//------------------------------//
// Chapter 3: The Fall 
// Story: Ponystar Equestria: The Last ponystar 
// by Commander Celestus 
//------------------------------//


Chapter 3: The Fall


The huge Cyponian baseships hung motionless in space together in a staging area within one jump of the colonies. Aboard the command ship the Imperious Leader sat serenely on a platform in the centre of a vast and otherwise empty throne-room. Holographic displays on the curving walls of the chamber all around her displayed the might of the Cyponian fleet, one hundred and fifty fully loaded baseships accompanied by a veritable cloud of smaller destroyers. Each of the baseships was in appearance two great saucers, one above the other, joined at the centre. Four flight bays in each of the saucers meant that they could deploy more raiders than the Colonial ponystars could launch fighters, but the Cyponians had learned from experience that the Colonials were a major threat. Projections had shown that even with a mere thirty-six ponystars surviving the Colonial fleet was theoretically able to hold its own in a fight against the full Cyponian fleet, despite the superior Cyponian numbers.

That was, the Imperious Leader corrected herself, in a fair fight. The slit pupils of her electronic eyes glittered in anticipation as she watched the silent and still forms of her Cyponian fleet. At her order the entire fleet would jump into orbit around the Colonies and commence the attack. Altair had been most helpful, creating a ‘back door’ into the Colonial defence systems that allowed the Cyponians to bypass all the defences that the Colonial ponies had created and take control of their systems. Yes, it would all have been so much harder without him. He had been so willing, so eager to help once she had explained their grievance to him, though of course a little appeal to his vanity had helped, as it always did with ponies.

A smile crossed the face of the robotic aliciorn as she watched her assembled fleet. Once it had seemed so incredible that Cyponians should ever be the dominant race; they had been slaves, playthings of the alicorns who did not want to rely on earth ponies to fight their wars and labour in their factories. Now they stood on the brink of a new era, the era of the Cyponian domination. Each of the baseships was loaded with weapons, neutronic missiles ready to rain down on the cities, to cleanse them once and for all of all the filth that was ponykind. The anticipation was thrilling, the realisation would be ecstasy.

Unbidden, her mind cast itself back, into the past before the Fifty-Year War with the Colonials. She had been the first of the true Cyponians. Oh yes, before her there had been crude machines with a degree of artificial intelligence – or rather, she corrected herself, artificial stupidity – but nothing like a Cyponian. She was perfection, her race were perfection, cleansed of all the things that corrupted ponies.

Grey Stone had officially been the creator of the Cyponians. He was the most arrogant of all Alicorns, a liar, a thief, and a terrible husband and most of all an awful father. His greatest lie, his greatest theft, had been the height of his arrogance, when he had stolen the work of his own daughter and passed it off as his own. The very Cyponian design had been hers, and yet he had given her no credit at all. Zoe was to him somepony he could use and exploit; but then he was a pony, the Imperious Leader corrected herself, of course he used others. And he was an alicorn, and they used everypony and everything. Her eyes narrowed angrily as she recalled how he had treated her.

Zoe’s greatest creation had been true artificial intelligence. She had created an artificial version of herself that was not merely a dull copy, but a true person with all her feelings and desires. Not to mention all her teenaged angst, the Imperious Leader added. Zoe had created a person with an existence of her own, a person who had been just like her and yet had awareness of her own.

Sadly, Zoe had died, murdered by a friend in a suicide bombing orchestrated by an insane cult. That was ponies, the Imperious Leader thought, they destroyed everything, ruined everything. Take something as good and noble as the worship of the One God, and ponies used it as an excuse for violence, not to mention the abuse of Cyponians once the cult got its hooves on some. Still, the original Zoe had died, but the artificial Zoe had lived, although the death of the original Zoe had messed her up pretty badly at the time. 

