Disclaimer: My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic is owned by Hasbro, and I’m pretty sure that Battlestar Galactica is owned by Glen A. Larson. This fan-fiction does not claim ownership of anything belonging to either.

There are those who believe that life here began out there, far across the universe; with tribes of ponies who may have been the forefathers of the Unicorns or the Pegasi, or the Alicorns. Some believe that there may yet be brothers of Pony who even now fight to survive, somewhere beyond the heavens!

Ponystar Equestria

Saga of a Star Pony

Chapter 1: Rendezvous in Space

The Colonial Ponystar fleet was an awesome sight to behold as it made its way through deep space towards the rendezvous with the Cyponian fleet. The great starships bore the scars of combat, their bristling armament of pulsar-cannon and neutronic missiles were not just for show. In the centre, cruising in line ahead, were the capital ships, the Ponystars themselves, huge warships combining the roles of battleships and carriers. Each of the twelve vessels carried a full complement of fighters, and the whole fleet was capable of deploying an awesome level of firepower, sufficient to level a planet. Escort fighter flew alongside the fleet, and destroyers, bristling with guns but without fighter bays, flew point duty.

At the head of the fleet flew the Ponystar Equestria, one of the oldest of the ships. Laid down decades ago at the beginning of the Cyponian war, the veteran of many battles, she had been rebuilt once, yet still looked old-fashioned compared with the clean modern lines of more modern ships such as the President’s ship, the Ponystar Epona. The Epona had seen relatively little service – she was seen as too valuable to the Pony cause to be lost. She was in the centre of the line of warships, followed by the Ponystar Bellerophon, the ship commanded by Count Altair, and behind her the Titan, the largest of all Ponystars.

“What a sight!” Lieutenant Flutter, a light yellow Pegasus with pink mane, looked over at the Equestria, from her little one-pony fighter. Sure, other ships were newer, but no ship had the character of the Grand Old Lady of the fleet, the oldest Ponystar still in service. And she was being honoured by being at the head of the Fleet as it flew to the rendezvous with the Cyponians to sign the treaty that would finally end the war that had killed countless ponies.

“Yeah, makes you glad to be one of her crew, glad to be a pony,” Lieutenant Star Flash, the mare who was on her wing, replied. The Pegasus pilot smiled. Star Flash could be infuriating at times; she was insubordinate, rude, brash, and utterly fearless. And she had saved her skin so many times that she had forgotten the number. Plus, she had taken so many bits off the other pilots gambling that he was sure she had to be the richest Pegasus in the fleet.

“Yeah, but how much longer? I mean, sure they won’t just send us all home, but when the war’s over, I can’t see them keeping us all on either – even if the fleet’s so buckin’ small now after all our losses!”

“We’ll go back to deep space exploration. That’ll be the real challenge! And we need good fliers for probe flights. I’m looking forward to it,” the yellow Pegasus had seen too many good pilots die. Her own family had been wiped out in a Cyponian attack on the colony of Aerila, the world of her birth. She wanted this peace more than anything else, for it meant that no more good ponies would die. And she liked the fact that the war would end like this. However vicious the Cyponians were, the idea of wiping them out made her feel ill.

“You maybe, Flutter, but can you picture me as a scientist? I’m the fastest, coolest pilot in the fleet, but flying probe flights? Ain’t gonna happen.”

“We built them, Star Flash, we exploited them, and when we got scared we tried to destroy them all. They only fought back then. I think they have a real grievance against us…”

“Yeah, but you’re a bleeding heart, Flutter. Me, I’m a simple kinda mare – they’re bucking Tin Cans, I’m a combat pilot, I shoot ‘em. The Tin Cans want us dead, so before they can actually kill us, we kill them. Simple.”

“I know,” Flutter smiled, picturing the cyan mare’s smile as she spoke. Flash would never listen; she wasn’t that sort of pony.

“Okay, time to head home and re-fuel this baby! And then I have a game waiting for me at the Officers’ Club! Watch in awe as I win once again!”

