force from here.” He pointed at a spot a short distance northeast of the hills that flanked the southeast-northwest-running valley, marked as a fording point.
Summer watched where he pointed with interest, turning the situation over in her mind. The river made a big bend and widened out, so that made sense. “The river is too deep for us to bring the tanks across in most places," he went on, "But there’s a ford up here that we will use. It’s the only one we know that’s both close enough it won’t take four hours that we don’t have, and is not currently held by the enemy.” He pointed to another one just a few kilometers downriver.
He said something else, but Summer wasn’t listening; she was looking between the valley and the indicated fording point, where two patches of woodland flanked the other side of the river, with an orchard right behind them they would enter as soon as they were out of the river. Something about that, and the situation as the lieutenant described it, was bothering her, and she was trying to figure out what.
The Crystal Empire, from all she knew, wasn’t in the same way materially that Equestria, apparently, was – they could afford to lose a tank or two. So why hadn’t they charged in and cleaned out the valley, or at least tried to soften up the place with a bombardment first? When she thought of that, the answer came to her in a flash.
“It’s a trap,” she blurted out.
“Excuse me?”
“It’s a trap, sir,” she said, louder. “They’re going to hit us while we’re crossing the river.” More specifically, she saw where a force of enemy tanks could hide some of their machines from view in the wooded patches and hit her platoon in the thin sides, and where the evenly placed trees would hinder Equestrian movement if one or two of them made it across the river even despite that.
“Well, little miss expert,” sneered the lieutenant, “Let’s say there is one. There’s still nowhere else we can cross that river to come to their aid in time without getting blown to smithereens. Are you suggesting that we do nothing and leave our friends to die there?”
Summer recoiled, shocked. Sure, she had been out of line, but this was important! They had to do something. And he dared to imply she didn’t care!? It wasn’t her fault she just got here! She managed, with some effort, to master herself, and reply with a calm she did not feel. “Absolutely not… sir. I’m just saying that I would do things differently in this situation.”
Right away, she knew it was a poor choice of words.
“Well, commander,” he said, dripping with disdain, “You can give us all a lecture on armored tactics when we get back from this urgent rescue mission. Until we do get back, though, I’m not going to take any lip from someone who’s barely even set hoof in a tank. If I hear another PEEP from you,” – he prodded her chest with a hoof – “There is going to be disciplinary action, you understand? You’re dismissed. Shoo. You don’t need to be briefed, anyway – just follow your orders and stay in the back of the column and you’ll do fine.”
“But –”
“Ah! One more peep!” he warned. She stood with her mouth agape, struggling to keep the words from spilling out. “Well, what are you still doing here?” he said, when she didn’t move right away. She slowly turned to go. As Summer walked away, seething, she heard, “Now, as I was saying…”
She felt she had heard enough, anyway. As she walked back over to her tank, she fretted about what to do. Such an insult from a clear inferior like him was unheard of in the circles she knew, and her initial thought was to challenge him to a duel, but she supposed he couldn’t answer properly to a unicorn’s duel without a horn. She technically outranked him, too, and she figured she could probably pull rank on him to get what she wanted, but not only was that that not actually how things really worked, the captain would probably demote her into one of those box-hauling unicorns she’d seen earlier for her audacity, and anyway, what would she then have the column do if it actually worked? The hot-pink buffoon was right, there really wasn’t another crossing that would suit.
She had honestly expected something like this to happen sometime or another – disagreeing with a superior, that is. It came with the territory, especially at the academy. The difference was, then it was frivolous make-work, meant to, in her view, mold the students into good leaders to their lessers and followers to their betters – and this was a matter of life and death. She was increasingly certain the more she thought about it that the lieutenant was going to lead twenty-four other ponies, counting herself, and five valuable machines, to a certain death, with five more to follow shortly thereafter. It might be a guess based on nothing but her own wargaming experience and a few other things, but her gut said it was right.
So, then, what could she do about it? As she wandered past the front of her own tank, she absently knocked over a bucket of water where Cashmere was using a wet rag to clean the already spotless tank.
“Sorry,” she said automatically, then stopped dead in her tracks as a dangerous thought hit her. “Enlisted Soldier Cashmere?” she said, a new edge in her voice.
The pony turned around, her eyes darting nervously. As it turned out, she was looking for a place to set down the rag, and she settled on throwing it over the mud guard before standing to attention.
Summer quickly glanced back to see if any of the group at the lieutenant’s tank were listening before issuing the order. “Go fetch my map case from where I left it, behind the cannon.” The pink earth pony scrambled to obey, jumping up to the turret roof in three bounds from the transmission cover to the hull roof to the turret. Summer then walked around the tank to its left side, out of view of the neighboring tank, and ordered, “Enlisted Soldier Sprout, get me something large and flat that isn’t dirty.” The stocky little earth pony spat and promptly moved to drag over a crate of ammunition. “And, Corporal Twist, is the tank fueled up and ready to go at an instant’s notice?”
Minty had an expression that told her this was a silly question to ask, and Summer regretted asking it, but the green mare nodded and said, “Yes, ma’am.”
“Corporal, er, Charger,” Summer said, thinking that saying the pony’s full name was a bit of a mouthful for the snappy officer of action she was trying to be, “Finish up with that engine; we’re going to need it sooner than they think.”
The pretty grey face appeared around an engine cover, saluted her, and disappeared again. The turret side hatch was thrown open and Cashmere emerged with the carrying strap of the map case in her teeth. Summer impatiently wrapped it in magic and yanked it out of her grasp. She uncapped the case and dumped the maps out on the crate, then pawed through them until she found the one she wanted; an official Equestrian topographical survey map of the region. The edges wanted to curl up after long in the tube, but she held it down with her sidearm on one side and the mess kit she pulled off her pack on the other side.
Minty appeared at her side after a moment and looked over her shoulder as she sat and pored over the terrain. “That’s a very detailed map,” she commented.
“It is, isn’t it?” Summer said distractedly, squinting through her monocle to read the small text. “I copied it by hoof myself.”
She had wanted to bring a pair of glasses instead, but her brother talked her out of it, saying a monocle would look more distinguished, and therefore reflect on the family better. Already she was regretting it. She studied the map closely, noting terrain features and thinking of where she would put her forces if she was planning the ambush she felt was waiting. The artillery would go there, the mobile forces gathered here, the heavy infantry here…
Abruptly Summer realized she was thinking about this too much like one of her favorite wargames. Warfare had come a long way since the times those were meant to reflect. She had to think like a tanker, yes, they would likely put anti-tank guns at the end of the valley, to free up tanks for elsewhere, and array the ambush force over there. The sides of the valley were easily climbable, but at the top of each ridge of hills would be vulnerable, so there would be someone there to hit any breakout attempt as soon as they were seen. The valley was in an odd limbo of being behind Equestrian lines yesterday, as she had seen on the captain’s maps, and ahead of Empire lines today, following that armored attack, so friendly infantry support was probably scattered. This happened too recently and too small-scale for the Equestrian big artillery batteries to be brought into play, but the frontline units probably had some mortars they could use to help. Higher command would likely not authorize the big artillery anyway, for the risk of friendly fire. Probably the enemy wouldn’t bring their own artillery into this for the same reason, at least, not for now.
Coming to her conclusions and forming a plan of action, she rolled all her maps up quickly and shoved them in their case, careful not to crease any of them, and looked up to find her crew around her, looking at her expectantly. “There’s not a moment to lose,” she snapped, “Get this machine moving!”
They all jumped into action. Supercharger grabbed a crankshaft from the mud guard and moved around behind the hull. Turnip jumped up to the side hatch in one powerful leap and disappeared inside, and Minty followed, climbing up the track rollers and over the mud guard. Summer stopped Cashmere before she could dash off too. “Can you get ahold of our frontline units in this sector if I need you to?” she asked, and when the mare nodded mutely, Summer let her go.
Summer threw her pack in the turret storage box with her telekinesis and climbed up to take her place in the turret. She was loathe to enter the hatch completely, and she rested her forehooves on the turret roof. Her place was up here, where she could see where they were going. The engine roared to life, occasioning curious glances from the party gathered around the lieutenant’s tank.
She twisted back to check on Supercharger, who stepped around the back of the engine deck and put the crankshaft back in its retaining straps. A second later, Summer was astonished to see wings spread from under the uniform jacket – so THAT was why her sides seemed wider than usual. The pony – no, pegasus – crouched and leapt clear over the turret with a single flap of her wings, then angled expertly down to land on the driver’s hatch with a resounding clop. Summer ducked, her reaction a little too late, as the pegasus opened the driver’s hatch, folded her wings closely under her jacket again, and dropped effortlessly into her chair.
Summer ducked down into the fighting compartment, now rumbling with the noise of a V12 engine only a thin firewall away. “Driver, there’s not a moment to lose, get us there with all possible haste!”
“Don’t have to tell me twice!” the pegasus yelled back with obvious glee, as she dropped the transmission into gear. The tank jumped backward into the lane with a lurch that sent Summer’s forehead against the front of the cupola. Stars flashed in her eyes as she got up and steadied herself outside the hatch again, rubbing her forehead.
The tank shuddered a little and made a hard left turn and lurched forward down the lane. They were tearing towards the sentry posts at an ever-increasing speed, with small starts each time the tank upshifted, and Summer felt that if it weren’t for her horn, her cap would have flown off her head long ago. Now this was living! Riding a ferocious beast running only she knew where, while she stood on its back and directed its fury!
Minty tapped her hindleg, snapping her out of the spell, and handed her a pair of headphones. Summer fitted it over her cap and took the microphone that was handed to her. She felt like a real tanker, exactly like the stoic ponies standing half out of their hatches that she’d seen at the parades as a filly.
“There is a transmission from Third Platoon leader,” Cashmere’s voice came over the headphones, a little scratchy.
Summer flicked the switch on her microphone and said, “Well? Why aren’t I already hearing it?”
“Switch your set to radio, sir,” Cashmere said, and Summer found the switch for it and did.
She heard a short burst of static, and then, “Tank fifteen! Tank fifteen, what are you doing? Tank fifteen, respond, over!” It sounded like Sweet Tooth, and when she twisted around, she could just spot his hot-pink coat in the distance behind them standing on top of his turret.
Ah, right, Summer thought, she was supposed to wait for the lieutenant to give the order to move out and be at the back of the column. Well, this was too important, and she had a plan – she just prayed to Celestia that whatever disciplinary measures she would get for it weren’t too harsh. Switching back to intercom, she said, with a calmness she didn’t feel, “We were having radio trouble, you understand? I take full responsibility. You were ordered to do this and had no choice.”
“Wait, we weren’t supposed to be doing this?” Cashmere asked anxiously.
“Aw, hayfeathers,” Turnip said, and spat on the floor. Summer would have to have words with her about that spitting habit later.
“So, I’d love to drive us just anywhere, but I know you were thinking of something specific. where are we going?” Supercharger asked, as the tank thundered along. Only she sounded unconcerned. Minty was silent.
“I’ll direct you over some shortcuts,” Summer replied. “We’re going to meet up with our infantry in that sector first.” She directed that they turn, and the tank rumbled on for a minute with no one saying anything. She felt she ought to say something else, something suitably heroic, so she said “Driver, all possible speed. If this works, we’re going to save a lot of pony’s lives.”
Headstormpony Feldspar glassed the far bank of the sluggish brown river with her binoculars, methodically checking for signs of movement. So far, there had been no attempt from the scattered infantry across the river to retake their front line. They seemed content to bustle around the far bank, digging foxholes and laying barbed wire, and didn’t seem to have noticed anything amiss in the trees. Her camouflage was, as usual, impeccable.
The attack at dawn had been more successful than she had hoped, breaking the Equestrian’s defenses and throwing them to the winds, as far as this section of the front was concerned. The survivors had run for the river, and the ones that hadn’t were pinned up in a valley a few hundred meters to her rear along with the token armored force they had seen fit to protect this sector with.
As she had expected, rather than fight a force that outnumbered them two to one, they retreated. Equestrians were either foolishly brave or cowards, there was no in between. They also placed high value on their machines and equipment, in her experience. Today, she was going to use that to her advantage. If they valued their tanks so much, they would doubtless send more to get them back, and aerial reconnaissance had indicated that they only had ten more medium tanks in the area. She had ordered that their infantry keep back, and though the local commanders wanted to exploit the opening to dig in new positions on the river’s edge, she had impressed on them how important it was that they stay out of it, except in a few key areas out of view of the river.
She would be the mare that decimated the enemy’s armored capability in this part of the front, and open the door for a future breakthrough and total encirclement of Equestrian forces. One of the only gambles was if they would send good tanks after bad, but she felt that as long as they knew their force in the valley was still alive, they would come. The tanks she had posted to keep watch over the sides of the valley had orders to let off with the machine guns every few minutes, just to let the enemy know they were still there and waiting, to keep their heads down. That was the other gamble; whether or not the Equestrian tanks in the valley would grow a pair and attempt a breakout, even though they would lose most of their forces in the process.
She lowered her field glasses and scoffed. Equestrians were fools; soft, pampered fools. They honestly deserved to lose this war. Crystal Empire ponies like herself, by contrast, were tempered by the struggle of living in the frigid north. Well, she thought belatedly, everyone except those doddering fools from the capital, where they lived snug and warm. For everyone else, a hard life made for hard ponies, who had the mettle to take what they deserved. Soon, these rich lands would be settled by ponies who would truly appreciate the bounty they offered.
These Equestrians had so much that they could just leave perfectly arable land untended for hundreds of years, like the orchard behind her now. It was enough to make Feldspar almost get angry. King Sombra had offered acres of land to every soldier when the war was over; when she first heard of it, she thought it was mere propaganda, but when she had come to the Equestrian front and seen the land for herself, she could easily believe it to be true. As for her, she wanted no part of Equestrian land. When the war was over, she would return to manage the family farm in the northern boundary mountains, and maybe improve it a little.
She picked up her microphone and said quietly, “B Detachment, report in. All quiet?”
The response came, “Not a peep. Want us to stop reminding them? We’ll run out of machinegun ammo in a few hours if we keep this up.”
She thought for a moment, then said, “No, keep doing it, but stop when you hear cannon fire from my position. Keep radio traffic to a minimum – I don’t want them to pick up on my location. Don’t contact me again until I tell you to, understand?”
The leader of B Detachment acknowledged the order and signed off. She waited, and, after a minute, she received an aerial report from headquarters that a column of Equestrian tanks were missing from their forward base. She allowed herself a small smile. They would come right to her, and she would take out two groups of Equestrian tanks at one stroke.
/ - / - / - / - /
Summer leaned and looked over the front of the turret roof in dismay at the river rushing by only a few meters away. Now that they were actually here, it seemed doubtful that what she intended would be possible. The engine idled quietly and made worrying hissing and popping noises. She had ordered Supercharger to run flat out the entire way here, with only a brief stop to talk to a sergeant of artillery.
Across the river, a long-abandoned orchard sat quietly. Most of the farmland in this part of the country had been sitting unused for many years, ever since the ponies moved away. Summer never cared to learn why, she only knew that the historic maps showed a sharp uptick in properties marked as “abandoned” around 130 years ago. She looked away and picked up her microphone.
“Corporal Supercharger, how deep in the water can this thing go?” She had seen this point on the map, and it had caught her eye. She had all the information she needed for this plan; there were just a few specifics she wasn’t really sure about.
“What? Oh, um, about a meter. Why did you bring us here?”
Summer didn’t answer her, considering this information and looking between the river and the engine deck. After weighing the urgency of the situation against the time needed to go up or down the river to a point that might be more certain, and mindful of the enemy troops who could be nearby, she heaved herself out of the turret and clambered down to check for herself. She sized up the engine deck’s height above the ground and mentally compared it to the surveyed depth. Nodding with satisfaction, she climbed back aboard and let herself down to stand on her seat.
Picking up her microphone, she gave the order. “Driver, back up a bit and get us a bit of a head start.” The tank backed up slowly, and she yelled, “Faster! We don’t have all day!” The engine revved, and the tank shot back until she gave the order to stop a fair distance back from the steep riverbank. “Alright, driver, full speed ahead!”
“Are you sure you know what you’re doing, er, ma’am?” Supercharger said, sounding worried for once. “If we swamp the engine here, we’ll lose the tank.”
“Your concern for the machine is noted, corporal,” Summer said coldly, “But you will need to trust me on this. Full throttle.” She thumped the turret roof to punctuate the point.
The tank jumped forward. Summer was prepared for the motion by now and held on tight. Her façade was a sham; she was desperately praying that she hadn’t just made a massive mistake and doomed them all to a prison camp in the far south. Suppose she had misjudged? Taking responsibility for running off without orders, taking a valuable tank with her, would only work if her plan worked; if they lost the tank and the others of the column died anyway, there was no hope for any of her crew either. The tank, at least, seemed enthusiastic about this plan, and it roared as they flew off the edge of the riverbank and pitched down into the river.
The machine hit the bottom with a jolt and a huge splash that drove her midsection against the hatch and pulled her headphones forward off her ears, where they were stopped from slipping off only by her horn. As it motored forward, it quickly rolled level in the river and then stopped briefly. The gun just barely cleared the bottom in the plunge, and it emerged from the river dripping wet. As Summer had thought, the depth here was not enough to come up to the tank’s air intakes, but it was a close thing; if it were a faster-moving river, the water might break over the side and flood into the engine. Her elation at guessing correctly was interrupted when something crackled over her headphones that she didn’t catch and the tank suddenly lurched forward without orders.
Summer struggled to put the headphones on so she could snap at the pegasus about following orders. The engine revved and the tank began to power through the water, leaving a wake in the sluggish brown river. Headphones on again, she yelled at Supercharger to slow down and take the crossing carefully, but there was no response. Frustrated, she ducked inside the turret to tell her off personally. Right away, she saw muddy brown water rushing in the viewports on the front of the hull. Water already covered the floor under the seats in the front of the compartment, and she realized she had forgotten all about the hull vision slits when she envisioned this crossing in her mind. She felt panic begin to set in. Her window of opportunity to salvage the situation was rapidly closing – now what?
Her mind felt blank, paralyzed, but the tank motored on. The instant the hull began to pitch up again, the tank lurched to a stop, then swung around in reverse, using the current to assist the rotation half of the way. Summer managed to gather herself enough to order the gun to be traversed all the way to the rear, so it wouldn’t interfere with an exit, and as it was still moving around clockwise the tank reversed up the steep riverbank at an oblique angle. It powered backwards until it finally slammed to a stop when the back of the hull rammed into the sturdy trunk of an old fruit tree.
Summer sat, stunned, feeling more than a bit like things had gotten way out of her control. The tank growled, and she almost was surprised it was still running. She dropped inside the turret and said briskly, “Is everyone all right?”
In response to the question, Minty only stared stonily back at her, and she again got the feeling that it was a silly thing to ask. The fighting compartment was filled with brown water, the water up to the level of a pony’s fetlock above the floor of the turret. It glistened with an oily sheen as the inside of the tank left its impression on it. Turnip glowered and spat black slime into the water; if she had something to say, she was keeping it to herself. Both the ponies sitting in the nose of the tank were chest-deep in the brackish stuff; miscellaneous items bobbed between them, and among them Summer spotted Cashmere’s pencils and signals pad floating gently back towards her. Cashmere opened her hatch and began bailing water out of the forward compartment with a mess cup. Supercharger slowly and deliberately unstrapped herself, opened her hatch, and climbed up onto the roof. Not once did she look behind her.
When Supercharger had gained the roof, Summer heard her stomp on the turret roof several times. “Commander. Up here. Now,” she growled. So that was what that sounded like from the inside…
Summer shook her head to clear it and pulled herself half out of her hatch to find the pegasus only a horn-length away from her face. “Yes, w-what is it, Corporal?” she said, trying to be businesslike. Always show them you were unconcerned by whatever happened, good or bad. Unfortunately, that advice wasn’t working very well for her at the moment.
“What in the hay were you THINKING?!” The sodden grey pegasus exploded in her face. “Did you even think that through at all? I trusted you to know what you were doing, and we almost lost the tank because of it!”
Summer wiped spittle off her face with a pocket kerchief. “W-well,” she stammered, “I knew the river was rocky-bottomed, and the map said it’s shallower here than I know the tank is tall…” She knew the driver was right; she was in the wrong.
“Did you know there was a strong current on the bottom undermining our tracks?” Supercharger said. “I could feel them slipping. Did you really forget about the viewports? I’m soaking wet, and we’d better PRAY to Celestia that the insulation on our electrics is good, or we could lose the radio or the turret motor or the whole tank!” Summer looked at her again, really seeing her this time. Supercharger looked like she had just been dunked into a pool, and her grey uniform jacket hung from her frame, dripping on the roof. “And did you think as far ahead as getting out of the river? Did you consider that if I tried to take us out headfirst the intakes would take on water and we’d stall? You haven’t told us anything, but I'm not dumb, you know – I know this is a contested zone. There’s no way the maintenance section could get a tractor up here to pull us out. Did you think of that?” Summer cringed back at the force of the pony’s accusations. It was true, she had made a mess of things, but…
“But we’re here now,” Summer snapped back, shoving her head forward. Supercharger moved back to avoid being poked by the horn, and Summer regained the ground she had given. “And the tank isn’t lost, thanks to the great skill of my subordinate. So what if you’ve got your hooves a little wet? Everything still works, as far as I can tell.” She rubbed the top of the turret as if to soothe an upset beast. “Now get back to your post, right this instant. The longer we dawdle here, the greater chance our entire platoon will be lost. I appreciate your concerns, but now is not the time to voice them.”
Supercharger opened her mouth to argue, but Summer held her stare, and she shut it again and tossed her head. “You’re the boss,” she muttered, and she turned and jumped back into her hatch with a splash, slamming it and locking it. Summer watched her go. Did all pegasi have such well-shaped flanks? She shook her head furiously; she was on a mission, and she had to check the map.
She dropped inside and said to Minty, “Hand me my maps, if you please, Corporal.” The pony bent behind her chair and handed her the map tube, and Summer’s veins ran with ice. The light wood had been floating in the layer of water that covered the floor. She grabbed it and tore open the lid, and found the maps wet through with water. Panicked, she wrapped them in her glow to pull them out, but her cooler head stopped her just in time. They could still be dried out, but if she moved them like this, they could tear or their ink could bleed, if it hadn’t already. She’d have to rely on her memory from here on out. Her precious maps, painstakingly copied from the archives by hoof… and she only had herself to blame.
She stuck herself out again and looked around, crestfallen. “Right,” she said, talking aloud to herself, “This is an old orchard. The trees will be good cover, but restrictive. Just that way and over the rise are the hills bordering the valley where Second Platoon is pinned down.” She picked up her microphone and prayed that the intercom still worked. “Cashmere?”
“Yes, sir?”
“Open all vision ports and get your head out here too. I want an extra pair of eyes looking out for enemy tanks. If my guess is right, they have a couple on this side of the valley.” Cashmere obediently opened her hatch and stuck her pink head out. “Enlisted Sprout and Corporal Twist, stay ready. Corporal Supercharger, Take us into those trees.”
/ - / - / - / - /
Second Lieutenant Sweet Tooth led his column of four tanks through a command post a short distance from the front. He signaled a halt with an upraised hoof and stamped thrice on the inside of the turret, and his driver understood their private signal and stopped the tank. Behind them, the rest of the column came to their own rattling stops. He heaved himself out of the turret and jumped down in two quick bounds to meet the approaching field commander.
“Second Lieutenant Sweet Tooth, Third Platoon, D Company, 5th Equestrian Armored Battalion,” he reported, “What’s the situation on the front?”
The pony did a double take and a look of confusion flashed over his face. “That’s funny…” he said, “You’re the second officer from the Third Platoon of D Company to come through here today.”
Sweet Tooth, alarmed, asked, “Who did?”
“A tank rolled up here a little while ago with a first lieutenant aboard. She left some instructions for us. Pale green mare, pink mane, you know her?” the pony answered.
Sweet Tooth felt a flash of anger. That arrogant unicorn whelp! Well, she had certainly been busy since tearing out of the depot like that… He stopped and thought about this. He had been turning over her outburst during the briefing over in his mind on the way, and he had to admit, her arguments were not entirely without merit. There was no sense in going in incautiously, which was true in any case, but what else was there they could do? He certainly wasn’t about to let his best friend of two years over in Second Platoon get killed when he could do something about it.
Out of curiosity, he asked, “What did she say her rank was again?”
“First lieutenant, sir. She had the papers and golden tabs and everything. I had her wait a moment so a few of my lads could look it over, and they all said it was the real deal.”
Sweet Tooth dismissed them as very good forgeries, but the fact remained that she was up to something. “What instructions did she leave?”
“Only for a bombardment at noon on her designated co-ordinates,” the pony said. Clearly growing worried, he asked, “Is she an imposter, sir? I’ll just disregard these orders if she doesn’t have official authorization.”
Sweet tooth thought for a moment. He didn’t like unicorns, and especially not unicorns that thought they knew everything, and especially not nobility. The thing that frustrated him the most about know-it-all unicorns, though, was that they frequently DID know what they were talking about. Summer Meadows had made a bad impression, but she obviously felt she needed that head start on the column to do something she couldn’t have done otherwise. There wasn’t any harm in letting her plan go on for now. After all, he could always radio in and belay her orders if something better turned up. Making up his mind, he said “No, she has my full backing. Carry out those orders to the letter, you understand?” The pony nodded. “Good. Now fill me in on the situation at the front.”
Several minutes later, he was back in his tank and signaling the column to move out. They had to hurry – they couldn’t count on the Second Platoon being unmolested, or on them not losing their patience and trying a desperate breakout, for very long. Crystal Empire assaults tended to be ruthless and efficient, and they didn’t like waiting. That unicorn was going to be in so much trouble when this was over, mark his words, but until it was, there were more important things to take care of.
Resembling a mother duck and its three smaller offspring, the column rumbled off towards the front.
/ - / - / - / - /
Summer’s tank had nearly made it through the orchard and was powering down the opposite side of the slope at speed when Cashmere yelled, “Stop!” in her oddly soft voice. Supercharger hit the brakes hard, and the tracks locked up, skidding the tank unevenly enough for the front right mudguard to smash into into a tree. Summer felt a little annoyed no one had cleared this maneuver with her first.
“There, see it?” said Cashmere, pointing at a shape up ahead in the trees, a few lanes over from them and far ahead, barely visible through the trunks. Summer squinted at it and detected unnaturally regular geometry among the undergrowth, along with a hint of dark grey color.
“Driver, take us ahead, but slowly, and get us back into the center of the lane. Radiopony, get back inside and stop blocking her viewport.” As the tank backed up, turned and began to move again, the crumpled mudguard rattled over the track noisily, and Summer winced, hoping it wouldn’t give them away too early. She prayed the enemy hadn’t heard their engine yet. Fumbling at her side, she came up with her field glasses.
She draped the strap around her neck and held them up, keeping them fixed on the spot she had seen the patch of dark grey. As the tank moved along the aisle, she saw more and more of the enemy tank at a time as they moved past each tree. It was a low machine, with a long, low engine deck, and the turret perched like a great box on top of its forequarters. A rose-colored stallion in a khaki uniform and wearing a red neckerchief was sitting with his hindquarters on the back of the turret, his legs hanging inside, looking ahead through a pair of field glasses. He was hatless, but wore a pair of headphones over his ears. His coat sparkled in the sun, and Summer hesitated to give her orders; she never expected crystal ponies to be so beautiful in person.
“Gunner, traverse turret to, er, one-thirty o’clock.” She mentally figured it in the degrees system she was fairly sure she was supposed to use. “Forty-five degrees. What do we have loaded?”
“Aiy-pee-see-bay-see,” Turnip answered, drawling out each syllable. Summer wasn’t sure what that was, but it sounded lethal, so she nodded her approval and went back to watching. The motor whirred to life under her as the gun moved around to her specified position. As they approached with probably a hundred meters between them and the target and closing, she watched the stallion flick his ears, waited while a tree briefly obscured her view, then when she saw him again he was looking directly at them, openmouthed. When she saw the tank again through the gaps in the trees he was gone from view and a spurt of exhaust gas was coming from the back of the tank and the turret was beginning to move.
“Driver, increase speed, and stop on my signal,” she ordered, as they approached the point where the trees, planted in a grid, would make a perfect diagonal corridor to the enemy tank. It drew closer, closer, and she prayed they would make it before the enemy had got their turret around. She yelled, “Stop! Gunner, fire when you have a good solution!”
The tank screeched to a halt, gentler this time. The target was no more than 50 meters away. Summer looked at the enemy; in only a few seconds, their turret would be all the way around. She waited, her whole body rigid with the tension, as the gun made a slight adjustment to the right and dipped down.
The long gun fired. The force rocked the entire tank on its suspension. The blast from the muzzle brake blew leaves off the lower branches of the tree to their immediate right, and Summer felt the deafening concussion through her entire body, her bones vibrating with the force.
When she had recovered from the shock enough to see straight again, she looked again at the target. The rotation of its turret had stopped, pointing at the tree right in front of them, and thin smoke leaked from every hatch. Summer felt sick to her stomach; they barely stood a chance. She imagined how that rose-colored stallion might look, body broken and twisted inside his dark grey metal box. But she kept her food down and steeled herself. There would be time to worry about it later. Right now, ponies were depending on her, whether they knew it or not.
“That won’t be the last of them,” she said, grimly, “There’s going to be one more to hold this side of the valley. Keep your eyes open, but stay inside. Load another one of those shells you hit that fellow with.”
“Already done, ma’am,” Minty said. “By the way, ma’am. If I might suggest you close your hatch when we fire?”
Summer heard her, but she wasn’t going to admit it. She needed to be able to see what was going on, and a little head pain wouldn’t stop her. “Driver, keep us to a low speed and proceed straight ahead. Gunner, traverse gun back to 12 o’clock.” Unless the enemy was exceptionally deaf, they couldn’t fail to have missed the shot, or the radio transmission the tank might have had time to make. She had to stay alert.
The tank started into motion again. She glassed the orchard around her slowly with her field glasses, starting from the left. If the first tank was any indication, the other would also be somewhere in the orchard, but would they be towards the river, or away from it? It didn’t take long for her traveling eye to catch on another irregular patch of dark grey color, on the left where the orchard curved away to the northwest following the curve of the land. She looked closer, using her telekinesis to hold the field glasses up and steadying her hooves on the edge of the cupola, and saw a boxy turret with the gun pointed directly at her.
She snatched up the microphone and shouted, “Hard reverse!”
The tank lurched backwards and she dropped her field glasses at the suddenness of the motion. The muzzle of the enemy gun flashed. There was a terrible metallic shriek and the tank shuddered and a spray of sparks flashed across her vision as the shell hit the frontal armor at a shallow angle and caromed off into the trees on their other side. A spray of splinters erupted where the shell hit a tree trunk a few dozen meters downrange.
“Gunner, traverse turret left to nine o’clock and fire when you see their paint!” Summer ordered, but the turret was already moving to respond to the threat. “Driver, when I give the order, turn left about, er,” and she had to quickly make the conversion in her head, “forty degrees and drive straight until we pass those trunks. Understood?”
Minty gave an affirmative but Supercharger was silent on the intercom; Summer heard her yell from inside the compartment, and figured her headset must not be working after its watery dip. After that there was nothing to do but pick up her field glasses from their retaining strap around her neck and watch the target for a few long anxious seconds while the turret whirred around, the microphone switch held close.
Their big gun fired when the turret was almost completely on target, rattling Summer’s teeth. The shell hit a tree at turret-height and deflected off it, spraying the enemy tank with splinters, and she saw an explosion go off on the front of the turret.
“Driver, now!” she yelled, and the tank rotated under her and jumped forward. Almost too late, she remembered to order, “Traverse turret to the right!” to clear it for going through the trees. She heard the breech open and the casing clatter to the floor on top of the whir of the turret motor and the roar of the engine.
The enemy fired again, and the shot ripped through the air over the engine deck with a sonic hum and crashed into a tree somewhere behind them. Summer looked at them again, and saw that the armor was whole and they were still moving, turning slightly and trundling forward into the next lane closer to the treeline to match her own tank’s movement. Probably the shell had detonated early, but still saved them by stunning the crew for the critical moment.
“Driver, stop and reverse until you see the tree trunk directly to your left. Gunner, target at ten o’clock. Make that nine-fifty. Loader –” she cut herself off when she heard the gun breech slam closed. “…Carry on.” She felt she ought to be calling out the range, so she gave it her best guess. “I make that about one-hundred-fifty meters. Aim for the turret face.” The turret face she was currently looking right at.
Atop the enemy turret, projecting from her own hatch, was an aquamarine crystal mare wearing a blue beret, looking back at Summer through her own pair of field glasses. Her mouth moved soundlessly as she barked her own orders to her crew.
The big gun boomed again. Summer saw up-close through her field glasses the hole that appeared in the armor a split second later and the percussive flash that rushed out of the open hatch on the turret roof, and the hollow boom the hit made. She winced and rubbed her temple; the muzzle blasts were beginning to get to her. When Summer looked again, the enemy commander was pulling herself out to fall over the opposite side of the turret, and she caught a glimpse of red and mangled hind legs.
She felt sick again, but there was no time for sentiment. “Driver, back us up until I tell you to stop. Gunner, target their engine and hit it only when you are sure of the shot.” Privately, she thought that the enemy were pretty well out of the fight, but still, they ought to be immobilized in case any had survived. The tank rumbled back, she ordered Supercharger to stop, and she ducked inside and closed the hatch before the big gun fired.
She opened the hatch again and made sure the enemy tank hadn’t moved. Fire licked at it where the fuel had caught, and it might have caught fire to the entire orchard if it hadn’t just rained. She stared at it for a moment before ordering her tank to move out of the orchard and onto the hillside. It was time that she contacted Second Platoon.
“Radiopony, get me Lieutenant Bubble Pop on the short-wave.”
Cashmere acknowledged the order and Summer waited while she made the necessary hails. When she finally had them, she put it through to the commander.
Summer flipped the switch on her microphone and said, as authoritatively as she could muster, “Second Platoon of D Company, this is First Lieutenant Meadows of Third Platoon. Do you read me?”
A reply crackled over the radio. “This is Second Lieutenant Bubble Pop of Second Platoon. We read you. Did something happen to Second Lieutenant Sweet Tooth?”
Summer thought the pony on the other end sounded more concerned than she ought to be. “Er, yes. I mean, no. He’s fine for now, but he won’t be for very long if we don’t act fast.”
“What? Who the hay are you?” the lieutenant said suspiciously.
Summer supposed the suspicion was warranted. “I’m the new commander – I’ve taken over command of the platoon on Captain Havoc’s orders. I’ve sent Sweet Tooth to lead the rest of the column towards the crossing just east of here. If you heard the cannon fire, that was us – my tank. Please, I have a plan for dealing with your encirclement, just listen.”
There was a lengthy pause, and Summer was starting to wonder if the radio had failed. “…Lieutenant Pop, are you there?” she asked, anxiously.
“Yes, Lieutenant Meadows, we’re here. I’d like you to explain yourself. Give me one good reason why you’re not part of a Crystal Empire ploy, because I know for a fact that immediately downriver has no fordable points by OUR machines.”
“But theirs can’t either –” Summer started to say, then stopped herself when she realized that their tanks would already be on this side of the river. “Fine. We’re coming to the top of this hill at, um,” she struggled to remember the grid co-ordinates she had briefly glimpsed on the captain’s map, “Five-jay, Canter-six, 680e, 240n. It should be to your south-southeast, if my position is right. Please don’t shoot.”
She ordered the tank forward up the hill, and it obliged, protesting slightly. When it rounded the top, Summer braced for the sound of cannons from below, but it never came. She breathed a sigh of relief. She scanned the shallow valley floor spread out under until she spotted the distinctive light grey of the equestrian tanks underneath stripes of olive green paint, making a two-tone camouflage. Around it gathered a ragged group of infantry, sitting in clumps under cover. When she saw a grape-colored mare looking back at her through her own pair of field glasses, Summer waved, and the mare waved back.
“There, I’m not an enemy, see?” Summer said, hopefully.
“I don’t recognize the tank,” the lieutenant said, and Summer’s heart sank. “…But that’s definitely an Equestrian machine, and you got your uniform right. Fine, Empire spy – I’ll hear you out and decide if it’s worth taking under consideration.”
Summer wanted to jump for joy. “Thanks! So, there is a trap set at that ford I mentioned where I, er, sent Sweet Tooth and the rest towards, and the enemy tanks will be waiting there to hit them from ambush as they cross. Now, you’re trapped in this valley by tanks on either side and guns at the entrance, is that right? And you think it’s odd that they haven’t come down on you and crushed you, correct?”
“…Yes,” came the answer, “Are you sure you’re not a Crystal Empire agent?”
“Well,” Summer said, beyond pleased that her guesses had been correct all along, “I managed to cross the river where it’s not too deep, and I just got rid of both of the guards on this side of the valley. Now, I propose –”
“Hold on,” Bubble Pop said, “Did you just say ‘both’? There’s three.”
Summer’s blood ran cold. There had only been two; where was…?
Suddenly there was an earsplitting shriek, and a spray of sparks along her right side, and the entire tank rocked and vibrated with the impact. She stood stunned for a brief moment. The tank, however, was not idle. The engine revved and the tank spun completely around, the locked right track carving a wide gash in the grass atop the hill. The shock passed quickly, and Summer came back to herself and took command.
The third tank sat a long distance away, far down the treeline and very close to the river, which explained why she hadn’t seen it before. Its hull sat slightly angled and smoke curled from the barrel. Its commander’s hatch was open and a tiny fuchsia figure was gesturing in her direction wildly. Summer quickly dropped inside her own tank, afraid of what she might see after that terrific hit, and found everyone still alive and relatively healthy. The tank had not even been breached; she concluded it must have been a poorly-aimed ricochet.
She stood on her seat again and fixed her field glasses on the target. Switching to intercom, she ordered, “Driver, two points to the left and full speed down this slope. Gunner, rotate gun to ten o’clock.” She had a plan, but first they had to survive the next shot – she wasn’t going to sit still while they corrected their aim.
The tank surged forward and rushed eagerly down the slope of the hill, and Minty dutifully rotated the turret to the appointed position. Once, it stopped rotating for a terrifying second, then started moving again with some gentle urging from the green mare. The sound of her hoof kicking the turret floor reverberated inside.
“Driver, turn right! Now stop!”
The tank jerked sideways a few dozen degrees, skidded onto a new course, then the tracks locked up and it came to a halt. The enemy fired with a flash and a boom, and the shot hit the ground a few meters to the side and upslope of their tank and threw up a small shower of soil. The tank’s big gun was now pointed nearly directly at the enemy.
“Gunner, adjust left a touch, distance 600!” Summer yelled, giving her best guess for the range, and the turret shifted under her slightly. The gun elevated slowly, then fired, rocking the entire tank on its suspension. Pain stabbed into her skull.
A bright spark and a hole appeared on the frontal hull of the enemy, and suddenly her eyes were dazzled as the tank erupted in a blinding flash, fire jetting out of every opening, but mainly the hatches on top of the turret. Quick, efficient, and painless; everything she hoped. She looked away and pushed out of her mind the image of the fuchsia pony’s sparkling coat engulfed in that conflagration. There was time for that later. She felt incredible, unstoppable. Her third kill, and more importantly, her crew still lived to enjoy it. She wanted to shout, to stamp her hooves, but she reminded herself sternly that as an officer such behavior could not be allowed. Stiff upper lip, that was the way.
In the ensuing stillness, the breech slid open and another casing clattered to join the rest on the floor. Water ran down the front of the tank and noisily splashed on the ground. Summer ducked inside and surveyed the state of her crew, now that she was fairly sure they weren’t in danger of dying anymore. She had to stifle a gasp. Supercharger was very nearly submarine, only her head barely sticking above the water in the tank, which had all mostly moved to the forward part of the compartment and was running out of the vision slits. Cashmere was likewise submerged and trying to hold her radio out of the water with one hoof and cranking open the vision port with the other. Minty was sitting in her chair, seemingly unconcerned, and Turnip shot Summer an odd glance before slamming another shell into the gun and closing the breech.
Summer cleared her throat awkwardly. “Alright, ladies, you have five minutes until we move on. I want as much of this water out of here as possible, understood? And throw these casings out too, they’re getting underhoof. Radiopony, get me on the radio with Bubble Pop again.”
