Chapter 6
Greater Love Has No Pony
Major Moonlight looked out from the broad windows of the bridge of the Element over the rag-tag fleet assembled in the refuge area. If she had had her doubts about calling it a fleet earlier, she had none now. There were over 150 civilian ships in the rendezvous area, ranging from Cheerilynn’s smart Colonial government transport to container ships so old that it was practically a miracle they were still flying. There were liners, cargo ships, mining vessels, even a couple of garbage ships. Alongside the civilian fleet were 25 military destroyers, some damaged from Cyponian attacks. One of the destroyers was being evacuated since it was too badly damaged to jump again, a procedure that left the ships vulnerable to attack since the shuttles carried by the civilian ships were not FTL-capable.
In the hour since the attack, a hierarchy had already developed in the fleet of survivors; Commander Blacker was in charge of the destroyers, Major Moonlight in charge of the civilian ships. The Commander’s responsibility was to protect the fleet; hers was the more onerous task of leading them away from the Colonies to safety. Amazingly, it seemed that Cheerilynn was the most senior surviving member of the government, making her the top civilian official. Thankfully, the Education Minister was a reasonable pony, well aware of her limitations and content to leave military command to the military. For her part, Moonlight was glad of the minister’s input and leadership experience, since it made up for what she lacked.
Every minute they stayed at the rendezvous was a risk, and she knew that; any moment the Cyponians might arrive, and like this they would be like fish in a barrel; even if they were able to jump away, there would be casualties, not least the shuttles evacuating the damaged destroyer.
The alarm went off once again, warning them of more ships jumping into the area. Each time there was the very real risk that it might be a Cyponian attack rather than more refugees, and when that happened they would have to abandon the area, and leave any more refugees to their fate.
It took a moment for the ships’ transponders to register, but to Moonlight’s relief the transponders were friendly, Colonial ships, twenty-six of them, many of them passenger vessels, but no destroyers. Looking out of the windows she could see that some of the ships were damaged by pulsar-fire. The Cyponians were starting to attack Colonial ships now, and that meant…
“Send out the co-ordinates for the next jump, and tell the fleet to prepare to jump,” Moonlight ordered. “Contact the new ships and ask what happened to them!”
“I’m getting a message from one of the new ships,” the communications officer said. “The captain of the Astral Princess wants to talk to you, Major.”
Moonlight picked up the telephone, aware that the message from the damaged ships was liable to be traumatic.
“Astral Princess, this is Element actual, Major Moonlight.”
“Element, Captain Adar, Astral Princess,” the stallion’s voice was ragged, terrified; his accent identified him as a native of Gemena. “We… we were on approach to Scorpia Yards when they attacked… swarms of raiders… all over the yards. Nopony stood a chance, all destroyed. Then… came after us. They… had a baseship, nukes… ship-to-ship. Caught our escort leader amidships… nuke was designed to use against ponystars, not destroyers. Our escorts did what they could… held them off while FTL-capable ships jumped… oh, gods, there was ships that didn’t have FTL. There was children on them! Children! Had to leave them… thousands dead; it’s all over, all of it! What’s the gods-damned point in running? We don’t have a bucking place to run to!”
“Captain, please,” Moonlight heard his hysterical sobs over the channel. “There must be tens of thousands of ponies on the ships here. If we can leave the Colonies, find another world where we can survive…”
“They’ll come after us! Don’t you understand, Major? The gods-damned Tin Cans want us all dead! Every last pony! Oh gods, there was a transmission… their leader… glorying in the destruction. She hates everypony, she wants every last pony in the universe destroyed! How can we escape from her?”
“We’ll find a way,” Moonlight promised. She had no idea how she would fulfil that promise, but she knew that she would fulfil it, because she always kept her word. “Captain, welcome to the Colonial refugee fleet. Spool up your engines, we need to be ready to jump at a moment’s notice. It’s only a matter of time before the Cyponians come here looking for us, and there’s no way I’m going to let them kill any more ponies.”
“Commander, we have to go back to Cimtar!” Colonel Pie cried angrily, stamping a hoof on the steel deck of Equestria's CIC. “We left most of our fighters there, and if there’s even a chance we can recover them…”
Commander Celestus nodded. He was still in CIC, looking up at the screen that displayed the main sensor read-outs. Ponystars were not piloted by sight, but by the readings from dozens of sensors that painted a far more accurate picture of the space outside than any mere visual image could give. What he saw though was not what was on the screen. The old war-horse saw in his mind’s eye the destruction of the Colonies, billions of ponies who had been relying on the military to protect them, wiped out in a moment by that genocidal robot. Her voice, like an unholy song of triumph, still sounded in his ears.