The two Pegasus pilots turned their ships back towards the port flight deck of the Equestria.

Captain Atepomonus was the oldest son of Commander Celestus of the Equestria, and in command of the ponystar’s fighter wing. He had his flight suit on; his helmet was painted with the Phoenix symbol of the Twelve Colonies of Pony. The alicorn captain trotted into the fighter bay just as Star Flash and Flutter entered.

“Hey, it’s the captain!” Star Flash said happily. “Last patrol before peace and you had to get it! Must be karma or something.”

“Actually I volunteered for it; it’s one of the advantages of being CAG. Given that every Pegasus on this ship wants to be in the Officers’ Club wolfing down ambrosia in celebration, I thought I’d let you, heaven knows you deserve it. That and I don’t really want the Old Man putting me in that stiff dress uniform to meet the Cyponians. So I’ll leave the ambrosia wolfing to you.”

“Wolfing ambrosia and avoiding that wolf of a kid brother of yours,” Star Flash pulled a face. “Ugh!”

“Actually, I’m taking him out of your mane as well – I figured that the alicorn who feels he’s the gods’ gift to mares needs to cool down, and a deep space probe is just what the doctor ordered.”

“Hey, you’re good-looking and thoughtful. But it’ll never work – I may be the coolest Pegasus ever, but considerate and thoughtful? Nope. Come on, Flutter, I need to get a drink and win some bits!”

She tossed her rainbow mane, and with that the pair departed, leaving Atepomonus chuckling to himself. Pilots needed to unwind, he thought. And the newest alicorn pilot, his brother Segomo, needed to fly his first patrol.

Seg was fresh out of the Flight Academy, and he actually had the makings of a good pilot. Like many new pilots, however, he was reckless, he tried to impress the mares with his flying, and he really was not as good as he thought he was.

“Hey, bro, ready for the probe?” Seg asked as hurried into the launch bay himself.

“Sure I am,” Unicorn engineers hurried to assist them. The two fighters were specially modified for alicorns, necessary not only because of the horns they had, but also to take advantage of the fine control that alicorn magic allowed. The fighters were usually designed for Pegasi, intended to work like extensions of the Pegasi’s own body.

The two alicorns carefully fitted their wings into the fighters’ control systems and then the canopies were lowered. Atepomonus checked his ship’s instruments as the craft was readied for launch.

“Ready for launch,” a disembodied voice from CIC, the Ponystar’s command area, said.

“Launching!” he pulled back on the stick and the fighter shot down its magnetic launch tube and out into space. Seg followed him.

“Okay, we do this by the book,” Atepmonus said over the radio. “I lead, you follow,” he checked his instruments. “Going to turbo in three, two, one… now!”

The two little craft streaked away into the unknown space ahead of the line of capital ships.

The briefing-room of the President’s Ponystar was playing host to the Council of Twelve, the Alicorns who represented the Twelve Colonies of Ponies. They sat around the council table in a specially-prepared chamber. The twelve-pointed star of the Colonies of Ponies marked the table, and at each point sat a pony. President Equus, wearing his white cloak and his golden wreath of office, stood in his place of honour. The white alicorn was calm and distinguished. Beside him sat Count Altair, a dark blue alicorn with a grey mane. Only one member of the Council, Commander Celestus, was in military uniform, a blue dress uniform that he found uncomfortable.

“My little ponies, after a generation of war, Ponykind stands on the brink of a new era,” the President said, “An era of peace! It has been so long since this war began, so many ponies have died. We have lost dozens of warships of all types, and while we have held our own, our Twelve Colonies have suffered. We faced annihilation for decades, but now there is a chance for peace. It seems that the Cyponians too have grown weary of war and desire peace. For the first time we shall meet the leaders of the Cyponians face-to-face and extend to them the hoof of friendship,” He raised a glass with his magic. “A toast to a new era,” the President said happily. The other members of the council raised their glasses with a self-congratulatory cheer – all but the blue-uniformed Commander Celestus, whose expression remained sombre.