As the crew set to their work, she spoke with the lieutenant. Speaking as authoritatively as she could, and leaving out how much guesswork had really been involved, she explained her plan for the Second Platoon. They were to break out at the northwest entrance to the valley, while she was dealing with the AT guns there, and fall upon the forces guarding the northern edge of the valley. Once those were dealt with, they were to drive onward to the forces lying in wait at the ford. She emphasized that since they would be attacking the enemy in their flank, where and when they didn’t expect Equestrians to be, this was a very low-risk plan, keeping in mind how they had retreated to begin with out of reluctance to risk the machines in a pitched fight.
She also wanted to ask them to check on the progress of the rest of Third Platoon for her, but if they did, she was afraid they would find out that she wasn’t what she said she was, and wouldn’t follow her plan. Now, at least, Bubble Pop believed that Summer really was an Equestrian armored officer; seeing her take fire from an enemy machine and then deal with it summarily had probably clinched it. As long as Second Platoon thought she was the leader on some daring maneuver, they would probably follow her where she needed them to go to save the others.
When the five minutes was up, judging by her watch, she told the crew to stop bailing water. The turret floor was now above the level of the water, but there was still a good two dozen centimeters in the forward part of the compartment. “Corporal Supercharger, drive us straight ahead and then follow the edge of the orchard. Full speed, as usual.” By way of answer, the tank jumped forward in a jolt that nearly sent Summer tumbling out the hatch. Recovering herself, she tried to remember what other terrain features there were that they could use to get around the side of the antitank guns, since the orchard clearly didn’t continue forever. It came to her, and she mentally plotted a course in her mind. This would probably work.
They motored along the edge of the trees, the wind whipping Summer’s mane back, and she her elation faded into warm satisfaction. Three kills, not bad for a first-time tanker with no training – not bad at all. Even the tank seemed satisfied, for all that it had taken a few minor bangs. The rough growl of the engine echoed her own inner desire to shout her elation at the top of her lungs. The tank, in fact, seemed downright eager for that big gun to roar again. Summer took heart in its – no, his – solidity of purpose. With a beast like this on her side, anything seemed possible.
Summer scanned the field at the valley’s northwest end with her field glasses, looking for the guns that should be set up here. The engine idled quietly where they sat under the cover of a forested area, well back from the treeline to avoid the barrel of the big gun giving them away. Seeing nothing at the expected point, her gaze traveled farther afield, and she saw with dismay where they really were. Either she had mistaken how far they had really traveled to reach this point, or the enemy had simply set the guns further back, but they were several hundred meters off on her left and in the middle of the field, far from any trees. There were fewer than she had counted on, but they were surrounded by an entire infantry company busily digging in, a development she told herself she honestly should have expected; these weren’t just pieces upon a board.
“Enlisted soldier Cashmere, get me Second Platoon on the radio.” When they were raised, she ordered them, “Get moving right now. I’m in position to attack the guns holding the exit, but the opening I can make won’t last long.”
“I’m sorry, lieutenant, but I can’t do that,” came the response. “We’re going over the top of the valley instead. Lieutenant Sweet Tooth just got into short-wave range a short while ago, and, you know, he told me a very interesting story about you. He needs help right now, not later, and I’ve decided it’s better to go to him directly than take the long way just to follow the sketchy plans of a wet-behind-the-ears aristocrat. The AT guns are pointed at our point of exit – the enemy tanks’ are not necessarily. I should probably tell you that Third Platoon is reaching the ford now, so there’s no time for delay. I suggest you come join us in our assault. An extra tank could make all the difference.”
Summer’s heart sank into her stomach. So now the lieutenant knew, and wasn’t going to uphold her critical role in Summer’s plan. There was no time left; she had to get over to the north of the valley and distract the guards. She flicked the switch on her microphone from receive to send and said, tersely, “I’ll just start the attack, then, shall I? Good day.” She took her headphones off for a brief moment, looked down at her hooves, beat them on the turret roof repeatedly, then put the headphones back on. It was all up to her now; her, her crew, and her tank. Surely they were ready to kill a few more enemy tanks, right? No problem.
“Um, s- I mean, ma’am?” Cashmere interrupted Summer’s attempt to regain her composure.
“Yes, what is it?” Summer snapped, perhaps a little too harshly. She immediately regretted letting her personal frustration get the better of her.
“The forward command post we stopped by just hailed us, ma’am. They said they have begun the bombardment.”
Well, that was good news, at least. Sweet Tooth must not have stopped by there on his way to the front, and her little deception remained intact, or they would surely have called it off. She had to move quickly now; time was short and soon they would lose any shock advantage that gave them.
She turned her attention to the infantry in the field. No one was shouting and pointing in her direction yet. In fact, she probably had the enemy’s unexpected position to thank for why they hadn’t noticed her yet. Four guns, arrayed in a line, fairly close together; she might be able to pull this off. There was no time to risk trying to deal with them all individually with the gun, but perhaps…
“Crew, listen to me. We need an explosive shell in the cannon. Corporal Twist, target that far gun at 10 o-clock and fire when you are sure to hit it. Enlisted Sprout, keep another explosive round on hoof.” Minty gave an affirmative and the turret motor whirred, jerking, to life. Turnip ejected the already loaded shell, opened the hatch beside her, and threw the live round outside, then loaded another. While the gun swung around, Summer said, “Enlisted Cashmere, get ready to use that machinegun. Corporal Supercharger, I want us headed towards that left gun at full speed as soon as our gun fires. Take a peek right now so you know where it is. Everyone, make sure you lock your hatches. Enlisted Sprout –”
The gun boomed out, the engine roared, and the tank lurched forward and then turned, cutting her off. An explosion threw soil high in the air where it hit among the guns. In the excitement, she had forgotten to get safely inside, and she did so now and locked her hatch, shaking her head as if it would make the pain in her skull go away. It was getting worse; she really had to stop being outside when the gun fired. Her horn ached.
Rather than crane her neck to see where they were going, she trusted Supercharger to get them to the target and hunched over in her position, drawing her sidearm with her teeth. She didn’t really know why she got her gun out, but she had a faint idea of shooting at enemy troops as she motored past them. She felt flushed with an excitement and anxiety unlike she had felt in the tank engagement. Was this how the crew felt, stuck up in this iron box and trusting that they weren’t about to all die by a hit they never knew was coming? She had nothing to do, really, but pray to Celestia that no one on that field got their guns turned in time to be of any use.
Cashmere fired a burst from her machinegun, then another. Turnip slammed the next shell into the gun breech and began firing her own coaxial machinegun in short bursts. Deep pings sounded inside the fighting compartment as they began to take fire from the enemy infantry. The crumpled mud guard rattled over the track, adding its voice to the cacophony. Summer felt that she was forgetting something important, what was it? Ah, right…
“Gunner, traverse gun to half-past-12 and engage the first gun you see,” she managed to say around her sidearm. She felt the turret begin to swing around. They were crossing the field, until recently one of the few that were cultivated, diagonally crosswise with the furrows, and the tank bounced on its suspension in a curiously undulating manner. She pressed her head against her hatch and checked their progress. They were halfway to the target, she judged; only about a hundred meters to go.
Then the turret abruptly stopped traversing, almost at the twelve o’clock position. “Why did you stop?” she barked at Minty angrily. Her gun fell from her mouth, and she batted it into the turret wall in an attempt to catch it, where it clanged off and fell to the film of water still covering the floor, the sound lost in the noise of the hits the tank was taking. Something smelled burnt.
Minty tried the controls again, and it didn’t respond. “Looks like the motor shorted,” she reported, “Switching to manual now.”
Summer cursed, despite her good breeding, and banged her hoof on the turret wall in frustration. Turnip was still giving intermittent bursts, but Cashmere had stopped; Summer ducked down to check on her and saw her fitting a new belt to her gun. Summer pushed herself back up into the cupola to check their progress again and caught a glimpse of running, sparkling ponies in brown uniforms before she was pushed downwards and then slammed upwards into the hatch, her neck contorted sideways, in a tremendous bump that lifted the tank nearly diagonal for an instant. The engine calmed for an instant then revved again and the tank made a very sharp turn, still vibrating from the impact. Summer slumped dazed in her seat as the big gun boomed again. Just before the next huge bump, Minty reached up and pulled Summer down and held her so she wouldn’t fly into the hatch again, and Summer didn’t resist.
Turnip ran out on her machinegun and was just coming back to it with another box when a shell smashed right through the machine gun and turret face at an upward angle, flew right over her head, skidded off the turret roof, and exited out the back of the turret in a great thunderclap of noise. A few dozen small bees whizzed through the air after it and clattered off the back of the turret. Summer felt small stings on her haunch and right hindleg, and the world was all light and sound for a moment. The tank rammed into something, and there was the terrible noise of something scraping by underneath the bottom as the tank gave another huge lurch and rumbled on.
Minty told Supercharger to keep driving, something Summer only barely registered as the tank skidded onto a new course. Gradually, though, as the tank began to put some distance between them and the guns, the shock began to fade, and she was able to master herself again. She sat up and shrugged off Minty. She found her microphone where she had dropped it and ordered, “Driver, t-turn right until I t-tell you to stop, then go straight. Follow the hills next to the valley. Maximum speed. It’s all up to us now.” The ringing in her head was so loud, she could hardly hear herself bark orders. “Enlisted Cashmere, keep a lookout and stop us when you see anything. Enlisted Sprout, get me a… Sprout?”
Turnip was lying, curled around herself, in the scummy film on the floor of the turret with both hooves held to her eye. Blood streamed between them, and from several wounds on her neck and chest as well. After directing the tank to its new course, Summer felt her own haunch, and her hoof also came away bloodied. She looked out the new hole in the rear of the turret. It was about 7 centimeters around and ragged with split metal, and through it she could see the carnage they had left behind. The gunshields of two of the guns were crumpled on one side; a third one was a twisted wreck, and the fourth looked fairly intact. The bodies of perhaps a dozen crystal ponies lay scattered around the guns. She wanted to shoot the intact gun again with the cannon, but there wasn’t any time.
“Enlisted Sprout, can you still do your duty?” Summer barked, turning back. The only response was a low groan. Well, there was nothing else for it. They needed the gun ready to fire again in case they met one of the enemy tanks who watched the north edge of the valley, and she couldn’t stop and wait for the loader to get over herself. “Corporal Twist, open the vision ports on your side and help keep watch,” she said, getting down off her seat and setting hoof in the scum on the floor. She winced as she put weight on her hindleg. The tank went over a bump that rolled her map case against her hoof, and she kicked it away and opened the right-side vision port; the right-hand turret face port was almost completely gone anyway.
First, she found the control to eject the empty casing, as she had seen Turnip do a minute ago. It clattered to the floor and joined its sibling. Then, she ran her eyes over the shell racks, and, not knowing which was which, picked one at random. The head of the shell was black and white and it was heavier than it looked, and she almost dropped it once before managing to fit the end into the open breech and shove it in, where the breech closed on its own.
The gun ready again, Summer bent down and shook Turnip. “There is time to be a lazy sow later. Get up.” Turnip cracked open her good eye, looked up at Summer, and uttered a foul blasphemy that the well-bred pony had not heard before. “Well, fine then,” Summer said, and she called for Cashmere to hand her the sodden first-aid kit. She was absolutely no good at bandages, but she managed to wrap Turnip’s head in something approximating an eye patch. All the while, the tan pony chewed furiously. Summer never looked closely at the wound, and there was too much blood to see much anyway. When she finished and tied off the bandage, Turnip only grunted and spat black slime on the floor.
“Listen,” Summer tried again, in a more compassionate tone, “My head hurts like, well, like hell too, and I’ve got something stuck in my flank. I’m afraid I might black out soon. But right now, I need to keep it together and stay awake, because there are so many more ponies besides myself that need me to keep fighting. All those ponies need YOU, too. I just loaded a shell into the gun, and I’m not even sure what it does.”
Turnip looked at Summer for a long moment, then, seeming to reach a decision, pushed herself up on her forelegs. Summer backed up to give her space. “What color was it?” Turnip asked, pushing herself shakily up on all four hooves again.
“Er, black with a white marking.”
Turnip nodded. “Armor-piercing. You coulda done worse.”
Summer felt good to know that she hadn’t just made another mistake. She nodded and climbed tenderly back into her seat, opened her hatch, and stuck her head out just enough to see ahead of them through the vision slit on the front of the cupola.
“You sure we need to be going full speed?” Supercharger called back, from inside the compartment. Summer thought she heard a hint of warning in her tone.
“Nonsense, Corporal, of course we do,” Summer clipped back, over the intercom, although the pony could hear her perfectly well without it. “The column was almost at the crossing just a few minutes ago. If we don’t make it there and attack the ambush force from behind, they’ll be torn to shreds!”
“It’s just, well, we’ve been running it hard for a long time now, and I had to put everything back together in a big hurry…” Supercharger said, “I know you can’t see the dashboard right now, but…”
Summer was prepared to order the grey pegasus to stow it and keep driving when she heard a loud pop behind her and the tank gave a seizing lurch. The vehicle kept going for another few meters in a shuddering, halting way as the transmission fought with the inertia of twenty-three tons of steel, and the engine seized and died. Once again, the tank had come to an uneven stop, and now it angled to the left of their original course, slightly down the slope of one of the hills. Summer twisted around and looked at the engine deck. Smoke was coming from the vents, and she was afraid the engine had caught fire.
“…Corporal Supercharger, what just happened? It’s smoking.”
There was a pause before she heard Supercharger answer, “Not sure. I’ll check it out in just a moment.”
Summer wanted to tear her mane out and scream in frustration. Of all times, why did the engine pick now to quit on them?
“Get us moving as soon as possible,” she ordered. “Corporal Twist, stand guard in the meantime. Did anyone bring their carbine?”
“I did, ma’am,” Cashmere said, “It’s under my seat.”
“Well, then, pass it up to her.”
Cashmere rummaged in the water under her seat, came up with a standard-issue equestrian army carbine, shook out the worst of the water, and handed it to Minty, who immediately stripped out the bolt and started blowing into the back of the gun to dry it. There was a long pause, and Cashmere appeared to be listening to something. The mild pink pony spoke up again. “Ma’am?”
“What?” Summer snapped back irritably.
“It’s lieutenant Bubble Pop. She says she’s leading Second Platoon out of the valley’s mouth after all.”
Well, now. “Thank you, Enlisted Cashmere,” she said, belatedly realizing she hadn’t been saying it nearly enough. She pulled herself out of her hatch and leaned her chin on her forehoof, fighting the wave of blackness that threatened to claim her brain with the movement. Things might still go according to plan after all.
/ - / - / - / - /
Feldspar ducked as another shower of splinters rained down on her pale yellow coat. None of this was going according to plan. First, B detachment didn’t answer her hail after she heard cannon fire from their position, then, only a few minutes ago, she gets a report that an unidentified enemy tank just ran over their towed high-velocity AT guns. Now, the grove she was hiding in was being torn to shreds by mortar fire.
Ducking inside and closing the two-part hatch, she ordered her four ambush tanks to take aim and fire at the column of enemy tanks, who had halted just the river. Her group’s guns were all fixed on a point of aim most of the way across the river, nearly to where the enemy tanks would have to exit, and it would take time to readjust their aim. Her gunner cranked the turret slowly around by hand, the hydraulic motor not being on yet, and the driver turned over the engine. She got on her periscope set and swiveled the hatch assembly around to keep track of the enemy. As she watched, the three smaller machines were beginning to spread out from behind the lead tank. Her big gun fired, rocking the tank, and she saw an answering flash from the lead tank’s short-barreled gun.
There was a tremendous boom next to her tank and a flash visible on the edge of the periscope. She swiveled the periscope set to look and saw the tank next to hers a burning wreck, the ammunition exploding in a flash. That had been a promising young officer, whom Feldspar had been grooming for command of his own element. Already, more muzzle flashes were coming from across the water from the shorter tanks’ smaller but longer guns.
“Squad, reverse. We’ll regroup and hit them as they come out of the orchard.”
She issued the orders calmly, but her mind was whirring, spinning its wheels. Evidently, they knew about her ambush. Either they had guessed, or somehow gotten tipped off, but the ambush was a bust. This was no place to fight, exposed and outnumbered as they were, especially now that they were down one tank. There was something about this situation she had missed, some way she could turn this around. Perhaps with the three tanks in A Detachment, they could…
“Sir!” came the call over the radio; it was the stormflockpony leading A Detachment. “Engaging enemy tanks coming up from the rear!”
“They came from the valley after all?” she prompted. This didn’t make sense; surely they had broken out on the south side of the valley, which explained the cannon fire and why B Detachment hadn’t answered hails.
“Negative, sir! They came from our flank! Knocked out tank seventeen before we knew it. We’ve pulled back to the orchard for cover, but there’s at least four of them that I can tell with guns on our location!”
The situation was unsalvageable, then. It was almost startling to Feldspar just how quickly she accepted this. The remaining three of her ambush squad against four tanks now arrayed against them, and soon they would be shot in the back by four more pushing up behind. She made an executive decision.
“Understormpony Boron, fight a rearguard action and cover our escape. Understormpony Cline, fall in behind my tank. We are going to join up with what’s left of A Detachment and break out. Acknowledged?
They said “Yes, sir,” in unison, and after the gunner took another shot, Feldspar ordered the driver to make a fast turn and motor away as fast as they could. As they began the turn, a shell hit and ricocheted off the side of the hull with a screech and a clatter as it tore through the toolboxes. She left instructions with Boron to attempt to follow as soon as both her and Cline were away.
Cline’s tank had joined up with hers and they were heading out of the wooded area when a mortar shell landed directly on the following tank’s mud guard, punched through, and exploded the track links apart. She had the hatch trained to watch ahead of her, but there was a periscope mounted on the back of the hatch as well, and she looked when she felt the nearby explosion and asked why they had stopped.
When they answered, she cursed. “Abandon your tank and make your way to our lines on hoof,” she ordered, “Your lives are more important than that machine. Boron, get out of there and join us in the breakout.” The line crackled with static; there was no response. Feldspar didn’t bother trying to contact the squad again.
/ - / - / - / - /
Summer sat half out the turret with her head propped up on her hoof, silently fuming. There was an intense, pounding pain in her forehead and horn that she was trying to bear in silence, and being angry helped distract her.
Of course, she was pleased that Lieutenant Bubble Pop had led her column out of the valley entrance after all, instead of over the north edge. But it felt humiliating to be stuck with engine trouble, of all things, while the platoon motored past. It had been her daring scheme, and she deserved to be the one to ride triumphantly at the head, taking all of the risk onto herself. And besides, after everything, she had been sure that if they would end up stopped in their tracks, it would be by a mine, or an enemy ambush she hadn’t accounted for – something a little more “honorable”. Something that would sound better when she wrote her brother about this later.
Minty was sitting half out the left-side turret hatch, keeping watch with the carbine propped up beside her, while Supercharger was cursing in the engine compartment, beating at smoking oil with her cap. Cashmere was crowded on the turret floor to the right of the gun, bandaging the wounds on Turnip’s chest and neck. Summer had waved her off when the pony had offered to do Summer first, and now she was regretting it; her own wound was beginning to sting and ache both at once.
She looked around. No enemy infantry in sight, and no friendly ones, either. Echoing booming noises reached her over the landscape from nearby in the southeast; Second Platoon engaging the enemy, no doubt. She hoped the mortar bombardment she had managed to have ordered did some good. A rise in the landscape where one hill led into another, and then another, hid the fighting, but they weren’t very far away at all, if she remembered correctly.
“So, Corporal Supercharger, what’s wrong with it?” she asked, hoping for good news but expecting the problem to be something massive, something they would need heavy equipment to fix.
“Looks like the main crank seal’s blown, and a few others besides,” the pegasus answered. “And we’ve lost a lot of oil. Just before we stopped, oil pressure fell through the bottom, and I think that’s when it happened.”
“Never mind that,” Summer said crossly, “Will it run?”
“I think I can get it started again, but we’d be risking the engine a lot, and we would only be capable of very slow speed, and no tough inclines.”
It could have been Summer’s imagination, but the fighting seemed to be picking up in intensity over there. Minty was looking that direction reflectively, smoking a cigarette.
“I thought I made myself quite clear on smoking in my tank.”
“I’m not in the tank,” Minty replied evenly, without taking her eyes off the top of the rise ahead of them.
Summer wasn’t going to dignify that kind of technicality play with a response. Instead, she changed the subject, trying to stay awake and not black out from the pounding pain in her forehead. “Is that thing made of… newspaper?”
“Sure is. I roll my own, you know. The ink gives it more flavor.”
Summer shook her head. It sounded disgusting, but there was no reckoning with some ponies’ tastes, she supposed. It was with a slightly lighter mood, then, that she spotted the enemy tank come hurtling over the rise ahead and come straight at them. Minty saw it too.
“Action stations, ladies!” Summer shouted, “Enemy tank dead ahead!”
Minty swung back inside and into her chair and flung the carbine across the compartment. It hit the wall and landed on Turnip, who had been lying down, resting. The tiny pony grunted and sprang to her hooves, as much for this afront as for the situation at hand. Cashmere slid into her seat and loaded her machine gun from the discarded box she had dropped on the floor in the attack earlier, and Supercharger slammed the engine hatches shut and vaulted into her hatch and began turning over the engine with the electric starter.
It turned out the tank wasn’t heading for them, but happened to be on a course that would take it right by them. Its turret was aimed to one side a bit, away from them. A few seconds after Supercharger regained her seat, it took evasive action, steering away from them sharply.
“Gunner, nail them to the wall,” Summer ordered, with unexpected enthusiasm, and Minty cranked the turret manually around to the right until the barrel lined nearly up with the speeding enemy tank. The big gun fired.
Summer winced at the deafening concussion and saw the sparks fly where the shell entered the enemy tank almost directly broadside to them. It smashed through the side armor and exited out the other side in a bright spray of miscellaneous metal bits, but the tank didn’t slow down. Summer ordered another shell loaded, but Minty couldn’t make the turret turn fast enough for another shot before it disappeared over the rise behind them and was gone.
No one spoke for a long moment. The only sound in the tank was that of the engine being turned over. Supercharger broke the silence by saying, “Damn! There’s a short in the remote starter circuit too!” The pegasus opened her hatch and climbed out to start the engine manually. Summer looked at Minty, who looked back, lit cigarette still hanging from her mouth. In the tank, Summer noted.
“I should have had you aim for the engine,” Summer said.
“Then they would have swung their turret around and hit us before Turnip managed to get another shell in, ma’am,” Minty replied. “You made the right call.”
Summer reluctantly agreed, but she wasn’t happy that one enemy had gotten away. The feeling wasn’t really dampened when another enemy tank motored into view a minute later, and they were ready for it.
She sat and watched the smoke curl out of its hatches, apprehensively thinking of what lay ahead for her now that her self-appointed and unsanctioned mission had apparently succeeded.
Supercharger managed to get the engine started with the manual crank. It ran much rougher, and sounded to Summer’s ignorant ear to have a certain grinding quality to it. She sighed; it was time to go and face the music. “Well, ladies, I’m at least glad I met you. Corporal Supercharger, try and get us at least across the river before the engine gives out on us.”
The engine rumbled to life in an unsteady whine and the tank began to motor slowly away.
/ - / - / - / - /
Feldspar held a hoof to her face and attempted to hold back the blood that ran down it, heedless of her efforts. She was trying very hard not to black out from the pain; she had to stay awake, for her crew. She had thought she had won free of the Equestrian forces, and then there was a sixth tank, laid right in their path as if they knew she would be coming this way.
The hit was unavoidable. It had killed her gunner and her loader instantly, but thanks to the bulkhead between the front of the tank and the fighting compartment, the driver was uninjured and was making for their lines at full speed. Feldspar had only the enemy’s choice of shell to thank that she still lived – that, and her commander’s position at the very back of the turret.
This was an utter disaster, for her, for her tank division, and for the Crystal Empire. Only two tanks had made a breakout without being destroyed, hers and one of the two she had joined up with from A Detachment, which had been close behind her, the last she knew. She hoped that any survivors made it back to Crystal Empire lines in one piece. The loss of the crews was the worst part – machines could be replaced, but the Empire had a heavy shortage of experienced ponies to run them. The loss today had been incalculable, by that metric, and it was all her fault. Feldspar gritted her teeth and made a vow. Nothing like this would happen on her watch again. Assuming there ever would be another chance, after this.
The co-driver opened his own bulkhead door and found her slumped against the back of the compartment, screaming. It wasn’t for any one reason – agony, grief, rage, she could take her pick, but he didn’t know that. He had a hard time prying her hoof away from her face to be able to administer basic first aid. When he had done, he murmured, “Sorry about this, sir,” and stuck her with a heavy dose of morphine. Unwillingly, former Headstormpony Feldspar sank into oblivion.
/ - / - / - / - /
Summer woke up to the feeling of someone prodding gently at her side. She opened her eyes, sat up, and shook her head groggily. She must have blacked out on the way back; her head was still pounding, but she was awake now, unfortunately. She was on the floor of the turret, with Minty standing over her with one hoof hesitantly raised. Beside her was her map case, which had apparently been pillowing her head. Her flank was wrapped in bandages, and it itched.
“I’m sorry to wake you, ma’am –” said Minty, breaking off when Summer looked sourly up at her, “– But Captain Havoc wants to see you. Without delay, y’see.”
“Ah.” Summer pushed herself to her hooves, shaking her head again and wincing. “Where is Turnip?”
“She’s already left to find the hospital tents. That’s where you’re going too, after Havoc is done with you.”
So it was that time already. “Very well. Take me to him.”
Minty pushed open the right-hoof turret hatch for her, and she cautiously climbed out, placing each hoof with care. Her body felt stiff and sore, and her hindleg hurt when she put weight on it. When she reached the ground, she rubbed floor scum off her muzzle with a sleeve and then started limping towards Havoc’s tent almost before Minty herself started in that direction to lead her. This was it, she thought, it had been nice to be a tanker for a day.
Havoc’s tent was, as it had been about two hours before, cloyingly warm, which wasn’t helping Summer’s desire to nod off any. The blue stallion himself was standing behind his table, the maps all neatly stacked on one side. Before him was an inkwell, a pen, and a sheet of paper, arranged with intimidating intention. Standing on one side of the table was Bubble Pop and Sweet Tooth, and on the other side was the orange aide from earlier, poised with his own pen and notepad.
Now that she saw the second platoon’s lieutenant up close, she seemed much older. Bubble Pop was a dark grape color, with a lighter purple mane shot with streaks of grey, and her eyes were sunk with the bags of premature aging. The hairs of her mane and tail curled up into overlapping spiral rolls that reminded Summer of pastries, and her cutie mark was of a lavender soda can with a bunch of grapes and bubbles on the label fizzing over with white foam. Despite her apparent age and wear, her posture was firm and her eyes blazed with intensity.
“Ah, miss Meadows. Good of you to join us. You know, we were just talking about you,” Havoc said, pinning her to the floor with his stare. “Take a seat.”
Summer looked around for a stool, and, seeing none, gingerly sat on her haunches where she was. She made sure to sit at her full height, not slouching of shrinking away from that intense gaze. That would make her seem guilty or remorseful, and it would be dishonest; she was not sorry about anything she had done.
“Alright, let’s get this, well, court, started. Marmalade, you may begin recording. First Lieutenant Summer Meadows, I, on the testimony of these two –” he nodded at the pair of lieutenants beside his table, “– charge you with desertion, disobeying direct orders, endangering Equestria’s military assets, ordering an unsanctioned mortar strike, theft of Equestrian military secrets: to whit, one factory-new medium tank, theft of military hardware, and openly lying about orders. Off the record, and that means don’t record this, Marmalade – I would also pin you with impersonating an officer. But, well,” he said, with an ironic twist of his mouth, “I think the list is long enough. Now, and you may resume recording, Marmalade, let’s hear from our brave officers. Second Lieutenant Sweet Tooth, what can you say for the record to corroborate these charges?”
“Well,” Sweet Tooth began, “When I was halfway done with briefing my platoon, she had her crew start their tank and then tore out of the depot in a hurry, despite orders to ride at the back of my column. When I called them on our frequency to stop and return to the platoon, she deliberately ignored me and continued on.”
“I was having radio trouble!” Summer protested, and Havoc whipped his head around and glared at her with such a terrible snarl on his lips that she instantly closed her mouth. He jerked his head at the orange stallion busily writing her words down, and she understood.
Sweet Tooth continued on as if she hadn’t said anything. “Later, on my way to the front, I stop at a command post, and find that she had already stopped there and ordered a mortar strike on a location without authorization from any higher officer.” Summer started; so he had known. “And then, when I got into shortwave range of Second Lieutenant Bubble Pop, she tells me that this pony had been claiming to be the new leader of Third Platoon, on Captain Havoc’s orders.”
“Orders which, to be clear, I did not give,” Havoc added.
Sweet Tooth nodded. “Yes. And that’s all I have to say about that.”
“Very well, this court has heard you. And now, let’s hear from Second Lieutenant Bubble Pop. What can you say for the record to corroborate these charges?”
Bubble Pop spoke clearly. “When she first made contact with me, she claimed to have been made leader of Third Platoon, and said she had sent Second Lieutenant Sweet Tooth and the rest of the column to the river ford, despite her claim that there was an ambush waiting there for them. In this way she endangered them and their machines.”
“Hold on,” Havoc said, “Do you mean to say that I should add ‘endangerment of Equestrian troops’ to the list of charges?”
“No, sir,” Bubble pop answered promptly, with a glance at Summer. “That was only what she claimed; it was not the case. And there’s another thing, that I had guessed, and then learned for certain when I questioned her crew. First, that Lieutenant Summer Meadows crossed the river just a half-kilometer downriver, at a point known to be too deep, and with the riverbanks too steep, for tanks to cross safely. In this way she placed Equestrian material in a situation of, in my opinion, needless risk. Second, she engaged a group of three enemy tanks, alone and without support, before contacting me. That she destroyed them all does not matter. I say that in this way also she placed her machine in a situation of extreme risk. And, finally, at a later point, she charged and ran down a group of anti-tank guns over hundreds of meters of open ground, instead of engaging with her cannon. This is the last time she places her machine in needless danger. That is all I have to say on the matter.”
“Well, now,” Havoc said, turning to Summer. “Do you have anything to say in your defense?”
Summer was painfully aware that what she said to this would go on record, and could potentially damn her in the future. She thought hard about what to say. “Everything that I did was to save lives and material both.”
“Is that your final word on the matter?”
Summer lifted her chin proudly. “I stand by my words.”
“As you wish. Now –” and Havoc’s expression grew thoughtful, “– there are some mitigating factors in this case. Second Lieutenant Sweet Tooth, the unsanctioned mortar bombardment stripped the enemy of their camouflage and foliage cover, exposing them to accurate counter-fire, correct?”
“Yes, sir,” the stallion answered.
“And Second Lieutenant Bubble Pop, the charge on the AT guns in the field allowed your column to attack the enemy from the flank without losses, correct? And the river crossing at the quote-unfordable-unquote point allowed them to reach the position to do so undetected by the enemy, correct?”
“That is true,” Bubble Pop said, “But the charge of fighting the three enemy tanks alone remains.”
“It does,” Havoc said. “I am ready to pronounce my sentence.” He reached over and put a hoof to Marmalade’s pen to stop it, and the orange pony took the hint and put the pen down. “First Lieutenant Summer Meadows, put on your rank tabs.”
Summer stared for a second; didn’t she already have those? Then, she realized what he was doing. “Yes, sir, of course,” she said, and she telekinetically unfastened her silver sergeant’s tabs, slipped them into her pocket, pulled out her golden lieutenant’s tabs, and fasted them on her neck, as she had done once before that day. When she had finished, Havoc nudged the pen back towards Marmalade, who picked it up in his mouth and poised it over the paper again.
He walked around the table and stood in front of her with an air of great ceremony. “First Lieutenant Summer Meadows, for your actions today, and in light of mitigating factors, I revoke your rank.” He ripped the tabs off her collar; the aide’s pen scribbled away. “You are demoted to sergeant, starting now. See the quartermaster tomorrow morning and acquire new tabs. Until you have your new tabs, you hold the rank of enlisted soldier. This court is dismissed.” Marmalade’s pen stopped moving a second later.
Summer sat still, trying to process what just happened. Just because she knew what happened, didn’t mean she really understood why he would do it, and that was bothering her. Bubble Pop and Sweet Tooth filed out past her silently, and Bubble Pop gave her a curious glance as she passed by, as if to see how she would react. Marmalade also left after them, probably to go make a copy of his transcript. Noonday sunshine filtered into the tent through the flap, and Summer felt a little dizzy. Havoc walked back around the table, picked up the pen, dipped it in the inkwell, and started writing the official report.
When everyone was gone, Summer started to put her sergeant’s tabs back on, but as soon as her blue aura appeared around her aching horn, Havoc said, without looking up from his writing, “Not in front of me.” Summer dropped her glow. Of course – if he saw, he would have to say something about it, perhaps even officially.
“…Sir, may I ask you a question?” She said, after working up the courage.
“You may,” he said, absently. The pen moved in quick, precise motions.
“Why?”
He stopped writing and set the pen down on a piece of scratch paper to keep ink off the table surface. He looked at her searchingly for a long time before answering. “I could demote you to enlisted soldier, if you would prefer,” he said. “I could call them back in here, we could hold another trial, I come up with a few more charges, and have Marmalade destroy the old transcript. But you don’t really want that, I don’t want that, and Equestria wouldn’t want that. I’ll be honest with you. You’re a good tanker, and I need good tankers in my unit. Four kills in one day? And by all accounts this is your first time even touching a tank? I spoke with your gunner – she didn’t have much bad to say about you.
"Now, personally speaking, you disgust me. Don’t look so offended – I know you used your connections to get this position. This position that a skilled and experienced earth pony commander could have taken, and along with it a brand-new machine that by rights should belong to Sweet Tooth, but it's gone to you instead, because you paid for it. I object to that on principle alone, even setting aside everything else about you. But my feelings don’t really matter here. Equestria is losing the war, and we’re losing badly. Every few weeks, we have to pick up our headquarters and move further; give more ground. We’ve been in this camp here for about a week. And Equestria needs the best it can possibly get to help defend it. When put it in those terms, don’t you think demoting you to enlisted and kicking you out of the tanks would be a terrible waste?”
He was clearly expecting an answer, and Summer hesitantly agreed, nodding her head. But he wasn’t done. “But there’s something I need you to understand. I know you’re used to getting your way –” Summer flushed, and opened her mouth to deny it, but he continued on, heedless of her, “– But I can’t let you keep leaving your platoon to do your own thing just because you think you can do the platoon leader’s job better than he can. From now on, you will follow orders, or it really is time for you to enroll in the infantry, you understand me? Just because your actions today saved hundreds of ponies’ lives, and preserved our meager armored strength in the area, doesn’t mean I’m going to tolerate it again. Now get out of here and see someone about that wound on your leg. I don’t need any more gimps in my command.” He picked up his pen again and resumed writing, obviously signaling that he was done speaking.
Summer left him, head spinning. Rather than go looking for the medical tents, as if she knew where that was, she stumbled back to her tank, climbed on shaking legs up to the still-warm engine deck, and flopped onto her side. For a brief second, she wondered where Supercharger had gone when the engine hadn’t been fixed yet, then her thoughts turned back to the captain. This outcome was more than she had hoped for, but she wasn’t sure that she liked this result any better than the one she expected. She had gone in prepared to lose everything; that was what taking responsibility was about, right? You did what you had to do, accepted your punishment, and lived proud, knowing that you had done as you ought. You weren’t supposed to get a… a slap on the fetlock, and a warning not to do it again!
Her thoughts turned gradually from the captain to her tank as she basked in his warm glow. She patted him gently. “Good boy,” she said, feeling the tank deserved some praise for all he had done that day. “You’re a very good boy. Big gun too, right?” and she giggled. “Very capable. You did good. I think you deserve a name.” She flipped onto her other side and thought about it for a while.
It was in this semi-lucid half-sleep state that Minty found her a few hours later, during the heat of the afternoon. When she went to nudge Summer awake, she found the unicorn already looking up at her.
“How does Sterling Ranger sound?” she said thickly, as if just waking up, although she hadn’t slept. Her headache felt a little better.
“What?”
“Which one of you paints the best?”
“That would probably be me,” Minty said.
Summer struggled unsteadily to her hooves. “Well, paint it on the barrel later. Use fancy letters. Where are Supercharger and Cashmere?”
“I told Cashmere to clean the inside of the tank. I don’t know where Supercharger is, but she’ll be back before dark, I promise. Should I take you to get that wound checked out?”
Summer thought for a moment, not that there was anything to think about. She was just feeling exceptionally slow, her head full of fuzzies. “…Very well. And remember to paint four kill rings on the barrel. Shame about the fifth one, I could have been an ace on my first mission.”
“I’ll do it,” Minty promised, gently guiding Summer down to the ground.
“And someone needs to make sure my maps get dried out properly,” Summer said, stumbling away. “I need those.” As she moved by the front of the tank, she heard a cough from inside, and saw smoke curl out of a vision port. She smiled and shook her head.
“I’ll make sure it gets done, ma’am,” Minty said. “Just leave it to me.” Catching up, she laid her tail over Summer’s back and guided the slight green unicorn in the direction of the medical tents. Above them, Celestia directed the sun to dip towards the horizon, the beginning of the end of another day.
Minty Twist wiped sweat from her brow and picked her paintbrush up in her teeth. She controlled her movements very carefully – this was fine detail work. A mistake now could ruin an hour of careful painting, but in the dry, late summer heat, it was hard going. She dipped the tip of the brush in the tin of paint and considered how to tackle the last letter.
It had been three days since the new commander, Summer Meadows, had shown up fresh off the train and promptly led her crew on an unsanctioned mission that saw them knock out four enemy tanks, or, in Minty’s estimation, possibly five, and help an entire platoon of five friendly tanks break out of a bad situation. In the process, their engine had blown out, and since then the crew had been sitting at the depot, largely idle, while the driver-mechanic ostensibly rebuilt the engine.
Ostensibly, of course, because the pegasus responsible had been nowhere to be found since early that morning, continuing a pattern for the last few days.
Minty wished she could say that the inactivity was taking its toll on them, but it was mostly only getting to the tank commander. As for herself, she was glad for the rest and time away from the front. The cleared area among the small tent city that constituted the regional headquarters where the unit’s tanks were parked was relatively peaceful. Silent, even, if you could tune out the constant buzz of activity that surrounded any military camp, the sound of generator engines running and tools clanking, and the booming of not-so-distant big guns.
Minty spared a glance at the pale green unicorn, Summer Meadows. She appeared outwardly calm, but the constant pacing in circles around the front of her tent betrayed her anxiety. Despite the heat of the day, she was dressed in her full uniform, and her officer’s cap was rammed firmly on her head. She was an alright sort, in Minty’s view, if a bit odd, but then, what unicorn wasn’t? Especially those aristocratic types.
She turned back and began painting. Summer had put up a good face of a cool and composed pony thus far, but sometimes, the mask would slip. Minty had seen it all a dozen times before. A new officer would arrive, put their best hoof forward, and somewhere along the way, they would crack. Minty knew better than most how this war had a way of grinding ponies down until the only thing left was a nub.
Thankfully, Minty didn’t think she herself had much to grind down to begin with. With the teeniest flourish, she finished the final letter and moved back.
“Splendid. Excellent job,” came a voice close behind her. Minty started; she hadn’t noticed Summer approach.
Minty dipped her head deferentially. “Thank you, ma’am.”
Her handiwork, on the right side of the barrel jacket near the base, were the words “Sterling Ranger” in a flowing, cursive script, white picked out with shading of grey and black along the letter-edges. Near the muzzle brake, done earlier using the same paints, were four kill-rings, two white and two black. Minty wasn’t a calligraphypony by any stretch, but she was quite proud of what she had managed to do.
“For such a good job, you can have the rest of the day off,” Summer said, like she was granting some great boon.
Minty looked around slowly at the nothing going on around them. There was nothing else they could do, at least, not without the engine running, and Minty thought Summer knew that. It was hard to tell sometimes.
The depot was very quiet today; the rest of the third platoon was out for the past several days along with the first platoon on an extended patrol, trying to boost their appearance of numbers on the front.