“Colonel, you’re right. We don’t leave them behind. Spool up the FTL drive, and jump on my signal.”
The pink mare smiled and laughed. Her voice was husky from too much smoking and drinking, she drank like a fish, but she was a fine officer when she tried to be. Nopony got to be promoted from the ranks as she had been without having real military talent, however much she hid it.
“Thank you, Commander! Okay, you mules, you heard the Commander! Get this gods-damned ship ready for jump! Tell those hot-shot pilots to be ready to launch, and for buck’s sake, get somepony to fix that monitor over there, it’s sparking!”
Celestus allowed himself a smile; he secretly enjoyed seeing Colonel Pie in action, she was so determined, so driven. He also suspected that she secretly enjoyed yelling at the crew.
Suddenly, as the crew were getting ready to jump, an alarm went off, alerting them to the fact that a ship had just jumped into the system. Colonel Pie watched with bated breath as the ship’s computers sought to identify the vessel. Unidentified could be Cyponian, and a baseship would be trouble, even if a ponystar was capable of going toe-to-toe with one and winning.
At last an identification tag appeared next to the contact; it must have taken only a few seconds in reality, but the wait seemed like an age. Colonel Pie shouted in delight.
“It’s the Titan! She cried. “It’s the bucking Titan! Thank the gods!”
“Registering multiple fires on board her, heavy structural damage,” Omicron reported. “Colonel, she may have made this jump, but her back’s broken; she’ll never jump again. To be honest, it’s a miracle she made this jump.”
“By the gods! Ready for evacuation!” Colonel Pie ordered. “Contact Titan, Commander Eta…”
“Titan is contacting us,” Communications officer Moonstone reported. “Requesting to speak to Actual.”
Commander Celestus used his telekinesis to raise the telephone, hoping that he would hear Eta’s voice. She was a good officer, and this sort of move, jumping a crippled ponystar to escape the Cyponians, was exactly her style. She had been one of his students at the Academy, and he had watched her career with interest.
“Titan, this is Actual,” he said.
“Commander Celestus!” the voice was not Eta, but a stallion. “This is Major Epiphania of the Titan. The Commander’s dead, so are at least half the crew. We… did what we could. Flight pod’s crammed with fighters and Hawks, all the ships we could get in. Hades, there’s even some in the damaged pod. The ship’s had it, she’ll hold together here, but she won’t be jumping anywhere. Gods, the Commander had to hold her together so we could jump here!” His voice was shaking with emotion.
Celestus was silent for a moment, knowing what Epiphania meant. Eta had sacrificed her life to save the ponies on board the Titan, using her alicorn magic to hold the damaged ship together during an FTL jump had subjected the Commander to stresses that even an alicorn could not survive.
“Major,” Celestus could not hide the pain in his voice as he heard of still more pointless deaths. “Evacuate the Titan. We’ll take everypony off if we can. Colonel Pie!”
“Yes, sir?” the warmare stood to attention. She sensed her commanding officer’s pain, and knew that Eta was dead.
“We’ll be taking every fighter, every Hawk, every shuttle, off of the Titan, so get the deck crews ready! Major, start sending the ships over at once!”
“Yes sir!” Epiphania answered happily.
“Equestria out. You can tell me about the battle when we’re safe and we’ve got time to talk.”
He put the phone down. Celestus knew that Equestria was the last ponystar now; if there had been any others left, they would have jumped with Titan. This was the last ship of its kind, and the last hope for the survivors of the Colonies.
Some hope! But what had happened out there at Cimtar? Well, no doubt they’d find out soon enough from whatever pilots had survived.
Cimtar: a little earlier
Star Flash dodged Cyponian pulsar-fire as she piloted her tiny vessel in for a landing in Titan’s undamaged flight pod. The fuel gauge was pulsing red; alarms sounded, warning her of battle damage. She was out of the fight, and she knew that they had lost. Bellerophon had destroyed another Ponystar, leaving only three of the capital ships, all severely damaged. The ponystars were doing their best to refuel the fighters, but running combat was taking its toll on all of them, and there were pitifully few Colonial fighters left. Of course they were making it count, the Bellerophon had suffered damage now, and hundreds of Cyponian raiders had been destroyed. The trouble was, the Cyponians had baseships out there, probably on their way to join the battle, but it was pretty unlikely there were any ponystars on the way to relieve them.
