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// Chapter 8:  Duel 
// Story: Starbound Flight 
// by computerneek 
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The thestrals were nothing if not impressive.  The fuel and oxidizer transfers went without a hitch, then Star and Coils provided a couple of empty pallets- which had originally held space food- for movement of their supplies.  All in all, they had their entire ship gutted and dismantled in a mere three weeks.  Their reactor, after Coils had determined that it was incompatible with the First Light’s power grid because ship designers had dropped back compatibility for that model almost a hundred years before, had been transferred to her Reactor Recovery Bay for safe storage until it could be recycled.
Following that, the gravity had been set up to a half a gee, then gradually brought up to a full gee over the following week to help them all get used to it again.  At the same time, they had finally opened the five stasis pods and transferred the soldiers inside to her medbay.
Finally, a week after that, Flight was alone on the bridge- Willow had gone to the mess hall to have lunch- when a sudden buzzer went off.
It only took her one glance to see what it was about.
Artillery inbound.
It even told her which direction to turn to avoid it most easily.
So she yanked on the helm, and shoved the throttle to maximum fully compensated thrust- which, according to the readout, was only a little more than she needed.
Three seconds later, a fresh chirp indicated that she had successfully avoided a sudden and none-too-pleasant death.  She sighed, maintained her new heading for the moment, and flipped up a plastic cover at the very end of her panel to flatten the bright red button underneath.





Cold Coils was just snuggling back into her sheets, after a midnight potty break, when her eyes snapped open at the sudden thrumming of a cold Gravity Drive being forced to operate at high output.  She sat up.  “What’s going on?” she muttered, looking across the aisle as the irregular hum awoke Star as well.  The sound of equipment getting abused like that would wake almost any engineer, after all.