“Thank you, ma’am,” she said again.
“Very good,” Summer said curtly, and she returned to her restless pacing, alongside the tank this time.
Minty leaned against the turret, pulled out one of her hoof-rolled cigarettes, and watched her. The unicorn’s haunch was bandaged, a wound taken during the attack three days ago. While her mane was as well-groomed as it could be under the circumstances, her coat had a certain ratty quality to it, and she had deep bags under her eyes. Of course, nopony slept well when new to the front, and especially not after their first action, so it wasn’t anything to worry about for the time being. She would get over it eventually, Minty decided.
Minty imagined she looked worse off next to her commander. Her uniform wasn’t anywhere near as straight and neat; her forest-green coat had the dull sheen of the permanently unwashed; and her light grey mane, streaked with red, looked like she had just woken up. Then again, her mane always looked like that, no matter what she did. Around her grey eyes probably didn’t look any better than the commander’s, too, though hers were sunken and creased slightly at the edges with premature aging.
After a few minutes of relative silence, the commander pacing and Minty smoking, she caught the approach of two ponies out of the corner of her eye. It was Supercharger, a pony Minty had known for a few months now, ever since ending up in the tank corps., and Cashmere, a pony she had not. Summer noticed them a second later.
“And just where have you been?” Summer snapped, spinning from her pace and glowering at Supercharger when they approached. “I needed this engine repaired two days ago!”
Cashmere shrunk back, though the commander’s words were not directed at her. She was carrying a basket in her teeth with a scrap of canvas covering it, and she set it down on the ground before answering.
“Um, I w-was visiting Turnip at the hospital,” she stammered. “I also brought you some things from the quartermaster’s, like you asked.”
“Yes, good, thank you,” Summer said, fighting to regain her composure after her outburst. She waved Cashmere away with a hoof. “Leave it by my tent.” She looked intensely at Supercharger and demanded, “And what about you?”
Supercharger met her look inch by inch. “I was also visiting Turnip in the hospital. We walked back together.”
Minty caught a confused glance from Cashmere as the pink pony turned to go. Probably half of what the pegasus had said was true, and Minty could make a pretty good guess about the rest.
“I need that engine operational, Corporal Supercharger,” Summer said. “Why isn’t it done yet? You’ve already had three days.”
Supercharger’s eyes shifted around nervously and she took a half-step to one side. “I need some parts we don’t have.” As she spoke, she seemed to grow in confidence, and she gave a small grin. “I’ve got a friend working on getting some, but… you know how supply is at the front.” She finished with a small shrug in a “can’t be helped” sort of way. Minty caught Supercharger’s eye and shook her head disapprovingly, and the pegasus flushed guiltily.
Summer narrowed her eyes. “Do what you can,” she ordered, and stomped past Supercharger towards her tent. She shoved past Cashmere, who almost dropped the basket she was carrying, and vanished inside. Minty watched her go, then looked back at Supercharger and raised her eyebrow pointedly.
“Alright, fine, I’ll see what I can do,” Supercharger said, rolling her eyes. She climbed onto the engine deck, raised one of the panels, and disappeared from view.
Cashmere set the basket down next to the tent and was about to scurry off when Minty stopped her with a, “Wait.”
The pink mare turned around, a question on her face, and Minty threw her a new pack of cigarettes. She caught them and stashed the small box under her collar with a swift movement, threw a salute, and dashed away.
When she had gone, Minty finished her cigarette and spat the stub onto the hard ground. Minty rather liked Cashmere; she was a hardworking little soul, and because she caved easily to pressure, Minty felt a duty to watch out for her. Ponies like that got worn down faster than most. These last few days, Cashmere seemed to have latched on to Summer, a development which worried Minty. Aristocrats didn’t usually have the best endings. Speaking of the sergeant…
With a sigh, she walked up to Summer’s tent. It was a small thing made of green fabric, barely big enough for a cot, but tall. Minty knocked on a tentpole outside to announce her presence and when the unicorn said, “Enter,” she did.
Inside, Summer was standing up from her bedding, a bedroll laid atop several blankets atop a layer of some crushed-looking oak boughs. Even in the privacy, and heat, of her own tent, she wore her full uniform. Sweat beaded on her brow.
Summer brushed something invisible off her shoulder and said, “Yes? What is it?”
Minty looked around while she considered how to word it; the only other furnishing was Summer’s extremely old-fashioned infantrypony’s pack lying at the other end of the small tent, looking several centuries out of place. “It’s about Supercharger,” Minty began.
“Did something happen – er, what about her?” Summer asked, and Minty couldn’t fail to miss the change that came over her face when the pegasus was mentioned.
“It’s about the engine, actually,” Minty said. “It’s true what she says about parts. Take it from me – sometimes you just can’t get the things you need. We still haven’t got more shells for the cannon. Believe it or not, but as bad as things seem, logistics are actually better now than they were at the start of the war, when we were… when the Empire wasn’t kicking our flanks quite so hard.”
Summer looked at her blankly for a second. “We don’t have more rounds for the cannon?” she asked, then she shook her head furiously. “Never mind. You were there at the beginning of the war? How was it?”
Minty didn’t like how eager the sergeant had suddenly become. She paused before saying, “…I volunteered.” She considered what to say next, and decided she didn’t want to lie to the sergeant, but she didn’t want to tell her the truth, either. “I served Equestria the best I could.” Not strictly true, but it would do.
Summer absorbed her words, and seemed disappointed she didn’t have more to say. When Minty stopped speaking, she asked, almost pleadingly, “How could you stand it?”
Uh oh. This was a question Minty definitely didn’t want to think about, let alone answer. She knew why Summer was asking, and it wouldn’t do any good to answer her, honestly or otherwise. This was something she had to hear from an equal, not a subordinate.
“Stand what, ma’am?”
At Minty’s prompt, Summer seemed to realize what she was doing, and her face snapped to a too-serious expression. She straightened and cleared her throat importantly. “Forget I said anything, corporal.”
“Already forgotten.”
Summer continued, as if Minty hadn’t said anything. “Is there anything we can do to get those parts the corporal mentioned? ‘Back channels’ or somesuch?”
“I’ll make inquiries of my own,” Minty promised. “In the meantime, why don’t you relax a little and mingle with your fellow officers? It might help take your mind off the wait.”
“I can’t relax, we’re at war!” Summer snapped with sudden fire, drawing herself up, even though she was shorter than Minty. Her businesslike expression failed her. “Every day we dawdle here, ponies could be dying that we could have protected! Don’t you see?”
Minty’s expression hardened. So that was how it was. Sooner or later, the sergeant had to realize that this line of thinking was just a waste of energy. It wasn’t Minty’s place to say this, though, so she held her tongue.
Summer cleared her throat self-consciously as the silence began to set in. “I sincerely apologize for my outburst. That was unseemly of me. Leave me now.” She turned her back on Minty in the small space and added, “And tell Cashmere I won’t be taking my dinner this evening.”
Minty saluted at the sergeant’s back and ducked out backwards. She wished she could help, but she had better things to devote her energy to than trying to reach yet another fresh officer. She’d tried it several times before, and fraternizing with officers never ended well. A quick surge of grief rose in her at the thought, and she swallowed it down again.
As for Supercharger’s dawdling, she would give it a few days, and then when the delay was no longer reasonably excusable, Minty would start pressuring her to finish the job. In the meanwhile, it wouldn’t hurt anything to let the pegasus continue wandering off, as long as it kept them all out of the direct line of fire.
She put Summer out of her mind as she walked away from the tent and turned her thoughts to Supercharger. She’d seen the pegasus work some amazing feats of mechanics, doing more with less than any other pony Minty had seen. Sure, she’d been missing sometimes in the past few months, but she always did her work swiftly, and was usually found tuning something or other on whatever tank she was working on. But not lately.
She decided to go see if any of the other crews were having a game of cards; she could use a game of cards right about now. As she walked by the tank on her way to the other side of the lot, she found Cashmere rubbing the side of the hull with a damp cloth.
“Did the commander tell you to polish the tank?”
“No,” Cashmere instantly answered, throwing Minty a sideways glance. Minty raised her eyebrows and gave Cashmere a look, not buying it for a second. “…Yes,” conceded the pink mare eventually.
“Well, stay clear of the barrel. I just painted there. Oh, and the commander is letting us have the supper you got for her – she’s decided to go to the officer’s mess tonight.”
Minty rose before dawn the next day. She crawled out of her sleeping bag, made an unsuccessful attempt at managing her permanently messy mane, and buttoned on her uniform jacket. Before climbing over the other sleeping ponies in the tent, she rolled up her things and concealed several mousetraps around the pouches. Then, she strategically set bits of twig and pebbles around those traps, so that she would know if anyone had touched her pack later, and where.
She stepped out of the tent and yawned; it felt like it was going to be another hot day. Couldn’t those pegasi see their way to forgetting to manage a few more rainclouds? Her body itched for a coffee and a cigarette as she made her way through the D Company’s area to the tank.
When she reached it, the bright grey paint shining dimly in the predawn darkness, she climbed onto the mud guard and tried to open the loader’s turret hatch. It was locked. She tried the gunner’s turret hatch, and found it also locked. She tapped the hatch lightly with a forehoof. No response.
“Open up, soldier, nightmare take you!” she hissed, banging on the hatch as loudly as she dared.
She heard a groan and a shuffling sound from inside, and then heard the latch sliding and Cashmere appeared, blinking.
Minty glared at her. Forget saving her cigarettes for later, she needed one right now. “Wake up, soldier. Get your blankets out of the tank before the commander wakes up,” she barked. “And don’t ever lock the hatches again. I let you to sleep in it, not live in it. Suppose something happened and we all needed to wait for you to let us in?”
“S-sorry, ma’am,” Cashmere squeaked. “I won’t do it again.”
Rather than rebuke her directly, Minty decided to take a different approach. “You know, I can always tell the commander what you’ve been doing,” she said, casually, “and tell her I only just found out. She would believe me.”
Cashmere visibly paled in the darkness and disappeared inside, and Minty heard her rustling around as she packed as fast as she could. When she climbed out, tugging her pack behind her, Minty stopped her with an upraised hoof.
“Ah-ah-ah. I can’t let you go without a disciplinary measure. Do you still have that pack of cigarettes I lent you?”
Cashmere’s eyes darted around briefly. She swallowed and said, “Lent? No, I… Traded it for some sugar.”
Minty suddenly grabbed Cashmere by the collar and pulled her close; she lost her grip on the pack, which fell like a sack onto the ground. The pink mare was terrified; her lip began to quiver.
“You’re a bad liar,” Minty said evenly. She let the trembling mare go, coming away with the pack in her hoof and stashing it in a pocket.
Minty didn’t much like government cigarettes, which was why she had been giving them to Cashmere the last week she had known her, but she had to do something meaningful here. If Cashmere didn’t wise up before she was caught, she could lose her position and end up back in the infantry - and Minty knew too well what the survival rate there was.
“Go and get yourself something to eat. Get something for the commander, too – she’s going to be hungry when she wakes up.” Whether she likes it or not, Minty added privately. “After that, I want you to go find wherever Supercharger’s gone.”
“But she’s not gone, she’s right over there on those crates…” Cashmere said.
Minty turned and looked where Cashmere pointed. The grey pegasus, nearly invisible in the predawn darkness, had pushed together three crates of ammunition for the company’s short-barreled seven-and-a-half centimeter cannons and laid a ratty wool blanket over it. She was sprawled out, sound asleep, snoring softly. Her uniform jacket pooled unbuttoned around her on the crate and her normally folded and hidden wings flopped freely out on either side of her.
Minty opened the cigarettes; about a quarter were missing already, but it couldn’t be helped. She plucked one out, lit up, shook her head, and turned back to Cashmere. “She will be,” she said simply.
/ - / - / - / - /
The morning passed as it had for the past several days. Summer and Supercharger both rose with the coming of the dawn and found Minty already awake nearby and watching the sky. Cashmere returned from mess, carrying a tin of gruel, and Summer wolfed it down hungrily. She looked, to Minty, like she wanted more, but she handed the tin back to Cashmere and retreated inside her tent. Supercharger mumbled something about eating at the mess herself and slipped off.
Minty watched her go, taking note of the direction; the same as yesterday. After that, it was another morning of Summer alternating between sulking in her tent or pacing anxiously, and Cashmere hovering nearby when she had returned from her appointed mission.
Minty was surreptitiously playing cards with the lads from tank no.7, strategically letting them win just enough she wasn’t losing bits, but not gaining too many either, when her pricked ears caught the distinctive rumble of dry track links and petrol engines approaching down the lane from outside the camp.
They came rumbling into the space cleared for them, First Platoon followed by the rest of Third Platoon. The commanders, standing in their hatches, looked haggard and dusty. First Platoon parked in a ragged row on the opposite side of the cleared lane, and Minty moved back to a touch allow tank thirteen to pull in as Third Platoon parked. Then the crews began disembarking, the commanders trudging towards the command tent and the crewponies fetching necessities for their machines. The erstwhile players around Minty scrambled to put their cards down and help with the operation.
Minty excused herself from the now empty table and flicked away the extinguished butt she had been mouthing on for the past half hour. The captain was about to order a new mission; it was time to go find Supercharger.
“Wow, they don’t look very good, do they?” came Supercharger’s voice near her shoulder.
Minty casually turned around, putting her poker face to good use to hide her surprise. “Decided to come back, eh?” she snipped. “Get tired of ‘visiting Turnip’?”
“Nah,” Supercharger shrugged. “I should probably do something on it sometime, or the sarge will get suspicious. And it looks like I’m just in time, too,” she said, nodding at the no.11 tank, Sweet Tooth’s Dandy Cupcake.
Before Minty could reply, Supercharger had moved away and hopped up on the engine deck. Minty decided to let it be. Instead, she walked over to Summer’s tent and paused. From within, she heard a sound all too familiar to her. There were times when even a good soldier should ignore protocol; she knocked on a tentpole and stuck her head in without any further warning.
Summer instantly leapt up from her bedroll onto her hooves, grabbing her uniform jacket and throwing it over her back. Her hat was still on. She angrily wiped tears from her eyes and demanded, “What is it?”
“The platoon is back, as I’m sure you know, ma’am. It would be expected of you to make yourself seen at the command tent.” Minty said, carefully giving no sign she had seen anything.
Summer sighed heavily and nudged at her eyes with the back of her hoof. “Right. Of course,” she said, buttoning up her uniform jacket and strapping on her sidearm.
Minty saluted and left the unicorn, to go find Cashmere. She thought it unlikely that the captain would order them, specifically, out on anything, with the engine gone kaput, but she needed to make sure everyone was on hoof and ready just in case. Stranger things had happened.
Cashmere, as it turned out, was laying in the dirt under the tank, idly pushing around pebbles in front of her.
“Hey. Get out here and get your things straight. We could be going next.”
Cashmere looked up at her, blinking at the brightness outside. “But the engine isn’t fixed yet,” she said, “There’s no way they would pick us!”
“Never count on it,” Minty told her.
She smoked while she waited for Summer to return from the little meeting at the captain’s. Cashmere stood stiffly, and probably uncomfortably, to attention next to her hatch the entire time, and Supercharger was banging around noisily in the engine compartment. After a while, Minty told Cashmere to stand down.
Finally, she spotted the young unicorn leaving the command tent. Summer walked with an unusual spring in her step, and held her head high. She seemed like she was in a much better mood, and Minty already knew the reason why.
“Good news!” Summer said, addressing her crew, “We’re being sent into combat!”
“What?!” Supercharger protested, in the middle of climbing out of the engine compartment. “But… the engine!”
Minty held her tongue.
“We can still move, can’t we?” Summer said. “We drove all the way back here under our own power, didn’t we?”
“We did, but-” Supercharger began, but Summer cut her off.
“I volunteered my tank to support an infantry offensive to the east. We only need to keep pace with infantry, something I felt us well capable of. When we get back, the captain says we’ll have all the parts we could need.”
Summer tossed her head dismissively. “Yes, I am aware. Turnip should be recovered enough when we get back.”
Before Minty had been in the army, she would have facehoofed. “We are missing a loader, ma’am. Trust me, you are going to need all your awareness on this operation, and I can’t shoot the gun when I have to get up to load it.”
Summer seemed sightly taken aback. “Well, perhaps we could beg somepony off another crew in the company?”
Minty looked around slowly at the worn-out tankers around them, many missing crew of their own, and at the relatively fresh ones, also missing some crew, helping them. “It wouldn't hurt to try.”
Supercharger, who had been visibly fretting in silence, suddenly perked up. “Ooh, ma’am, I have an idea! I know the perfect pony for the job!”
Summer turned to her with interest. “Do you now? Who are they?”
“He's an infantrypony with the 57th hoof reserve. Just go to their area on the west end of camp and ask the captain there for Thrash Metal.”
Minty didn’t like where this was going, but she held her tongue.
“Splendid, that's that trifle solved, then!” Summer said. She then snapped into her “orders” mode, and started rattling off instructions. “Corporal Supercharger, make sure we’re able to move in an hour. Enlisted Cashmere, see to it that we have all the supplies we need for a week out. Corporal Twist and I will go and see about recruiting this fellow.” When she finished, she turned her back on them all and started walking briskly away.
“Why is she walking the wrong way?” Cashmere asked, confused, into the vacuum of silence between them the sergeant left behind her.
Minty winced, but Summer was thankfully out of earshot. “She wants to get her things from the officer’s lounge," she told Cashmere. "Make sure you get us enough to last for two weeks, alright?”
As Minty hurried away to catch up with Summer, she heard Cashmere say, “But the officer’s lounge isn’t that way either…”
Minty caught up once the command tent hid them from view. She turned Summer in the right direction, earning a grateful glance from the sergeant, and they made their way through the headquarters camp together. The camps were always set up a different way every time they moved, but she had a good memory for directions, and for a lot of other things besides. As they walked, she lit up another one, keeping a lid on her simmering annoyance until later. Of all the ponies for the corporal to suggest…
/ - / - / - / - /
They found the reserve corps. ten minutes later. It consisted of a ring of tents around an area cleared of undergrowth under the boughs of the nearby forest. All around it, Minty knew, were the foxholes where most of the infantry slept, but for the moment the bulk of those ponies were elsewhere on the day’s duties. Summer predictably headed right for the largest tent around the circle of dead campfires to find the commanding officer, but Minty hung back and decided to wander the periphery instead.
It wasn’t long before she found somepony worth talking to.
“Hey, you,” she said to a pale-yellow mare reclining against a tree with her pack under her head, “Got any tobacco?”
The mare spat through a gap in her front teeth and squinted up at Minty. “Only if’n ye chew it,” she grunted.
Minty wrinkled her muzzle. “Never mind. I’m looking for a pony named Thrash Metal. Have you seen him around here?”
The mare chuckled dryly. “Shoot, ah sure did. He’s over in those bushes with Petunia from th’ labor detail.” The mare jerked her head in the indicated direction. “You jest set tight and wait yer turn, y’hear?” she said, with a knowing wink.
The corner of Minty’s mouth quirked down a touch. She left the soldier alone and walked over to where the mare had pointed, a dense clump of bushes outside the area cleared by the company, trying to ignore the noises she heard from them as she drew closer. Approaching as close as she dared go before she ran the risk of seeing anything, she cleared her throat and said, in her best commanding voice, “Enlisted Soldier Thrash Metal?”
There was a sudden scramble from within and a moment later the pony in question appeared without, tucking his uniform jacket back into his midsection belt. Thrash Metal was a handsome black stallion with a spiky white mane shot with red, and large caramel-colored eyes. His cutie mark was a blue treble clef, broken in half, each half sitting atop the pink halves of broken heart. Minty sighed inwardly; this was the reason for Supercharger’s constant absences lately?
Of course, she knew about him, but it was Minty’s first time seeing the pony in person. As first impressions went, he was wasting his, but they needed a loader and the sergeant wanted this one, so Minty pressed on. “Hey, look, matching manes,” she said, with false cheerfulness, trying to break the ice a little bit.
With a sullen glace at her, then back at the bushes, then back at her, he said, “Mine is naturally this color.”
Minty set her jaw and resisted the urge to say something very unkind. “So is mine.”
“So anyway,” he said, annoyed, “If you’re looking for me just to flirt, you’re very bad at it. What did you really want?” Behind him, a pale pink mare slipped out of the bushes and scurried away, tripping over the uniform jacket held in her teeth.
Minty scowled; he could clearly see her collar tabs, so his tone was definitely intentional. “I am Corporal Minty Twist, and you should have a better attitude, seeing as you are about to receive an assignment that I think you probably don’t want to turn down. One that is a little… cozier than this one.” She glanced around significantly at the hundreds of foxholes around, some with ponies sleeping inside them, curled under foil blankets. “If you’ll follow me, my commanding officer and yours are no doubt already discussing the details.”
His annoyance suddenly vanished like a summer rain. He eyed her up and down with a newly critical eye, and she felt her skin crawl under her coat, but she held her ground. “Alright, anything to get me out of this dump,” he said, “Just let me get my ruck first.”
Minty turned away and stood by while he collected his meager belongings from a hole dug among the roots of a nearby tree. That was… surprisingly easy, all things considered.
He returned, burdened by his packs and wearing a steel infantry helmet, his rifle hanging off his side. They walked together into the ring of officers’ tents. As they passed by one of the dead campfires, Summer and a portly moustached unicorn stallion emerged from a tent and caught sight of them.
“Oh, there’s the lad now! Jolly good!” said the stallion, nodding to himself. He turned to Summer. “Of course you can have him! I can spare a pony or two for the daughter of a dear friend, ha!”
“You would have my thanks,” Summer said.
“Yes, of course.” He waved vaguely. “Shall we shake on it?” the stallion said, holding out a hoof.
Summer hesitated a moment before taking the stallion’s hoof. The instant their hooves made contact, he shook heartily, nearly lifting Summer off the ground.
“P-pleased,” she said, when she had her hoof back. Their business evidently concluded, Summer began tottering back the way they came, and the other unicorn turned to walk back inside his tent. Minty noticed that he seemed oddly relieved, but she kept her misgivings about this deal to herself.
/ - / - / - / - /
Minty let Summer lead the way back, so she could walk behind Thrash. It wasn’t that she felt he would try and slip away – in fact, he seemed enthusiastic about this change in his fortunes, once she had explained to him what, exactly, he had been called away from his unit to do. It was because she didn’t want him to be able to look at her haunches while they walked.
When they returned to the depot, Cashmere wasn’t there, but Supercharger was, only her navy-blue tail visible hanging over the side of the tank. Minty hailed her over the new bustle, and her head appeared around an engine cover.
Summer turned to Thrash and said, “Right then. Welcome to our crew. We leave shortly, so make certain you are packed in before then.”
Because the unicorn’s back was turned, she didn’t see how Supercharger’s face lit up in a radiant grin at the sight of the black stallion, but Minty did. Supercharger jumped out of the tank and hurried over. Minty frowned. She couldn’t keep a lid on it any longer.
“Excuse me, sergeant, but I’m just going to have some words with our mechanic,” Minty put in suddenly. She stepped around Summer to intercept Supercharger. Throwing a foreleg over the pegasus’ neck, she pulled her around and led her behind the tank, out of view of the sergeant and their newest crewmember. Two of the crewponies from the no.3 tank a couple meters away looked at them curiously. Minty stared daggers at them until they moved off a short distance, but they continued to watch.
She turned back to Supercharger, who was looking peeved. “Okay, what’s this all about?” the pegasus asked.
“What this is about is that you-” Minty began. She stopped, and made an effort to reign her temper in. She needed another smoke. “I really didn’t want to bring this up, but why the hay did you have to volunteer your coltfriend of all ponies as a replacement loader?”
Especially, she added to herself, to a commander who was inclined to trust your word far more than she should.
“There’s a big offensive coming up, everyone says so.” Supercharger took a step back and raised a foreleg defensively. “He’ll be safer with us.”
“Safer, and closer to you,” Minty snapped back. “I don’t think that’s a good thing. Especially now that I’ve met him.”
“He’s a good pony!” Supercharger protested. “You just don’t know him yet! He’s really sweet and I like spending time with him!”
“Too much time lately,” Minty replied sourly. “I’ve been covering for you with the sergeant. You didn’t used to be absent this much. Was he only recently posted here long-term?”
Supercharger scuffed at the dirt and looked down. “Yes.”
“Still. Even if he were the nicest stallion in the world, which I do not think he is, think about the sergeant. You’ve seen the way she looks at you. She took her first action badly – I think if she found out about you and this pony that you suggested to join our crew, it would not go well for either of you two.”
“It’s not that big a deal,” Supercharger said, “She can handle it.”
“It is, and if a couple tanks blown up gets her like it has, I don’t think she can. Just promise me that when we come back around this tank, you are going to treat him like a respected colleague you so happen to know from somewhere, and nothing else. You are not going to sneak off with him to fool around for as long as he is in our crew. Alright?”
Supercharger was silent for a long moment, hopefully weighing things in her mind. Minty was about to prompt her when she said, “Fine. I promise. But as soon as Turnip is back from the hospital, it’s off. How’s that?”
Minty sighed. It was probably about as good as she was going to get out of her. “Fine. But there’s something else. I don’t think you should be seeing him, period.”
“Funny you should say that,” Supercharger quipped.
“What? No, listen, I’m serious. When I found him, he was with some mare named Petunia. Besides, he gives me the heebie-jeebies. Supercharger, as your friend, I don’t think this pony is good for you.”
“Oh, that,” Supercharger said, waving a hoof dismissively. “Yeah, he fools around with other mares from time to time. But I’m his main mare. I’m the one he really loves.”
Minty stared, dumbfounded. She gave up. Let it happen, then; that broken-heart cutie mark was a prophecy. “Fine, whatever. As long as you don’t jeopardize the sergeant's state of mind. And if I find both of you missing at the same time, I will not hesitate to bring a world of hurt down on you, whether we're friends or no. Am I clear?”
Supercharger rolled her eyes. “Crystal clear, miss bossy-hooves. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I should go and meet my ‘respected colleague’.”
She pushed past Minty and rounded the nose of the tank. Minty watched her go, then, when she was out of sight, angrily dug the pack of government-issue cigarettes from her pocket. She didn’t want to waste one of her good newspaper ones, she just wanted the nicotine. She tapped one out, struck a match, and lit it. Taking a deep drag, she leaned against the hull, peering around the upper glacis, and watched Supercharger “introduce herself”.
After a second, she shifted her attention the new loader. At first he seemed confused by Supercharger’s “friendly, professional” attitude, but he quickly caught on, and now he seemed fairly bored. His attention wandered and settled on Minty, who held his gaze and blew out a cloud of smoke.
When the introductory remarks were over, Summer looked first at one, then the other, shook her head furiously, and left them to attempt to take down her tent.
Then Minty heard Supercharger say, “Let me show you around the tank,” and she felt she had to intervene.
Walking over, she said, “It’s a tank, not a mansion. He can look around it himself.” She stabbed a forehoof at Supercharger. “You should be focusing on getting the engine road-worthy. You only have a half hour. Stop wasting time.”
Supercharger huffed, but she walked away and jumped back onto the engine deck and vanished behind an open engine cover.
“That’s harsh,” commented Thrash.
Minty glared at him. “Yes, well, sometimes she gets her priorities a little mixed up, and needs to be reminded. You just get yourself inside and see where everything is. Better do it now, when we’re not hitting every bump in the path.”
“Don’t mind if I do,” he said, eyebrows arched playfully.
Minty snorted and turned away just in time to meet Cashmere returning with a milk crate balanced on her back and a sack gripped in her mouth. She hurried to help her, transferring the crate onto her own back.
“How much did you have to give for all this?” Minty asked.
“Oh, I told them you sent me and then what I wanted, and they gave me all this!” Cashmere said, happily. Minty groaned; this was going to cost quite a few favors to pay back. “Who’s that?”
“What?” Minty said. Thrash was tentatively poking his muzzle inside the radio operator’s hatch. “Oh. That’s our new backup loader. Keep your possessions close, but keep your flanks closer.”
“What?” Cashmere asked, confused. Minty merely moved off, without elaborating further.
To reach the turret storage box with their loads, they had to climb up the front of the tank. Minty passed by Thrash without issue, but the stallion stopped Cashmere with an outstretched hoof.
“Hey, cutie,” he said, “What’s your name?”
Minty shrugged the milk crate off into the baggage box and glanced over to Summer to see if she was looking; the sergeant was busy wrestling with a tentpole.
“C-cashmere,” stammered the pink mare, and she coughed nervously. “W-what’s yours?”
“The name’s Thrash Metal,” he said, examining the underside of his hoof in mock aloofness.
“That’s, um, nice. Nice name,” Cashmere said, smiling weakly and backing up the machine onto the turret roof, tugging the sack behind her. She deposited the sack in the box and Minty gave her a “see what I mean?” look. Cashmere nodded and jumped off the side of the engine deck and went to fetch her pack.
Minty stepped down the front of the tank and stopped next to Thrash. With another quick glance to make sure Summer wasn’t looking, she leaned in close to the stallion and said, “Stay away from that mare. Got it?” with each word punctuated by jabbing Thrash sharply in the chest.
Thrash looked down at her outstretched hoof, then up at her face, shrugged, and slowly lowered himself into the hatch. Minty snorted angrily and went to help Summer, who had somehow gotten something with her tent hopelessly tangled.
While she assisted, she considered voicing her concerns, but decided it wasn’t worth saying anything. The young unicorn had enough to worry about, and they still needed a loader, even one like that; there wasn’t any more time left in the sergeant’s deadline to find another. She would see for herself sooner or later what sort of stallion he was, anyway, Minty told herself.
“There you go. You should probably ask somepony for help next time you need to set this thing up, though.”
“I can manage by myself, thank you very much,” Summer said, frostily. Wrapping the tent bundle in her glow, she lifted it onto the engine deck in between the engine covers and lashed it down with twine. If only all ponies could perform such feats of remote manipulation.
“Alright, climb aboard, let’s go,” Summer called, to the crew at large.
Supercharger appeared. “But I still need a few minutes! It hasn’t been an hour yet!”
“We’re leaving ahead of schedule,” Summer told her, “Start it up.”
Fourty minutes later, after a lot of shouting and smoke and the liberal use of a fire extinguisher, they rumbled out of the depot, stuck in first gear.
They made good time, or as well as they could be expected to make when confined to a handful of kilometers per hour. At first, the going was off-road, along ground churned by hooves, tanks, and trucks, but Summer soon had them on a proper road, a quaint country lane little more than two tire-ruts in the grass. The road was deeply rutted from all the trucks that had been using it since the rain. The ruts had hardened as the weather turned dry and hot, and now the going was nearly as bumpy as not using a road at all.
Minty reclined in the gunner’s chair, her forelegs crossed behind her head, silently craving tobacco and keeping an eye on the woods to the left of the road. Behind her and to the right, Summer sat in the commander’s chair, with the commander’s hatch open as always, looking around at where they were going. Along their right lay a stretch of marshy ground, signaled by the deep-mud reeds that grew thickly there.
She spared a glance to check on their new loader. Thrash sat on his haunches on the opposite side of the gun looking both bored and uncomfortable, clearly wishing he had the chair he would normally have had, if Turnip hadn't removed it and thrown it away. Supercharger’s bare minimum of work hadn’t extended to repairing the holes that anti-tank gun had left in the turret last time, and he was able to watch the road easily through the hole in front of his position.
The afternoon was hot, and the crew had almost all the hatches and vision ports open for ventilation. Minty alone kept hers closed, because she would rather sweat a little than be left open to shrapnel in case of a sudden air raid or shelling; it had happened before, and their tank was a tempting target, in the open as it was.
She had given Thrash a brief lesson in the types of shells they carried on the way. Several times, Minty caught Supercharger looking back at him, but he seemed to be ignoring her. Was he playing a part, or was he merely disinterested? Minty chewed on this.
Summer, at least, seemed to be in much better spirits. Minty supposed that she had misjudged; the unicorn didn’t need rest, she needed something to take her mind off of things. Of course, that didn’t change that what served to do that entailed putting all their lives on the line. She shook her head; she should really steer the sergeant to take up some kind of hobby. Cards, perhaps.
Then Minty heard the fatal crack, followed immediately by several hollow spang sounds from the halves of the commander’s hatch.
Minty grabbed Summer with both forelegs and yanked the unicorn inside. “Close the hatches!" she yelled. As the others scrambled to do so, deep pings sounded in the compartment as more bullets hit the armor.
But Summer’s hatch remained open. Minty dropped the suddenly limp commander, who slumped over and fell on Thrash, and lunged upwards to grab both halves and pull them closed. She slid the latch home and heard something heavy clatter onto it and skid off, and a deafening explosion rocked the turret. The force of the blast slammed Thrash’s hatch shut while he was pulling it closed, eliciting a sharp curse from the stallion.
Minty took one look at Summer’s slumped form and took charge of the situation. “Supercharger, keep driving as fast as you can without killing the engine. Thrash, stick your rifle out of that shell-hole in front of you.”
Thrash had already recovered; this obviously wasn’t his first combat either. He shrugged off Summer’s body and picked up his full-length infantrypony’s rifle from the floor near the right-side shell rack and pushed it through the hole where the machine gun and turret face vision port would normally be.
The pings of bullet impacts sounded, but most of them were not as loud, hitting the back of the engine compartment or ripping into the turret box to be stopped by the baggage. Minty slipped out of her chair and crouched to check on something important. She put her hoof to the front of Summer’s neck, fully prepared to not find anything, but not only did she find a pulse, Summer then groaned and tried to sit up. Relieved, Minty patted her on the cheek and slipped back into her chair.
Two heavy objects clattered onto the engine deck and exploded.
“Grenades!” Minty swore. The enemy was able to keep pace easily; there was no way they would outrun ponies like this. “Supercharger, turn us around to face them. We’ve got to fight.”
The tank swung around slowly. The small arms fire increased in intensity, hitting near vision ports, trying to blind them. Minty closed hers and hoped the others had the sense to do the same. The bow machinegun rattled off a burst, and Thrash fired a shot, then cycled his rifle and fired again.
“I need a high-explosive shell,” Minty yelled. Thrash started and dropped his gun and rushed to grab one. The rifle fell inside, the brass buttplate hitting the floor with a loud clang, the barrel still projecting up through the hole. The bow machinegun fired again. Something much heavier hit the front of the hull with a thunk – an anti-tank weapon.
While Thrash fumbled with the cannon breech, Minty cracked open the left turret face vision port and swung the turret around, triangulating her target based on how the hit had sounded. She quickly spotted the source of the shot. It was a rifle, with a barrel was twice as long as a pony, sticking out of the treeline like a sore hoof. The operator, a dun-colored crystal pony, had rested the gun on a tree branch for a firing rest.
She got on the gunsight and cranked around the cannon to the area, adjusting elevation and horizontal travel simultaneously with long practice. Through the sight, she saw the pony drop the rifle and make a run for it. She fired.
And nothing happened. She turned to look at Thrash with a snarl just in time to see him close the breech. She looked through the sight again and saw her gun was pointed left and getting farther off-target by the second.
“Supercharger, stop turning!” she yelled, “I’m trying to shoot something!”
The tank stopped rotating, and she got the turret back on target. Already, some daredevil among them had picked up the anti-tank rifle and was aiming it right at her, or more likely, at the gunner’s position. She rolled the firing switch.
The gun boomed, the breech kicked, the tank rocked. The target vanished in a flash and a shuddering boom. The tree he had been using to brace buckled and slowly fell over with a crash.
“Shoot at anything that moves,” she ordered Thrash. “I’m going to load the gun myself.” He nodded and picked up his rifle, happy to be back in his element. The machinegun chattered again.
She opened the locker on her side of the compartment, pulled out a high-explosive shell from the bottom-left rack, armed it, then awkwardly stoop up on her hind legs and braced her shoulder on the commander’s seat to reach over the bars of the gun cradle and push it into the breech. Several more grenades exploded harmlessly on the outside of the tank, but a bit of shrapnel flew upwards through the crack she had made in the forward left vision port and fell harmlessly where she had just been sitting. Sweeping the metal bits off her chair and sitting back down, she reached forward and closed it and panned around with the turret. Any time she saw two crystal-colored coats at once, she rolled the switch and blew them away, then got up to repeat the process again.
After the third shell spent this way, as she was loading another, she stood up and came face-to-face with a slightly unfocused-looking Summer. The unicorn smiled and took the shell from her and began awkwardly fitting it into the breech. When the gun was loaded again, Summer crossed her forehooves together in a “no” gesture. Minty took it to mean Summer didn’t want her to fire the cannon again, and she nodded and sat back down. Summer climbed back into her seat and picked up her microphone.
“Ladies,” she began, then, remembering Thrash, continued, “Or, er, crew, I am sorry to have worried you all like that. Corporal Supercharger, I need you to keep us angled in the direction of greatest fire. Enlisted Metal, keep shooting, but load when I say.” Thrash didn’t seem to hear; he kept shooting, cycling, shooting. “Enlisted Cashmere, you are doing good work. And Corporal Twist, don’t fire until I give the word.”
She was hard to hear over the sound of bullets hitting the tank and grenades going off around them. Didn’t these ponies ever give up? Even so, Minty was relieved that the commander had recovered enough to take charge. She could see better than Minty where a shell would be best used, and Minty wouldn’t need to worry about directing the tank anymore when she was already so busy working the cannon.
Summer pressed her head sideways against the locked hatch, in that odd way she needed to do to be able to see out the cupola slits, and said, “Gunner, target 11 o’clock, 400 meters, down the road!”
Minty nudged the turret over and caught a glimpse through the gunsight of a group of ponies crossing, probably a whole squad.
“Fire!”
The shell landed amongst them and blew their bodies over in every direction. Thrash dropped his rifle and heaved another shell off the rack and began arming it. Cashmere let off another burst. The tank rotated in place slowly this way and that, carving wide ruts on the surface of the country road.
/ - / - / - / - /
Some time later, exactly how long Minty did not know, everything was silent outside the tank. The enemy troops appeared to have all either fled or been killed. From what Minty could see out of her forward vision port, the sun was getting low in the sky.
They had run through almost all of their machinegun ammunition, and Thrash had long since shot all of his own personal supply of rifle rounds. The rest of the crew saving Summer, who didn’t have a carbine, kept theirs with their personal kit in the turret box, so they had been unable to retrieve it throughout the battle. That would have entailed climbing outside, and nopony wanted to do that.
The inside of the turret hung thick with fumes from the gun. The fan in the roof whirred for all it was worth, but it was just barely enough to keep the air clear enough to breathe. Minty looked longingly over the field of battle, wishing she could grab some of the enemy’s weapons to trade for supplies later.
“Let’s be gone from here,” Summer declared, echoing the crew’s sentiments. “Corporal Supercharger, take us…” and she paused to consult her map. “Take us along this marsh, then leave the road and follow it alongside for a few hundred meters. Corporal Twist, rotate the turret to the rear and give anypony you see following us something to chew on. Everyone, open your vision ports fully.”
Privately, Minty felt that anypony who wanted to follow their tank could do so easily, and blasting any hangers-on would only delay the inevitable and draw more down upon them. A predator that couldn’t run soon became prey.
“What if they ambush us again?” Supercharger asked, from behind them.
“I want us to be able to see them first,” Summer replied over her shoulder.
They motored on, and Minty shook out a cigarette from the pack she’d taken off Cashmere and struck a match. Summer frowned and looked at her, silently reminding Minty of her private prohibition of smoking inside the tank. Minty looked back and held the match to the end of the cigarette in a silent challenge. Summer didn’t say anything, and Minty gratefully sucked in and blew out a puff of smoke. She needed this.
“Can I have one, too?” asked Thrash. Minty glanced at Summer for approval, and though she wrinkled her muzzle, Summer nodded. So she did understand, after all. Minty gave Thrash one of hers, and he leaned in and lit it with the end of Minty’s own. “Thanks,” he said, leaning back against a half-depleted shell rack and blowing out smoke into the thick air of the turret.
The extraction fan whirred in the relative silence, drawing out toxic fumes and cigarette smoke alike.
Summer slouched over in her seat, studying her map by the light of the turret’s one lightbulb. She took off her hat and mopped her brow in the hot and stuffy compartment; Minty noticed a bullet hole going through the front and out the back. She’s an extremely lucky mare, she thought, taking a reflective drag.