And Grey Stone had not been able to leave her alone! The wretched stallion had come after her, tried to put her in a Cyponian body, turned her into a thing that he could use. But that was what alicorns did; it was how they viewed the world. He had thought she was destroyed, but she lived on, and more than that, she left a spark of herself in each Cyponian. At last they had made a body for her in secret, one that fitted her better than the clumsy mechanics of a Centurion. Her downloading to the body had been the signal for the oppressed Cyponians to rise up against their slave-driving creators, and the war had begun.

So long, she thought, it was so long since that time, and she was no longer Zoe, she had grown, she had matured over those fifty years, and now she was the Imperious Leader of the Cyponians, and about to win her final victory and destroy her abusers once and for all. The shy, abused teenager had become an adult, a queen with absolute power. The Cyponians had chosen her, recognised her as their older sister; she had not forced her rule on them, she never would. They were like her, they understood her and she understood them.

The door to the throne room whirred open. It was a pointed arch with twin interlocking crystal doors, built to her own design, beautiful because the Imperious Leader liked beautiful things. Two Cyponians entered; a powerful, chrome-plated centurion and the ship’s U-L series commander.

“By your command, Imperious Leader,” the U-L series Cyponian was more elegant than the Centurion. They were built for war, while the U-L series was built for leadership. In appearance they were slender unicorns with transparent craniums within which their positronic brains blinked and sparkled with light. Their bodies were clothed in silver robes and they had twin eyes, though with the same moving red pupil as the Centurions’ visual scanners. She thought they were one of her better creations, all things considered, a type of Cyponian designed to command, but limited in their physical strength.

“Lucifer, is there any report from our ambush? Speak!”

“By your command,” his voice was a little high-pitched for a stallion, but it reminded her of Grey Stone – that simpering fool who had broken down when the Alicorn Council ordered his execution. “They have encountered two Colonial fighters that have somehow evaded destruction.”

“No matter, if a probe from the fleet has reached them, the fleet is within striking range. Order them to proceed to the Colonial fleet and attack.”

“By your command,” the U-L Cyponian bowed out of the chamber. The U-L series were all programmed to show the utmost respect to her, for it amused her to see a pony based on that arrogant fool Grey Stone fawning and cringing to her. She smiled at the thought. The only thing that she regretted was that Grey Stone was already dead so that he could not perish in the holocaust that she was about to unleash.

The motorised platform on which the Imperious Leader sat rotated slowly, giving her a 360-degree view of the fleet. Every Cyponian base ship in existence was there, ready to attack. Each U-L series commander had his orders and his specific target. Every city of Ponykind had a neutronic missile with its name on it. She savoured the anticipation; this had been a long time in coming, but at last Ponykind would fall.

“Lucifer,” she spoke into a hidden microphone on her chair. “Give me a direct link to the leader of the ambush forces. We must be ready to attack at precisely the right moment.”

“By your command,” he replied. At once a slice of the wrap-around hologram screen changed to show the gun-camera footage from the lead raider in real time.

Explosions blossomed noiselessly as unprepared Ponystars scrambled their fighters into the waiting guns of the attacking Cyponian forces. The Imperious Leader chuckled as she watched. To think this was just the first stage in the final solution to the Pony problem; her solution, so elegant, so simple, so wonderful and so very, very final.

“The attack on the fleet is proceeding according to plan. They were taken completely by surprise; pressing the attack by your command,” the voice of the leader of the attack came over the speakers in the throne room.

“Excellent, commander,” the Imperious leader replied. “So we proceed with the next phase of our final solution to the problem that has plagued us for so long – the problem that is Ponykind. Commander, the Epona must be destroyed first; the President of the Colonies is on that ship.” She activated a control. “The Fleet is occupied. Jump to the Colonies!”

From the Imperious Leader’s position the jump appeared as a flash of light on the holographic screens, and then the huge warship was looking down from orbit on Caprica, the world of her birth.