Willowstone was having a good conversation with the thestrals in the dining hall.  They were surprisingly friendly, she had found- just like any other pony, even.  They were a remnant of the Midnight Navy, the navy of a tiny nation of thestrals that had once existed on a planetoid even smaller than Equineothame…  before their homeworld had been blown to bits nearly five hundred years prior.  Naturally, not a single pony was still alive from that time- ponies only lived to forty, after all.
All conversation came to a sudden halt when Night Skies, the Thestrals’ captain and engineer, suddenly stiffened.
Then she heard it too.  The low, throbbing moan reverberating through the ship, that hadn’t been there just moments before.  She didn’t recognize it right off, but that moan sent ice through her veins anyways.
“Something’s not right,” Skies muttered darkly, scowling.
Right at that moment, a sudden screaming, howling alarm blasted out of the intercom, echoing throughout the ship.
“GQ?” one of the thestral soldiers asked, alarmed.
Willow made a snap decision.  She’d made quite a few of those during her brief stint as the ENS Everfree’s sole Tactical officer, and they’d all paid off, so she didn’t dare second-guess herself.  “Shade, medbay,” she commanded.  “Skies, Blacklight, Astral, you’re with me.  The rest of you report to Engineering for Damage Control.”
Then she bolted from the room, abandoning her half-eaten salad.
The thestrals exploded into motion at the same moment- and, she knew, didn’t head straight for damage control.  A couple of them did, but most of the group she’d assigned to it were soldiers.  They knew that a ship’s Marines had exactly two duties in a naval battle:  The first was to distribute the pressure suits, and the second was to report to Engineering for damage control.  Her command had assigned them that role- the role they’d already had, aboard the Shadouette.
“I told you this wasn’t a civvy ship,” she heard Blacklight telling Astral Eye, as they brought up the rear.
Skies, being older and faster than Willow, caught up quickly.  “Are you sure?” she asked.
Willow ignored the question.
Mere seconds later, the last door snapped open in front of her, and she burst onto the bridge.  “What happened?” she asked.
“Near miss with artillery,” Flight answered quickly.  “Range six light-minutes and closing fast.”
Willow turned to the thestrals, and started pointing them to consoles.  “Blacklight, there, Astral, there, Skies, there.”
Flight glanced up briefly.  “We’ll be counting on your experience, Skies,” she stated, studying her displays.  “If something doesn’t feel right, say something.  Willow is our tactical talent, but you’ve got the experience.”
Skies nodded darkly as she sat in what she recognized as the First Officer’s seat.  “Yes, Captain.”  She narrowed her eyes at the panel.  “That’s at least three ships there,” she muttered.  “Looks like a pirate formation, they probably have a lot of missiles.  How are your defenses?”
Willow scowled at her panel.  “We’re well past the PONR,” she muttered.
“We’re a glass cannon,” Flight answered.  “Largely unarmored, but our artillery has a maximum effective range of five light-minutes.”
Skies looked up.  “How fast?”
“One shot per minute each of four weapons,” Flight answered.  “Lightspeed, untested.”
Skies looked down at the displays again.  “If we don’t kill them with our opening salvo, we’re not likely to hit them until we reach point-blank.  Even pirates know how to use anti-artillery doctrine.”
“Enemy ID-ed,” Willow called.  “One superdreadnought, two heavy cruisers.  Pirate flags.”  She glanced up at Flight.  “Artillery?”
Flight nodded, and pushed on the helm to line the bow up with the enemy.  “I have it charging,” she answered.
“Four rounds?”  Skies narrowed her eyes.  “Ripple-fire two of them down the superdreadnought’s throat,” she ordered.  “They should act like a drill.  Split the other two against the other two ships.”
Willow glanced up at Flight, who nodded.
“These chickens are way too close together to polarize their hulls,” Blacklight observed calmly.
Skies raised an eyebrow.  “Oh, it’s those idiots.”  She sat back.  “They’ll be so close together the destruction of the center vessel will inevitably cripple the other two, so it’s more efficient to concentrate fire on the superdreadnought.  Don’t miss, though- they start dodging crazy once they know you’re shooting at them.”
Willow raised an eyebrow.  “So, ripple-firing all four down the superdreadnought’s throat in five, mark?”
Skies nodded.  “Yup.  Anything left we should be able to erase with-!”
She broke off when the ship gave a tiny twitch, and the massive window across the front of the bridge suddenly turned pitch black.  A quartet of miniature stars were still visible, though, blasting out from above and below and vanishing rapidly into the distance as the window returned to its prior transparency.
Flight scowled.  “That looked a lot slower than lightspeed,” she muttered.
“That’s because we’re moving seventy-five percent as fast as they are,” Willow answered.  “They’ll look like they’re moving about point one two cee relative to us.  We’ll want to make a hard right five seconds before impa- There’s a fourth ship behind the superdreadnought,  class unknown.”
Skies leaned forwards again.  “You’re right.  That’s…”  She paused.  “That’s a classic protective formation for these idiots,” she muttered.  “That ship behind them will be either a civvy or a glass cannon.”
“It’s going to get hit by our arty if the first three rounds make a hole in the SD,” Flight observed.
“It will,” Willow agreed.  “Unless they change course or something within the next three and a half minutes.”
“They’re idiots,” Skies answered calmly.  “Most pirates won’t do anything except charge straight at us until we get within thirty light-seconds of them- unless we shoot artillery at them, but the Midnight Navy hasn’t had that for centuries.”
Flight glanced up.  “Why the blind charge?”
She shrugged.  “Because as hard as it is for the nations to find tactical talent, it’s even harder for pirates.  They’ve got one tactician for every thousand ships or so.”
Flight raised an eyebrow.  “And your fleet…?”
“The last of the Midnight Navy’s true tactical talent died off a hundred and fifty years ago,” Skies answered.  “However, thestrals are natural predators, so we’re naturally tactically inclined- and not completely useless without a trained tactician.”





“I know I shouldn’t be calling an artillery duel boring,” Skies muttered, “but if anything was, that one definitely was.”
Flight nodded.  After they had confirmed all their enemies defeated, they had gone even tighter into stealth and altered their course- and now, it was ‘evening’ aboard ship, and the engineers had just taken over for Flight and Willowstone.  The thestrals had returned to the passenger sectors quickly, once the danger was past- so she had met them down in the mess hall, where she wanted some dinner.  “Yeah.  Bit stressful when it started, but after we dodged that first round…”  She shrugged.  “They just died.  Even when one of the cruisers managed to survive the SD’s explosion and tried to flee.”
“Straight line flight,” Blacklight nodded.  “One of the easiest ways to get suckered by artillery.  Must not have realized that’s what we used.”
“Chickens indeed,” Flight agreed.  “Had they varied their course, they might have gotten close enough to fire missiles against us.”  She sighed, then turned to Skies.  “Speaking of, I know a two-and-done artillery duel like that is kinda unorthodox, and very, very simple, but I like how quickly your ponies fell into place when I hit the GQ.”
Skies looked at her quizzically.
She smiled back.  “I know the Shadouette wasn’t in a repairable state, but what do you say to joining the permanent crew of this ship?”