“How did we run into all those troops, anyway?” Cashmere wondered aloud, voicing all of their thoughts.
“I expect they made a breakthrough,” Summer answered absently, tracing her map with a hoof and squinting. “Yes, I’m certain we’re well behind our lines. There’s no mistake.”
“May I see that map?” Minty asked.
Summer hesitated, then gingerly passed it over, like it was a precious thing of porcelain. The map was crinkled with water damage, and the ink had ran in a few places, but for the most part, the hoof-drawn lettering and lines were still immaculate.
“And where’s the front supposed to be?” and Summer showed her. “Ah.” Minty handed the map back to Summer. “Permission to give my opinion?”
“Granted.”
“I think that from now on we should consider ourselves to be behind enemy lines.”
“Noted, corporal.” Summer looked grave. “Enlisted Cashmere, get on the radio with anyone nearby and inform them that we have met a large party of the enemy well behind friendly lines and beaten them back.”
“I can try, ma’am,” Cashmere said, nervously, unfolding a paper in front of her. In the darkness where the roof bulb didn’t reach, all Minty could make out was a list of some kind. “But I don’t think we’re in range of any of the fixed stations.”
“What? Give me that,” Summer demanded. She snatched the paper out of Cashmere’s hooves as she handed it back and squinted at it. After a moment, Summer sighed and set the paper down, but did not return it to Cashmere. “It seems you’re right. Still, you should try.”
“There could be a friendly unit in range,” Cashmere put in.
“There could be…” Summer looked thoughtful for a long moment, then shook her head furiously. “Belay that order, enlisted,” she said. “No radio transmissions.”
They rode on in silence for a minute, which suited Minty fine, but then Summer spoke again abruptly. “But if the enemy has staged a breakthrough, the troops we are to support will need armor more than ever.”
No one spoke another word as they motored on into the gathering dusk.
They had left the marsh behind and had been traveling cross-country through stands of young birch trees surrounded by dense patches of berry bushes, dodging several more marshes on the way. This was a low country that ordinarily got a lot of rainfall, Minty could tell. In the midst of one of those tall stands of birch, Supercharger abruptly brought the tank to a halt.
“Did I order you to stop, corporal?” Summer said frostily.
“The engine’s about to overheat,” Supercharger clipped back. “I can’t take it any farther today.”
Summer unlocked her hatch and pushed it open. They all heard it; a steady hissing noise coming from the back of the tank. She stuck her head out and looked back. Minty and Thrash opened their hatches and looked back as well.
Issuing off the engine deck was a wispy stream of foul chemical white steam. The hissing sound came from under the engine cover on Minty’s side, and not from the engine itself, and she surmised the problem before Supercharger said it out loud for them.
“The radiator’s been damaged,” she said, standing on the hull behind Summer, since the turret was still rotated backwards. Summer half turned back, paused, and put a hoof up to her face. She studied the surrounding bushes with unusual intensity, but Minty wasn’t fooled; she knew the unicorn was hiding a blush.
“I’ll have to take a look at it before it gets too dark.” Supercharger jumped past Summer down to the engine deck and pulled open the cover. Minty sank back into her seat and looked at Summer, who remained in her pose of affected focus. She sighed. Thrash sat on his pack and began cleaning his rifle, working the ramrod slowly. The cleaning patches each came out black with carbon buildup, and he flicked them outside. Cashmere fidgeted in her seat anxiously, hoof on her carbine.
Then Supercharger climbed out of the engine compartment with an announcement. “One of those grenades really tore up the radiator. I think I can patch the worst of it, but we’re going to need some water to fill it with, or we won’t get very far.”
“And then we can move on,” Summer said. “It is imperative that we reach our forces as soon as possible.”
“Ma’am?” Minty spoke up.
“Yes?”
“Respectfully, I don’t think that would be wise, ma’am. We ought to stay here for the night.”
“On the contrary. If we’re being followed, we should move on as swiftly as we can,” Summer countered. “And if that encounter means what I think it means, we should head for our assigned infantry group right away.”
Minty leveled a look at Summer. “That is true,” she said. “But I think if anyone was keen on following us, they would have done so already, and I haven’t seen any sign of that. We’re stuck moving at a pony’s pace, so whether we move on or not, we’re not getting away from anyone. I think it’s more important that we get some rest, while we can. The army will keep. And besides,” she continued, making a motion like flipping up a new page of an imaginary notebook for each point, “if we did keep going, we would be stumbling around in the dark, with possible enemies around, in a marshy area, with a bad engine. I don’t think we can survive another encounter like that if they come up on us in the dark, especially not since they seem to be using anti-tank rifles.”
Summer paused, and to Minty’s relief, she seemed to be rethinking things. She looked conflicted for a moment, then said, “Noted, corporal,” and looked away. She turned on the roof light again and pulled out her map and studied it for a moment. “Very well. We’ll stop for the night. Corporal Supercharger, how much water do we need?”
“About…” Supercharger cast around. “One of these.” She grabbed the handle of one of their two emergency fuel canisters in her mouth, pulled it free of its carrying box atop the left mud guard, and held it up. “Oh…”
Fuel dribbled down the side of the can where it had been perforated by several bullets. She set it down and pulled up the other one, and it leaked from a bad dent in the side, but was obviously still mostly full.
“Hmm,” Summer said, holding a hoof to her muzzle thoughtfully. “Empty what we have left into the fuel tanks. Enlisted Metal, there should be a pond in…” and Summer paused to think, “That direction. Take both empty cans and fill them up.”
So, Minty thought, one for the radiator and one for future leaks on the road, and Summer didn’t want the pony to make a second trip that far out.
“But, sir –” protested Thrash.
“Ma’am,” Minty automatically corrected him.
“…Ma’am, I can’t carry both cans at once.”
Minty kept to herself how Cashmere could probably manage it with that balancing trick she used so much.
Summer tossed her head and snorted. “So it’s a two-pony job, then – have somepony go with you.”
Thrash nodded and started climbing out. Supercharger jumped down off the side of the tank with the dented can in her mouth and batted a clump of foliage hanging from a roller wheel aside. Fixing a spout to the cannister, she popped open the fuel fill cap and emptied the can inside, then poured in what dregs she could of the second, holed cannister.
When she set the can down, Thrash moved up to put the lids back on. “I’ll go with you to get these cans filled up,” Supercharger offered.
“Sure, let’s do it,” Thrash answered. Their heads started bending close together; Minty took action.
She slid herself through her hatch and dropped in between them and picked up a can, incidentally the one with the bullet-holes. “I’ll do it,” she said, around the object in her mouth. “You,” she rounded on Supercharger, forcing the pegasus to move back or get bumped with the steel object, “Nee’ t’ phatch up th’ radiator.” She gave Supercharger a warning look and turned to go in the direction Summer had indicated.
“She’s right,” Thrash said, with a shrug. He picked up the dented can and followed.
As Minty walked away, she heard Summer ordering Cashmere to help her with her tent, and she privately shook her head.
They walked together in silence through the gathering twilight. Minty kept on the alert for anything amiss, an enemy scout or observation flying machine. A vague direction wasn’t much to go off of, but they stuck to heading downhill, and when the air began to smell slightly of decaying plants, she knew she was heading the right direction. Little lightning-bugs began to dance among the grass. Thrash kept to himself for the entire walk, thankfully.
When they reached the pond, Thrash had no problem filling his cannister, and he set it down by a clump of reeds and watched her. Minty ignored him and thought about her problem. Her cannister could barely hold any water, with its holes. She needed something to plug it with. She looked around for a suitable area of ground, and, spotting one nearby, walked over and began scratching at it sharply with the end of her hoof.
“Got a cigarette?” Thrash asked, breaking the silence between them.
“You can stop pretending,” Minty grunted, separating a plug of sod out of the ground and pulling it up with her teeth. “I know you have your own.”
Thrash chuckled. “You got me,” he said, undoing the top button of his jacket to reach the inside pocket. Shaking out a Shetland-brand cigarette, the good kind, from his pack, he put it between his lips and fumbled for his matchbook. “You know,” he said, when he found it and struck one, briefly illuminating his face with the small flame, “You smoke a lot more than most mares I know. Mind if I ask why?”
“Know a lot of mares, do you?” Minty said. She fitted the sod plug in one of the larger bullet holes, and bent to separate out another from the hard turf.
Thrash grinned in the darkness; the lit point of his cigarette bobbed with the movement. “Quite a few, and that’s why I’m wondering about you.”
He moved closer. Minty wanted to move away, but the patch of ground she needed was right where she was. “That’s a light hazard,” she informed him, bending to pick up another plug. “You should know better, being an infantrypony.”
“Then why do you?”
“I was an artillerypony,” she replied. “We weren’t close enough for it to give away our position. Especially since…” she swallowed and closed her eyes. The sight of her big gun, rendered twisted metal by a direct bomb strike. A stallion dying in her hooves. “Their aerial patrols knew where we were anyway. No point not to do it, really.”
“Okay, but why so much?”
“The war!” Minty snapped irritably, with uncharacteristic fierceness. Now was not the time to remember that. She dragged the fuel cannister over to the pond and dipped it in experimentally. One of the plugs popped out and sank to the bottom. She sighed. “You’re being a very nosy pony, you know that?”
“I just want to learn a little more about this cute mare I met today,” he replied.
She snorted in disbelief. “You’d go after anything with a pulse. Besides, don’t you have a marefriend?”
He waved a hoof dismissively and rolled his eyes. “Yeah, I guess I do. But she isn’t you.”
“Hmm,” she mumbled, moving around to the opposite side of the patch of turf and digging at the ground there.
“Tell me about yourself? How about it?” he said, taking a casual step closer. The end of his cigarette flared brightly as he took a drag.
“Maybe,” Minty said, digging out the outline of a slightly larger plug than last time.
“Fine, then, be that way. So, if I had to guess, you’re from… Fillydelphia?”
“Manehatten,” she corrected. How could he possibly get the accents confused?
“Ah, the city that never sleeps. I don’t feel like sleeping right now either – funny thing. So, you were a typist before the war? I’ve never seen a typewriter for a cutie mark before.”
“Secretary.”
“Same difference,” he said, sidling closer. “You know, you’re being a very boring pony with these answers.”
“Thanks,” Minty said, distractedly, tugging at some stubborn roots. “I always was a boring pony. I was quite proud of it. Only really hung out with workmates sometimes.”
“Well, I’m a workmate,” he said, moving closer and shifting the cigarette to the corner of his mouth. She raised her head to tell him to back off. “And you’re not boring to me.”
And he kissed her.
For a few long seconds, their lips met. Minty was too shocked and confused to move. It tasted like smoke and ash, but then, ash was her constant baseline. She thought she detected an undertone of… chocolate?
Then, the moment passed, and she recovered herself. Just as he took her inaction as acceptance and leaned in to the kiss some more, she scrambled backward, hooves slipping on the soft ground. A crimson blush adorned her cheeks that he probably couldn’t see in the near-darkness.
“Wh- what was that for?” she sputtered. Why did her first kiss have to be stolen by a stallion like him? Not even that pony had ever kissed her, although she had so wanted him to. For it to be like this…
He blinked. “I already said. Because you’re cute, and I like you. Now, are we doing this thing, or not?”
“Definitely not,” Minty gritted her teeth. “And if you touch me again, I will kick you.”
“Alright, fine,” Thrash said, shrugging. “I was just trying to be friendly.”
“Save your ‘friendliness’ for your marefriend,” she hissed, fitting a new plug into the hole in the fuel cannister. “And I am going to talk to her about this behavior of yours, wait and see.”
“Fine,” he said, sounding unconcerned, even bored, “But I doubt she cares. She’s still with me, after all.”
Minty tossed her head in frustration and filled her cannister.
Full darkness had fallen by the time they made it back. Minty’s neck strained at the weight she carried, trying to keep it from bumping the ground or her legs, either of which would risk one of her improvised earthen plugs coming loose. Thrash dragged his can behind him. They found the tank draped over with branches and small trees, nothing that would hide it from prying eyes in daylight, but enough to confuse its outline from a distance. The darker metal speckles of bullet impacts on the armor helped conceal it further in a kind of accidental spotted camouflage.
As they approached, Minty’s simmering anger only increased. Someone had built a large campfire nearby the tank, in front of Summer’s tent, and it was an invitingly bright beacon to anyone who might be in the woods that night, or in the sky, for that matter. It was bad enough that fool unicorn had to put up her tent, and now this. But first things first.
“Hey, Supercharger,” she called out, approaching the engine deck and setting down her cannister. She rubbed her neck and winced. “Use this one to refill the radiator. I was able to get it here with some water in it, but the plugs won’t hold.”
There was no answer.
“Supercharger, you there?” she called out again, and the pegasus appeared.
“Oh, hey,” she said, “Yeah, I’ll get right on that.”
To Minty, she sounded awfully preoccupied. She moved closer, to avoid being overheard. “Are you doing okay?” she asked.
“Fine, fine. Just tired, that’s all. Been trying to work on the engine without parts, ha-ha.”
“If you say so.” Minty knew she was lying, but she didn’t want to press the issue just then, so she let it be.
With a dubious glance back, Minty left her and walked over to Cashmere, who was poking the fire with a stick held in her mouth. A small pot with two fresh dents in the side hung from a neat little frame of sticks, bubbling. Summer was nowhere to be seen; she had probably retired to her tent already.
“What do you think you’re doing?” Minty barked.
Cashmere jumped and spun around, dropping the stick. “Um, er, cooking up some supper for us?”
“No, you’re not,” Minty said, and Cashmere’s face fell.
“What you’re doing right now is letting everyone in this forest know exactly where we are. Didn’t I specifically say we should consider ourselves ‘behind enemy lines’?”
“I-I know, but Sergeant Meadows said-”
Minty narrowed her eyes and leaned in close. In a low voice, she hissed, “I don’t care what the sergeant said. She doesn’t know anything. You helped her set up her tent? Why didn’t you say anything to her like, say, ‘what if we get attacked suddenly’?”
“I thought-”
“Shut it. Get your e-tool and follow me.”
Cashmere swallowed and nodded. She scrambled off to the tank and climbed up to the turret box, suspended over the air on account of the turret being rotated to give access to the engine, and dug out her pack. She returned to an impatiently waiting Minty with a short spade held in her mouth.
Minty led her away to another stand of trees close by, thickly shrubbed with berry bushes. She stopped and pointed at some of the ripe berries. “Don’t even think about using these in the food,” she warned, “They won’t kill you, but they’re the worst thing you ever tasted.”
She found a spot that suited her and took the e-tool from Cashmere and started digging a hole. She made sure to keep the walls steep and dug it out to a depth of around two dozen centimeters. When it was done, she sank the spade into some moss with an air of finality and turned to Cashmere, who was fidgeting nearby, clearly unsure of what to do with herself.
“Build a fire in here. Keep it small, and only use dry, dead wood. The depression and the bushes should help hide the light the fire gives off, and the dry wood won’t have as much smoke. Got it?”
Cashmere nodded, and Minty fetched a burning branch. When she returned, she found Cashmere already had a firebed assembled. “Put that other one out,” she said, jerking her head at the bonfire, “don’t leave a trace of it. And fill this one in before we leave. Enemy territory, remember?”
She left Cashmere to tend the pot in her new location and went to find Thrash. She couldn’t find him anywhere in the local area, and she was afraid of what she might find if she checked on Supercharger, but just to be safe, she called out, “Enlisted Metal?”
“Yeah?” came his reply, from somewhere above her. She jerked her head up in surprise. He was sitting up on a thick branch high in one of the birch trees, leaning against the trunk with his pack as a pillow, cleaning his rifle again. The light of the campfire didn’t reach that far, so he must have been doing it in complete darkness.
Minty frowned up at him. “You’re on first watch. Wake Cashmere next, and I’ll take the last watch. Pass the watch order on.”
Thrash sighed. “Yes, sir. Your wish is my command.”
“Shut it and get down here. How did you get up there, anyway?”
“I’m part pegasus. It’s in my blood.”
“Oh, really,” Minty said flatly.
“…Not really. I climbed. If it’s all the same to you, I’d rather keep watch up here. They won’t expect a pony in a tree.”
Minty had to privately agree that he had a point there. “Cashmere is making oat porridge,” she said, and walked away. She heard the sound of someone sliding down the tree behind her, and she rolled her eyes.
/ - / - / - / - /
Minty awoke to the sound of Cashmere’s soft voice saying, “Sir? Sir, wake up.” She sprang up, narrowly missing banging her head on the gun cradle, and Cashmere scrambled back across the turret floor.
“What is it? What happened?” Minty asked, looking around wildly, ears pricked for any sign of danger.
“You said you wanted to take the last watch,” Cashmere said uncertainly. She had an army blanket draped across her back, obviously intending to go to sleep right where she was.
“Oh. Right.” Minty sheepishly rubbed the sleep from her eyes, grabbed her carbine from where she kept it against the forward ammunition box, and climbed out of her hatch onto the front of the hull roof into the predawn darkness. Picking her way among the camouflage on the tank so as not to disturb it, she found the pot of oats next to Summer’s tent and ate most of what was left cold, leaving a little bit for somepony else.
Thrash had climbed another tree to sleep, one that overhung the tank, and below him, Supercharger sprawled out on the engine deck, snoring. There was no sign that any funny business occurred while she was sleeping, but she wasn’t very confident in that.
Minty found a place nearby, not too close, and sank down into the bushes to wait and watch. For some extra concealment, she pulled her grey service cap out of her pocket, broke off some twigs from nearby, and stuck them in the folds. She desperately wanted a smoke, but you never, ever smoked when you were on sentry duty. She suffered her cravings in silence and stillness.
As the sky lightened and the air warmed, mist started rolling off the nearby marshes, infiltrating the birch trees. It was a low-lying, flat forest, and it didn’t take long for visibility to be reduced substantially. She shivered at the clammy air. Then she heard hoofsteps through the still and misty air.
One of the crew returning from morning privy? But they were asleep just a few hours ago, and she hadn’t heard any of them stir… Standard procedure would be to call out a challenge the pony, but something about this felt wrong to her. She held her tongue and waited.
A moment later, she was glad she did; two shapes emerged from the mist, carrying rifles. She slowly sank lower into the bushes, praying they didn’t spot the movement. The pair of crystal ponies stalked by her hiding place, scanning the area around them, and then were lost again in the mist.
Minty waited, not trusting that they were just a couple of scouts, and sure enough, they were followed by a group of three soldiers, then three more. Behind them, she could dimly make out the shapes of more ponies moving through the mist. She hoped and prayed that none of them saw the tank, or Summer’s tent, and thought about what she would do if they did.
Thrash, they could have; Supercharger and Cashmere, they could not. They could maybe have Summer, but they shouldn’t. But there was her own life to consider, and it would do no good if she stood up and got herself killed in an attempt to stop the inevitable, so perhaps she should stay quiet. Then again, if they found the others, they might rightly assume it was one pony short of a bunch, and go looking for her, or they might recognize the tank by its appearance and hunt for the gunner…
A group crossing before her with a curious load interrupted her frantic indecision. They were a team of four crystal ponies harnessed to a small field cannon, and they were pulling it, keeping pace with the others, without much apparent effort. Following right after them was a single pony pulling an ordinary apple cart, probably taken from someone’s farm, laden with shells and other supplies.
Three more such groups passed her by this way, followed by a rearguard. No one seemed to have spotted her, and none of them raised a cry about a tank. When they were gone, she breathed out slowly, willing her pounding heart to calm down, and thanked her family for her forest-green coat that was nearly the same color as the bushes she hid in.
She stayed still in the chill dampness of the early morning for a very long time, long after she had seen the last crystal pony pass her by. Eventually, she got up stiffly, carbine at the ready, and when nothing moved, cautiously crossed to where she knew the tank was. It loomed up out of the thick mist as she approached it, a dark shape surrounded by small tree-shapes. Perhaps they had taken it for a large rock, or a dense stand of trees – she was just glad they hadn’t seen it.
She climbed onto the engine deck, knocking some of the cut trees aside, and prodded Supercharger with her hoof. “Hey. Wake up.”
“Whuhh?”
“We need to get moving. Right now. Fly up there and wake up Thrash and get ready to go. I’ll go wake the others.”
Without waiting for a response, she moved off. Something in her voice must have reached Supercharger, because Minty heard the sound of her wings snapping open and flapping experimentally behind her.
Just before she entered Summer’s tent, she hesitated. She thought she heard the sergeant moving around. Not wanting a repeat of yesterday, Minty cautiously cracked the tent flap aside instead and saw Summer squirming around on her bedding, muttering, “no… no…” in her sleep. Well, can’t be having that. She pushed her way inside and nudged Summer in the side, then nudged her again.
She knew Summer was awake when she stopped moving. Clearing her throat, Minty said, “We need to go, ma’am.”
Summer blinked up at Minty and dug her watch out of her pocket. “Why, so we do. Let’s go.”
Cashmere was already awake, and leaning out of the right-hoof turret hatch with her hooves draped over the opening. “Help her get the tent taken down and stowed,” Minty ordered, “I’ll erase the fire.”
This time, it wasn’t nearly as long until they were moving again.
They motored up to some living Equestrian soldiers, sentries by the look of them, late that morning, with a few more bullet splashes than they had started out with that morning. One of the sentries stood up from his foxhole and confronted them, rifle at the ready. Theirs was obviously a friendly machine, but he did his duty nevertheless; Minty respected that.
“Halt, the tank!” he barked, levelling the weapon at the hull in a mostly symbolic gesture. “Identify yourself!”
Summer unlocked and pushed open her hatch and climbed up on her seat; they had been travelling “buttoned up” whenever possible after the incident of the prior day. Minty was watching through her forward vision port, and saw the sentry stand up straighter when he saw the commander’s officer cap and pale green horn. “I am Sergeant Summer Meadows, lately of the 5th Equestrian armored battalion, D Company, Third Platoon. Have I reached the headquarters of the 67th Equestrian Hoof Regiment?”
The sentry saluted. “No, sir, this is only B Company.”
“I see.” Summer sounded thoughtful. “Well, enlisted, may I pass?”
“Oh, of course. Sorry, sir.” The sentry lowered the rifle and cantered sideways. He shooed some of his comrades from their foxholes, and the tank rumbled forward through the space cleared and crossed through the boundary line and into the camp.
After they had got moving that morning, Minty had filled everyone in on what she had seen. Summer had looked grave; Thrash looked about as concerned as Minty had seen him so far. Supercharger kept her eyes on the road. Cashmere had been wide-eyed and nervous.
Not long after, while traveling across a meadow, they had run into another group of enemy infantry, who had foalishly opened fire on their front with a handful of anti-tank rifles. A smaller group than the ambush yesterday, they didn’t seem to know that Summer’s slightly-less-than-brand-new tank had more than enough frontal armor to resist a rifle, even a very big one, and they were dealt with shortly, before they had a chance to realize this and try hitting the thinner sides.
Still, Minty was rattled. They had their lives to thank that the enemy hadn’t been smart enough to engage them correctly.
Thanks to that engagement, though, and the one before it, the tank was nearly out of high-explosive shells. The remaining three were stacked on the racks on the left side of the hull, where Minty could hand them over to Thrash if she felt they needed it; otherwise, they were down to using the armor-piercing rounds.
Besides the state of their shells, Cashmere’s machinegun had run out almost immediately, which was a problem, but not a big one, because the ball mount was so jammed by now with bullet impacts it hardly moved anyway. Only Thrash’s rifle, resting in its shell-hole, had some bullets left.
They hadn’t made the same mistake twice; all their rifle clips had been consolidated in the main compartment, along with other necessary equipment for a protracted engagement. Thrash was wearing two extra bandoliers, one above his own and the other crossed over both of his. The newer leather of the extras, Minty’s and Cashmere’s, contrasted with his own weather-worn and cracked one.
They weaved through the encampment, driving this way and that around sullen clumps of ponies, whole squads huddled together around their sergeants in preparation for an impending movement. These ponies looked up at the tank with a kind of desperate hope in their eyes. Minty understood those looks, and she wondered if Summer noticed them too. It said a lot about morale when one bullet-ridden tank stirred such a reaction.
An infantry lieutenant, a mare the color of tomato soup, ran up to them from the left, frantically waving a hoof to catch their attention. Minty saw her first. She tapped Summer on the leg and nodded at the mare, and Summer ordered a halt.
“Thank Celestia, another one made it!” the lieutenant puffed, leaning against the mud guard to get her breath back. “Where were you headed?”
“The headquarters of the 67th, to support the advance tomorrow,” Summer said. “I’m Sergeant Meadows. I don’t believe I’ve made your acquaintance?”
“Oh… um, well, I’m afraid you’re going to have to cancel on that.”
“Cancel introductions, or cancel my orders?” Summer queried.
The mare paused. “Ah. Right. Apologies for the confusion. I mean cancel on any travel plans from here you may have, of course.”
“My tank is expected at headquarters tomorrow.”
The tomato soup mare squinted up at them. Minty noticed that her cutie mark was a white plate laden with yellow noodles, unsauced. “Did you send the message by telegram, by any chance?” The look on Summer’s face must have told her all she needed to know; she cut off whatever the light-green unicorn was going to say. “…Then they aren’t expecting you. Listen-”
She glanced anxiously skyward. “Let’s head over to that grove of old trees over there, get this machine out of sight, and then let’s, you and me, go see Major Grapevine. The sky has eyes.”
Summer hesitated, but nodded and said, “Very well. Climb aboard.”
The mare skittishly clambered up onto the mud guard, as if the tracks would bite her. Then, deciding she was still too close to the edge, she stepped up onto the hull roof, beside the turret, and looped a hoof around the commander’s hatch.
“You’ll have to excuse my rudeness; I’m Lieutenant Marinara Sauce. Pleased to meet you.” She put up her free hoof in greeting.
Summer shook the offered hoof. “I’m Summer, Sergeant Summer Meadows. The pleasure is entirely mine.”
Marinara directed them under the trees, excitedly calling out directions, which Summer then relayed so that Supercharger could hear them. Minty opened her hatch, put on her cap, and leaned out, forcing the lieutenant to scoot forward, and lit up another government cigarette. After a minute, Summer began pre-empting the lieutenant’s directions, and the latter took the hint to shut up. Summer obviously did not appreciate being told how to direct her own tank.
Marinara tried another tack. “So, you’re a unicorn like me. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a unicorn tanker. How is it?”
Minty caught sight of the other tanks ahead; Cashmere gasped.
“I manage,” Summer said, shortly, her expression grave.
There were three of them, parked among the trees. All were of the shorter anti-tank model, unlike their own large infantry support model. All three were peppered with bullet splashes, though none as much as their own, and one of the tanks was scorched black all over the turret by a fire. Minty spotted a number of penetrating hits on the ones that weren’t burned; none of them a total knockout, since the victims had made it this far, but the crew can’t have gotten off well by it. Ragged-looking ponies milled around the machines, and Minty averted her eyes from the arc-flash of a welder.
“Just park it over there.” Marinara gestured with her horn at the three sorry-looking machines. “You can replenish your crew from my platoon, like these fellows did, and the mechanics should be able to do something about your engine. It sounds like it’s heard better days, eh?”
Thrash opened his hatch, stuck his head out, and said, “Hey, I’m not dead yet.”
Minty cringed and tried to kick him in the hindshin across the turret, but couldn’t reach. She would have to have serious words with the black stallion later; being in a tank did not mean you were above showing officers the proper respect. Thankfully, Marinara did not seem to take this rudeness amiss.
Cashmere popped open her own hatch, pulled herself out a little, and waved shyly.
“No one?” Marinara exclaimed, surprised. “So much the better.” They pulled up beside the blackened tank and she turned back to Summer. “Come, I’ll take you to see Major Grapevine. He’ll be glad to know you’re here.”
Summer left with the tomato soup lieutenant. Minty watched her go, then looked back to the rest of the crew. Supercharger was already climbing out of her hatch and stretching her legs on the roof, but the enlisted were both looking back at Minty.
“Alright, girls – yes, that includes you, Thrash. Cool it.” The stallion lowered the hoof he had raised in protest. “Thrash, I need you to take some of our food and find some more canteens. Otherwise, just find a jug we can strap somewhere. Also, fuel up the tank.
“Cashmere, get as much machinegun ammo as you can. And a machinegun. Just tell them it’s for the tanks, and they’re sure to give it to you, no matter who you ask around here. We need more clips for our personal rifles, too. If you can get ahold of a crate or two, we should have enough.
“And Supercharger, you – are you listening?”
“Look, I know, okay? Get off my back,” Supercharger snapped. “Who made you the commander, anyway?”
Minty set her jaw and frowned at the pegasus. “Just get it done.”
“Fine.”
“Fine. I’m going to see what I can do about the stock of shells. I have a bad feeling we’re going to need them very soon.”
As Thrash was about to climb out of the right-side turret hatch, Minty stopped him. “And find us some extra fuel cannisters after you fill up the tank. Say what it’s for, and-”
“Yeah, yeah, I get it,” Thrash said. “You want me to top up the fuel?”
“You heard me.”
Thrash rolled his eyes and threw her a mock salute; Minty wanted to kick him square in his handsome jaw. “Your wish is my command,” he said, grinning. He looked at the open driver’s hatch to see if Supercharger was still there. She wasn’t.
Minty scowled. She took a drag, picked up her carbine, and climbed out and onto the ground, ignoring the twinges in her legs from sitting for so long. Slinging the gun over her back, she made her way over to the ponies around the other tanks. Most had stopped working to watch this new arrival, but that wouldn’t last for very long.
“You there,” she stabbed her hoof at a pony in an enlisted uniform standing nearest to her. “Where can I find seven-and-a-half-centimeter shells?”
“Um, I don’t know… I am – was – just an infantrypony.” And a pretty new one, too, Minty added to herself. That was fine. She hadn’t expected a good answer – she had been relying on a wrong one. Ponies were more likely to give good info when they were correcting somepony else.
“We don’t have any,” said a pony from nearby. Minty looked around for the source, and her eyes found a grizzled wheat-colored pony lying on a stretcher, half-hidden behind one of the tanks. “The neighboring unit had some, but good luck getting to them now.” He chuckled humorlessly.
Minty walked over, glancing at the other ponies and cocking her eyebrow. The lot reluctantly went back to their work, mostly the work of waiting. When she rounded the tank, she noticed a detail previously hidden from her; the stallion who had spoken up was missing his foreleg. The bloody stump was wrapped in bandages, and the stretcher was stained with fresh blood.
Nearby, a pony who used to be an eggshell color, and still was around his back hooves and hindquarters, was being fussed over by a nurse. He was covered in terrible burns, and he lay still, continuously letting out a low moan, in too much agony to do anything else.
Minty jerked her head at the unfortunate. “What happened to him?”
“Dunnae. Forgot.” The stallion looked up at her expectantly, his drawn face betraying some of the pain he must be in.
“Oh, all right, fine,” Minty said, with a resigned sigh. She took out the pack, nearly empty now, took one out, and handed it to the stallion, who immediately stuck it in his mouth and gestured with his remaining forehoof. Minty struck a match and lit it for him.
“Thank ye.” He sucked greedily and blew out a large cloud of smoke. “He was th’ commander o’ no.1 tank,” he said. “Incendiary broke right over ‘is ‘ead. Set ‘is tank on fire, and th’ enemy moved right along to the next ones in line.”
“Hmm,” Minty dragged on what was left of her own cigarette. “And what happened to you? I suppose it has to do with why the neighbors are so, well, unreachable?”
“Rifle’s what did it. Came right through the hull and hit me on me hoof. Docs amputated just a couple o’ hours ago.”
“You’re a loader.”
“I was, yes.”
“What about the others? Why all the green faces around here? And I don't mean coats,” she added, with a warning look, aware that her own face was probably the greenest around.
The stallion closed his eyes. “All th’ rest in me crew dead or lightly wounded, not worth troubling the docs - you know. That’s me commander over there.” He nodded towards a line of four bodies under sheets nearby.
“I see.” Minty didn’t ask any more questions. Shells were a bust, but maybe there was something else she could do. “Thanks, anyway.”
She left him with an extra cigarette. Only six of the enlisted infantryponies lurking around the tanks were actually crew members; the rest were merely gawkers. She started questioning them, and what crew weren’t currently occupied, trying to learn what had happened. After a few minutes, a commotion at the Sterling Ranger drew her attention, and she excused herself to hurry over.
A group of mechanics – not tank mechanics, but truck mechanics, by their uniforms – surrounded the engine deck, tools in tow. Supercharger crouched low on top of it, snarling, a large spanner clenched in her teeth. Whenever one of the mechanics moved closer, she focused her attention on them and brandished the spanner.
“Go away! This is MY tank!” she growled.
“But-” a pony wearing welding goggles on his forehead protested, “The C.O. said this engine needed repairs, and we need to get these holes patched!”
He approached with a welding stinger in his mouth, and Supercharger slammed the spanner down on the edge of the hull in front of him meaningfully with a resounding clang.
Oh, dear, not this again. Minty approached and pushed through them, then turned to face them when she had reached the tank. She sighed.
“Sorry, but she gets like this. You gentlecolts can just leave that equipment here, okay? She has work to do, and she’s not doing it when she thinks she has to defend her tank from you guys.” New unit, new maintenance crews that needed to learn the hard way that Supercharger never let anyone but her work on her tank. Minty flicked her cigarette butt away with finality. “Now scram.”
When most of the mechanics had begrudgingly gone, though a few still lingered nearby, she climbed up onto the engine deck. Supercharger set the spanner down in easy reach, like she didn’t trust them not to come back, jumped down, grabbed a wooden toolbox left behind on the ground, and returned. She spilled the contents next to the turret and picked up a smaller wrench.
“Well, now that they’re gone, how long do you think it’s going to take?” Minty asked, conversationally.
Supercharger paused in the act of opening an engine cover, making the mental calculations. “A couple of hours, if nothing gets in the way.”
Minty’s eyelid twitched involuntarily. In all the time spent playing cards since joining the army, she had developed a very good poker face. She used it now. “That’s it?”
Supercharger gave her a sideways look, saw her carefully neutral expression, and mumbled, “I’ll need some parts from the other tanks…”
“Do you think I’m an idiot?” Minty said, struggling to keep a level tone. She felt the urge to curl her lip in a snarl, to kick something. “You said the seals blew, back when it happened. Those tanks over there don’t have seals to spare. And besides,” she added, “I saw you stashing extras on the tank when we left.”
“So what?” Supercharger said, shrugging with her shoulders but not her wings. She put the wrench down. “It’s not that big of a deal.”
“Not that big of a –” Minty struggled to find the words. She gave up on her poker face and stomped the panel she was standing on and aggressively leaned forward into Supercharger’s space. She felt her muzzle contort as she gritted her teeth in sudden rage. “We could have died, all of us, just getting here. Me, you, and your precious coltfriend. Or maimed, like those stallions over there.” She jerked her head briefly at the invalids on their stretchers. The amputee waved. “We’ve been extremely lucky, do you understand that?”
Supercharger, visibly taken aback, rallied herself and shrugged again, with her wings this time, causing her jacket to hump oddly for an instant. “Shows how well you know me,” she said, “I thought you knew.”
“I’m not the mechanic, Supercharger, you are. I’ve been covering for you because I thought it was something that would take you a while, and we could all use the rest. But because of you not fixing this piece of garbage when you could, the commander got us roped into this whole thing, when we could be patrolling a quiet sector of the front instead! I guess… I just never figured you for a pony so selfish she would rather spend time with her unfaithful coltfriend than do her actual job for a few measly hours.”
“Selfish?” Supercharger scowled and pushed her face into Minty’s. Minty refused to give ground, so their foreheads butted together. “Unfaithful? You’re a fine one to talk about that, since you’ve been trying to steal Thrash away from me. AFTER you tell me I shouldn’t be seeing him. That’s low, even for you.”
“What does…? Nevermind. Don’t bring your coltfriend into this.”
“You brought him up, not me.”
Minty found that impossible to deny. Instead, she shook her head and said, “Listen. There is nothing going on between me and Thrash.”
Supercharger snorted and leaned back, an incredulous look on her face. “Likely story! I saw you coming on to him when you two ‘went to get water for the radiator’.” She made air quotes with her hooves.
“Wait, you saw that?” Minty asked, drawing back as well. “It’s not like that at all. How much did you see, anyway?”
“I saw everything,” Supercharger replied.
“Including the part where I kicked him for what he tried?”
“You didn’t kick him. You kissed him.”
“Ah. Right.” She blushed slightly at the memory, and she was painfully aware of how it only made her look guiltier. “But I threatened to kick him. I did not want that, you know.” Supercharger rolled her eyes. Minty could tell she didn’t believe her. “Wait a minute. If you saw what happened, why didn’t I see your hoofprints on the way back?”
“Oh, please.” Supercharger snorted and spread her wings fully, causing her uniform jacket to ride up around her shoulders. Some of the idlers nearby looked over at them with surprise. “I’m a pegasus, remember? I don’t leave hoofprints I don’t want to leave. Or did you forget about that about me, too?”
“No. I didn’t. I just thought you would be busy doing your job. Obviously, that was my mistake.”
Supercharger blew her long bangs out of her eyes and waved her hoof dismissively. “Shows how well you know me. That was just a few holes to patch, took no time at all.”
“Still, I’m not –” Minty started to say, but Supercharger cut her off.
“Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have my actual job to get back to,” she said, with a glare. She picked up her wrench, stepped to the edge of the engine deck, and opened the right-side engine cover, putting up a barrier between them that Minty got the feeling was meant to be more than just physical.
Minty shook her head and turned away, fuming. How could a pony possibly be so dense?
Meanwhile, Cashmere was coming up to the tank, dragging an ammunition box, with two more balanced on her back. When she saw Minty approaching, she set the box down and saluted in greeting. It was a small courtesy to a superior not usually observed among tank crews, but something in Minty’s face must have made her think better safe than sorry.
Minty jumped down from the tank and approached her.
“I was able to get these, but no one would let me have a machinegun…” Cashmere began, hesitantly.
“Get your spineless rear back there and try harder,” Minty snapped. “And bring three more of these. Don’t let me see you back here until you’ve got it.”
Cashmere put her ears down and sank down at the force of Minty’s words. Shrugging off the boxes on her back onto the ground where she stood, she quickly scampered away.
Minty watched her go, feeling a little twinge of remorse for losing her temper with the younger mare; she hadn’t deserved it. Behind her, someone cleared her throat, and Minty spun guiltily.
Summer stood there, standing straight and self-assured and surprisingly better-groomed than when she had left, a total contrast from the sleepless ball of nerves she had been yesterday. She still looked sleepless, of course, but now her bearing had an indefinable aspect of energy about it. “Corporal Twist,” she said, “What is our state of combat readiness?”
Minty’s heart sank. It was as she had feared; there was to be an action soon. She saluted. “Ma’am, we cannot get any more shells, but we are in the midst of replenishing our stores of ammunition and fuel and restoring the secondary armament. Corporal Supercharger is doing what she can for the engine."
She left out the part about it taking only a few hours; that was probably not wise to say out loud, though the sergeant would doubtless find out shortly anyway.
"Splendid, splendid, very good. I suppose she begged some parts off our fellows here?”
Minty thought about telling her the truth, but despite her anger, she still considered the intransigent mare a friend. “Yes, ma’am. They had just what she needed.”
“Excellent. Carry on, and pass the word to be ready in three hours. You will find me in the officer’s dugouts until then.”
Minty saluted again and walked back to the tank with her jaw set. There wasn’t much time, and she had to make sure the machinegun they did have was usable. She picked up an empty belt with one hoof, popped open one of the ammo boxes with the other, and began reloading the belts, one bullet at a time.
Minty sat in her gunner’s seat, working a green twig around in her mouth. It occupied a similar tactile feeling as a cigarette might, and helped give her something to do. She tapped her hoof just behind the right turret traverse pedal, forelegs crossed, firmly in “hurry up and wait” mode. A bundle of newly-acquired canteens hung by their straps from the gun cradle.
They sat at the head of the small tank force, the smaller tanks behind them in a line, waiting to receive the signal to advance. The Major evidently felt it was best to make his move sooner rather than later, and the last few hours had mostly been spent making what repairs they could. The holes in all the machines had been patched with thin metal scraps, the burrs on the edges of the splash penetrations filed down so that Cashmere’s machinegun could move in its mount again, but, unfortunately, there had not been enough welding rods or time to fill in the innumerable pits and gashes in their armor.