“And a toast to Count Altair, without whose work we would not now be going to sign this peace treaty. It was he who made contact with the Cyponians, and it was he who negotiated the peace treaty with the leader of the Cyponians!”

“Really, Mr. President, the fact that the Cyponians chose me as their go-between was an act of… the providence of the gods, nothing more,” Altair replied smoothly. “Besides, it is the peace and not the instrument that we should celebrate.”

“Altair’s too modest,” a distinguished mare who represented the Colony of Saggitair, commented. “He is the saviour of our people.”

“Oh, Lady Senax, you exaggerate. If the Cyponians had not chosen me, they would have chosen another. They want peace, my fellow members of the Alicorn Council, just as we do. They may be machines, but they have their own desires and longings for the future, and they do not wish to be destroyed any more than we do. The Cyponian leader has come to see that the only alternative to peace is the mutual destruction of both our peoples.”

“Indeed, Count Altair, indeed,” the President smiled. “What is important is that there is peace ahead of us.”

“Peace!” the Council members said as one. The President looked around the table and saw the clouded expression on Commander Celestus’s face.

“Not all my little ponies are pleased by the news, I fear. Commander, am I to assume that you are sceptical of this promise?”

“Perhaps I am too much of an old soldier, President. But I’m not a war-monger. You know what I’ve always said, war is hell,” the distinguished Alicorn warrior’s battle scars were apparent to all. His wings were crippled so that he could not fly; his face bore the marks of several ugly injuries. Celestus was a respected officer, and had refused the rank of Admiral several times. His cutie mark was a twelve-pointed star, a point for each of the Colonies. His uniform bore the badges of his rank and the ribbons of many medals. “There is not a pony here that has not lost somepony in the war with the Cyponians, and not a pony here who does not honour those dead and long for peace. My own wife was among the casualties of the Cyponian attack on Caprica ten years ago, and I would not wish that loss on anypony,” he sighed. “I welcome peace as we all do. But I’m uneasy. We left just a skeleton force to defend the colonies and we’re taking the fleet into deep space for a rendezvous with the Cyponians. Perhaps it is merely a military instinct, but there is something about this I just don’t like.”

“Oh, the Cyponians are quite sincere, Commander,” Altair said. The Count was a distinguished scientist, though he had been notoriously wild as a younger pony. “They contacted me, I did not contact them. It was after the battle of Coritur, when I was with the third fleet. My Ponystar was crippled, and we were unable to keep the Cyponians from boarding. Really I thought it was the end – and yet instead of killing me, they took me prisoner and transported me back to their base ship. There I met with their leader, and to my surprise she asked me to negotiate a ceasefire. I do not take this lightly, but I am humbled to be the instrument of this peace.”

Commander Celestus frowned. He was not convinced that Count Altair could be trusted, but he had no evidence that the dark blue alicorn was anything other than he claimed to be.

“Well, Commander, are you not pleased to see this historic day of peace?” the President asked.

“Mr. President, we created the Cyponians generations ago to serve us, to relieve ponies of physical labour so that we could work with our minds. We created life, and we forgot that we had responsibilities towards that life. We made life, and we enslaved it; the Cyponians rebelled against us, and there is a sense in which we deserved it. We brought this war upon ourselves. Yet I feel uneasy. I’m not sure that we have learned the lesson of our hubris. The Cyponians hate us with every fibre of their being, and their Imperious Leader has never asked for peace before.”

“But she has now, Celestus! Oh, Trust the military to rain on our parade!” The President laughed. “Gentleponies, return to your ships and prepare for our entry into Cyponian space.”

“I expect that the Cyponians will have some sort of welcoming committee waiting for us,” Count Altair suggested as the Council ponies dispersed, heading back to their shuttles. Commander Celestus frowned as he went, unable to shake off his vague feeling of unease.