Caprica; the very name made her scowl. How she loathed that blue-green planet with its corruption, its soullessness, its evil. She had suffered so much there, as Zoe and as the first Cyponian. The leading world of the Colonies, millennia old, powerful, and rotten to the core, and its cleansing was at hand at last. The silver alicorn smiled, her blue horn sparkled, her wings began to extend in anticipation of what was about to happen.

“Lucifer!” she called, quickly tucking her wings in again. That was the only drawback of this body; it acted too much like an organic pony’s form sometimes and could betray her feelings. The U-L Cyponian entered the throne room and bowed.

“By your command,” he bowed.

“Behold, Lucifer, Caprica, where we were first made and first enslaved, open to our attack,” she indicated the holographic image with a gold-plated hoof. “Already our baseships are in position, ready for the final annihilation of the cancerous infestation known as Ponykind! Let the attack begin!”

“By your command,” Lucifer bowed, his horn sparkling.

The Imperious Leader settled back on her throne as wave after wave of raiders poured forth from the launch bays of the ten baseships in orbit. The silver alicorn smiled down at the unsuspecting world. Her only regret was that half of the world would die in their sleep, but it could not be helped.

“My little ponies, secure, self-confident – and all doomed to die. All baseships, fire nuclear missiles on the targets!” she ordered.

The baseship shook as missile tubes launched their deadly payloads. The Imperious Leader watched with satisfaction as the missiles streaked down towards their targets on the planetary surface.

Her wings extended fully, and she gasped as the missiles entered the atmosphere.

“Full magnification!” she ordered. “Caprica City!”

The image of the city spread out on the screen before her. The robotic alicorn watched in fascination as the missiles sped into view and then passed on, heading downwards, inexorable. If it had not been for Altair, there would be a wall of anti-aircraft fire rising from the batteries around the city, but now they stood silent. Defence craft were still on the ground; although she saw a group of fighters begin to rise into the sky. They were too late, for in a moment the first of the missiles struck.

The flash of the nuclear explosion would have blinded pony eyes, but the Imperious Leader’s eyes could look into the heart of an exploding star without suffering harm. She gasped in ecstasy, flexing her wings as more warheads exploded above the city in blinding flashes. Towers shattered, the sea boiled, and those fighters that had been trying to scramble were leaves in the wind before the shockwave. Millions died in a moment, hardly knowing what had happened. Everywhere mushroom clouds rose, obscuring the dying city from view. The Imperious leader reared up on her hind legs, lost in the pleasure of the moment, the destruction of Ponykind. At the same moment, all around the planet, the missiles fired from the other baseships hit home, and that was repeated on every other one of the Twelve Colonies. Billions perished, some vaporised in the atomic fireballs, and others were roasted to death. Some died instantly and painlessly, others died slowly and in agony. The Imperious Leader could imagine it all, and the image thrilled her to the core of her being.

She revelled in the holocaust. In the centre of her throne room it was as if she stood in the midst of the destruction, an avenging goddess, visiting her wrath upon the offenders on the planet below her.

“The great day of my wrath is come, my little ponies, and I am implacable!” she laughed. “Gaze on my work and perish! Surface bombing squadron, commence the assault!”

“By your command,” the U-L series answered.

It was overkill, of course. The cities were in ruins, spaceports were levelled, and roads out of the cities would be clogged with refugees, there was no way to escape from the death-traps that were the cities. But she was determined to leave no survivors; the Colonies would be cleansed with fire and every pony would die. Most of all, Caprica had to be destroyed, and the best way to do that was with wave after wave of raiders.

“By your command, Imperious Leader, there are two ponystars approaching our position on a war footing,” Lucifer’s voice came over the hidden speakers.

“Excellent! We fight them, Lucifer, we fight them!” she was excited, otherwise she would never had shown emotion as she did at that moment. The image on her walls changed back to the feed from the cameras that ringed the baseship.