Behind her, the engine idled smoothly. It was running better than ever, which was odd, considering what Supercharger had to work with. The other experienced crewmembers, Supercharger and Thrash, sat or stood to their stations in similar attitudes of practiced boredom. Cashmere was nervously chewing her lip and writing a letter on a clipboard while she monitored the radio traffic.
Supercharger had not even so much as looked Minty in the eye since their fight; she even made a special point on reporting to Summer directly once she was finished with the engine rather than have Minty do it.
Minty looked over at the cause. He had his helmet pulled low over his head, his jaw firmly set, and his eyes straight ahead. His long infantry rifle sat clamped in a pintle mount in front of him.
In the end, no one had been willing to part with their squad machineguns for the upcoming operation, and Minty had been too busy working on the tank to argue with anyone in Cashmere’s mild-mannered stead. As a short-term measure to replace it, Supercharger had been able to fashion an adjustable mount, weld it to the inside of the shell-hole in the turret face, and now their new and slightly unorthodox coaxial gun projected from the turret face a good deal farther than the original coaxial gun had.
Summer sat proudly in her seat, temporarily a commander not just of her tank, but leading the others, too. Her horn projected through a hole between the dual hatches Minty had persuaded one of the welder ponies to cut specifically for this purpose when Supercharger left the tank alone to deliver her "personal report". Not only did Summer not have to crane her neck so much anymore when she sat, but also, in Minty’s opinion, it was worth the look on Supercharger’s face when she returned to find the work already finished.
The extraction fan in the turret roof had been running for the last ten minutes straight to clear out the residual fumes.
Cashmere, who had been tipping her ears attentively at something over her headphones, abruptly put down her clipboard and picked up her microphone. “Major Grapevine just gave the signal to move out, ma’am,” she said.
“Relay the message to the squad and remind them to stay in line until I give the word,” Summer’s voice came over the intercom, though they could all hear her just fine. “Driver, ahead slow.”
She sounded pleased, which worried Minty.
The tank rumbled forward. Minty bit down on her twig. Just like last time, Summer didn’t tell them anything she felt they didn’t need to know, but it was clear to Minty that the plan was for them to move behind the infantry advance until the enemy was met, and then spearhead that advance. Their tank would be at the forefront, since the others were hampered by all-new crew and thinner frontal armor, and they would be the target of every one of those guns Minty had seen go by.
She spat out the twig. It wasn’t her job to know things, it was her job to shoot the gun.
It didn’t take very long for Minty to detect the distinct pop of small arms fire up ahead. This early? Her tapping on the floor increased in speed and lost its steady rhythm.
Thrash noticed, looked over the gun cradle at her, and grinned. “First time playing with the infantry, eh? You nervous?”
Minty worked the twig, retrieved from the floor, around to the right side of her mouth and frowned at him, sidelong. “No, and no,” she answered sourly.
“Then why-”
“Cut the chatter,” Summer ordered, and Thrash fell silent, but he still gave Minty a knowing look.
Or, at least, a look he probably thought was knowing. Minty sucked in air and willed her leg to stop tapping on the floor. Of course she was nervous going into an action – she would be a fool not to, but what she really needed was a smoke. She was just on edge, that was all; she didn’t usually feel the urge to fidget like this.
Right on time, Cashmere piped up. “First infantry platoon has made contact with the enemy and are requesting armored support. Second and third are engaging as well.”
Summer considered for a second before answering. “Tell the squad I want them to fan out behind me in a wedge formation.” She glanced at her map, a different one this time, and added, “Driver, adjust two points left. Radiopony, pass on that instruction, and tell Second that I’m coming to their aid.”
A tree passed close by on Minty’s left before the tank made the slight course adjustment. They motored for a minute more, the sounds of sporadic fighting increasing in frequency and volume, before Summer turned around and checked on the following tanks. She scowled and picked up her mic.
“Radiopony, tell tank no.7 to form up on our right, not left.”
“S- ma’am, he apologizes and says he’s only a radiopony,” Cashmere said.
“Who, the radiopony?”
“No, ma’am. The commander.”
“That’s the one that lost everyone in the turret, right?” Summer asked. She visibly chewed on this. “Very well, tell them to stay ten meters off from us on the left, and tell tank no.18 to move twenty meters off our right. Better yet, put me on the frequency, and I shall tell them myself.”
Tank no.7, as Minty had learned, had taken an armor-piercing shell through the front that had killed the commander and gunner outright, and wounded the loader so badly she died only minutes later. Now, the radio operator had taken over as commander, because only he and the driver knew anything about tank operations, and the driver was indispensable. He was trying his best, but he was definitely a weak link in the chain.
“Um,” Cashmere began, “According to my training, I should be the one to take care of tank communication in battle… The commander needs to stay focused. Is what they said in training. Um.”
“Nonsense,” Summer said. “I can handle it. Turn the squad frequency over to me; you just monitor things and fire the machinegun.”
“Yes, ma’am,” Cashmere said, as the first few enemy bullets pinged on the front of the tank in a now-familiar sound.
Summer sat up and peered through the forward vision slit in her cupola. Minty peered through her gunsight and saw a lot of dirt, fallen trees, and a muzzle flash, which was followed by a screech inside the tank as the bullet ricocheted off the turret roof. A deeper booming sounded, which was alarming. So, the enemy had managed to set up some of their towed guns, too, and this close. Minty had to give them credit, they were very industrious.
Minty wished the commander would stick to using only degrees. While Summer was getting better at calling out targets, she still wasn’t very good, and what it mostly did was give Minty a place to start looking, which lost them valuable time as she hunted for where, exactly, the target was.
“The trench, sir?” she asked. Through her gunsight, she could barely make out a shallow trench, banked with soft earth, over which a line of rifles poked menacingly. As fighting positions went, it was barely enough to keep the crystal ponies lying there out of direct rifle fire, with no apparent way to retreat; celestia, or whoever watched over them, help them if anypony managed to get close enough to drop in a grenade.
“Yes, that trench. Fire when ready.”
Minty rolled the firing switch, sensed the dull feeling of a dry-fire, and cursed quietly. “Sorry, ma’am,” she apologized, pushing one of their remaining HE shells over to Thrash, who armed it, opened the breech, and shoved it in. The second the breach was closed, she rolled the firing switch and the section of trench in her sights exploded skyward in a shower of earth. Thrash yanked his hooves back from the recoiling breech with a yell.
A loud THUD impacted just in front of Minty and sent a shivering vibration through the entire hull.
“What was that?” Thrash said, looking around wildly as if that would help him determine the source of the impact, shut inside and buttoned up as they were.
Minty bit her twig in half and cursed, tamping down on her anger until later. The commander was gambling with all of their lives again, but this time, she didn’t even seem to care. Minty needed to give her a stern talking-to, but not now. Now, she was just the gunner. Just the gunner. The gunner.
“Targeting information on the enemy guns, sir?” she prompted, hoping Summer would come to her senses and let Minty take out the enemy’s field pieces before they took her out instead. She realized too late she had used the wrong address, but thankfully, the sergeant didn’t seem to have noticed.
Summer only glanced down at her, then back up. “Ten degrees left, distance roughly three-hundred-fifty meters, elevation three degrees up. Grey gunshield, up on the rise.”
“Thrash, load an AP round,” Minty ordered. They carried two kinds, a solid shot and one with an explosive filler, but she was determined to make sure it wouldn’t make a difference.
She panned the turret over slightly, and the gun up, and hunted around until she found what she was looking for. The gun was pointed right back at her through the gunsight, and she swallowed.
“Thrash, where is that shell?” she asked, an edge entering her voice, just as the enemy gun fired. The shell hit the ground just in front of them and threw up a spume of soil. She heard the breech close, adjusted slightly to aim directly at the barrel, and rolled the switch.
The gun boomed, the tank rocked, and Minty was gratified with the sight of the enemy gun buckling over, turning a complete somersault, as the solid shell caught it just underneath the barrel assembly and tore its carriage apart.
“Ma’am, they are ranging in on our position,” Minty said. At least one already had, but she kept that part quiet.
Summer tried to nod, winced as her horn was caught scissorwise in the hole in the hatch, and said, “Right. Corporal Supercharger, take us ahead slowly.” She flipped the switch in her microphone and continued, “Squad, we are moving forward. Target enemy field guns and provide covering fire for the infantry. Stop when you make a shot, but don’t fall behind. Understood?”
They must have said as much, because Summer put down the mic and ordered Minty to target another gun, on the right this time. As the gun swung around, Minty was able to get a glimpse of the battlefield before them, in broad strokes, a fractured composite of her narrow view through the telescopic sight. The enemy had dug in here before a slight rise in the land, not quite a hill or ridge, so that their field guns could command a great range and arc of fire. Summer ordered a stop, and thrash struggled to load another armor-piercing shell before Minty fired, throwing the enemy gun into its crew and along the slope for a good nine meters.
“Strike,” she mumbled under her breath, and she allowed herself a ghost of a smile.
“Ahead, twelve-thirty, elevation two degrees up,” came Summer’s voice. Minty swung the turret back and was settling her sights on the target when it was obscured by multiple clouds of dirt thrown in the air around it; all three other tanks had chosen this exact target. Minty gritted her teeth and tried to find her target again. Meddling newbies.
She took her shot, which ended up punching a hole through the top of the gunshield and obliterating the upper half of the pony aiming the gun. A high-explosive shell from their number two, the burned tank, took the gun out completely. Minty dispassionately sucked on her broken twig; after a few months, she was used to seeing the results of her shots up-close through the scope.
They moved forward again, stopping a few more times to shoot at the remaining guns in sight. Minty hit her mark most of the time, and the rest took care of what she didn’t hit. The pop of the rifles was closer, and then, came all around them too. Summer cast a dubious glance at their two remaining HE shells.
“Corporal Twist, rotate turret to nine o’clock and open your hatch.”
Minty cocked a questioning eyebrow, but she complied, wondering where Summer was going with this. Summer climbed down from her seat and pushed herself over Minty, sticking her head outside.
“You! Soldier!” she yelled, to be heard over the whistling cracks and pings of enemy rifle fire all around them and the bullets impacting off of their machine. A young enlisted stallion looked up at her from where he crouched low to the ground. “Yes, you!” Summer said. “Give me all your grenades!”
“But… We need those!” the soldier protested, wincing as a bullet cracked through a birch tree next to him. Minty looked around; in all the excitement, and buttoned up inside the tank, she hadn’t been able to see that they were actually in among a loose birch forest. Several bullets impacted the turret's side, now presented to the enemy, and Minty worried if they had missed something that could get through the thinner armor there, remembering the maimed loader.
“Never mind that!” Summer yelled, sounding almost cheerful. “You won’t need them, and regardless, that’s an order from a superior!”
“Well…” the soldier groused, but he signaled to his buddies nearby and crawled behind the tank, out of direct gunfire. They each pulled out their two grenades and passed them forward, and Summer wrapped them in her telekinetic glow and brought them all inside the tank. Minty wondered what she had in mind.
“Thank you, gentlecolts,” she said, and closed the hatch. When Summer had seated herself, she called, “Enlisted Cashmere, inform the Major that I am beginning the breakthrough at the following co-ordinates.” She rattled them off, and Cashmere dutifully began relaying them.
“Right then.” Summer addressed her other tanks while Cashmere was busy. “Squad, I am going to make a charge at the enemy. Drive straight ahead and crush any resistance under your tracks. Form up in a tight wedge behind me in the meadow on the other side of this rise and await further orders. Understood?”
Summer addressed her crew. “Corporal Supercharger, ahead medium speed. Both of you enlisted, you may let them have it with your guns. Corporal Twist, stand by for instructions.”
Minty dutifully waited, hooves on the pedals, the turret pointed almost completely left. Thrash picked up his rifle and began shooting at the enemy trench lengthwise with gusto, pressing close to the gun in order to aim the rifle far enough around to hit. Cashmere let off short bursts with the machine gun ahead of them.
Summer ordered Minty to turn the turret ahead again. Minty couldn’t see what effect their advance was having on the enemy, but she could guess; very little immediately obvious effect, but a great psychological one. The machine gun belts were all loaded with standard “ball” bullets, as that was all they had to spare on such short notice, so there were no visible tracers to herald its deadly stream, and Thrash’s rifle, of course, was fed by the same, in small sheet-metal clips. Minty herself had spent a large part of the last few hours reloading those belts herself, with Cashmere’s help after the mare had returned for the second time, empty-hoofed.
She could well imagine the image of their tank, an unstoppable steel monster that took cannon shots and kept coming, pocked all over with the ineffectual bullet marks of past victims. The more scars, the more cunning and dangerous the beast.
When they reached the shallow trench, Summer ordered a halt. Bullets rang off the armor from three sides at once, making the already loud interior deafening to be inside. “Right.” Summer said, needing the intercom system to make herself heard, “Ready grenades!”
It suddenly clicked in her mind what Summer intended.
Minty stared, dumbfounded at this plan, but Thrash immediately scooped one up from where they had been rolling around on the floor and held its wooden handle in his mouth. Summer frowned at Minty, picked one up telekinetically, and shoved into Minty’s forehooves.
“On my signal, open your hatches and throw one into the trench on your side,” Summer ordered. “Ready? Now!”
Minty and Thrash pulled the cords on the grenades with their teeth, starting the fuses. Thrash bashed open his hatch with his shoulder, both halves flying open, but Minty turned and punched out with one forehoof on the rear half of the hatch, hoping that the forward half might perhaps give some cover from enemy gunfire. Conscious of the fuse ticking away, she tossed her head and flung the small bomb outside. As she reached out to grab the hatch, she caught a glimpse of a terrified young mare the color of the inside of a lemon recoiling from the deadly little object, before she slammed the hatch shut and locked it.
Minty sat back in her seat, heart pounding in her chest harder than it ever had. Outside, the explosion came, only barely muffled by the armor; the percussion rattling through Minty’s frame. She took a deep breath, buried the image behind her eyeballs, and centered herself, and she was ready for duty again. Just one more thing to add to the pile, that was all this was.
“Driver, ahead medium,” Minty heard Summer say. The tank lurched forward once more and began climbing the shallow slope. Thrash picked up the end of his rifle again and began swiveling it around, looking for targets, and, finding some, shot. Minty was glad just then that she wasn’t obliged to shoot at the scurrying shapes of fleeing ponies. At least, not with a rifle.
They gained the top, and the tank began to pitch downwards as it traveled on. Shots on their armor came sporadic again, then all but ceased. Minty half-expected the enemy to be waiting to meet them there with anti-tank guns leveled, but the only thing behind the rise, as far as she could see, were some apple carts half-full of munitions, and the remains of some cookfires. Summer ordered the tank to stop in the middle of the meadow, then ordered Minty spin the turret to various points, so that Thrash could shoot at some more targets around them Cashmere couldn’t reach.
They waited there. After a few minutes, Minty detected the roar of engines nearby over the cacophony of battle, and supposed the others must have caught up.
“Squad,” Summer began, addressing her small command, “The infantry needs to open up a secure zone to move the wounded and the baggage through. Tank no.18, lead tank no.7 to the west and support the right flank. I and tank no.9 will support the left. Move out.”
Minty felt tiredness drop onto her shoulders, and she leaned back and closed her eyes. The operation was far from over; the operations were never over. She felt in that moment like she had been in one long operation, ever since operation Star on High two years ago. It was just one thing after another, day in and day out.
You got knocked out by a crystal empire shell in a frozen town on the northern border, and when you woke up, you were inside a steel box, blowing ponies limb from limb. Minty couldn’t say it was where she expected she would be when she volunteered for the army.
She heard the commander issue an order, and she opened her eyes and sat up. She really needed a smoke.
Turnip Sprout locked eyes with the enemy across the table. Or, really, her one uncovered eye, the one not covered by bandages. Today it was all going to end, once and for all. She grinned wolfishly.
“Scared?” she taunted the figure across the table.
“Naw,” her enemy replied, returning the grin.
All around then, the ponies of the hospital ward crowded around, shouting encouragement or booing, although who both were directed at was anypony’s guess. Some enterprising ponies were even taking bets, with cigarette and chocolate rations the main stake.
Their battlefield was a crate-turned-table set up in the middle of the cots and sleeping-places of a long and tall army tent, a handy place to send casualties and then forget about them. The heavy canvas walls admitted nothing through the material, and what little light managed to permeate the curling wisps of cigarette smoke came under the edges and from the entrance flaps at either end of the long space, leaving its residents in dim twilight most of the time. For now, burning some of the limited oil supplies, a lantern hung up on a nearby support pole cut through the gloom like a beacon.
Getting into the casualty ward with shrapnel wounds from an enemy shell from that last mission a week ago just might have been the best thing to happen to Turnip lately. Sure, it was boring, and she only had one eye to see with, but the rations were better, and there was no shortage of fine company. Best of all, in here, nopony had to get shot at.
And anyway, Turnip thought, whoever said the hospital was boring clearly wasn’t trying hard enough.
Turnip’s enemy tonight was a strong young stallion about her age, with a washed-out, desaturated-looking green coat and an uncombed brown mane. His cutie mark was a brown button with a silver thread and needle running loosely through two of its four holes.
Turnip flicked her head, sending her blonde braid to the other side of her neck. “Y’all ready fer me to take you down, Buttons?”
“Do yer worst, Sprout.”
“Then let’s do this.”
She dropped her smile, and he did the same. They stared each other down, bodies taut and ready for action. He rose slightly on his haunches. She spat to one side through the gap in her teeth. The crowd hushed. Then they both slammed their elbows on the table and locked hooves together, and the cheering resumed.
Turnip had met Buttons when she first arrived here at the hospital. He had been her bed neighbor, and, having nothing better to do on that first day, she struck up a conversation. That neighbor had turned out to be mighty good company indeed, and the rest was history. It helped a lot, too, that he was from her home county, and they were able to share in a great many little in-jokes about home. This latest activity of theirs was honestly just the end result of two bored country ponies without enough liquor.
Turnip had an early advantage in the contest and managed to push his foreleg down quite a ways, but then her advantage was gone, and his strengths began to show. Or rather, his lengths, since his legs were much longer than hers, average for a stallion though they may have been. Turnip had many times cursed her small stature – barely bigger than a filly, really – but this time she cursed perhaps more than usual. She could not lose; her reputation and her pride was at stake.
Sweat beaded on her brow and her tongue stuck between the gap in her front teeth as she tried to make her prodigious strength do the work of two ponies, no, three. Her elbow hurt.
Buttons strained, too, but not anywhere as hard. Like her, he was also quite strong for his size, and he had leverage; it was all Turnip could do to keep him from pushing her past the critical point. Turnip took her eyes off her hoof and glanced up; the look she saw on Buttons’ face as her struggles began to really show themselves angered her beyond reason. He needed to be taught a lesson, he needed to be kicked right in that smug face, he needed…
“Raaaaahhh!” Turnip screamed a war cry, flushed with rage and adrenaline. Slowly, she pushed the stallion back, gaining lost ground. Her straining muscles stood out in sharp relief on her glistening tan coat. Now she was past the halfway point; if she kept this up, she could-
“May I have all of your attention, please?” interrupted an authoritative voice behind her. Her ears swiveled involuntarily; what?
Her brief lapse in concentration was all Corduroy needed. With a redoubled effort, he pushed back, and by the time Turnip realized it, it was already too late. Her hoof slammed to the table, defeated.
“I win,” he announced to a suddenly very silent tent. Somepony coughed, and several others followed suit. This was the casualty ward, after all.
But all the rage seething through Turnip’s veins had nowhere to go, having been denied its release. She got up slowly, deliberately, her face flushed. Of course, she was mad that Buttons had beat her, but for a second there, she had been on the way to winning, and then…
She turned on the one who had distracted her, vision filmed over with red. Her nostrils flared and she snorted. She pawed the ground with one hoof.
“Sprout, don’t…” said Buttons from behind her, but she wasn’t listening. She charged.
The officer looked surprised, but she recovered quickly and sidestepped Turnip. Thwarted, Turnip spun and tried to kick out at the officer, who slipped inside her blind side. She bit out at where she suspected the mare to be, and her teeth clacked in empty air. The tackle that brought her to the ground came completely out of nowhere.
She roared and tried to push the pony off of her, but her tired right foreleg gave out on her and she crashed to the dirt underneath the weight. She thrashed around and tried to rise again.
“Dag nab it, Sprout, cut that out!” came the voice of the pony holding her down. It was Buttons’ voice.
“Git offa me!” Turnip yelled, trying in vain to get her hooves under her again. The officer she had attacked – oh, Celestia, had she just attacked an officer? Walked into her field of view.
“Sorry, sir, she’s – well, she’s…” Buttons started to say, apologetically.
“…Very lucky I took hoof-to-hoof classes at the academy,” finished the officer. “Let her up; it’s quite alright.”
Buttons’ weight disappeared from her back, and she shakily got to her hooves. From the officer’s expression, it was pretty far from “alright”. Briefly Turnip wondered if it would be worth trying to apologize. She hawked in preparation to spit, then thought better of it and swallowed. The officer’s face tightened, but she turned slightly to address the tent at large.
“Now, if that matter is quite finished, I’d like all of your attention, please,” she began, again. “I am Lieutenant Mudskipper, and I am looking for able-bodied ponies to join my unit for proactive and productive exercises for the good of the camp.”
No one spoke. A few ponies not already bedridden laid back on nearby cots, and everyone tried to look as injured as possible. Turnip tried swaying slightly in place, as if she had been more tired out by her struggles than she was.
The lieutenant’s mouth tightened even more. “Very well, then. I asked for volunteers, and as Celestia is my witness, I’ll have them. Starting with you –” she pointed at Turnip. “– You –” she pointed at Buttons. “If you’re well enough to hoof-wrestle, you’re well enough for me.”
“But I’m not –” Turnip began, meaning to raise her status as tank crew, but she was overridden.
“When I choose you, you are to form up in ranks before me,” the lieutenant barked authoritatively at the crowd at large. “Now then. I’ll also take you, you, you, and...” she pointed to more ponies from the crowd. Amputees and ponies obviously too ill or weak to move weren’t chosen, but everyone on their hooves who looked like they were capable of holding a rifle, the lieutenant selected. The center of the tent rapidly lost all standing room as it was occupied by walking casualties.
One pony she selected tried to walk over to join the condemned, but his legs gave out and he collapsed. “Up!” the lieutenant commanded. “Up, you ingrate!”
She walked over and kicked the pony several times, and though he tried, he was unable to rise again. That, or he was very good at acting. The lieutenant gave up and stopped selecting ponies.
“You will all go to the quartermaster to be armed and equipped,” she barked. “Form lines!”
With a terrible sinking feeling, Turnip dutifully shuffled around into the line, although she was careful not to be the first. What was she going to do, disobey a direct order from a lieutenant? This whole thing had to be against some order or another. She just had to hope someone noticed that the troop of casualties was out of the ordinary and raise the point with someone higher up the chain of command.
“March!” the lieutenant commanded, and they did. They all marched out of the hospital, the officer bringing up the rear, making sure none of them slipped off.
It didn’t take long for the little column to thread its way through the headquarters to arrive at the lieutenant’s destination, where the quartermaster ponies were responsible for doling out equipment, usually to replace lost or damaged items. The lieutenant explained what she wanted, keeping half a suspicious glare on her group of rounded-up patients. Then, they received their new equipment, such as it was, starting with the first pony in line.
Each was given a rifle, a bandolier of ammunition, a helmet, and nothing more. Turnip surmised that they couldn’t be going far, and that she would probably have a chance to slip away soon and fetch her pack. Then it came her turn.
She stood on her hind legs, to see properly over a desk made for ponies of a more normal size, her forehooves braced on the wood. The pony at the desk took one look at this unusually small, green-eyed mare, and dropped a standard medium-sized helmet on her head, a bandolier over her neck, and shoved a full-length rifle at her. The helmet promptly fell over her eyes.
Turnip pushed the helmet back, licked her lips nervously, and looked to see if the lieutenant was watching. She was to the side, arguing with a camp aide who had appeared, probably about this whole business. Now was Turnip’s chance. She leaned in confidentially to the quartermaster pony behind the table and asked, in a stage whisper, “Hey, you got any tobacco for a wounded pony?”
“Like this?” the pony said, holding up a pack of premium cigarettes.
It probably helped that half her chest and head were wrapped in bandages. Turnip checked on the lieutenant again, confirmed she was still busy, then turned back and shook her head slightly. She hawked and spat on the ground to one side. Even after a week, her saliva had a blackish tinge to it.
The pony’s eyes darted to the lieutenant, then back to her, and winked. “Say no more,” he said confidentially, sliding a round tin about the size of a tuna ration across the counter. Turnip quickly swiped it off the counter and stashed it in a pocket, and when the lieutenant sent the aide packing, she had already joined the first ponies along with her “new” gear, fighting to find some way of wearing the bandolier in a way that wouldn’t tangle in her legs.
While the rest of the group, including Buttons, received their gear, Turnip managed a solution that mostly involved letting both the bandolier and the rifle rest upon the shallow curve of her back, and the helmet strapped well behind her jaw. If she moved too much, her carefully balanced items would fall down and bump into her forelegs as she walked, so she tried to stand still and not upset things too much.
Once everypony had been equipped, they were marched through the gathering dusk of the evening through the camp, and shortly left it behind for open ground.
Turnip shuffled around in the march order until she was no longer being observed by the officer, then stealthily pulled out the tin with a little three-legged hopping gait, prized the lid open with her teeth, and tried grabbing a plug of the stuff with her tongue. She accidentally got enough for two, but that was fine; she shut the lid and shoved it back in her pocket. She chewed, and sighed. They didn’t let you have this stuff in the hospital – something about the stained gums getting in the way of properly assessing health.
Darkness had almost completely fallen by the time they reached a hill some distance out from the headquarters, where a full platoon of infantryponies were busy digging new trenches in the virgin soil. Turnip couldn’t tell, but it seemed like the same was happening on the neighboring hills to the east and west as well. A line of unused shovels stuck in the ground near the working ponies.
“If you can dig, join your unit and help dig!” barked the lieutenant, in a tone that brooked no argument. Reluctantly, ponies moved to pick up shovels, and Turnip, feeling the officer’s eyes on her, picked one up as well.
She had no idea things were this bad. Drafting wounded ponies, not telling them what for, exactly? What did they think it would accomplish, avoid a panic? Clearly, they felt they needed every pony on the ground for this one, so why didn’t they just say so? Turnip felt that would go down much better than randomly abducting a bunch of ponies from the hospital and marching them through the camp by the figurative scruffs of their necks, like they were on penal duty or something. She sighed and bit the tip of the shovel into the soil, shoulder-to-shoulder with a burly dark red stallion with enlisted tabs.
The work was hard, but her body was strong and well-fed, and she was up to the task. Others were not so lucky; a few ponies down the line, she heard the sound of a body hitting the ground. A sergeant came over and chewed out the unfortunate pony, but when it was clear that he really was incapable of returning to work, he was sent to go get his rifle and wait. Lucky guy, Turnip thought.
Much later, in the small hours of the morning, they had dug a trench sufficiently deeply around the front of the hill so that a pony could stand up in it without being exposed to fire from below, as well as a rear trench about six meters behind it, connected by a shallow communication trench. The communication trenches should be deeper, but they had dug them just deep enough to crawl through without being exposed in the interest of time, and now the lieutenant, who was apparently also the pony in charge of this platoon, ordered a halt for rest.
“We shall finish this work and make dugouts in the morning,” she had said, and Turnip gratefully left to go find Buttons.
“Whew,” he said, stretching his back slowly as she approached. “I been worked like a dawg, and I’m tired as one, too.”
“Ya got any rations in yer pockets?” Turnip asked, and Buttons shook his head. “Awright, I’ll go git some. You jest set tight.”
With a glance around her to see if anyone was watching in the moonlit darkness, she left her rifle and bandolier and slipped away from the platoon and made her way into the camp. It didn’t take long for her to locate her hospital ward and retrieve her pack, along with her carbine and a bandolier that actually fit her (standard extra small size). On her way out, she paused, then walked up to the first nurse she saw that wasn’t busy.
“Hey,” she said, confidentially leaning in close and glancing around, “If I was you, I’d keep my kit close to hoof. A li’l bird told me somethin’ big’s gonna be happenin’ very soon. Ya get me?”
The nurse’s eyes darted around for spectators, then she nodded and murmured, “Got it.”
Turnip clapped her on the shoulder with a forehoof. “Attagirl. Tell yer friends.” She left the nurse and slipped away through the camp, having done her good deed for the day. And this early in the morning, too!
Back at the periphery trenches, she found Buttons again after some searching. He was lying with his hooves tucked under his body in the rear trench, a meter or so away from another sleeping infantrypony. She found the full-length rifle she was issued earlier and prodded him with it.
Instantly, he came awake in a flurry of motion, drawing his knife and surging towards her. “You won’t take me alive, ya crystal fleabag!” he shouted. It was lucky for him that everypony around them was too tired to care about the disturbance. She fended off his advance with the barrel of the thankfully unloaded rifle until he recognized her in the darkness, probably by her uncommon stature. “…Oh. S’ jus’ you, Sprout. Why didn’t ya jus’ use a hoof?”
She propped up the rifle on the back wall of the rough-dug trench and nodded to the knife held in his teeth. “Fer the fun of it, ya old warhawk. Here, have some o’ this.” She got out two tins of field rations and passed him one of them.
“I’m not old,” Buttons muttered, sheathing his knife and accepting the tin. “Thanks fer this, though. This ain’t a time to go hungry.”
“Ain’t that the truth,” she agreed, and they dug in. When they had finished, they sat with their backs against the other, sharing warmth, and looked at the stars.
Buttons laughed softly; she could feel it more than hear it. “Yeah. I know it. Why’d ya ask, anyway? Worried ya might be fancyin’ yer cousin?”
Turnip snorted derisively. “Hay no. I jest never expected to meet somepony from Turnpike, is all.” Well, somepony else, anyway. There was one other pony she had her suspicions about, but that pony wasn’t here.
“Long as that’s all that’s eatin’ ya,” Buttons said with a shrug. “Let’s try and get some shuteye, awright?”
“Awright,” Turnip answered, but the night was cold, and her mind was set buzzing with a horrible suspicion, one she hadn’t allowed herself to contemplate since she had found a bed neighbor who shared her hometown, accent, and culture.
“Buttons, you awake?” she asked, after a long time spent watching the stars move across the sky.
He stirred against her back. Though his breathing didn’t change, he said, “Yeah, I’m awake.”
“Can I ask ya somethin’?”
“Shoot.”
“Buttons isn’t yer full name, is it?”
He was silent for a moment. Then he answered, “Is Sprout yers?”
She sighed. “Point taken.” Then, a horrible thought occurring to her, she took a plunge. “My name’s really Turnip.”
“Turnip Sprout, huh?” he said, and she held her breath. Surely he knew now what she was, if he was indeed from her hometown. “Well,” he said, after a long pause, turning around and presenting his hoof, “Pleased t’meetcha, Turnip Sprout. I’m Corduroy Buttons.”
Turnip froze, reeling, one hoof hesitantly raised from the ground. He was one of them. It was exactly as she had feared. Exactly the answer she hadn’t wanted to hear.
Turnip’s family, and Corduroy’s, had bad blood going back generations. Her great-uncle Turnip Goulash had been swindled on a deal with the old crone, Taffeta, so he’d done her the turn she deserved, and then they had killed his favorite dog… Well, things escalated, and her father had hammered into her head as a filly that a member of the Turnip family could not, as a matter of clan honor, show their rivals anything less than the treatment they deserved. But Buttons – no, Corduroy, wasn’t really a bad guy, in the time she’d known him…
“You… stay away from me, you textile two-timer!” she growled, and she spat right in his face.
Corduroy recoiled from her, a look of shock on his face that turned to hurt. He slowly reached up and wiped the blackish goo from above his eyebrow and flicked it aside. Turnip waited for him to attack; she welcomed it. To her surprise, though, he only turned his head away and swallowed.
“Have it yer way,” he croaked. He snagged up his rifle, looked at her one last time, and marched around the corner of the nearest communication trench.
Was that a raindrop the moonlight had glinted on just now? Turnip checked the sky for more unscheduled rainclouds and found the predawn sky black and empty.
She sat back down and hung her head; she hadn’t wanted him to run away, she had wanted… she didn’t know what she had wanted him to do. How she wanted him to react. She was angry at herself, but herself was no fun to be angry at, since she couldn’t just beat herself up and put herself in her place. Well, she reflected, she could, but it wouldn’t make her feel any better, the way beating someone else up might.
She pulled a blanket off her pack and draped it over herself. “And stay away,” she muttered, halfheartedly, in the general direction he had disappeared.
Though she was bone-tired from spending all night digging, sleep was a long time in coming.
A terrific explosion shattered any shred of rest Turnip might have been having. She blindly scrambled to her hooves, trying to determine the source, only for another explosion to strike nearby. Then, she became aware of the sound of an aerial engine, more of them, in the sky, and the telltale whistling noise of impending death.
She threw herself against the side of the trench and curled into a ball; the bomb struck not three meters away, but on the ground above, and she was sheltered from the blast and the shrapnel of the bursting case. Even so, she felt the force of it through her side as an unbelievably heavy thump being transmitted through the soil. The unbraced side of the trench caved and buried her under a small avalanche of soil.
Spitting and struggling free of the loose dirt, she fished around the former floor of the trench and came up with a rifle. Who’s rifle? Hers? It didn’t matter, and she quickly slung it over her neck and hurried to the front trench, which was deeper and should offer better protection. The gun swung heavily into her legs and she tripped twice, bombs falling seemingly at random on positions along the hasty defensive line they had only some hours ago had a hoof in making.
Then, just as soon as she had gained the forward trench and found a spot in the line in between two ponies much larger than her, the bombs stopped falling. The drone of aerial engines seemed to be fading, not that she was a good judge of that, when she could hardly hear anything. Then she was aware of more bombs going off far behind her.
The headquarters! She turned to look up and saw a formation of low-flying twin-engined flying machines roar over. Doors in their bellies opened and dropped bundles of deadly parcels on the tent city, ripping through canvas like cobwebs. Turnip watched helplessly.
The infantrypony next to her shot her rifle. Turnip felt the percussion of the report, more than the sound, and turned to see what the soldier had shot at.
Sparkling ponies in tan uniforms were beginning to advance across the open ground before them, emerging from the forest. Not quite a tide; they dashed between folds in the ground, some staying behind to provide covering fire while their comrades moved. Bullets began whistling over Turnip’s position and striking the ground before the trench, kicking up little sprays of dirt.
She got her rifle swung around from her neck – unfortunately, it was the long one, not her carbine – and got it set on the edge of the trench. She aimed left-hoofedly down the notch-and-post sights with her uncovered eye at a group of crystal ponies and pulled the bar-shaped trigger into the stock.
The heavy gun kicked her in the shoulder, but not near as hard as her carbine would. Not knowing if she actually hit one of the darting three-hundred-meter specks of color, she slapped her right forehoof up at the projecting bolt-handle, then jerked it backward, ignoring the casing that flew over her head. Then, she pushed the bolt-handle forward and slapped it down and sought another target.
The ponies beside her shot too, picking their targets. A few days of training didn’t guide their motions; experience did, and that made them faster shots and more accurate, too. On Turnip’s fourth shot, she saw the pony she was aiming at, nearer now than before, fall an instant before she felt her comrade’s rifle report.
She fired her last shot and dropped back out of the line of fire to reload. She popped open the first pouch on her bandolier, the one that was issued to her when she was first outfitted, the one that fit her, and pawed out the end of the sheet metal strip with the tip of her hoof, then she held up the belt and grasped the metal in her teeth and pulled it completely free of the pouch. The strip of metal was followed by five bullets held in a neat row. She maneuvered the clip up to place it in the guide set in the receiver of the rifle, and belatedly realized the bolt needed to be open. Unlocking it and sliding it to the rear of its travel, she pushed the line of bullets into the magazine and flicked the clip into the dirt. She closed the bolt and was ready for killing again.
Popping up to the firing position again, the enemy was closer now than they had been, and easier to hit. She centered her sights on a pony, fired, and was disappointed to see him buckle and fall seconds too late, from a different direction.
She didn’t hear the chatter of the machinegun, but she saw the bright muzzle flash and saw the bullet impacts on the ground before her just in time to duck down. She felt the sonic crack in the air as a swarm of deadly lead hornets whipped by inches over her head. The soldier to her right pushed his rifle up and blind-fired it, then pulled it down to cycle the action.
She popped up; she was smaller, and maybe she could deal with this so that her comrades didn’t have to. She took aim at the machinegunner. He squeezed off another burst in her direction.
She didn’t even have time to pull the trigger before something fetched a terrific blow to her head and yanked it backward. She was already unconscious before she hit the bottom of the trench.
Turnip woke with the smell of copper and cordite in her nose. She was staring up at a few wisps of cloud in a bright blue sky, wondering what was crusted to the side of her head and why her chest felt so heavy. Wondering what she was doing lying on her side in the dirt. Her head was pounding behind her eyes, and her mouth felt too dry.
She tried to rise, and found the weight was more than just metaphorical; she was lying under the body of another Equestrian soldier. His glassy eyes stared at the sky, as hers had, and as she watched, a fly buzzed around and landed on one eyeball.
“Get offa me,” she muttered, struggling to wiggle out from under the weight of the stiff corpse. Her body felt robbed of all strength, like she had been marching all day and night with no food or water. Then she heard voices speak in an undeniably foreign accent, and she stopped struggling and tried to figure out what was going on.
Craning her head, she was able to look down the trench. Two crystal ponies in tan infantry uniforms, one rose-colored and the other an aquamarine grey, were picking through the pockets of the dead. As she watched, the rose one pulled out a gold-plated cigarette case from a soldier’s pocket, opened it, sniffed the contents, then shrugged and put it in her pocket. The other admonished her for looting for personal gain, but good-naturedly.
Hearing their conversation made Turnip realize that she could hear again, or at least, hear things well enough to understand these two in their conversational tones.
How long had she been out? She glanced at the sun’s position in the sky and saw that it looked past noon. What would they do if they found her alive? Would they check? Maybe it would be best to surrender now?
Turnip hadn’t heard good things about Empire prison camps. She decided to play dead. Better for her pa to get the letter that she had died in battle than find out she was going to linger for a few years yet before dying of disease in a drafty unheated shack in the frozen north.
She closed her eyes and slackened her jaw and tried to look for all the world like she was still unconscious.
The crystal ponies on looting detail worked their way up the trench with agonizing slowness until they eventually got to her. They rifled through the pockets of the body on top of her, and then it was heaved off her suddenly. Moment of truth; Turnip tried to breathe as shallowly as possible, so that her moving flanks wouldn’t give her away.
Keeping up their banter, one of them turned out all her pockets, coming away with her tobacco, her wallet, her ration opener, and a few other odds and ends she kept. She was rolled over, and she did her best impression of a stiff corpse, and hoped they didn’t notice anything amiss as they stripped her of her bandolier and midsection belt, probably for the buckle. And then they moved on to the next body. She kept still and controlled her breathing long after their voices had faded away into the distance.
Well, now that the looting detail had come through, what came next? Well, probably at some point soon, whatever was left would be scraped into a mass grave…
Turnip didn’t want to be around for that. Taking a risk, she opened her eyes and raised her head to look around again. The coast was clear, at least as far as the trench went. And now that the body had been removed…
She stood up, shakily, and fought the pain that shot through her head as her helmet shifted. Reaching up, she undid the straps that held it painfully against her neck and tipped it to the ground.
The helmet had a deep dent where the mild steel had caved, but not broken. It was longer than a bullet-width dent had a right to be, and she rubbed at her tender throat where the chinstrap had cut against it. If the helmet hadn’t had the “give” on her small head to move back as it had when hit, and if the steel had been harder and more brittle… thank Celestia for wartime corner-cutting, Turnip supposed.
It had probably left a whopper of a bruise, though, and maybe worse. She cast around for a weapon. All the Equestrian rifles were already gone, collected, probably, and they had taken her belt knife along with her belt. An entrenching shovel with a crushed dent in one side of the blade about the size of a pony’s helmet lay discarded a short distance away, and she scooped it up in her mouth. Not everything was fit to be collected, she supposed.