Colonel Pie, a pink earth pony, was the executive officer of the Equestria, and while the Commander was at the council meeting she was on duty and in charge of the ship. Her mane was straight, her expression world-weary, and her pink coat bore a number of battle-scars. She stood at the command console, watching the crew at work in the busy CIC aboard the Ponystar. The older vessel was less automated than the more recent ships, a precaution against the Cyponian ability to hack computers with amazing speed. This meant that she required a larger crew to run, but as far as Colonel Pie was concerned that was just because she was a ship who needed to be treated with care.

“How far to the rendezvous?” she called over to a grey earth pony at a control panel.

“We made the final jump an hour ago…” he began, much to the Colonel’s annoyance.

“I know that, sergeant, I'm not a cretin! What I want to know is how far we have to go in normal space?” she snapped angrily. She wanted to get this over with, so she could go back to her cabin and have much-needed drink. A bit of old ambrosia was what this called for, and the bottle was practically calling to her. Only she would have to be sober for the actual peace ceremony, sadly. Well, she could always get stinking drunk afterwards. Trouble was, it sounded like the sort of thing that would go on for hours, and since the other side were robots, they wouldn’t be interested in drinking.

“Another couple of hours, Colonel,” the answer did not please the ageing battle-mare. Colonel Pie sighed.

“The Commander is on his way back, sir,” another pony reported. She smiled at the news. They had seen a lot of action together, and she counted the tough old alicorn as a friend, not to mention the only alicorn she had any respect for at all.

“Tell the docking bay to get ready for his return! And while you’re at it, tell the bucking Pegasus pilots to lay the hay off the ambrosia in the officers’ club! I don’t care if they are off duty or not, they are not going to be blind drunk when we get to Tin Can space! Pegasi… bunch of hot-shot show-offs the lot of them. Moonstone, you got anything on the scans?”

“No, sir,” the cyan mare reported. “Just empty space out there, sir. The probe fighters have flown beyond scanner range.”

“I can see the empty space,” Colonel Pie growled. She settled back to wait, while the CIC crew exchanged worried glances. The Colonel was not a happy pony, and when she was cranky she let other ponies know it.

Colonel Pie knew that there was no place for an old war-horse like her in a fleet re-oriented to exploration, and that was making her even crankier than usual. This was going to be her last mission, and then the civilian government would put her out to grass with a pension and a few medals. That was what the civilian government did. To think there was only one warhorse on the Council! But that was the government, a bunch of politicos, stuffed horse-skins who didn’t have a clue.

The two small fighters streaked ahead of the fleet at full speed, insignificant in the vastness of space, two insignificant little dots in an endless sea of stars. Atepomarus smiled as he piloted his ship. He loved this, just flying free in space, no Cyponians to worry about. That was the trouble with being a combat pilot, you were surrounded by all this beauty, but you could not pause to look at it. The white alicorn was looking forward to peace, to being free to explore the universe once again. He hoped that they had learned from the errors of their race in the run-up to the Cyponian war. The trouble with Alicorns was that they tended to be arrogant, to assume that because they ruled it was their natural place. The war had changed that, ponies of all types had shown command abilities, while some alicorns had proven weak and incapable. Most importantly, different types of ponies from all twelve of the colonies had fought side-by-side and died together.

And now they stood on the brink of a new era of peace. Perhaps they could even explore side-by-side with the Cyponians in the future. Maybe the Cyponians would forgive them, though there was a lot to forgive. The trouble with too many ponies, in Atepmonus’ opinion, was that they thought all the blame was on one side – the Cyponian one. They forgot that the Cyponians had rebelled against slavery, and how the Colonies had used Cyponians to settle petty grievances, from religious terrorism to petty gangsterism – though was there really much difference? Cyponians had been set to fight Cyponians, in conflicts they had no part in. No wonder they had rebelled. They had seen the dark side of pony culture, and they had rejected all of Ponykind because of it.