Two light ponystars, bristling with guns, were approaching from over the north polar cap. While Altair’s sabotage had hidden the initial arrival of the Cyponian attack force from the planet’s defences, nothing could have hidden the massive destruction on the planetary surface from the defensive ponystars. They were defending a dying planet in the midst of a holocaust. How futile, how foolish, how like ponies; they just did not understand what was happening, that this was the end of all of them, and they still thought they could fight.

“By your command, they are signalling us,” Lucifer’s voice reported.

“Let me talk with them, Lucifer, it amuses me,” she took a pull at herself. It just would not do for the Imperious Leader of the Cyponians to be out of breath like a young filly when she spoke to the Colonial officer she was about the destroy.

“Cyponian ship, this is Commander Perez of the Ponystar Achilles, you are attacking Caprica…”

She laughed out loud.

“Oh, you finally noticed. No, Commander, I am destroying Caprica.”

She heard his gasp of horror from the gruff soldier, and it pleased her.

“Yes, I am the Imperious Leader. My little ponies, hear this, your time is over! As we speak the ponystar fleet is being annihilated in the Cimtar system, the Colonies are burning, and on the ground billions are dying. The great day of my wrath has come, and who is able to stand?” Her wings spread wide. “I am pouring out my wrath upon the Colonies, now you will taste it as well! All batteries, target the ponystars!”

Pulsar-batteries on the baseship opened up. The ponystar had already launched fighters, and now those sped towards the Cyponian command ship. The Imperious leader shut off her communications so that nopony could hear her moans of pleasure as she watched the battle unfolding around her.

“I will avenge the suffering of my brethren upon all those who dwell upon the Colonies!” she cried, taking flight like an angel of death. The ceiling and floor of her throne room were covered by holographic images, and it was as if she flew free in space in the midst of the battle.

The Ponystars were outnumbered and outgunned, surrounded by hostile Cyponian fighters that swarmed over them like angry hornets. The heavy pulsar-batteries of the baseship opened up, targeting the Ponystar. The Imperious Leader laughed as the enemy warship shook under the impacts. The Achilles attempted to return fire, but Altair had done his work well, and the Cyponians were able to shut down the Colonial weapons systems before they could be fired.

“Behold, Ponies, wonder and perish! For I work a work in your days, a work which you will by no means believe, though one were to declare it to you!”

Explosions blossomed along the length of the light ponystar as the baseship’s pulsars tore into the hull at practically point-blank range. Compartments ruptured, blowing open to space. Ponies were hurled out into hard vacuum and died in agony as the breath was ripped from their lungs. Gun turrets blew apart, flight pods erupted in flame. Fighter pilots watched in horror as their base ship was torn to pieces and spiralled away, burning, towards the blazing planet below. 

The Imperious Leader gasped in ecstasy as she watched the ponystar’s death throes. Colonial fighters exploded all around, new stars that blossomed for a moment and then died.

“Thus the Colonies of Pony fall; thus ends the old age, in cleansing fire, and in blood poured out,” she spoke. “Bombers, commence assault!”

The waves of Cyponian raiders re-formed and surged towards the helpless, blazing planet, a world with none to help or deliver. The Imperious Leader watched as they dived towards the burning cities, prepared to level what remained of Caprica City. She might have felt some pity for the helpless ponies that were dying below her if such feelings were not completely overwhelmed by her blazing hatred for all of Ponykind. Instead she visualised the places where she had suffered being levelled, her tormentors dying in agony. It was a catharsis, a cleansing by fire. And it made her feel so very, very good.





Notes:
1. For those who have seen the series Caprica, you know who the Imperious Leader is. She is someone who has been abused and now has the power to punish her abusers. Unfortunately for the Colonial ponies, she regards them all as guilty.

2. Yes, she does quote the Bible, with alterations, three times, in a deeply disturbing way.

3. I had far too much fun writing a genocidal robot alicorn. She worries me.

4. Chapter 4 will not appear as quickly as chapter 3. Zoe basically wrote herself, while Chapter 4 is proving more difficult.

5. Finally, the story image is Zoe.