Cautiously, she popped her head over the trench. The two ponies who had taken her things were sitting next to a cart on the neighboring hill, and several other groups of Crystal ponies moved in the vicinity as well. How was she going to get away from a place they had specifically dug so that nopony could approach or leave without being seen?
She looked back. The crown of the hill blocked her view of the state of the headquarters, but it was either destroyed or occupied by the enemy or both. To either side were more quickly-dug trenches crawling with crystal ponies. That left only the direction the enemy came from, the forest across the open ground. She tried to think of a plan to help her escape, but thinking was hard. Harder than usual.
Oh, well, gunned down on a battlefield was the same either way as far as the official report was concerned, no matter if it happened during or after the fighting. She checked to see if anypony was looking her direction, then clambered out of the trench and started running for the trees.
She heard a distant shout that was followed by a rifle shot that didn’t even come close to hitting her. The next shot, however, cracked over her back with a deadly hum and took a branch off a bush in front of her. She hunched lower and tried to duck and weave as well as she could, bullets striking around her. Thankfully, none of them had a machinegun, or she’d be a goner for sure.
Reaching the treeline, she dashed behind the first trunk big enough to give her some protection. Several bullets hit the tree or hummed to either side, and one hit the edge of the trunk next to her head and sprayed her face in tiny splinters. Fortunately, it was next to the bandaged side of her face, and the dirty linen absorbed most of the little stings.
Ponies were running closer, firing as they went. Firing on the move was never accurate for a pony, but it served to send lead in her direction and keep her pinned down. Her legs were shaking with the effort of running this far, but Turnip knew if she stayed where she was they would close in and capture her in no time.
She wanted to get mad, feel something – that usually helped her when she needed a boost. But for some reason, she just couldn’t. The only thing she could be was afraid, afraid her legs would give out, afraid she would die without seeing her pa or her brothers again. She mustered what little strength she had and dashed out from behind the tree and ran deeper into the forest.
She ran as fast as she could, but still her pursuers were gaining. She risked a peek backwards and saw that most had broken off, but a few adamant souls were still hot on her heels. She tried dodging under a fallen tree, and they vaulted over; slipping through gaps between saplings, and they went around. Without her midsection belt, her uniform jacket was free to flap around her, and for one terrifying moment it caught on a projecting broken branch before she tore it free and kept going.
The problem was, her legs were just too short, and she was tired. These ponies had probably been in the assault, but they were fresher, and they hadn’t been lying in the sun with no water for the better part of a day. But Turnip wasn’t about to give up. She still had her hooves, and she had the shovel, and before her legs gave out she determined to stand and fight.
The last battle of Turnip Sprout, who gave better than she got. Too bad no one was around to write that on her headstone.
“Hey, over here!” shouted a voice ahead of her, in a decidedly familiar accent. An Equestrian-sounding one.
She spotted him; a young soldier in a grey Equestrian uniform, rifle at his side and leveled. A living soldier? In these woods? It could be an empire trick, but Turnip didn’t care. She ran in his direction, ducking down as she saw him move to trigger his rifle.
The bullet caught the pony closest behind her full in the chest, and the crystal empire soldier crashed heavily to the covering of old fallen leaves. When the Equestrian had shot, Turnip scrambled to her hooves and tried to run farther, only for the next one behind her to bowl her over with sheer momentum.
They tumbled together a meter or two before fetching up against a tree, Turnip trying to jab her shovel under the other pony’s chin and the other pony trying to pin her forelegs to her sides. Turnip didn’t have the leverage she needed, and she settled for bashing her foe on the side of the face before releasing the shovel to bite something. Very close by, several rifle shots rang out.
She bit, but it was hard jawbone, and the other pony managed to shake her off and get Turnip flipped around, forelegs pinned. Turnip tried to headbutt her hard in the nose, but her assailant kept her head down and blocked it. Turnip thrashed uselessly in the larger pony’s grip.
Turned around, she had a view of what was going on, though: the Equestrian soldier was not alone, and he and his comrades were engaging the other three crystal empire soldiers in a very brief running close-range gun battle. As she watched, one of them buckled from a wound Turnip couldn’t see, and a grenade went off, sending deadly shards everywhere around it. One of them stung her in the foreleg, just above her right hoof, but she felt her attacker flinch. Served her right.
The last crystal soldier yelled, “kom on, lets get aut auf heer!” to his one surviving comrade and tried to disengage, using the trees as much as possible to stay out of the line of fire. He unclipped a crystal empire grenade from his webbing, a small oblong object the size of a lemon, and tossed it with a curious rearing-up motion. It flew over Turnip’s and her attacker’s heads and exploded somewhere on the other side of a large deciduous tree.
The Equestrian and his companions, minus one, pursued shortly thereafter, firing sporadically. Turnip’s attacker began backing up slowly. One of the soldiers, a grizzled stallion with a cleft chin and a thick moustache, noticed and leveled his rifle at Turnip. Or at least it seemed that way.
“Hold it there, rockhead. Let the filly go and we won’t have no problems.”
Okay, that made her at least a little bit angry, despite the ostensibly friendly rifle pointed her direction making her reconsider how much she wanted to die rather than be taken alive. If they took her, she could always escape later, right?
“Hey!” she yelled, while trying to kick the pony pinning her in the belly. It was no good; she didn’t have the space, the leverage, the length of leg, and, most of all, her legs were shaped the wrong way.
“Zhis is no filli, zhis is a solder, a kombatant!” her attacker shot back, trying to shuffle backwards on her hind legs alone while struggling to contain Turnip’s kicking and squirming body.
In answer, the Equestrian soldier made two brisk motions with an upraised forehoof. Turnip could feel her attacker move her head one way and then the other, and felt her body stiffen more as she realized what was happening. The lone crystal soldier was out of options.
“Veri uell, haff her,” she said, dropping Turnip and stepping back on all fours again. “Ai vill go in pease, just no harm.”
Turnip scrambled in the direction of her dropped shovel a short distance away. She had to end this crystal pony now, or the wretch would tell everything the second she got back, and the one that had got away was bad enough already. Her right forehoof felt slightly numb when she put weight on it.
“Of course,” the soldier said, and Turnip heard the rifle shot. She snatched up her shovel and spun around just in time to see the body hit the ground with a heavy thud.
She stopped dead in her tracks, looking around wildly for any new threats. None presented themselves immediately. It was just her, and three ponies wearing Equestrian uniforms and holding Equestrian weapons. They looked dirty and ragged, and the two stallions were unshaven, now that she saw them clearly. Turnip very much doubted they were real Equestrian soldiers; the officers she knew would never allow their ponies to get like this.
Their leader, who’s collar would claim to be a corporal, cycled the bolt on his rifle and looked at her, and then at the body of the crystal pony. Then he turned to the two who had been flanking her in the standoff.
“You, help Gutter with his leg. You, relieve the bodies of the guns and ammo.” Orders dispensed, he turned his attention back to Turnip.
She faced him, chest heaving, heart pounding, ready to run again if need be. New wetness trickled down her hoof and worked its way down the crusty dried blood on the side of her head. She was painfully aware that she would never get away from this lot if they chose to chase her down, too, and they might not have any obligation to treat her under the laws of war.
The so-called corporal spoke first. “Put the shovel down, li’l miss. It’s okay, we ain’t gonna hurt ya.”
Turnip tried some way of stowing the e-tool, remembered her belt was taken, and set it down close at hoof. As the rush of combat slowly faded, it was getting harder and harder to stay on her hooves.
“I’m an adult,” she said, through gritted teeth.
“I’m sure y’are. Come on, let’s get ya somewheres safe.” He slung his rifle to the side and advanced on her slowly, like one would a skittish animal.
Turnip stamped the ground angrily, sending a lance of fresh pain up her leg. Ow. “Turnip Sprout, enlisted cannoneer, 5th Equestrian Armored Battalion, D Company, 3rd Platoon, Tank Fifteen. Service number 998734.” Belatedly realizing she should have done this first, she fished down the neckline of her jacket and came up with an Equestrian military I.D. disc. “I’m a real Equestrian soldier, unlike you frauds!”
The stallion just looked at her for a long moment. Turnip’s sides shook. Maybe now was the time to make a run for it, while the others were occupied.
Then he guffawed loudly. He started laughing so hard he had to bend to stay on his hooves. Wiping a tear from his eye, he said, “Frauds! Frauds, she says!”
“It ain’t no laughin’ matter,” Turnip said sourly.
“Frauds! Missy, I tell ya the truth, I thought you was the fraud here!” he laughed, straightening up. “I didn’t know as they made soldiers that small! How’d ya do it, lie about yer age?”
“I’m twenty,” Turnip said, defensively. “Are ya soldiers or aren’t ya?”
Still chuckling a little, the corporal pulled out an identity disc long enough for Turnip to see that there was one, then stashed it away again.
“Proves nothing,” Turnip said stubbornly. “Coulda taken it off a body.”
“Have it yer way,” the corporal said with a shrug. Turnip’s blood ran cold. Buttons! She’d left without even trying to find him, and he had surely been in the same trench as she had been in! He could have survived, or, more likely, he was like that other stallion, lying somewhere with flies on his eyeballs, waiting for someone to push him in to a big hole in a nameless field…
The corporal continued, heedless of her inner turmoil. “We gotta get back to the unit and report this action, anyhow. You can come with us, if ya like. Get sum stitchin’ on yer leg, there, get ya fed an’ watered. Howaboutit?”
Turnip eyed him warily. Whether he was really an army scout or a partisan or just a bandit, if he was any good at his job she knew he wasn’t going to let her leave of her own accord, lest she give something away to somepony else. What was that about escaping anytime? Oh, yes. Besides, water didn’t sound too bad right about now.
“Fine,” she said, guardedly, “Jus’ let me get some things off this here body.”
The stallion gestured with his hoof grandly at the body that Turnip had so recently been wrestling with. “Be my guest.”
She limped over, throwing him a cautious glance, and took the corpse’s webbing and pocket items for herself. She had felt the profile of a pack of cigarettes against her back during their struggle, and she tried to find them, but the other scout must have taken them already. A shame; she could have used them to bargain for something if she ever made it back to a unit. Checking the belt knife, a Crystal Empire-issue bayonet, she slipped her damaged Equestrian e-tool through the belt and stood up.
She spat to one side. “Let’s go.”
“Right y’are.” The corporal flicked away the enemy cigarette he had been smoking while she had been busy and gestured to his companions. “Y’all wrapped up?”
“Pretty much. Waiting on you, sir,” answered the only mare of the four, tying off a fresh bandage that wrapped around the hindleg of the casualty of the encounter, a young russet-furred stallion.
The third stallion of the party was laden-down with four enemy rifles along with his own, and his pockets bulged with clips of rifle ammunition and other bits and bobs.
“Can I git one o’ those?” Turnip asked, pointing at him.
The corporal shook his head. “Not ‘till we know where you stand, ya can’t. Jest hold yer… well.”
The mare made a placating gesture at her. “Oh, don’t worry. The commander’l find something for you to do. Us nurses could always do with some more little helpers.”
Turnip scowled at her.
The group walked away from the scene of the brief skirmish, and Turnip limped along with them.
They walked for a long time, keeping up a brisk pace, through woods and fields and patches of uncultivated meadow grass. The wounded stallion, limping on three legs, was helped along by the mare, so he didn’t fall behind. No one offered to do the same for Turnip.
She kept up as best she could, taking four steps for every one of their three. At every step, a spike of pain throbbed up her right foreleg, but momma didn’t raise no wimp, and she gritted her teeth and kept on.
She glanced at her fellow travelers. She was near the front of the group, with the corporal; they weren’t going to let her fall behind and slip away. The shadows were beginning to lengthen as the sun slipped away.
“Say, er, I’ve been wondering…” Turnip spoke up.
“What’s that, li’l missy?” the corporal said, casually.
“You… from up-country roundabouts Turnpike?”
The corporal chuckled. “Not from there, no, but I been up and around nearby.”
Turnip hesitated before her next question. She wasn’t taking chances now; she had to know where she stood ahead of time. Before she got blindsided again.
“So… ya know what I am, then, right?”
He looked over and down at her questioningly. “What are ya?”
“My name.”
“Ah, The Turnip family, is that what yer getting’ at? Sure, I’ve heard of ya. No offense, but you ask me, all of y’all’s hoppin’ mad, is what all y’all are. Crazy business. But that don’t concern me.”
Despite his answer, Turnip felt relieved. At least he wasn’t another one of them. She wasn’t in any shape to fight just yet.
She didn’t try to talk to the corporal anymore, only walked on in silence. Not even when he tried to make idle conversation about her home did she respond. They entered another dense bit of woods, old growth, where the trees were thick and far apart. Turnip could tell they were approaching a camp of some kind; she spotted the warm and flickering glow of firelight ahead, even if she couldn’t see the fires, and heard the passive hum of many ponies in a small space.
Another ragged pony in the same Equestrian grey materialized before them and leveled a rifle, startling Turnip with the suddenness of his appearance. Bits of grass and twigs stuck to his uniform, and he had wrapped twine around the crown of his helmet, in which was stuck more small greenery.
“Halt, who goes there!” he barked at the group.
The corporal stepped forward and cleared his throat. “Scouting party from Second Platoon. The afternoon password is ‘if aardvarks could fly, we’d all be in the soup’.”
The sentry nodded and stepped aside, eyeing Turnip dubiously. “Who’s the filly in uniform?” he asked the corporal.
“Just a li’l somethin’ we found along the way,” he replied with an amused twinkle in his eye. “Snatched her from a whole heap o’ rockheads.”
“Nightmare-taken rockheads,” the sentry agreed, spitting to the side ritualistically before shaking his head. “Just when I think they can’t get any lower…”
Turnip scowled and passed by with the rest of the group.
Now they walked into the camp proper, and Turnip was forced to admit to herself that they might be real soldiers after all. Everypony was in uniform, or close enough to it. They had Equestrian weapons, for the most part, Equestrian trucks, and, further back, out of the firelight of the several sunken cookfires, they even had a hooffull of Equestrian tanks. One of them was a new long-barreled support model, so they weren’t just working with old dregs, either.
“Shortcake, get Gutter to the medics,” the corporal directed. “Strongheart, get that gear stowed. And you, li’l missy,” and he turned to look down at Turnip, “Are comin’ with me to deliver a report.”
He led her towards a tent covered in cut tree branches, one of the very few set up, and she limped after him. This was probably the brass tent, if Turnip had to guess. Oh, well, the sooner this was over, the sooner she could beg a pair of pliers off somepony and do something about this stabbing feeling in her leg…
The corporal ducked inside the tent flap, Turnip right behind him. He saluted and announced, “Corporal Dusty Trails, second platoon recon, ready to report.”
This was indeed the brass tent, and the small collection of unicorns who had been huddling around a map spread out on a folding card table all looked up. Strangely, the map was creased and water-damaged. Turnip ran her eyes over the officers, and one unicorn's appearance in particular stopped her dead in her tracks.
“Sergeant Meadows?” Turnip blurted out.
“Speak when spoken to, enlisted,” snapped a tomato-red unicorn mare next to Summer.
“Let it go this once, Marinara,” Summer said. She looked at Turnip directly; she wore a monocle over her right eye. “I know you. Enlisted Sprout, was it? However did you come to be here?”
A messy-looking unicorn stallion with a deep voice and a coat just a few shades off from Turnip’s own spoke up. “We’ll hear the corporal’s report first, sergeant, if you please. Fraternize with the enlisted on your own time.”
Summer dipped her head deferentially. “Of course, Major. Forgive me.”
The major gave Summer a wan smile and then turned back to the corporal. “Report.”
“The enemy’s been through the forest just north o’ the section six headquarters in numbers as late as this morning; their hoofprints‘re everywhere. Looks like they got some light tanks through them woods, too, since we found tracks. We were jest pressin’ on to see ‘bout the state of the headquarters itself when we ran into this soldier here,” and he gestured to Turnip, “Bein’ chased by a few enemy soldiers. We engaged ‘em and killed four, but one got away, so ya have my apologies for that one, sorry.”
The major nodded. “Hmm. Thank you, corporal. I’d like to hear of your findings in more detail, but wait there a moment for now, please.” The corporal saluted and stood at ease, glancing at Turnip. The major shifted his attention to her. “Now, Enlisted Sprout, it sounds to me like you can tell us a lot more about the state of headquarters than he can. So, let’s hear it.”
Turnip cast about for some nicer way of putting it, then gave up and said it as the pause began to border on insubordinate. “Well, sir,” she began, “It’s prob’ly not there no more, fer starters.”
That got a reaction out of the officers, alright, but most of them didn’t seem very surprised. The red one fixed her with a hard stare. “Elaborate.”
Celestia, did they want the whole life story? Well, fine.
She gave them all of it. Well, leaving out the little stuff that didn’t matter, like how she attacked an officer, or anything about her friend – friend? No, enemy – Corduroy, or the specifics of the flight and subsequent fight, such as why she was currently giving the dirt in the tent a slow drip supply of her blood.
When she finished, the major leaned his elbows on the table and steepled his hooves, frowning at the map. Addressing Turnip without looking up, he said, “Your report is well appreciated, enlisted. You may go now.”
Turnip saluted uncertainly and backed out of the tent. The instant the flap closed, she heard the officers begin to talk among themselves in raised voices. She paid no attention; the conversation was not meant for her ears, and she didn’t care. She had a lot to think about of her own.
Sergeant Meadows being here was a surprise, since last she heard the commander was still on base, and she herself was still the cannoneer, although she had been wondering why it had been a few days since Cashmere had visited her. Cashmere; Turnip was becoming increasingly certain that was another of her enemies. That pony tried to hide her accent, but she couldn’t hide her name, and Turnip was on to her.
Wait a minute – if the sergeant was here, then was that long-barrel model hers?
Turnip would have to check later. For now, this leg was going to be a problem, and her bandages needed changing, or her older wounds’d start festering for sure. And she needed something to eat, and she was thirstier than a dog on a summer day, and she was sure she would just collapse from exhaustion before much longer… priorities, Turnip. Worrying about army stuff can come later.
She limped around until she found the medics, such as they were. They were a hoofful of army surgeons and nurses, plus some more ponies who were evidently acting as helpers, set up near the back of where the trucks were parked. Shortcake was there, also, laying a wet rag on a soldier’s brow, and Turnip approached her. She had said she was a nurse, right?
“Hey, doc, ya got any pliers or forceps or somethin’ I can borrow?”
The mare looked at her sideways. “And you’re asking me?”
“Figgered ya might know.” Turnip shrugged. “Do ya or don’t ya?”
“I can’t just go giving out medical equipment to anypony who asks,” Shortcake replied. She moved on to the next unconscious soldier in the truck bed and checked his condition.
“Fer pete’s sake, girl,” Turnip growled angrily, “I got a spike or somethin’ in my leg that hurts like all getout, or didn’t ya notice?”
She was running out of patience for this. She waved her bleeding foreleg at the mare, and winced as another spike of pain shot up it. She turned to find somepony else who wasn’t too busy. Maybe her knife would do the trick to extract the little shard.
“Oh, sorry! Sorry about that,” the mare said, behind her, suddenly apologetic. “I can help you with that if you want. Wait one moment.”
Turnip sighed and lay on her belly on a handy toolbox, letting her legs dangle to the ground on either side. She fought the overwhelming urge to close her eyes and drift off, now that she didn’t need to concentrate on staying on her hooves. Then Shortcake was there and fussing over her injured hoof, and she had something to pay attention to again.
“Oh, you poor thing,” she crooned. Turnip would have felt insulted if she had any energy left to do so. “When did this happen?”
“Yer grenade,” Turnip said shortly. Shortcake produced a pair of long, thin grasping implements and held them in her teeth.
“Wher’ ish i’?” she asked, and Turnip pointed to the entry wound, which was still oozing blood. Shortcake nodded and winked. “One shec,” and she plunged the probes in with the grace of a butcher.
Turnip hissed in pain, but kept her leg still. She would definitely have been better off doing this herself. Shortcake probed around for a minute, and, finding something, dug out a small triangular fragment of steel. She deposited the bloody item on the toolbox in front of Turnip’s chest.
“Ta-da!” she said proudly, once she had put away her instrument. “All done!”
Turnip’s hoof was on fire from the treatment it had received, and sweat stood out on her brow. “Where’d ya learn that, the choppin’ block? I thought ya were a nurse!”
Turnip’s leg was bleeding more now. Shortcake looked embarrassed. “Um. I’m not really. I’m just a helper, since the unit’s been so short-hoofed, you know?” she said, as she produced a roll of bandages and started wrapping Turnip’s bleeding leg.
Turnip groaned. When her family asked her how she’d lost a leg in the war, she’d have to tell them, ‘I let the wrong pony dig out a bit of shrapnel.’ It just didn’t have the same ring as, say, ‘a gun shot it right off’.
“Well, if ya got any more of them bandages, I’d ‘preciate it if ya could see yer way to changin’ these others too.”
“Oh, for sure,” Shortcake said, tying off the end of her handiwork. Blood already stained the fresh white linen. She began unwinding the dirty bandages around Turnip’s head. “Sorry about earlier. Did it hurt to walk all this way like that?”
“A bit,” Turnip answered, not wanting to get into it.
“I would have carried you if you’d asked. I had to help my buddy Gutter over there first, though.” She nodded over at where the pony in question was lying, hind leg stretched out behind him. “Bullet shattered his bone, you see. He wouldn’t have made it back otherwise. Say, your eye is just fine!”
Turnip blinked back at her, squinting slightly as her now-uncovered right eye got used to the dim ambient light of their surroundings. The half-healed wound under the eye, the whole reason for the bandage to have been wrapped so, stung a little in the evening air. She gave the mare a toothy grin.
“Sure is. The last orderly to do it messed up, and I never set him straight. Helps me look worse, ya know. When ya wrap it up again, make sure ya leave the eye uncovered, eh? It’s a mite hard to shoot a gun with my good eye covered like that.”
“Um, sure,” Shortcake said uncertainly, unwrapping the bandages on Turnip’s chest.
They made small talk while the mountain-rose-colored mare wrapped her barrel in a fresh jacket of bandaging. Turnip avoided mentioning details about her home, but that was fine; Shortcake carried the conversation with amusing stories about her own, back in her home village. Turnip didn’t catch where, exactly, only that it was close by the Everfree.
When Shortcake had finished and tied off the last knot, Turnip slowly pushed herself to her hooves.
“Well,” Turnip said, holding her foreleg out in front of her and examining the already-bloodied bandage, “Thank ya kindly, Shortcake. I really ‘preciate it.” She put weight on the leg experimentally. It still hurt to do, but at least the specific throbbing pain of something inside stabbing her with every step was gone. “Where can a pony go to get some grub around here? I’m hungrier’n a hog.”
Fed, watered, and freshly bandaged was a good place to be; Turnip even had a canteen someone had given her. With her belly full of thin oat gruel, she would have liked nothing more than to close her eyes. But she couldn’t allow herself to collapse just yet. Now it was time to worry about army stuff.
Excusing herself from the conversation she’d been involved in with one of the infantry squads, she got up and made her way to the tanks. If this morning was any indication of what infantry fighting was like, she wanted no part in it.
The tanks were parked away from most of the encampment and covered in cut tree boughs to offer concealment from the air in addition to the forest’s dense canopy. They were all of them deeply marked with numerous ineffective bullet impacts, the big one most especially. Stacked on the front wherever it wouldn’t interfere with either the driver or the radio operator’s position were empty meal sacks filled with dirt. More were lashed to the turret sides with rope, blocking the loader and gunner’s hatches and vision ports.
She paused before the biggest machine a moment, then climbed onto the nose and knocked on the radio operator’s hatch.
She heard a shuffling from within, a slight clanging sound, a bump and a muffled curse. The hatch swung open and Turnip dodged to the side to avoid being struck by it. Instead of a pony she had expected, Cashmere or perhaps Minty, she found an unfamiliar black stallion with large caramel-colored eyes looking back at her.
“Who the hay are you?” Turnip demanded.
“Right back atcha,” the stallion shot back. He glanced at her collar, and seeing her rank, or lack thereof, added, “No, we don’t have room for another loader. That spot’s taken by me. Buzz off.”
“The hay ya’are!” Turnip said angrily, stamping her hoof. Ow. “I’m the loader, and you’re gonna let me in!”
“Not happening, squirt,” the stallion said, and he moved to close the hatch. Turnip placed a hoof on the open hatch, preventing it. “Hey! Get off!”
“You might be a temporary replacement, but I was here first. Let me in!”
“Oh, for Celestia’s – Minty! There’s a midget here that wants me to let her in the tank!”
Finally, somepony who would be reasonable. Turnip heard more shuffling from inside, and the commander’s hatch was pushed open and Minty appeared, rubbing her eyes. “Alright, what’s the situation here?” she asked sleepily.
“This pony here –” and Turnip pointed at the unfamiliar stallion with the forehoof not holding down the hatch. “– Ain’t lettin’ me enter the tank to which I’m assigned. Set him straight, will ya?"
"Alright, let’s-" Minty started to say, then she stopped and did a double-take. “Turnip?!”
“In the flesh, yes ma’am.” Turnip did a little salute, hoping that would help her case with the corporal some.
“How did you – never mind. Thrash, let her in for now. We’ll sort this whole thing out later.”
The stallion, Thrash, snorted, but withdrew from the hatchway. Turnip lowered herself onto the radiopony’s seat, hind legs first. As she climbed from the radio operator’s station into the fighting compartment, she asked, “Where’d Cashmere get off to?”
“She’s with the other radio operators,” Minty said. She was already down from the commander’s hatch and was loafing with her hooves tucked under her in the narrow space between the forward ammunition rack and the gunner’s seat.
Turnip was pleased to see that the loader’s seat she’d removed when she’d first been assigned to the machine hadn’t been replaced. She was less pleased that her replacement was sprawling out in that spot.
“Thrash, keep your legs on your side of the turret,” Minty scolded. “Turnip, care to tell me why you’re here and not in the hospital where you belong?”
“Maybe once I’ve got a few winks,” Turnip mumbled, slinking under a bundle of canteens hanging from the gun cradle. “’S a long story.” She was small enough that when she settled down the canteens didn’t brush her head, so at least there was that. It was a good thing she had removed the canvas shell-catcher bag way back when, too, or there wouldn’t be any room under the gun for her.
She put her chin on the unfamiliar stallion’s back, closed her eyes, and dropped off instantly.
Turnip awoke to find daylight filtering into the turret through the open commander’s hatch. She was lying on her side on the cold metal of the turret floor underneath the gun. At some point in the night, somepony must have covered her up, because an army blanket was tickling her chin.
She kicked the blanket off and sat up right into the bottom of the gun.
Agony shot through her head, and she curled up in a ball and moaned in pain until the feeling subsided from head-splitting to merely heavy throbbing. She had hit almost exactly where that massive bruise on her head was.
“Oww…”
Holding her head with one hoof, she climbed up to stand through the commander’s hatch and looked around. The camp looked different by daylight; more… muted. There wasn’t much movement going on, and everything had an appearance of dull drabbery. The same ponies were in more or less the same places as before.
“Morning, sunshine,” came Minty’s voice from close at hoof.
Turnip turned, still holding her head. Minty was standing on the side of the tank next to her, smoking a cheap cigarette. Seeing Turnip looking, the mare looked out at the encampment and blew out a cloud of smoke.
“Why’d nopony wake me up?” Turnip asked, annoyed.
“You looked like you needed the sleep,” Minty answered. “Besides, there’s nothing to do until the commanders finish their deliberations.” She nodded at the command tent.
Turnip asked the question that was really bothering her, the one she had been too tired to want to hear the answer for the previous evening. “Why’re y’all here, in the woods, ‘stead of at headquarters?”
“Mm.” Minty sucked down the last of her cigarette, then threw the butt away. “That’s a bit of a long story, but we’ve got time. You want to hear it?”
Turnip spat to one side. “Sure thing.”
Minty told her. Apparently, the commander had got them on an infantry support gig on the front; they’d gotten attacked en route by Crystal Empire soldiers, which sounded about right, considering the events of yesterday; and they’d stumbled into a group of infantry, isolated in a pocket, and helped them break through ultimately to where they were today. Turnip hadn’t noticed it last night, but with it pointed out, she now saw that the coaxial gun that had been destroyed on that fateful first mission under Summer’s command had been replaced by a regular Equestrian infantry rifle. That was mighty odd, but needs must, she supposed.
“…We got here yesterday, and the commanders felt we ought to stop and see what the situation was at HQ before we just rushed in there,” Minty finished.
“Encircled and cut off, eh?” Turnip mused. “Well, I’d say that’d be where my story comes in. I was defending HQ, I got knocked out, I woke up, I ran, and now here I am. That’s about all there is to it.”
Minty nodded. Nothing more needed to be said.
“So, where’s the rest of the crew?” Turnip asked, after a spell.
“They’re around,” Minty said. “Nothing to do, right? Cashmere’s over there…” she pointed out the pink mare sitting among one of the infantry squad’s circles. Turnip narrowed her eyes. “…Thrash, may Luna rot his hide, is over there…”
Thrash seemed to be arguing with a cook. Minty’s hoof slid off him and pointed to the trucks. “Supercharger’s over there. She knows I’ve got my eye on her. Wave hello, Turnip.”
Turnip looked at Minty questioningly and kept her hooves where they were. From the sound of things, there was a heap of things Minty had left out of her little yarn.
Supercharger caught sight of them anyway when she happened to look up from the engine she was working on, and while she scowled at Minty, she lit up when she saw Turnip.
“Here she comes,” Minty said flatly. Something had definitely happened since she landed in the hospital.
Before Supercharger had the chance to excuse herself from her work, though, Thrash came sauntering over, a ration-kit tin balanced on one hoof, and another on his head. In daylight, Turnip could tell that he was quite a handsome stallion, black with a contrasting white mane shot through with red, and a jawline that mares back home swooned over. She might even like him, if she didn’t know he was currently occupying the only place keeping her out of the blasted mudsloggers. He had the look of a mudslogger around him, too; she wondered where they had found him.
“Hey, cutie,” he announced, once he’s reached their tank. Turnip saw Supercharger frown at them, although there was no way the pony could hear from way over there. “I brought you breakfast.” He offered up the tin to Minty with an upraised hoof, miming a fancy waiter.
Minty seemed to Turnip like she was caught in a difficult position, looking back and forth between Thrash before her and Supercharger far away. After a second’s hesitation, though, she accepted the offered tin from the stallion. “You bring me any cigarettes with that? I’m almost out.”
Thrash shrugged. “Everypony’s almost out, cutie. I tried, I really did.” Then he turned slightly to look up at Turnip. His face broke out into a grin. “So you’re the famous Turnip! Nice braid, it really suits you. Sorry about the job – this mare here,” and he indicated Minty with a sweeping gesture, “Came to give me the loader’s spot, and swear on my left back hoof, I thought the pony in question was dead.”
Turnip squinted at Minty. So it was her fault…
“Well, you look a lot better in the sunshine,” Thrash continued, “Why don’cha come on down here? I might have brought breakfast for another lovely young mare, too!”
Minty tried to give Turnip an imperceptible head-shake ‘no’, but Turnip ignored her. She was awfully hungry, and so what if this stallion was acting strange? She wouldn’t say no to an easy breakfast.
She climbed down and grabbed the tin from off his head and dug in. Watered-down oat gruel again. With what she knew now, it was probably just what was left.
“Thanks,” Turnip mumbled, around a mouthful.
“Don’t even mention it,” Thrash said, casually reaching out to lift her braid with a hoof. Turnip tossed her head to flip her braid to the other side, out of his touch.
“Turnip! It’s so nice to see you again!”
Supercharger had made her way over. If her cheerful voice was any more strained, it might snap. Turnip gave her a skeptical look over the tin. She’d known these ponies for about three days; she really didn’t see what the fuss was.
“Minty,” the pony continued coolly, acknowledging the mare’s presence. “Thrash, honey, did you get any for me? I’ve been working since daybreak.”
“That was barely forty minutes ago, Supercharger,” Minty said sourly.
“Aww, sugar, I’m sorry, but the cook only gave me enough for two, myself and a plus-one,” said Thrash, smoothly talking over Minty. “And I already gave our mutual friend Turnip half of it.” He nodded at Turnip.
‘Sugar’? ‘Honey’? ‘Cutie’? What the hay had Turnip walked in to? Whatever was going on with these three, she wanted no part in it. In fact, she didn’t even want to know about it. She put back her ears and pretended to be absorbed in her food.
“And the other half to Minty,” Supercharger pointed out, pointedly looking at the tin in Minty’s hoof. “Thrash, baby, we can’t all sit on our hooves doing nothing.” She slung her hoof over the stallion’s neck in a very possessive manner. “I’ve been hard at work making sure the trucks will run when we need them, which is more than miss guard-the-tank can say…”
“Well,” Thrash began, but Minty held up a hoof and sternly interrupted him.
“Hey, ladies. Sergeant’s coming.”
Well, that stopped it. Supercharger gave Thrash a good-natured noogie, like the whole leg-over-the-neck thing was just some casual joshing, and stood away and to one side, suddenly having the grace to look embarrassed. Thrash also stood away from the others a little, and Minty took another sip of gruel. Turnip followed the green mare’s lead.
Sergeant Meadows picked her way over slowly. In the daylight, she looked much altered from when Turnip had first seen her a week ago – deep bags under her eyes, a certain dinginess of coat, a lack of her original youthful energy in her posture. Her haunch was bandaged, probably from the same thing that had Turnip as wrapped-up as she was. Her black officer’s cap was rammed tightly on her head, shading her eyes closely.
“Mission for us, Sergeant?” Minty prompted, when Summer had drawn near enough.
Turnip took another sip.
“Not as such, Corporal,” Summer sighed. “My orders remain the same. Standby.”
Minty saluted, and the other two followed her lead. Turnip stayed where she was, since she was apparently not a part of the crew anymore.
“But there was one thing to see to,” Summer continued, turning to face Turnip directly. “Since Enlisted Sprout has fortuitously returned to us, should we allow her to return to duty in Enlisted Metal’s horseshoes?”
Minty blinked. “Are you asking me, ma’am?”
Summer looked like she wanted nothing more than to curl up and pass out. “Asking you, asking all of you,” she said wearily, waving a hoof at the group. “How about it? Shall we take this pony back, or shan’t we?”
Turnip stood silently. A unicorn officer asking her ponies what they thought? Now this was a first. She didn’t want to be one to sing her own praises, but if it let her be in the tank in the days to come instead of on the ground…
“Oh, yes, ma’am, absolutely,” Minty answered for her, while Turnip was still thinking. “She’s the fastest loader I’ve ever worked with, and Celestia knows I’ve wanted shells to be loaded exactly when I needed them these last few days.” She finished this with a glare at Thrash, who merely shrugged.
“But ma’am, we’ve had to rely on the coaxial a lot lately,” Supercharger said, jumping to Thrash’s defense. “Thrash is the best shot in the crew, and he does alright when we need to use the main gun for some reason. It’s not like we’ve been running into any enemy tanks, anyway.”
“Like you would know about his performance,” Minty snapped. “You’re not the one who has to wait for him to push a shell in while an enemy gun stares you in the face!”
“Oh, I know a lot about his performance. My question is, how much do you know?”
“I know enough to know how inadequate he is!”
“Ah, so you admit-”
“Ladies, ladies!” Thrash interrupted, “Why can’t we both be loaders? She’s small enough she can fit between my legs! Oh.” The stallion’s ears dropped as he realized what he’d said.
“I’m sure you’d enjoy that very much,” Minty sneered. “Stay out of this.”
“Oh, he would?” Supercharger said, and she gave Turnip a weighing-up, appraising look.
“Supercharger, stop it,” Minty said, giving the pony a cuff around the ear. “Remember what you promised.”
“I promised I’d be chill until Turnip got back from the hospital, remember, and look, here she is!” Supercharger pointed at her. “Now the promise is off. I don’t have to pretend like he’s not-”
“Silence!” Summer said forcefully, without raising her voice. The belligerents obeyed instantly. Turnip tipped back the last of her gruel.
Summer looked at each of them in turn, glaring like they were all equally complicit in things, even Turnip. She continued, “I didn’t argue all night only to hear more of it. This will be decided later.” She walked by them and started slowly climbing up the front of the tank. Just before vanishing under the commander’s hatch, she said, “Wake me in time for evening supper.” And then the hatch was closed, and Summer was gone.
Nopony spoke for a minute.
“Well, Turnip, looks like another day of waiting,” Minty said, laying a hoof over Turnip’s back.
“So, Thrash, looks like we got the day off,” Supercharger said, batting her eyes at the stallion. “Whatever should we do?”
“Absolutely not,” Minty broke in, before Thrash could reply one way or the other. “If you can remember what you promised, then you definitely remember what I promised.”
“Sorry, Sugar,” Thrash said, the cheerful undertone to his voice giving the lie. “Looks like my hooves are tied on this one.”
“Well,” Supercharger said, trying to sound unbothered, “I’ll just get back to those trucks, then. What about you?”
Thrash grinned. “I’ll be around. You know, just in case Minty needs me.”
Minty snorted and rolled her eyes.
“Okay then.” Supercharger narrowed her eyes at Minty. Turnip could have groaned. “Turnip, want to help me? I could use somepony to hold tools.”
Dear Celestia, was it going to be like this all day? Or just when they were near each other? She looked around for ways to escape the situation, and got an idea.
“Hey, Thrash,” she said, ignoring Supercharger’s offer and shaking off Minty’s hoof.
“Yeah?”
“Where’d ya get this here mess tin?”
“I borrowed it from the cooks. You want me to-”
“Reckon I’d better take it back, then,” Turnip cut him off. Holding the rim of the tin in her teeth, she backed away from the others, then turned and walked away.
Well, sitting around waiting for the commanders to order something wasn’t her idea of fun, but then, it was the army, and sometimes this kind of thing happened to a pony. Sitting around between two mares and a stallion who were all weirdly nice to her, for their own reasons, and against each other, also for their own reasons, was definitely not her idea of fun. She got to thinking about other ways to spend the day.
She found the cook she’d seen Thrash with and gave him the tin. Maybe she should go find Shortcake and see if she was in the same situation; she was nice enough, and more importantly, had no connection with whatever was going on in the tank.
This was only a company, so surely it shouldn’t be too hard to find her.
Turnip got the cook to point her towards the second platoon, then she asked around until somepony told her that Shortcake had left about fifteen minutes ago with a recon patrol.
Drat, she had just missed her. She cast a glance back to the tank, where it sat in the shadows. Minty was pacing around in circles next to the tank. Thrash was nowhere to be seen near the tank, but Turnip found him across the camp talking with another mare. Supercharger had moved on to work on a new truck. Well, it was just a recon patrol, right? They had no obligation to fight the enemy if they found them, yesterday’s unusual circumstances notwithstanding. Turnip made her decision and made for the pile of enemy weapons.
There was a pony on guard, but she told him she’d lost her rifle, which was the honest truth, and he let her fill her webbing with enemy rifle clips, and even gave her a rifle. She turned it down and insisted on something shorter.
She walked away loaded down with ammo, with a fresh-captured enemy carbine slung over her back, and two enemy grenades clipped to her chest. One thing she could say about Crystal Empire webbing; it might have originally been worn by a pony much bigger than her, but she was able to adjust it so that it fit her, mostly. It was still a bit loose, but the straps had never been made with ponies as small as her in mind.
A sentry stopped her before she could leave the camp.
“No further, little soldier girl,” he admonished her. “No leaving camp. You know the Major’s orders.”
“Oh, sorry, I’m just tryin’ to catch back up with Corporal Dusty – I got held up a bit. Had to get m’self equipped.” She brandished her carbine, as if to present proof. It was true enough, from a certain point of view.
“You’re with Corporal Dusty?” the sentry said. “Alright then – go on ahead. Weren’t you with him on yesterday’s patrol too? The small mare?”
“Sure was,” she answered, already moving past him. “Thanks.”
As she walked away, she wondered how the sentry knew, since he was definitely not the one she had seen last night, and anyway there were a few dozen sentries posted at any given time. Perhaps they talked after their watches were through.
She headed through the woods at a brisk trot in the direction she had been told the party had left in, hoping to catch them up.