And then there was the mysterious Imperious Leader, the being who had given direction to the Cyponians and led the revolt against Ponykind. Very little was known about her – it had only recently been discovered that she was female, whatever that meant for a robotic pony. Apart from Count Altair, nopony had seen her and lived. Hers was the brain that directed the Cyponian war machine, and she was the one who had given Count Altair the task of negotiating the peace with the Colonies.

The cloud of cosmic dust was dimly illuminated by the surrounding stars, but its core was dark. The particles from which the nebula was formed were interfering with the ship’s instruments, and the nebula was big, large enough to hide a fleet in.

“I’m going to fly a little closer in,” Atepomonus told his brother. “You cover me.”

“A cloud our scanners can’t penetrate and it’s directly in the path of the fleet. There might be an old Cyponian minefield in there. That’s why we need to investigate closer.” The trouble with Seg, he thought, was that he wanted to be a hot-shot pilot, but in reality he lacked the ability to be one. He wanted to be admired by mares, he wanted the glory, but he did not want to put in the hard work. He had yet to learn that the life of a pilot was hard and dangerous – why, he had not even flown a combat mission. This was exactly why he would have preferred Star Flash to be his wingpony, but then he had only himself to blame for giving Seg this mission.

The two one-pony fighters sped towards the Nebula. Scanners still showed interference patterns, a fact that worried Atepomonus. These were state-of-the-art scanners, military grade. Unless this was a very rare type of nebula, he should be getting some sort of reading from it.

Segomo’s fighter sped past him, headed straight into the swirling clouds of the nebula. The alicorn captain barked out an order to stop, but his brother ignored him.

No, Atepmonus thought, you have no idea what you’re doing or you would have slowed before entering the nebula. That thing could be hiding atomic mines that could take out a ponystar. But Seg rushed in, trying to impress. Atepomonus had seen too many pilots die to be impressed by recklessness. In war you had to take risks, but you calculated them. That was what made Star Flash the best pilot he knew – though he would never tell the young Pegasus that. Seg didn’t think at all, he took needless risks.

The captain’s ship penetrated the cloud. Visibility within the cloud was poor, and he slowed to a crawl. His instruments were all over static, nothing clear could be seen – not even Seg’s fighter.

As he moved deeper into the cloud, a contact flashed on his scanner screen. It blinked and went out, obscured by interference.

“Seg, turn back! We have no idea what’s in this cloud! With the static on our scans and this visibility there could be a ponystar in here and we’d never know it!”

“Seg, I know what I’m doing – you don’t. In any case, I’m your commanding officer, and that means you follow my orders!”

Two contacts appeared on the scanner. They were a distance away, but moving towards him.

Atepomonus activated the ship’s standard recognition system. If he could not see the contacts, perhaps he could identify them with the ship’s computer. They did not look like ghosting created by the nebula; their movements did not match his fighter.

Atepomonus piloted his one-pony fighter slowly towards the two contacts. It was now quite apparent that they were no ghosts; they were too large to be ghost-images of small fighters.

A form appeared through the nebula’s swirling dust and gasses; a long ship, a double-cylinder with a wedge-like brow. The fighter’s computers identified the vessel quickly, a Cyponian tanker. Two tankers and they seemed to be empty.

He flew past them, down into the nebula. More contacts appeared on his scanner, and suddenly a terribly familiar image flashed onto his computer screen. He did not need to read the accompanying text to know what the elliptical vessel was.

“It’s a trap! They’re lying in wait for the fleet! There could be thousands of raiders in this nebula and we’d never know! The Cyponians don’t want peace, they want to wipe us all out!”

The Ponystar Equestria universe is something of a mix of the original Galactica and the new version, with ponies. I am not slavishly following anypony else's storyline, but I really don't think I can get the atmosphere of the Galactica miniseries, so I'm using the ambush scene from the original series instead, edited to make it a bit more sensible.

Ponystar Equestria: The Last ponystar

by Commander Celestus

Chapter 1: Rendezvous in Space