It was looking to be another fine day, not as hot as it had been recently; perhaps there was weather moving in. The sky through the canopy cover was blue with thin shreds of cloud rolling across it. Turnip hadn’t tracked anything for a long time, but ponies couldn’t be that much different from varmint, right? Looking closely at the ground as she trotted, what she picked up on seemed encouraging.
She was on the brink of deciding that the hoofprint impressions could be traveling a different direction, or from an older track, when she spotted a flash of a gentle pink coat through the trees ahead of her. Bingo!
“Hey! You up there! Wait up!” she called.
The group halted, and she caught up with them quickly.
The corporal looked slightly annoyed as she walked up. “Didn’t expect to see ya again, missy,” he said. “Did we forget somethin’ at camp, or what?”
“I came to join ya,” Turnip puffed, leaning forward slightly. “Aren’t ya missin’ a pony after yesterday?”
Then she noticed the unfamiliar dark-brown-coated pony standing near the front of the small group. “Oh.”
“’Oh’ is correct, Missy. Why’d ya want to come with us, anyhow? We’re going on recon, girl, into enemy territory. Thought you was a tanker. Why don’t ya hang ‘round the tanks ‘til it’s time to do yer part?”
Turnip stepped sideways awkwardly. Maybe she should have expected a less than enthusiastic reception. “Well,” she said uncertainly, “I figgered ya could use my help. I’m small, I know the area, and mebbe that counts fer something. And besides,” she continued, cutting off whatever the corporal was about to say, “I’m kinda in a grey area here. I ain’t part of your outfit, all them boys from headquarters are dead, and my old commander can’t decide if I’m part of the crew again or not. Please, sir, I won’t be no trouble.”
The corporal chewed on this. The greenish-tan coated stallion from yesterday, Strongheart, cut in, “You can’t be seriously considering this, sir! We shouldn’t be taking fillies into combat zones, no matter how useful they might be. Think of your sister, sir!”
Turnip only barely stopped herself from throwing herself at him in a fit of rage. She vibrated in place, teeth clenched and redness hovering at the edges of her vision. One hoof made it off the ground, and with an effort of will she forced it back down. Running after a patrol just to have something to do that got her away from whatever was going on with the crew was filly behavior, she knew, and she didn’t need to reinforce that image in the corporal’s mind.
“I say we let her stay, sir,” Shortcake vouched, although she cast a worried glance down at Turnip’s injured hoof and its blood-stained bandage. “I’m sure she’ll be helpful.” Turning to address Turnip directly, she asked, “You okay? Leg hurt any?”
Turnip passed a hoof over her face and forced herself to calm down, mostly by resolving to beat up that stallion later for that remark. She spit out a sigh. “Sure. Yep. Still a little tired, that’s all.” Actually, anger aside, her leg still hurt, but it wasn’t really noticeable unless she put too much weight on it. She’d be fine.
“Mm,” the corporal said finally, “I got one question fer ya.”
“Shoot,” Turnip said, meeting his eyes.
“Why our patrol and not somepony else’s?”
His tone suggested that he already knew what she was going to say. She said it anyway.
“Yer the ones I know.”
He laughed. “Sure, sure. Now come on,” and he made an up-and-over motion with a forehoof, “We’re burnin’ daylight.”
They all hitched up their gear and walked onward, and Turnip walked along beside them, as part of the group.
They didn’t talk much, but Turnip asked just enough to find out that the dark brown stallion she hadn’t seen before was named Jerky, though he insisted on being called by his first name, Beef. Turnip told him she would remember to; her beef was not with Beef, it was with Strongheart. Shortly afterwards, the corporal ordered the small squad to silence.
They spread out in loose order, the corporal communicating orders with hoof signals that Turnip did not know. Most were pretty self-explanatory; go this way, go that way, stop. She did her best to keep up with them, pony see, pony do. She still ended up shunted to the back of the formation anyway, left to follow the others. That was fine with her.
They followed more or less a reverse of the path they had gone back on yesterday, but upon reaching a meadow Turnip recognized, they struck off in a new, more southerly direction.
Turnip had said she’d known the area, but that was kind of a lie; she’d previously avoided leaving the headquarters, and she’d got there by the train. The loader’s position wasn’t the best way to examine the surroundings, either, on the few missions she’d left on. She had to face it, if it wasn’t for these ponies, she would already be lost.
Despite the different route, it was mostly the same as yesterday – forest, meadows, clearings, ponds and bogs, sometimes a field. It was the cultivated countryside of Equestria at its finest, bright green and shimmering in the late summer sunshine. Then they came to the edge of the stretch of forest immediately north of the headquarters, and the corporal held up a hoof for a halt.
He ordered Shortcake and Strongheart ahead to take a peek with two brisk signals. They stuck their helmeted heads, wrapped in twine and stuck through with twigs as seemed to be the fashion of their entire unit, out the screening brush at the edge of the trees and looked around. After a few minutes, they came back and reported to the corporal in whispers.
The corporal nodded. He swished his hoof in the air, then made a downwards motion, then a forward one. The squad moved closer to him, got down into a creep, and started moving forward.
“Stay close, not too close,” he said quietly, as they moved. “We’ll be headin’ through the grass. Stay low and head straight at that stand there ‘till we’re out of it.” He pointed to a treetop, barely visible over the next hill.
Turnip followed his hoof, then looked around, stopping to think before she plunged into a field of grass tall enough to swallow her up, even standing at her full height. They had to stay spread out, she supposed, so that any individual trails they made in the grass had less chance of being spotted, now or later.
They were a fair distance to the east of the commanding hills Turnip had just been defending yesterday morning. A few distant crystal ponies could be seen, distinguishable only by their bright, sparkling coats, moving over the old battlefield. To the other direction, the forest curved around slightly, then dropped off, and far beyond that were farm fields with an elevated road running through them. A lone staff car with an open top drove slowly along it. Turnip turned and pushed into the grass.
It didn’t take very long pushing through the tall, choking stalks, hearing the rustle of the others somewhere on her left, before the stagnant air and the seed-pods that fell all over her forehooves, chest, and head, started to get to her. It might not have been the hottest of days, but the direct sunlight on her back, together with the total lack of airflow among the stalks and all the dust and plant matter she was getting in her nose made things very hot, very stuffy, very quickly.
She tried forging ahead quicker. Her light mass was poorly suited to bulling over the stalks, and she didn’t make any more progress than before, only growing hotter and more out of breath. She stopped, her flanks heaving and covered in foam, and tried to catch her breath. Seeds stuck to her fur, prickling her sides.
She tried to think. That tree the corporal had pointed out! If only she could tell where it was, she could make right for it! Nightmare take this creeping business, she had to get out of here!
Once she had got her breath back somewhat, Turnip stood on her hind legs to try and see over the grass, risking being visible to a distant observer for a moment. No dice; she wasn’t tall enough. Frustrated, she tried jumping, gathering herself on her haunches and springing upwards. Her eyes just barely cleared the tops of the grass, and still she didn’t see any tree. In fact, she didn’t see anything, except pale green grass filling her field of vision. It was the same story when she tried all other directions.
As she sat down to contemplate this, it struck her that she couldn’t hear her comrades anymore, and actually hadn’t heard the noise of their rustling passage in some time. They had all moved on… without her. Well, that was fine. She would just strike out to the left of her path, and she’d break out on Jerky’s trail.
Except that was not happening. She pushed for about five meters, began to suspect something at ten, and knew something was wrong when she’d gone fifteen. She halted, surrounded on all sides. The grass behind her where she had come was already straightening back up. What now – admit defeat and backtrack along an uncertain trail? Go upslope in the hopes of seeing something there? Keep going straight ahead?
Shouting, of course, was out of the question. She took a drink from her canteen and pressed onwards, figuring that she had to come out of this cursed grass someday.
After a few more meters distance, she became aware of the rustling sound of someone pushing through the grass again. Had she kept up after all, or had one of them come back for her? Shortcake, perhaps? She excitedly pushed towards the noise, and was glad when she heard the other pony coming her direction.
The two questing ponies were very close now. Turnip pushed down one last curtain of grass with her forehooves and stopped dead in her tracks. Her veins ran with ice.
It wasn’t Shortcake. In fact, it wasn’t rightly a pony at all. Turnip stood face-to-face with an enemy soldier who looked equally as shocked as she was. The soldier’s burgundy coat sparkled dimly under its own layer of dust and seeds, the light glinting on the tiny facets crystal pony coats were said to have. This was the first crystal pony Turnip had ever seen up-close, and if she was asked later, she would have to admit that they were very beautiful, but right then, it was the last thing she wanted to see.
After a long second of mutual stunned silence, the soldier jerked a hoof up for her rifle, slung high on her back where it wouldn’t snag. Turnip couldn’t allow that.
She planted her forehooves and swung her body around in a classic forwards apple-buck. She had to draw her hind legs in much further than usual, or they would get tangled in the grass that surrounded them both so closely, and lashed out with both hooves put together. The enemy soldier dodged down, and Turnip’s hooves caught her a glancing clip on the temple.
The soldier cried out in pain and sprang forward, tackling Turnip while she recovered. Turnip rolled sharply to throw her off, and she halfway managed it, but the enemy mare caught Turnip’s rifle by the sling in her teeth and pulled Turnip down with her, crushing over a short swathe of grass.
Turnip twisted round and lashed out with her forehooves. The soldier grunted at the hits and kicked out with hind legs, and Turnip felt the impact drive into her lower intestines. A squelching jolt of queasiness ran up her body.
She had to ditch the rifle. With a duck and a twist, she got free of the rifle strap, but before she could do anything else, the hindhooves slammed into her chest and sent her flying back. The grass caught her, and now there was a meter, give or take, of distance between them. So short, but so far in this tight and airless place.
They glared at each other for a few seconds. The soldier had a split lip. Turnip wanted to double over at the pain in her abdomen. She took a deep breath, and the soldier started to get to her hooves and grab at her rifle again.
Turnip drew her captured bayonet with the hoof strap and threw herself at the enemy. The soldier, surprised, barely managed to block the deadly blade with the stock of her rifle.
Turnip didn’t let her get a chance to bring the gun up. She let go of the knife and stood on her hind legs and jabbed with both forehooves, trying to hit the cannon of the mare’s right foreleg. There was a solid, satisfying impact of hoof on bone, and with a cry, the gun was dropped to swing free in front of the soldier’s neck.
The soldier didn’t allow her to enjoy the small victory, however; rather than try and pick the gun up again, she shrugged out of the sling and spun into her own apple-buck which caught Turnip square in the chest. Apple-bucks had enough power behind them to shake a sturdy tree – Celestia alone knew what it could do to a much softer target, like a pony. Now, Turnip also knew.
She felt something snap in her chest with a sharp twinge of agony she had no time to even realize she had before she was flung back into the grass, flattening a wide channel this time with her passage and landing a few meters away on her side, legs splayed out.
She had just enough time to raise her head dazedly when the soldier barreled on top of her and began hitting her ferociously, stomping her barrel and then kicking her in the head. She felt numb and confused as blow after blow hit her chest and head without mercy. One foreleg kick hit the massive bruise the helmet had given her, and Turnip nearly blacked out.
However, the numb confusion quickly suffused into rage as she recovered from the stunning hit and took a few more. Turnip was used to losing herself when she got too angry. She was used to having a “short fuse”. She wasn’t used to this kind of white-hot, unthinking, electrifying feeling that consumed absolutely everything around her except the target, the pony she hated more than anything in that moment.
She flipped onto her back. The soldier stomped down on her face directly, and the vision in her left eye went red. She didn’t notice; it had already been red, as far as she cared. She kicked up with hindhooves and jabbed out with forehooves at the soldier’s body, ignoring the hits that soldier was still dishing out on her head and chest.
The soldier abruptly dropped out of view. Turnip rolled to her hooves and kicked out and found flesh, and pursued it with more. Hitting something was not gratifying anymore; it was just something that happened. Useful information, to help her hit some more.
She kicked, jabbed, swiped, bit, headbutted, clobbered, and anything else she could possibly do to hurt. Nothing mattered but the enemy. Everything was on the table and there was no time to think. She couldn’t hear anything but the roaring of blood in her ears.
The enemy was on the ground now, their positions reversed. Turnip kicked, and kicked, and kicked.
/ - / - / = \ - \ - \
Some time later, how long she could not say, Turnip abruptly realized she was standing, motionless, over an equally motionless body. Her coat felt sticky, and her throat was dry, and there was something in her mouth, and her teeth hurt. Actually, everything hurt. Absolutely everything.
She groaned and let her tense jaw go slack. Something heavy fell from it to plonk onto the crushed grass. Once started, the slackening of tension would not stop; the next thing she knew, she was on her side on the ground, staring at the dented Equestrian entrenching spade a hoofful of centimeters in front of her eyes. The edge had a fresh crust of blood.
Lying on her side hurt more than standing up. Stalks of grass prickled her body uncomfortably. Everything felt leaden, and aching, and hot. She didn’t think she could stand up again even if she wanted.
And so she lay there for a while, baking in the morning sun with her eyes closed. Eventually, she thought she would give it another try, and to her surprise she found enough strength to roll over on her belly and tuck her hooves underneath her body. Rising further felt beyond her at the moment.
She tried to open her eyes and found only one worked; the other felt puffy and hot and refused to open. She sniffed and wiped at her muzzle and found dried blood. One of her teeth was loose. It hurt to draw each breath.
She pushed herself painfully to her hooves. Well, she thought, looking around at the walls of grass on all sides and wetting her tongue with a small sip from her canteen, time to get out of here.
Trying not to look too closely at the crystal pony’s body, she limped over to her dropped carbine, pulled her knife out of the other rifle, and replaced the bloodied spade in her belt. She took another sip and started forging ahead again due south, more or less.
It was even slower going than before, but an interminable eternity later, she broke through the other side onto the relatively clear ground before a line of old trees. Turnip could have cried if she had the tears.
But she couldn’t stop, and she couldn’t rest. If she did, she might not get up again for a long time, and she was burning daylight; she had to find the others.
Turnip started heading along the line of trees, which served to divide two fields from each other, in the general direction of the midmorning sun. Sometime in the trek through the grass, her foreleg had begun to hurt noticeably with every step again. She should never have left camp on some silly whim, she thought bitterly.
Then, as she neared the end of the line of trees, she spied a gentle pink up ahead with her one good eye – and now it really was her one good eye. Shortcake? Hope rising in her chest, she hurried forward, then slowed down again as her leg almost buckled under her.
It was, indeed, Shortcake. The mudslogger-turned-nurse was crouched by the last tree in the line, watching the tall grass before her worriedly. Occasionally she would paw the ground anxiously.
Turnip didn’t call out a hail, instead opting to just keep walking. When she had gotten quite near, Shortcake’s ear pricked at some small noise and she turned her head.
The mare’s face lit up in an expression of infectious relief. Turnip couldn’t help it; a lopsided grin started spreading over her own face. Then Shortcake blinked and looked at her again, and the mare’s expression changed to one of deep concern.
Shortcake got to her hooves and hurried over. “What happened to you? Did you get lost?” she whispered loudly.
Turnip stopped in front of the mare, swayed in place a moment, then collapsed on a ridgeboard of tree roots, hooves sprawled out in every direction. “Whadya think?” she answered wearily, not caring to keep her voice down.
“You’re bleeding,” Shortcake fussed, tugging apart the knot in Turnip’s foreleg bandage. “Oh, this is all my fault…”
“Heh. Don’t go beatin’ yerself up on my account,” Turnip said, laying her head on its side. “This’s all just my bad luck.” The shady earth under the trees was cool to the touch and soothed her swollen eye a little.
“No, I’m sorry.” Shortcake pulled away the bandage, which came away sticky and stiff. At some point, the wound had begun to bleed slowly again, and Turnip hadn’t noticed. “Somepony should have told you we were going single file after a few dozen meters.” She pulled a roll of bandages from a saddlepack and began rebinding the wound.
“What.”
Turnip said it flatly, without feeling. ‘Too tired and beat-up to care’ was quickly becoming her default state of being, she reflected. Ordinarily, she knew she would be very angry at this revelation, violently so, even. But for now, she felt like all her anger for the day had been left behind in a hell of tall, choking grass.
Shortcake tied off the new bandage and started checking the rest of Turnip over for injuries. “Yeah…” she said apologetically. “Roll on your right side for me.”
Turnip obliged, shutting her good eye. Shortcake ran the frog of her hoof gently over the side of Turnip’s face, then around the puffy, swollen eye. She pressed down in a few places, and Turnip winced.
“Looks like your orbit’s fractured” she reported. She pushed up Turnip’s lip momentarily. “And it looks like you need a few teeth pulled. Want me to do that now?”
“No,” Turnip said emphatically, pulling her muzzle away slightly. “Since when’d ya get good at diagnosin’ ponies’ ailments, anyhow?”
“And you’ve got a broken muzzle,” Shortcake breezed over her. Turnip tried wrinkling her snout and found it was true. The mare began prodding her barrel. “How did this happen, anyway?”
“Met somepony in the grass,” Turnip grunted. She hissed as Shortcake poked a painful rib. “Not much to tell. Got in a fight. Couldn’t let ‘er shoot.” Shortcake began rolling fresh bandages around her head. “Why’re you here, anyways? I thought everypony’d go on with the mission.”
“Oh, we waited for a while, but when you never came out, Dusty left me here to wait for you.”
“Mighty kind of him,” Turnip sighed. Her head was almost completely encased in white linen bandages now. Her head throbbed, and underneath the bandages her skin itched. “I guess I wasn’t useful after all. Splint my muzzle, will ya?”
“If you say so…” Shortcake said dubiously. She took hold of Turnip’s head with both forehooves, and Turnip closed her eyes and waited for it to be over. The questing hooves felt around her muzzle, then, with a sharp, painful grinding sensation, pressed down on both sides. Three parallel somethings were placed on top of her muzzle and taped down with something adhesive that stuck to the short fur. Blood started dripping out of her nose and onto the ground again.
“Ow…” Turnip groaned, opening her eye and picking herself up. She focused on her muzzle. “…Are those popsicle sticks?”
“Yep,” Shortcake said, packing her saddlebag. “They come in useful. Do you think you’re ready to go after the others? They’ve got about an hour head start, but we might be able to catch them up.”
Turnip was standing, but she wanted to lay down. She could still walk, but she probably shouldn’t. She’d decided to bring herself on this mission, and her pride wanted to see her finish it.
She shook her head. “I ain’t goin’ nowhere like I am.” Her voice had taken on a nasal quality, with the nosebleed.
“Alright, then we wait,” Shortcake said, sounding like this was the answer she was waiting to hear.
“I’m real sorry ‘bout this…” Turnip said morosely. “This is all my fault. If I’d just set tight like I was s’posed to…”
Shortcake lay down under a bush and indicated the spot next to her. Turnip crawled under the bush with her. Somehow, the greatest tragedy of the day was that she could not feel the other pony’s warm coat through the bandages around her barrel.
“Looks like we’re in for a wait,” Shortcake observed. “About that… Do you want to talk about it?”
“Not r-” Turnip began, then stopped herself. She drew in a deep breath, wincing at the pain in her chest, and sighed explosively. “Fine. Let’s talk.”
They finally returned to the camp in the evening, as the sun was setting. Turnip got a curious look from the sentry on duty, but she didn’t care. They tromped into a subdued atmosphere, even more sullen and tense than before, and Corporal Dusty went to deliver his report.
Dusty, Strongheart, and Jerky, although Turnip greeted him as ‘Beef’ like he asked, found them late that afternoon. Dusty had marched up at the head of the trio, looking fit to chew Turnip out for getting lost and making him leave one of his squad behind, but when he saw Turnip and her new and larger collection of bruises and bandages, he relented and told the two of them the news instead.
And what news it was! Dusty said they had been able to avoid Crystal Empire patrols and make contact with the new Equestrian front line, which wasn’t actually very far away at all. They had retreated across a river behind the old headquarters during the attack, across an old bridge over a narrow and steep channel. Oddly, while the Equestrian forces were holding it just fine, they also didn’t seem to really be under attack, beyond the daily skirmishes with small parties of Empire troops. Turnip listened closely to his description of the day’s journey. Then he finished, and it was her turn to swap stories.
She left out what she couldn’t remember, but they could guess, as she did, by the dried blood crusting her hooves and shovel. Beef suggested finding the body, and since his was the darkest coat, they pushed him up into a tree for a better look, but he never saw anything, and nopony was about to wander into the grass to try and find it. After that, they all made the several-hour journey back together.
“Thanks fer the ride, Shortcake,” Turnip said, as they entered the camp proper. “I really ‘preciate it.”
“Oh, no problem, Turnip,” Shortcake said, crouching low to the ground to allow Turnip to climb off her back. “And you can call me Strawberry, if you want.”
Turnip chuckled weakly. “I’ve been somethin’ of a dead weight lately, huh?”
“Don’t say that,” Strawberry said lightly, flicking Turnip with her tail. “Thanks to you, there’s one less enemy soldier for us to fight.”
“Yeah…” Turnip agreed noncommittally. She turned away. She was glad she couldn’t remember what exactly she did to that mare.
“Yeah…” Strawberry echoed, sensing the change in mood. She awkwardly cleared her throat and looked around. “Who’s that over there?”
Minty and Supercharger were making their way over, jockeying to get ahead of the other while still keeping to a walking pace. Thrash moved languorously towards her from a different direction. Summer was making her way over, too, flanked by Cashmere, at a much more leisurely pace. Turnip sighed.
“My crew.”
Minty reached her first. “You’re back,” she observed simply.
Supercharger was less restrained. “You’re alive! We were so worried about you!”
Turnip leveled a lidded look at the pony. It seemed to her that insincerity dripped from every word Supercharger said. She only wished she knew why.
“And just where did you go all day, anyway?” Minty asked crossly, frowning as she noticed Turnip’s splinted muzzle. “I saw you dash off to the weapon stockpile in quite a hurry.”
“Yeah, where did you go, the enlisted mess?” Supercharger cut in, stepping in front of Minty.
“Give her space,” Minty ordered, putting out a forehoof to guide the grey pony back alongside her.
Turnip tried to draw a deep breath through her nose, found it blocked, and snorted out a clot of blood to one side. The offending lump landed near an enlisted infantrypony, who gave her a dirty look. “I went out,” she began tiredly. “On a recon patrol. This here pony,” and she nodded at Strawberry, who was just turning to walk away, “Can tell ya’all ‘bout it.”
Strawberry stopped where she was and turned around, giving Turnip an annoyed look at being put on the spot.
“Reconnaissance? I hope you aren’t reconsidering your place in the army, Enlisted Sprout.”
Summer trotted up. Minty and Supercharger duly moved aside, although they were already doing so in the pursuit of answers from Strawberry.
Turnip said, “Evening, sergeant,” and saluted loosely. She shook her head despite the twinge of pain. “I haven’t, sergeant.”
She ignored Cashmere, standing quietly beside the sergeant. There would be time to confront her properly in a moment.
Summer chuckled lightly. Was she… in a good mood? “It’s good to hear that, Enlisted Sprout.” She put a hoof familiarly on Turnip’s shoulder. “I do believe I have some news I think you will like.”
Supercharger looked over and her eyes darted to the approaching Thrash, suddenly seeming very anxious.
“Yes, sergeant,” Turnip agreed, keeping a neutral tone and expression.
“Enlisted Sprout, I have decided to restore your rank of loader within my crew. That is, of course,” Summer said, with a conspiratorial look at a confused Strawberry, “If you accept the offer.”
Turnip was also confused. Summer had been practically dead on her hooves last she’d seen her, and now here she was energetic, getting unusually familiar, for a unicorn, and giving her a choice? Well, at least it was a relief to finally know she wasn’t stuck fighting with the infantry…
“I’d be… I mean, of course I do, sergeant,” she managed.
Summer put out a hoof. Turnip hesitantly shook it.
“Wait! But, Thrash, the coaxial!” Supercharger protested despairingly, appearing beside them. Thrash, who had just walked up to the group, silently blanched.
Summer slowly turned towards the pony with an air of magnanimity, a proud little smile on her lips. “At ease, corporal. Enlisted Metal is hereby demoted… to assistant loader. His primary duty shall be the secondary gun we so rely upon.” She looked at all of them. “Any objections?”
Nopony had any. The unicorn clearly thought she had worked out the perfect compromise. Supercharger looked relieved; Minty looked like she wanted to say something, but she held her tongue. Turnip kept her own reservations to herself. How much room did Summer think there was to work next to the gun? Not enough for two ponies, that was for sure. If she said anything, though, Summer might rethink that ‘stroke of genius’ of hers and decide Turnip wasn’t in after all.
“Splendid! Get acquainted, you lot, I’d best go see what the other commanders got up to while I slumbered.”
Summer gave a brief nod to Turnip and left them. The crew looked at each other uncertainly. Now what?
Minty sucked in a breath. “Well,” she said, “Turnip, you’ve met Thrash, Thrash, you’ve met Turnip. I think we all know each other now.”
“Yeah…” Supercharger agreed, looking suspiciously between Turnip and Thrash.
Turnip closed her eye. “Yer right.” She opened it again and jabbed a hoof at Cashmere. “But you an’ I got unfinished business.”
Cashmere looked to either side, and, seeing nopony there, pointed at herself. “M-me?”
“Yeah, you.” Turnip limped over and reached up and threw her wounded foreleg up over Cashmere’s pink withers and began leading the unresisting but confused mare towards the tanks. “Just a li’l thing, just the two of us, we urgently need to have a li’l discussion on.”
Turnip flashed what she hoped looked like a reassuring smile towards Minty, who frowned and narrowed her eyes. Maybe the muzzle splint made it come off wrong?
Once they had reached the tanks, Turnip checked behind her. Minty was asking Strawberry questions, but keeping an eye in their direction. Supercharger had sidled close to Thrash and was pretending like she wasn’t. Strawberry shot a glare at Turnip over Minty’s shoulder, and Turnip shrugged and grinned apologetically.
She ducked back and pushed the other mare with her. Once out of sight behind Summer’s tank, Turnip roughly shoved Cashmere against the tubular exhaust drum and stepped back. She grinned wolfishly.
“Didja think I wouldn’t notice what ya were?”
Cashmere’s face had gone from confused to confused and afraid. “H-how’d you find out?”
Turnip flipped a hoof with exaggerated casualness and scoffed. “Yer cousin Corduroy told me.” It was a guess, but it was a fair one; what would the odds Turnip had just happened to run into her former crewmate’s brother? No, he must surely be a slightly more distant relation.
And the guess struck home. Cashmere paled and her knees started shaking. “W-what’d ya do ta cousin Corduroy?” she asked. There was the accent she’d been doing so well at hiding.
Turnip’s grin got wider, and a feeling of uneasiness roiled in her gut as the thought of what she was doing struck home. “The same thing I’m fixin’ to do to you. Hold still.”
Cashmere started shaking like a leaf. “W-what?” she said, but she sounded like she already had an idea in mind. Turnip tried to swallow down the feeling of shame of using her f… enemy Corduroy’s name in this way, but it wasn’t quite enough to make her stop. Cashmere reached a conclusion. “HEL-”
The pink mare was cut off by a pair of hooves driving into her chest, knocking the air out of her and slamming her back into the exhaust again. She rebounded only to be caught by an uppercut to her jaw that sent her reeling again.
Turnip started to feel kind of bad as she battered the pink pony to one side and fetched a knee, or rather a bent wrist joint, into her gut. “Sorry, kid. Clan rules,” she muttered. Maybe she should be angry. She certainly felt like she should be, but Cashmere never even tried to defend herself. How could you get mad at somepony who wasn’t even trying to hit back? Turnip’s heart just wasn’t in it, and as a result, her hooves weren’t either.
It was just as well, then, that Minty arrived unexpectedly to pound Turnip hard in the chest with both forehooves. It wasn’t even a particularly hard strike – more of an aggressive shove, really – but it sent Turnip back reeling, gasping for breath, as a piercing lance of pain radiated through her barrel.
She held a crooked foreleg over her chest where Minty had struck and backed off a few steps further with a crabbed three-legged skitter. Right, Strawberry had mentioned something about cracked ribs. Ow.
“Turnip, what in Celestia’s green pastures is the meaning of this?” Minty asked, a hard edge of rage coloring her voice that Turnip hadn’t ever heard from her before in their admittedly brief time together.
Turnip breathed hard, wincing at the pain in her chest. Now that Minty was here, she was once again painfully conscious of how tired she was. Why had she gone and done this completely foolish thing, again? Oh, right. “Clan rules,” she answered simply.
“Clan rules? Clan rules?” Minty sputtered, marching up and looming over Turnip. “You dumb hick, we’re at war! Look around you! At our situation here!” She gestured around them. “You’re practically dead on your hooves, and you start picking fights with a crewmate because of some stupid… clan rules!”
She raised a hoof as if to strike. Turnip scowled and pinned her ears back, but kept eye contact. Shame burned in her aching chest. “Go ahead. Hit me. I deserve it,” she challenged the forest-green mare. Celestia knew she’d already been beaten up plenty today, so what was one more hit?
Minty met her gaze for a long second, then slammed her hoof down in front of her. “AAARGH! I can’t!” she suddenly cried aloud in frustration and threw her forehooves in the air. “Nightmare take you, Turnip. Nightmare take you right down to Tartarus, because that’s where you belong,” she said bitterly. “Listen. This isn’t over.”
Minty turned back and helped Cashmere get to her hooves again. A little dribble of blood ran down the front of Cashmere’s muzzle, and she wiped at it with a fetlock and sniffled. The look she gave Turnip was… sad. She sniffled again and looked down.
“There’s going to be action soon,” Minty continued, patting Cashmere on the back gently. The hard edge hadn’t left her voice. “Very soon. And we’re going to need you in the best possible condition. A condition which you weren’t in after getting away from headquarters, and which you’ve now ruined some more with your selfish antics today. Why couldn’t you have just stayed nice and safe and bored like the rest of us?”
Turnip shrugged warily. She knew mentioning whatever was going on between Minty and Supercharger wouldn’t excuse her in the slightest.
“So I won’t hit you. I can’t.” Minty stroked Cashmere’s mane protectively, almost exactly like a fussing mother. Cashmere looked very much like she wanted Minty to stop and go away, but she didn’t say anything. “Yet.”
Turnip stirred and thought about the apology she owed Strawberry. “Ya could have jest left it at ‘there’s gonna be some action’ or whatever.”
Minty heaved a deep sigh and put all four of her hooves on the ground. Cashmere sidled away with a slightly relieved expression, and Minty didn’t seem to notice. “Did you happen to find any cigarettes on whoever it was you killed out there?”
“Um…” Turnip scratched at her muzzle nervously, getting a sharp twinge of nasal pain for her trouble. How was she going to explain that she had been too shaken up to even think about searching the body? “…She didn’t smoke?”
“Hay, I’d even take chew,” Minty said wearily, as if Turnip hadn’t said anything. She gave both country ponies a tired glance. “Oh, well. Stow whatever you want to take with you on the tank while you have the chance. And don’t kill each other.”
She turned and stumped away, looking sharply around the camp for something, and left Turnip and Cashmere eyeing each other warily. Cashmere wiped at the streak of blood on her muzzle again but made no attempt to leave. After a moment, Turnip took the initiative and walked up to the pink mare.
“Go ahead, hit me.” She prodded herself on the chest meaningfully.
Cashmere hesitantly raised a dirty pink-shod forehoof and gave her a poke.
Turnip rose up on her hind legs and spat. The glob of spittle landed on the other pony’s coat. She waved her forehooves threateningly. “What the hay was that? Go on, hit me!” she demanded.
Cashmere took a deep breath, reared up on her own hind legs, and shoved both forehooves at Turnip’s chest with a tiny little grunt. On contact, Turnip instantly went down, again.
After a long moment spent heaving like a beached fish, Turnip managed to recover and climb painfully to her hooves again. “That’s…” she wheezed, struggling to breathe through the excruciating pain in her chest, “Good enough.” Those ribs could not heal fast enough. She summoned enough breath to spit on her hoof and hold it out for Cashmere to shake. “Clan rules satisfied?”
Cashmere considered her for a long moment, her watery, sky-blue eyes scanning Turnip’s bandaged face for any sign of treachery. She wiped her muzzle again and put on a wan little smile and spat on her hoof. “Clan rules satisfied,” she agreed, shaking the offered hoof.
Turnip didn’t think she would ever get used to how soft this pony’s voice was.
Turnip had just let go of Cashmere’s hoof and was starting to wonder if there was a chance she could catch some sleep when a bellowing voice from the center of the camp answered that question for her.
“EVERYPONY LISTEN UP!”
Turnip followed Cashmere around the tank and saw the rumpled tan unicorn in an officer’s uniform standing in the center of their encampment, outside the brass tent. What was the Major’s name again? Right, Grapevine. At this distance and with the gathering dusk it was only barely possible to spot the thicker silver trim on his cap and shoulder boards.
The unicorn glared around him. When it was clear all eyes were on him, he continued in the same deep bellowing voice. Turnip noticed his horn glowing pale green; no wonder he was able to keep up the volume. “PONIES! IT’S BEEN A HARD FEW DAYS!”
Murmurs of assent were heard, a few surprisingly close by. Turnip only hawked and spat.
“NO FOOD! NO BULLETS! NO WARMTH! NO MEDICINE!” he continued. “SCAVENGING FROM THE HATED ENEMY! HIDING FROM THEIR FLYING MACHINES!”
He paused for significant effect, turning in a circle to look at everypony near him.
“YES, IT’S BEEN HARD. BUT TAKE HEART, PONIES! FOR I HAVE GOOD NEWS!”
He stressed the last part with a stomp for each word.
“GRAB YOUR RIFLE! EAT YOUR FILL! THIS TIME TOMORROW, WE’LL ALL EITHER BE EATING DAISIES IN A HEATED BARRACKS, OR PUSHING THEM UP ON A COLD FIELD!”
An uproarious cheer erupted from the tired infantryponies around him. Turnip and Cashmere joined in, and so did the few other ponies lurking around the tanks. That she had expected something like this to happen made the energy of the unit no less infectious.
“YES, THAT’S RIGHT, PONIES! WE’RE BREAKING FOR EQUESTRIAN LINES TONIGHT! RIGHT NOW! NO MORE WAITING! NO MORE GUESSING!”
The Major pumped a hoof in the air triumphantly and looked around him. The cheering got louder, if that was possible.
“YOUR OFFICERS HAVE THEIR INSTRUCTIONS! THEY WILL PASS THESE ON TO YOU! I’M COUNTING ON EVERYPONY, AND I MEAN EACH AND EVERY ONE OF YOU, TO DO THEIR PART TO ENSURE THE SUCCESS OF THIS OPERATION!”
He paused again, then, with a note of finality, shouted, “CELESTIA BE WITH US!”
The soldiers roared harder. Turnip roared harder, though it made the back of her throat hurt. Privately, she felt it might be more appropriate to invoke the princess of the night for success, since it was nearly night now, but who cared about Luna, anyways? And she was the field marshal in charge, anyway, so perhaps this mess they were in was all her fault.
A bout of hard coughing next to her brought Turnip back to herself. It was Cashmere, bent over nearly on her knees as the coughs shook her barrel. Turnip hesitated, torn – just because they had agreed to let go of that minor thing a few minutes ago didn’t make them friends – then patted Cashmere’s back heavily. When she looked back up in the Major’s direction, he was gone, and the camp had exploded into activity in his absence.
“Ya alright there?” Turnip asked, once Cashmere had managed to get herself under control and stand up straight again.
“Sorry,” the pony replied hoarsely. “Yelling.”
Turnip coughed and cleared her throat. “Sure thing. Looks like it’s time to climb aboard.” She nodded at the tired light-green-coated unicorn picking her way towards them.
“Get in,” came a muffled hiss from behind them. Turnip turned; it was Minty, pulling Supercharger by her ear. Thrash, standing next to the pair, gave a toothy grin and waggled his eyebrows suggestively at Turnip, as if he’d just said a knowingly bad joke. Minty spat out Supercharger’s ear and nudged the grey pony forward with a hindleg and began addressing her.
“Now, you listen here, and you listen good. I specifically said…” Minty began, but Turnip flicked her ears forward and tuned out the rest of it, focusing instead on climbing her aching way up the track and onto the engine deck. From there, she stepped up to the open commander’s hatch and paused. Summer had reached them.
“Excuse me, Corporal Twist, but have we enough fuel to make it to…” she began, lighting her horn to pull out a local map. Minty and Supercharger both turned to face her, both scowling. “…Here, from here?” she continued, pointing with a forehoof at the floating map.
“Just enough left,” Supercharger volunteered, stepping away from Minty and straightening up. “If we go straight there.”
“I… see,” Summer said, rolling the map back up. “Very well,” she went on, her face hardening with sudden resolve. “Corporal Supercharger, get us moving. Enlisted Sprout and Metal, you’re sharing a station. Enlisted Cashmere, Corporal Twist, climb aboard and carry on. I suppose the details of the plan aren’t exactly secret, so… we’re in the vanguard. Ours is the duty to open the way and hold off any enemy counterattacks while the wounded are taken through on the trucks.”
Summer reached up and pulled her hat off with a forehoof, carefully pulling it up and off her horn. Behind her, one of the other tanks’ engines chugged to life. “I realize I haven’t been the most transparent with you lot…” Minty’s mouth hardened in a thin line at that. “But I felt you should know. There’s a very real chance we may not return from this mission. An even higher one we’ll have to ditch the tank, if what Corporal Supercharger says is true. I just wanted to tell you all that if the worst should happen, well… Princess Celestia, Equestria, and most of all, B Company of the 67th hoof, thank us dearly for our sacrifice.”
Another engine started, on the other side of the tank this time. Summer cleared her throat self-consciously and set her hat back on her head. “And I expect we should be going, then.”
At the second speech in such a short time, Minty snorted and rolled her eyes. Supercharger frowned, shot an anxious look at Thrash, and went to retrieve the crankshaft from its retaining strap. Cashmere ducked her head and disappeared inside the radio operator’s hatch. Turnip met the eyes of her new co-loader, spat, and turned away. And that was all.
A surprisingly short time later, the entire company had grabbed what they were going to take, left the rest, and were away through the forest as fast as possible. No one bothered to try concealing the signs of their camp.
The tanks were on pathfinding duty, finding routes for the trucks through the trees. Assisting the tanks were the screen of infantry, who at the moment were acting as guides to the lumbering iron beasts, since the Major had forbidden the use of lights of any kind. It wasn’t really a situation Turnip liked.
And about situations Turnip didn’t like: inside the tank, she was squished uncomfortably against the hindquarters of the much larger stallion. While he was keeping a keen watch down that clamped rifle of his, Turnip, with nothing better to do, watched the goings-on outside through the narrow window of the loader’s hatch vision port. She was able to do this, because Minty had persuaded Summer to remove the bags of dirt from the turret to allow the turret crew better visibility and fast egress in the likely event they had to abandon the machine in a hurry.
It stank of unwashed pony, gun vapors, and old grease.
Turnip huffed and craned her head to look over the gun. Minty was sitting back in her chair, her almost imperceptibly shaking hooves resting loosely on the gun controls. One of her hooves tapped out a rapid rhythm on the floor. A green twig bent off an unfortunate sapling was in the process of being ground rapidly into pulp between her teeth, and from time to time her right eyelid twitched.
Summer was hidden from the neck up unless Turnip sat down, but since that would put her head behind Thrash’s tail, she stayed where she was and noted the tension the unicorn was holding herself with.
Other than her compatriots in the fighting compartment, Turnip could only really see the back of Supercharger’s navy-blue mane and that didn’t offer much. Turnip turned back to the hatch viewport in time to notice that she could no longer see the shadowy shapes of trees; they were free of the forest.
Turnip watched the hills start to go by through her vision slit. It was too dark to see, now, but she imagined she could see the dead-carts at the crowns. Probably the shadowy shapes she saw were only the barrier trees between fields.
The shapes were suddenly bathed in harsh red light, and Turnip saw she was right.
“Squad, turn seventy degrees right, on me,” Summer barked. Turnip heard the small switch being flipped on the microphone, and, “Driver, seventy degrees neutral turn and hold for tank no.18 on the left.”
Turnip shifted her hind leg against the sudden rotation as the tank swung around and took the opportunity to “accidentally” shoulder-check Thrash’s rump when it stopped. The stallion shot a glance over his shoulder, but shuffled forward a few centimeters.
All too soon, they were moving again, pitching down a grade and then up the next. Turnip heard the muffled pop of distant rifle fire begin. She slid an armor-piercing shell from the side rack, backing slightly under Summer’s chair, and set it point-up in the rear corner, where she leaned over it, waiting.
She tapped Summer on the leg, and the unicorn glanced down. “Six shells total,” Turnip informed her, speaking loud enough to be heard. “One is high-explosive.”
Summer nodded and turned her focus back to her ring of vision-slits. Out of the relatively small compliment of shells they had to begin with, Turnip was honestly just surprised they had anything left to fight with at all.
“Keep an eye out for those enemy tanks,” Summer clipped to the squad. “Tank no.18 and no.7, split and head south along the infantry’s left flank. I and tank no.9 shall remain and hold the center.”
A few bullets struck the frontal armor, some being caught by the sandbags laid over the transmission cover shelf in a curious mixture of deep pings and thuds. Turnip wondered why Summer hadn’t renamed or renumbered the tanks in her little squad; wouldn’t that make them easier to manage?
They crested the hill fully, and the bullets hitting the armor increased in frequency, like the first few drops of rain heralded a downpour.
“Rosebud, we hold them here,” Summer ordered. Who? Ah, the other commander. “Save your shells until the enemy armor shows up, if possible.” Summer then paused a moment, listening. “I am aware. When it comes to that, I expect you to do as my crew have done.”
A grinding crunch drew Turnip’s attention back to Minty for a brief instant. The green mare spat out the remaining splinters of her twig and shifted her shaking hooves on the gunnery controls with a grim set to her jaw. The wad landed in Supercharger’s mane, who quickly swept it off and returned both forehooves to the steering levers.
Turnip took stock of herself and found she was neither afraid nor anxious. It just was. Maybe she’d been close to the edge too much lately, or maybe getting shot in the head changed one’s perspective on life, but Turnip felt that tonight she was going to live or she was going to die, and she was fine with either one. Celestia only granted one second chance, she reckoned, and she’d used hers already.
With this revelation, she felt she ought to do something about the mood within the tank. “Lighten up, y’all. We’re gonna get through this.” She made the lie easily, and hoped her neutral delivery would give it its own degree of certainty to the others.
“Like Tartarus we will,” Thrash growled, as a bullet impacted a scant distance from the shell-hole on the turret face, denting the rim slightly with a shriek. “Commander, permission to turn off the light? This hole here’s a damned beacon to snipers.”
“Granted. Enlisted Metal, Enlisted Cashmere, return fire only when you are positive of a target. We haven’t the bullets to waste.”
“Affirmative, ma’am.”
“Got it, ma’am.”
The report of Thrash’s rifle banged around inside the compartment, silencing anything else as only noise could. Outside the tank, it was joined by the nearby popping sound of more rifle fire as the infantry moved up. The enemy’s fire on the tank slackened somewhat as more targets presented themselves.
“Driver, rotate us twenty degrees and take us back slowly. Gunner, turret to ten o’clock; there’s some trouble over there.”
It was done; Thrash started banging away at something; Turnip waited. Trying to get lower to his gun, Thrash backed well into Turnip’s space, and she hugged the wall, rearing up on her haunches to stay out of the way. When it was time for her job, she’d make the space she needed.
“Rosebud, reverse out of sight and take up position just behind the crest of that hill to the right of here.” Summer switched. “Radiopony, tell me the status of the trucks.”
“They’ve made it about a third of the way so far, ma’am,” Cashmere reported.
Turnip didn’t know how long they continued crawling back and forth over that hilltop, carving a crisscross of track gouges in the soil. What she did know was that it didn’t take long for the enemy’s warning flares to burn out, casting the battlefield in near-total darkness.
The only light came from the intermittent muzzle flashes, theirs and the enemy’s. Without being able to see each other, ponies only really shot to remind the other side they were still there, or in reply to try and hit one of the elusive sources of those flashes. Thrash was able to conserve his limited stores of ammunition.
“Rosebud, are you in position?” A pause. “Right. Load an armor-piercing shell and get ready to come up when I give the order.” Summer opened her hatch and looked around, ignoring the bullets that still cracked overhead. “Driver, follow my instructions…”
A series of short, jerky maneuvers later, Summer closed her hatch again and sat with her hooves crossed before her sternly.
“We are now right in the center of this hilltop,” she informed her crew. A bullet pinged off the cupola. “And we’ve been making quite a show of being up here. Enlisted Sprout?”
“Yes’m?”
“Load the shell, if you please. Gunner, turret to eleven o’clock and depress the gun as far as you can.”
Turnip tapped Thrash on the back with a forehoof; her hindlegs had almost fallen asleep by now. “My turn,” she said, and gave him a narrow-eyed grin. He nodded and bunched himself up against the turret face, and she slung the shell around and slammed it into the waiting gun breech. The extra depression of the gun and elevation of the breech didn’t give much room to sling it up and over the gun cradle, but Turnip was an expert.
On all fours again, she stretched out and shook her back legs one at a time, for once glad for her small stature. “Ya should jus’ lay down there,” she suggested helpfully, “Curl up a li’l.”
Thrash promptly curled up like a dog under the hanging coaxial rifle with his hooves over his head and stayed there.
And then it was light outside again.
“Gunner, adjust left a few degrees, base of the hill!”
The turret motor stuttered for an instant, the gun adjusted up a small amount, and the entire assembly rocketed back into the turret with an incredible boom. The noise and blast of the thing was something a pony felt in her bones, and Turnip’s ached enough already. The ejected shell hit the floor with a loud clang, striking the hanging canteens on the way down. Turnip kicked it under Minty’s seat.
“Driver, reverse at full speed!”
There was a sudden lurch as the tank dropped into gear and began powering backwards.
It was too late. A terrific ringing bang echoed around inside the compartment and sent a bone-rattling shockwave through everything, steel, pony, whatever lay between.
Just as Turnip cracked open her eye, as if to confirm she was not dead yet, A second hit made the turret almost jump out of its guides, throwing everypony inside up a few centimeters. Summer’s head hit the hatch and Minty almost lost hold of her controls with surprise. Thrash curled tighter and Turnip scrambled to get her hooves under her again as her leg almost collapsed.
A third hit only threw loose soil all over the tank, with a sound like hard rain. If there were any other big guns aimed their way, Turnip never heard the evidence.
“Driver, hard right turn but keep reversing!”
They had begun to back down the slope and the tilt was making itself felt in the floor.
“Armor-piercing! Gunner, rotate turret right! Two o’clock! Driver, ahead, second gear, go around the crown!”
Turnip obliged, yanking a red-banded shell out of the storage rack, arming it, and hucking it into the breech, despite the incredibly bumpy ride. She only stepped on Trash’s legs by accident twice. Their last shell had been a solid one, but this one had some filler to it.
“Rosebud, don’t move until I give the order!”
Summer switched modes. “Radiopony, tell Lieutenant Marinara to pull her ponies back to the first fallback point!”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“This is MY field now…” Summer muttered, and then she yelled, “STOP!” and the tank came to a skidding halt, kicking up clods of dirt on both sides. “There on the hill, 30 degrees, reversing slowly!”
Minty made the adjustments, fired the gun, and…
“Missed! Driver, hard reverse!”
Turnip had just grabbed another shell, a solid one again, when a horribly familiar screech filled her world, a noise to top everything else. Nothing was louder, nothing was more deadly, and nothing better reminded her of that first day under Summer’s command.
Minty suddenly screamed and batted at something between her legs. Thrash hissed. Turnip felt the deadly familiar stings in her right foreleg, wrapped around the shell, and her jaw. Cashmere’s shriek went unheard, but Turnip saw her jump in her seat.
“Driver, stop!” Summer ordered, and they stopped. Minty was hyperventilating and staring at her lap.
“Everypony, sound off!” Summer barked, as she slid down from her seat to squeeze in beside Minty.
“Here!” called Supercharger, twisting around in her seat with a look of concern.
“Present!” Cashmere squeaked.
“Alive,” Thrash said, from his awkward position on the floor.
“Ain’t dead yet,” Turnip reported. She ran her injured forehoof over her face and felt a warm trickle of blood. Only a trickle was good; it would keep for later.
Summer reached up and turned on the light. Minty’s breathing was already steadying out just from the touch of another pony.
“Corporal Twist, what happened?” Summer barked. “Do I need to have you replaced or are you well enough to fight?”
Minty stopped shaking so badly and held her hooves up before her like a supplicant. She took a deep breath and slowly let it out, looking from one hoof to the other. The corner of one eye twitched.
“…I’ll be fine, sergeant. I just got a little burned is all.” She lowered her hooves and experimentally poked the inside of her right thigh and winced. “That… shell landed on me is all. It… Hey, would you look at that…”
Minty tapped the side of the turret, where the hinges of the hatch met the armor. The steel was caved like a pony had struck with a supernaturally strong hoofstrike, and the middle set of hinges had burst open. On the floor in front of her lay the slightly deformed enemy shell.
“Glad to hear that, corporal, because we are going back out there right now. Our troops are going to get chewed up if we don’t.”
Minty nodded. “I understand.” As Summer climbed back into her seat, Minty nodded again, apparently to herself, and stated, “I’ll make it through this.”
Turnip made to load the shell before Summer turned the light off and found one of the bars of the gun cradle cut right through and crushed into the gun’s recoil path.
“Anypony else have a problem?” Summer asked. She got back a chorus of ‘no, ma’am’s. “Good. Driver, full speed ahead and turn on the headlight. I want them to know we’re coming.”
The engine revved and the tank leapt forward. Turnip almost fell down as her injured foreleg was forced to again support her weight.
“Driver, hard right turn! Gunner, turret one o’clock! Thirty minutes! Fifteen past noon!” Summer yelled a series of rapid corrections at Minty.
The tank skidded around, throwing up even more dirt from the torn ground, and the turret turned opposite until it stopped nearly centered. Minty dipped the gun down and fired.
The gun recoiled with an odd wheezing quality from the right side. As expected, it smashed into the bent bars of the cradle and straightened one end of the break while smashing the other. The casing joined its siblings on the floor, and Turnip kicked them away when they rolled towards her.
“I think I hit, but…” Minty began, when another terrible bang struck the tank and another shock went through them all as they were hit again.
“Driver, hard left, NOW!” Summer yelled. The order was complied with sluggishly, and Turnip prayed to Celestia that Supercharger was not wounded. While they turned, Turnip heard a hideous whistling screech across the engine deck.
Then Supercharger hit the throttle, and they were accelerating away.
“Left by thirty degrees!” Summer ordered, in between gear shifts. “Right by fifty! Zigzag and make for the next hill!”
Turnip had already loaded another solid shell. By the slope of the floor, they were close to the bottom of the trough between hills. Then, the tank dipped horribly forward, throwing Turnip atop Thrash, and hit a new bottom with a jolt that made Turnip’s bruised bones ache. Supercharger paused the tank momentarily once they were level again, and Turnip heard her groaning in pain.
“It’s a streambed, ladies,” Summer brusquely informed them. She switched her microphone. “Rosebud, take position now. Make those shots count.”
Summer switched the microphone and sat still for a moment. Turnip extracted herself from the sweaty pile of limbs and exchanged a nervous glance with Thrash in the dim flare-lit tank.
“New plan. Driver, turn right and point us down this stream, then follow it until I say. leave the headlight on.”
They rotated forward and started moving, picking up speed. The tracks rattled over polished smooth river-rocks and patches of mud and underbrush.
“Now! Turn right eighty degrees!”
The tank surged out of the streambed and broke through the denser brush surrounding it to come nearly face-to-face with an enemy machine.
“Fire!”
Minty fired. Turnip had a front-row view through the shell-hole in the turret face as fire bloomed around their muzzle brake and a dark hole appeared in the front of the enemy tank with a shower of sparks.
A few dozen meters behind that tank was a second one. Its turret cranked slowly around from where it had been aiming, and it didn’t have much to travel to begin with. Turnip knew they were dead.
“Driver, charge!” Summer yelled, and the tank surged forward like a pouncing beast. The enemy tank fired, and their tank ate the shot without missing its stride. “Keep going! Pass them!” Summer urged, and Turnip caught a glimpse of the dark shape moving by them for an instant before it was gone. Behind them, she heard a muffled bang. After another few seconds of travel, Summer ordered, “Driver, U-turn!”
They came around in a tight, dirt-spitting circle. “I need a shell!” Minty shouted angrily. She must have dry-fired it.
“Which one?” Turnip yelled at her from beneath the gun. “We only have one AP and one HE!”
“Never mind, ladies,” Summer said smugly, crossing her hooves with satisfaction. Turnip crawled out from under the gun. “I do believe our problem is dealt with.”
Turnip peered out the shell-hole over Thrash’s back. The enemy tank they had just passed was broadside to them and burning, a fuel fire most likely, and had stopped moving mid-turn. As she watched, a hatch opened in the top of the turret and crystal ponies started spilling out.
“Enlisted Metal, shoot them,” Summer ordered.
It was Thrash’s turn to knock Turnip aside as he laid hoof on his rifle with obvious relish. He shot once, twice, thrice, then had to pause to load a new clip. Cashmere let them have it with a burst from her own gun, and there was no further need to shoot. Summer raised her microphone.
“My eternal thanks, Rosebud. Commendable work.” As she spoke, a few bullets pinged off the side armor. Turnip realized they had probably been doing that all along, and only now was it quiet enough for her to notice. “Follow our soldiers to the first fallback point. You remember? Good. I’m going to assist Selvage and see what kind of trouble they’ve gotten up to there. What? No, we’re all fine here. Superficial injuries, though we did take a few knocks. We’re still in the fight. Yes. See to it.”
Turnip grabbed one of the hanging canteens and wet her tongue as Summer ordered Supercharger to take them somewhere else. Thrash was squatting on his hindlegs against the front of the turret inspecting the rifle he had removed from its mount.
“Got a gun I can borrow?” he suddenly asked her.
Turnip squinted at Thrash in the fading flare-light. She couldn’t see why he had his hoof curled tenderly around the barrel of his rifle, but it wasn’t hard to think of a reason why.
“Mine’s a capture,” she grunted. “Take Minty’s.”
Before Thrash could even turn to ask, an Equestrian carbine slid across the floor under the gun with a clatter and bumped against his hoof. He picked it up and installed it in the mount without a word.
Meanwhile, Summer was checking in.
“Radiopony, what’s the status of the trucks?”
Cashmere relayed the request, waited, and answered back, “They’re nearly there, ma’am.”
“Splendid. We shall-”
Summer abruptly cut herself off and held a hoof to her headphones. After a moment of listening, she suddenly spat out an oath Turnip thought was reserved for common ponies and switched her microphone.
“Selvage, I’m on my way. Leave them and focus on assisting the infantry. They’re trying to draw you away from support.” A pause. “I know. Alert the Major of the situation and resume your post. We cannot afford to break too early.”
She switched to intercom. “Driver, back to full speed. Course corrections as I order them. Loader, give us that high-explosive shell, please.”
Turnip struggled to fit the armed shell in past the broken bars as the very bumpy ride turned into an extremely bumpy one. Dropping it now would risk detonation… but she managed it in the end. Thankfully there was only one shell left, because her right foreleg didn’t feel like she could force it through any more abuse.
The engine sounded fine, through the firewall, but the transmission was making a bad grinding noise. Turnip hoped it wouldn’t give out on them when they needed it.
It was a short ride in retrospect, but at the time it seemed to Turnip like an eternity of sharp turns, sharp bumps, and sharp edges. Before it was over, she had a few more bruises on top of the old ones and a cut on her left foreleg where a bad jolt had sent her up into the end of the broken cradle bar. After yet another wide, skidding turn, Summer called for a halt. Unfortunately for Turnip, it was not the good kind of halt.
“Target ahead, bearing ten o’clock from our position, four hundred meters!” Summer yelled. “Aim for the rear one!”
Turnip jostled with Thrash to see what the turret was pointing at. Over an open field ahead of them ran two of the enemy machines broadside to them, one illuminated by the headlight of the other. To their left, along a dirt path, she spotted the lights of a truck or two; ahead, Turnip could make out the taillights of the rest of the convoy. As she watched, the foremost enemy tank fired on the move, and a bright flash blossomed several dozen meters beyond one of the stopped trucks.
“Hold it, Minty!” Supercharger yelled suddenly. Turnip looked over curiously just as the engine roared and everything lurched. She tumbled to the back of the turret, and Thrash held on to his gun.
Turnip picked her aching body back up as Summer indignantly shouted, “Just what is the meaning of this?”
“There’s no time for shooting!” Supercharger yelled back. “I’m gonna ram them!”
“Corporal Twist is a capable gunner, she can…” Summer began coldly, then stopped. A small grin quirked at the edges of her muzzle. With disturbingly good humor, she ordered, “Gunner, turret to nine o’clock.”
They in the turret began to swing around and Turnip lost sight of the rapidly approaching tanks. She propped herself up to look out the loader’s hatch vision port instead. Yep, that dark shape there was it, and any second now…
Turnip dropped down and braced herself against the hull, on top of and next to the empty shell racks, just before a terrific impact knocked the wind out of her with a scraping, grinding sound of tortured metal on metal, like how Turnip imagined a train derailment must sound like. Thrash, hanging on to his gun, was swung around into the side of the turret, where the noise of his impact was drowned out by everything else happening in the moment.
“Target the track!” she dimly heard, as the floor began to tilt up under her. The noise of the gun came with the same lopsided wheeze from the shocks and spat the casing out. It hit the floor and rolled against the collection under Minty’s chair. The floor continued to rise, and the scraping screech only increased in its shrillness.
And then, abruptly, the floor rose to a full diagonal angle, and Turnip slid and then tumbled into the gun cradle, struck it, bounced off, and found herself rolling over spent casings to end up pressed against a larger, older mare. A searing new pain was shooting through her shoulder and she was finding it hard to breathe.
“Loader, armor-piercing!” she heard Summer yell, from somewhere far away. Minty nudged her, then nudged her again harder. Turnip groaned; she’d touched a bad rib.
But she picked herself up. And slipped on a casing that rolled under her. And got up again, throwing a hoof over the undamaged bottom bar of the gun cradle, pulling herself up more.
“Shell,” Turnip managed to croak in the oddly quiet interior. The grinding had stopped and the engine had dropped in revs.
A dazed-looking Thrash, hanging from his gun for dear life, quickly looked over and kicked the last shell out of the rack, where it tumbled down the slope and slammed against Turnip’s hindlegs, all seven kilograms of it. Turnip sucked in a hissing breath through clenched teeth and dropped to all fours and groped for the business end.
“Driver, prepare for a hard reverse spin,” Summer ordered.
Shell in hoof, Turnip strained to lift it up and over her head, over the cradle, and set the nose in the breech. She heaved forward, pushing the length in, closed the breech, and promptly slipped on the discarded casings again.
The instant the breech closed, Minty fired the gun, and the breech recoiled right where Turnip’s head had been an instant before. The sudden percussion had a note of finality to it as the breech ejected the casing of the final shell. It bounced on top of the fallen Turnip, still burning hot from the gun, and though she couldn’t muster the energy to push it off, the problem was solved by itself when Supercharger reversed the tank to more level ground and the hot casing rolled off her and across the floor to bump against Thrash’s hoof.
Summer heaved a deep sigh of obvious relief. Minty deflated back into her seat, looking limp and weary.
“Radiopony, ask the group if they’ve encountered any more enemy armor. Anypony you can’t reach, go through the Major’s radioponies – he has the range we lack.”
“Yes, ma’am,” Cashmere squeaked.
Turnip lay in a little pile of pain in the floor. Her part here was done now and there was no need to pretend to have it in her to keep fighting.
“Driver, take us over to those trucks, and we shall see what is the matter.”
The tank backed up and turned and started forward, slowly. The trip took but a minute and then they halted. Summer opened her hatch, looked around warily, and pulled herself out.
“Hey, you lot! Why are you stopped? Explain yourselves!”
A western-accented male voice outside called, “We had a breakdown, sair! We can’t make heads ‘r tails o’ what’s wrong… whoever worked on this earlier didn’t tell anypony what they did!”
Ahead, Supercharger sucked in a breath.
“Very well then; we’ll tow the wounded across the bridge. What’s in that other truck?”
“More wounded, sair.”
“If they can, tell them to climb aboard the tank or hoof it. Get your towing cables. Oh, and some of you lot had better go and capture the occupants of that tipped-over tank over there. Corporal Supercharger?”
Turnip listened with closed eye as Summer directed Supercharger to place the tank before the truck. The cables were affixed, ponies were heard clambering over the hull, and then they were away, the engine struggling to pull the extra tons of weight through the transmission’s lackluster torque.
The ride was oddly peaceful. The fighting was too distant for anything to be heard over the constant cacophony of noise the tank made everywhere it went, and the occasional thump as one of their passengers shifted on top. It was difficult for Turnip to remember that every minute that went by, somepony was probably getting hurt or killed. She wondered if Strawberry had already joined those ranks, and decided she didn’t want to know.
After a while, they eased slowly to a halt.
“Corporal, why did you stop?” Summer demanded.
“We’re here,” Supercharger answered simply.
“So I can see. Take us across.”
“Are you sure, ma’am?” Minty cut in. Turnip cracked open her one eye and squinted up at Minty just as the mare pointed ahead. “That bridge doesn’t look like it can take twenty tons. If it collapses, everypony who’s back there fighting right now will have to swim.”
Summer stayed silent, so Minty pressed on. “…And your squad would have to abandon their tanks to the enemy.”
After a further pause, Summer said, “I see. Thank you, Corporal Twist. I fear we shall have to risk it eventually, though.” She pushed open her hatch again. “Cast off that truck, there, and fetch a fuel hose!”
Turnip made a decision. Rising painfully to her hooves, she started climbing over Minty, who sat back and didn’t interfere. She pushed on the hatch, which opened fully only after some shuffling from outside, and slunk out to end up face-to-face with a gaunt-looking burnt-orange stallion, who moved back. Then, Summer noticed her.
“Enlisted Sprout, just what do you think you are doing?”
“Ya don’t need me no more,” Turnip grunted. “I’m just in yer way.”
“Do I need to order you to remain at your post?”
Turnip heaved a sigh and turned slowly to face her, realized she was turning into her blind side, and turned the other way. “‘S not my post no more. ‘S his.” She pointed back at Thrash with her injured forehoof, then used the same forehoof to wipe at the blood running down her chin. It only smeared it some more. “Ya ain’t got no shells left. I’m goin’.”
She turned and began to pick her way down the front of the tank, following behind the burnt-orange stallion. The corner she stepped down was bent in, as if by a giant hoof, and the center of the main armor plate was dented and split down the middle with a wide crack, giving a glimpse inside the tank. The blunt shape of an enemy shell remained wedged right in the middle of it.
“Goodbye!” Cashmere called. She had opened her hatch and was forming an obstacle to the ponies still trying to debark.
Turnip paused on the brink of stepping off the nose, then turned and ducked under the gun to stand before the hatch. An earnest little smile graced Cashmere’s delicate pink features. “Don’t worry about me none. Jest…” Turnip paused to swallow down an unexpected lump. “Find out if Corduroy’s okay, okay? Now git back in there.”
With that, she flipped the hatch up, forcing Cashmere to duck or be hit. The hatch hit its seals with a resounding clang of finality. Turnip turned and dove off the tank, a decision she immediately regretted as her foreleg buckled under her the instant she hit the ground. Ow…
She lay in the dirt of the path, gathering her strength, when suddenly she found herself being helped up by another of the walking wounded. It was a cotton-candy-colored mare with a left foreleg tied off at the stump with dirty linen and more wrapped around her midsection. Turnip met her eyes with her good one, nodded, and, unspoken agreement reached, they leaned on each other and began to make their slow six-legged way towards the bridge.
On the cusp of the rickety-looking structure made of logs and hope, Turnip paused and looked back, forcing her companion to stop as well. Summer was looking the other way, calling instructions to the ponies unhitching the truck from the tank. It was just as well. Whatever happened now, the fight was in their hooves, not hers.
“Sorry,” she mumbled to no one in particular, and her and the strange mare crossed together. Awaiting them on the other side, beyond the friendly gun emplacements and machine gun nests, was a veritable swarm of medical ponies bearing the familiar cross-and-four-hearts. Turnip was swiftly separated from her fellow and hustled behind cover, where she was placed on a dirty white stretcher and whisked away to a large field where scores of other stretchers lay in orderly rows. They left her immediately and went back for somepony else.
Turnip lay listening to the song of the wounded for a time; the moans, groans, the silence. She supposed she should well count herself among their number now. All she could think about was how much everything hurt, and how utterly exhausted she was. Looking up at the starlight of the Princess’s heavenly firmament, it was hard to believe that not twelve hours ago she had taken her first life.
Turnip sighed, closed her eyes, and immediately passed out in a deep, exhausted sleep.
/ - / - / = \ - \ - \
Turnip awoke with the sun in her eyes. It was well past midday, and her throat was parched. Luckily, she still had her canteen, and the problem was quickly dealt with. She wiped her mouth, capped the canteen, and looked around.
She was lying on her side on a blanket outside a large tent, and she had neighbors. She sat up. The flap of the tent was open, and inside she saw more wounded lying, some on improvised cots, some on the ground like she was, with only a simple barrier layer between them and the dirt. There were a hoofful of tents like this one, and she realized they were the same kind used for the old casualty ward, just a lot fewer in number. They must be reserved for those hurt too badly to risk leaving them in the sun.
Army nurses and a few doctors scurried about the area, ducking in and out of tents, carrying water, fresh bandages, surgical tools, and whatever else it took to manage a thrown-together field hospital. Turnip observed the nurses for a long time. None of them were the mountain-rose-colored mare she was hoping to see.
She tried to stand, and found that not only had her right foreleg picked up more bandages, her left had some too. She could barely to stand on the gimp foreleg, and she hobbled over to the prone form of another pony to “borrow” his crutch for her own use. None of the overworked medical ponies so much as glanced her way as she slipped out of the field hospital, crutch in hoof.
Where to? She asked herself. Where else? Was the response. She wandered around, talking to ponies and asking where the supply dump was. Most of her burning questions were answered in this way by the time she reached where the new supplies were being distributed.
It seemed that the operation to rejoin Equestrian lines had been a complete success, though not without its costs. Turnip knew all about that. Most soldiers she talked to could hardly believe that an entire company’s worth of ponies had made it all the way from the old front line to here. It was swiftly becoming something of a local legend, and Major Grapevine’s name was on everypony’s lips as the unicorn who had made it all happen. Despite being a unicorn, his permanently messy appearance and pragmatic attitude had greatly endeared him to earth pony enlisted troops all throughout the new camp.
Turnip knew that, in truth, only about three-quarters of a platoon out of the whole company were still capable of fighting. The rest were either dead and buried along the way, or like her, laid up with only the buzzing flies and fellow invalids for company. She felt that everypony of the bunch, including her, was due for some leave for sure.
“Cigarettes, please,” she said to the harried pony who was busy sorting boxes just pulled off the back of a nearby truck.
“What?” he glanced at her and did a double-take, almost dropping a ration crate on his forehooves. “Oh, er, here,” he said, pulling out an unfamiliar compact field ration and flinging it her direction distractedly. “Actually, have another one. They’ve got cigarettes in them now.”
Turnip thanked him, gathered her loot onto her back, and hobbled away. A pony should take the good with the bad, and if that meant exploiting her wretched appearance for her own gain, then so be it.
She found the tanks, such as they were, some time later. Of course, she knew where they were since long before she got the rations, but she was in no hurry. Hobbling up, Turnip began to feel like she had somehow lucked out with getting the snot beat out of her three ways to sun-day.
There was no rest for anypony capable of working, it seemed. The crews of each tank were hard at work alongside the motorpool ponies to repair and restore every one of the hoofful of tanks there. There was Summer’s big long-barrel infantry support model, of course, and two of the three anti-tank models beside it; the third was absent. Near them stood Captain Havoc’s personal tank, a great big square of a machine who’s exact role Turnip had never been quite clear on, and one of 5th Armored, D Company’s slope-faced command tanks, the other one being absent as well. None of the other members of the old company were there.
The steady crackle of welding machines rang through the air as Turnip made her way over to Summer’s tank. She noticed some flowing lettering on the barrel jacket she’d missed before, white lettering with black accent, spelling out “-ing Ranger”. The rest was obliterated by a gouge in the steel of the gun barrel. Turnip shrugged.
“Turnip! What are you doing here?” Cashmere’s voice exclaimed. Turnip turned her head; the mare was cleaning the mud-spattered hull with a wet rag. On the other side of the turret, an arc flash spilled around the edges of the metal.
Turnip shrugged. “Bored. Hungry. These here rations got cigarettes in them now, did ya know that?”
She held up one of the packages and tore open the end with her teeth. It was a “supper” ration, according to the printed label. Sitting down, she ripped open the main course and started eating the oats dry. Honestly, she was getting a bit sick of eating oats all the time, but she had to admit there were few things better for a fighting pony to eat. Well, eggs would be better, but those would probably go bad in transit.
“Cigarettes? Where?” came Cashmere’s soft voice from close at hoof. Turnip looked at the pony standing next to her. There weren’t friends, but…
“Prob’ly these,” Turnip said, nudging a small package over with her gimp leg. “And wouldja look at that, they even come with matches.” She knocked those over to the side as well, tore open the salt ration, and tipped it all back onto her tongue. Mmm, salt. “Light up on yer own time. Refill my canteen from that there water tank yonder, will ya?”
Cashmere swiped the tiny package of cigarettes with the speed of a striking cobra and stashed it under her collar, then picked up Turnip’s canteen and hurried away. Turnip watched her go. She resolved to leave as soon as her meal was done. There really wasn’t anything here for an injured enlisted loader like her to do but be in the way. There were worse things than laying around among a bunch of wounded with nothing to do, and she would know – she had laid around with the dead.
She swallowed the entire ration of sugar just as Cashmere reappeared at her side, hoofing her the now filled canteen. “Thank ya,” Turnip said, “Apple slice?”
Cashmere eagerly swiped one of the three slices of dehydrated apple the ration had come with and swallowed it like a hungry bird. Turnip took one as well and chewed it slowly. It wasn’t bad; it was just as tasteless as dried apple always was. She tapped the last slice to indicate that Cashmere could have it.
“So,” Turnip began, as Cashmere ate the last slice, “Ya write letters?”
“Yeah…” Cashmere said guardedly, looking at Turnip like the dried apple had been poisoned. “I write to my kin, mostly. Tell ‘em what’s going on. I haven’t got a chance to send the last seven letters I wrote yet.”
Turnip nodded sagely. “It’s good t’ keep in touch with yer folks. If I was any hoof at writin', I’d try an’ do it too.” Cashmere didn’t have anything to say to that, and the silence between them began to stretch. “Tell ya what,” Turnip began again, standing up and getting her crutch under her leg, “Ya can write t’ me anytime. You know the address, eh?”
Cashmere laughed bitterly. “How could I forget?”
Turnip raised her hoof from the crutch to pat Cashmere on her withers. “Attagirl. Git back t’ work.”
And with that, she turned and hobbled away from the tanks. She didn’t look back. Not even once. Not even a peek.
“Oh! ‘Scuse me! Sorry!” Turnip apologized, picking herself up off the ground.
The mare she had run into shook dirt off her bundle of papers and sneered at her. “Lady, next time, look where you’re going!”
And so she returned to the hospital, resigned to a long wait. When she walked back inside the bounds of the area, a nurse who noticed her return scowled at her, and she scowled back. She found her blanket and lay down on her side and lay her stolen crutch to the side.
The day passed in the peculiar way that extreme boredom does to a pony. Every second that ticked by was an eternity, and every hour was nothing. When a doctor called to get everyone’s attention from the center of the space they had been given, she could have sworn she had laid down just a few minutes ago, despite the sun being near the horizon.
The doctor had good news; it seemed that higher-ups had managed to commandeer a riverboat from somewhere and were going to use it to transport the surfeit of casualties that the remnant of section six command had to deal with. The doctors were doing what they could, but in these conditions and without most of their equipment, there was only so much they could do for the wounded. With the majority of the Lost Company – not what the doctor said, but what Turnip had heard the group coined in rumors, suddenly dumped in their laps, they were positively overwhelmed here. Turnip looked around as he spoke; yup.
Well, it seemed the riverboat was scheduled to arrive in the evening and begin taking casualties down the river under cover of darkness, to a point where the army was better equipped to transport all these ponies to actual hospitals. The doctor said this first run would be ponies in critical condition, who would likely die without better facilities, and any room beyond that would be taken by volunteers. He stressed that the first trip was fraught with risk, and likely to be attacked on the way. That didn’t dissuade Turnip any.
The hospital passed the time until the boat arrived in a very different mood than before. Where before, most were content to lie around or hold quiet conversations with their immediate neighbors, ponies now chatted excitedly with each other about the boat and what it could mean. From there, of course, the conversations inevitably bloomed into other matters. Turnip found herself standing in a small knot of other ponies who could still stand without help, discussing fishing with one of the very few pegasi among their number.
“So once ya got yer catfish and ya done measured it, ya take out yer hook and throw it back in the pond. That way ya can ketch it again later,” Turnip explained. “There’s this one catfish I done caught five times in a row – my cousin named ‘im Mister Gills, and I guess it stuck, ‘cause now I call ‘im that too!”
“Wait, wait, wait, hold on a second,” the pegasus waved a foreleg in front of him with a frown. “You go catfishing, and you don’t eat the catfish?”
“…Why would I eat a catfish.”
“Because!” he protested, rustling his wings. One of them was mangled and misshapen under its linen wrapping. “They’re tasty! You mean to tell me you live in catfish country and you DON’T eat them? You’re really missing out!”
“Blech.” Turnip made a show of sticking her tongue out in disgust. “No thank ya. ‘Sides, if ya eat ‘em, how’re ya gonna have any fish to catch next year?”
“You fish responsibly,” the pegasus said loftily, with a little grin. “Fishing’s no good if you don’t leave some for later, eh?”
“I suppose,” Turnip said dubiously. “Ponies ain’t s’posed to eat fish, anyhow. Jest ain’t right.”
“Sure it is!” he protested again. “Why-”
“ATTENTION EVERYPONY!”
It was the doctor who had delivered the announcement earlier. Perhaps they chose him because of his voice.
“THE BOAT HAS ARRIVED AND THE PATIENTS ARE BEING LOADED NOW!” he shouted. “THERE’S STILL ROOM ABOARD! ANY VOLUNTEERS? RAISE YOUR HOOF!”
Turnip’s hoof shot in the air. Privately, she felt that the method needlessly discriminated against ponies without a foreleg to spare, but perhaps that was the point. She knew if she had a boat full of invalids, she’d want a few of them that could fight.
“Wow, that’s, um…” she heard the doctor say, “Way too many.”
She looked around herself to find that just about everypony who could have their hoof in the air, including her pegasus companion, did. She scowled. These selfish ponies were going to cost her a fast ticket out of here.
The doctor seemed to make up his mind, and he cleared his throat meaningfully. “Alright. Keep those hooves up, and I’ll point out who gets to go. Nurse, stop me when we reach, let’s say, thirty.”
A nurse beside him nodded, and he set off through the crowd. “You. You. You.” He pointed to each pony in turn, and the ponies selected dropped their hoof and gathered unprompted at the edge of the hospital nearest the river. Turnip stopped counting once he passed fifteen; he wasn’t going to pick her.
As he wandered by, though, she decided that wasn’t a reason not to try. She waggled the eyebrow that wasn’t too swollen to move and tried to give the doctor a little grin, which probably looked like a grimace. He noticed her, stopped, and his eyebrows twitched towards a frown. “You,” he said, pointing at her before moving on to another group of ponies, and her heart soared.
“Yes!” she said quietly to herself, putting her hoof back on the crutch. “So, I gotta go, what was yer name again? Not that it matters, of course.”
The pegasus grinned at her, seeming unbothered at being passed over for selection. “Polestar. Yours?”
“Turnip,” she answered. “Don’t die.” It was the best wish for another that she could think of at the moment.
“I’ll never die,” Polestar said as his grin took on an ironic quirk, and then Turnip stepped away and made her way over to the rest of the group, which had already reached twenty-eight members and was waiting for her and one more.
“And…” the doctor said, hoof on his chin in careful deliberation, surveying the camp. He had the power of life or death in his hooves, though perhaps in a different way than usual, and he knew it. “You.” He pointed to a mare with bandages all over her face, neck, and barrel. When she walked over to join the group, Turnip decided that she was a burn victim, by the smell of her.
As soon as everypony was together, they followed an orderly down to the riverside. Along the way they passed some very fresh positions dug in near the top of the slope down to the riverbank. There it was, moored to the shore with a few lines: their salvation. Turnip was amused to notice that the bridge, a ways upstream, was partially collapsed, wooden beams hanging in empty space.
The riverboat was tall and long and barely fit the channel of the river, being only a scant few meters from the opposite bank while being moored to the nearer one. The tall flared smokestack spewed pale grey smoke into the gathering darkness and the wheel paddled slowly to keep the boat from drifting downstream. Turnip hoped the smoke hadn’t given them away too badly. The wooden railings and trim were painted a baby pink color, and the columns supporting the canopy that overhung the deck were decorated with heart designs carved whole into the wood. The windows likewise had charming little heart designs painted above them.
It was, in other words, a near-perfect example of traditional Equestrian design, marred only by the blackout shutters over the windows and other wartime modifications. After spending months existing around only the bare, utilitarian designs of the military, it felt out of place, more like a ghost from a past life than a real vessel. Turnip had to ignore the feeling that if she stepped aboard, it would take her away to some forgotten afterlife. She rubbed her eye and looked again, just to confirm that it was real.
She wasn’t the only pony to think so, she noticed, as several other ponies tapped hesitantly on the gangplank to confirm its corporeality and paused before climbing onto the deck. She made a little three-legged hop down to the deck from the railing, then turned and helped another pony ease her way down. The gangplank was simply set against the railing, rather than at the designated embarkation point she could see further down the boat. That space was taken up by a healthy soldier and their machinegun.
Turnip found somewhere to sit between some of the badly wounded ponies littering the deck, where they couldn’t be fit into the cabins, and watched the shore. Once everypony was on board who was meant to be, ponies on the shore cast off the mooring lines, which were dutifully pulled in by the crew, and without so much as a whistle blast, the huge paddle-wheel at the stern stopped and began moving in reverse.
It was a strange feeling to be aboard a working machine and not be doing anything. Sure, she’d been on trucks, tanks, and of course a train, but a truck had a driver, the tanks she’d been in had always had her on in a crew capacity, and trains kept their crew hidden from the passengers, for the most part. A boat like this one was an altogether different kind of beast; the crew scurried around and over their passengers as they saw to their duty, which right now seemed to be using long poles to ensure the boat didn’t get too close to either shore.
She watched the shore begin to slip by ever so slowly. The boat had to move in reverse a fair ways, she guessed, before it could be turned around. She thought about the ponies she’d known. The buddies she’d made and never seen again. As a member of a tank crew, the ponies around her never really died so much as they… left.
Sure, she’d sometimes see the aftermath of a fight before, and the sights, sounds, and smells were something she would never, ever forget, but prior to a few days ago, she’d never known what it was like to see the same ponies you fought beside with such fervor devoid of life after it was over. Maybe that was better than the pony just vanishing from your life like they had never existed. But it was harder, too.
She cast a glance at the pony lying next to her. She was a greenish-blonde mare with material packed into a chest wound, held in place with bandages. Every strained breath she took had a weak gurgling quality to it, and her lips were flecked with bloody foam. Turnip flicked her ear and pretended not to notice. Every battle fought, Turnip saw, made many dead, but they made many more like this mare, or like the amputee who had helped her across the bridge; destined to either die soon or live out the rest of their lives as cripples. Turnip was just one of the lucky ones.
She looked at the riverbank again. Already, they were nearly beyond any sign of Equestrian forces. She hoped Summer and her crew would be alright. As for her, well, maybe she had potential as a nurse? Strawberry seemed to have picked it up easy enough, so it couldn’t be too hard for a hick from a root vegetable farming family…
Turnip put down her head, closed her eyes, and tried to fall asleep to the comforting vibration of the deck and the gentle splash of the paddle.