“Titan! I’m coming in hot!” Star Flash warned the flight deck over her comm. “One engine on fire! But I’m gonna save this bird, don’t you worry!”
She extended landing gear as she approached the flight pod, one of several fighters coming in for a landing. The huge Titan and her sister ship Colossus had been built with two flight decks in each pod, meaning she could handle many more fighters than a normal ponystar, a fact that made her the refuge for survivors from the destroyed ships.
Star Flash saw the flight deck coming up fast; she fired her retros and prayed they would slow the ship in time and she would not end up as a twisted mass of wreckage and flesh on the deck; for one thing that would create a hazard for any other fighters landing after her, she thought with a grim smile.
The landing was awkward and bumpy, not helped at all by the battle raging all around. But then, a good landing is a landing you walk away from, as they said, and she was going to be walking away from this one. The damaged fighter touched down on an elevator, and was carried down, into the hangar deck.
“Oh, buck!” the deck-hand groaned as he surveyed the extensive damage to the fighter. “Thanks a bunch for bringing it back, now I’ll have to try to fix it!”
“Hey, you unicorns need the work to keep you out of trouble!” the Pegasus pilot laughed as she jumped from her cockpit. She stretched her wings and smiled. “Okay, get her re-fuelled and in the air!”
The mechanic used a very colourful expression, and Star Flash trotted away, laughing.
“Flash!”
The familiar voice made the rainbow-maned pony smile. She whirled and caught Flutter in her fore-hooves, overjoyed that her friend and wingpony had survived as well.
“Flutter! Gods, am I glad to see you!”
“You Star Flash? ‘Cos I reckon I owe you one for shootin’ a coupla Tin Cans off of my tail out there.”
The pony’s accent betrayed her at once as a Triton pilot, Apple, from Aquaria. She was an orange Pegasus with blonde hair; her flight suit bore Triton markings, a patch of a trident on one shoulder.
“Yeah, Star Flash; you’ve gotta be Apple.”
“Sure. That was some fancy flyin’ you pulled off back there…”
“Get off the hangar deck!” the voice belonged to the Titan’s Chief Petty Officer. “I’ve got fighters coming in every moment, and there’s no room for you pilots to stand around talking!”
“Okay, okay,” Star Flash sighed, leading the way off the deck. “Sheesh, you’d think he’d understand.”
“He does” Apple replied. “We’re in the middle of a battle. Your ponystar may have survived, but mine, and six others have been destroyed.”
“Attention all hands, attention all hands,” the urgent voice came over the ship’s tannoy. “Prepare for FTL jump! The ship’s damaged, so it’ll be rough!”
“FTL jump?” Star Flash frowned. She knew what that meant, of course; it meant they were pulling out, that the battle was over and what little was left of the Colonial ponystar fleet was finally admitting defeat.
“I reckon we’d better be findin’ ourselves a refuge case things get choppy,” Apple advised.
Star Flash nodded in agreement.
“I reckon you’re right,” she said with a smile.
Titan’s formerly gleaming CIC was in disarray; repeated hits had destroyed monitors and consoles, and even brought an overhead gantry down, killing several ponies. There was blood on the deck and on consoles, smoke in the air, and a fire burning in one corner, defying the efforts of a damage-control team of unicorns.
Commander Eta was a tall, elegant white alicorn of refined tastes. She regarded Commander Celestus with admiration, but felt that there were times that the veteran warhorse needed to be tolerated more than anything else. The way he looked out for that drunken battlemare Colonel Pie, for example, was something she had never been able to understand.
Right now, however, she knew that Celestus could be the last hope of the Pony race. Eta’s white coat was stained with soot; her mane was limp, her right wing broken, her uniform torn and bloodstained.
“Ossian,” she turned to an injured earth pony who was in charge of communications. “Are they all on board?”
“Not yet, Commander,” he reported as the Titan shook under the impact of a missile from the Bellerophon. “Ponystars Aletheia and Ramilles are trying to stay between us and the Bellerophon. Both are taking heavy damage; we can’t hold much longer. Commander, if we jump now…”
“No, we wait until we have every fighter on board!” Eta ordered. “No pony left behind, do you understand?”
“Yes, commander.”
Major Epiphania watched from his station. The Commander was the bravest pony he had known, he thought, she was delaying the jump until she had saved everypony she could, even though she was badly injured herself. The downside of her determination to leave nopony behind was that she might just end up dooming them all in the process. He was now the second most senior officer on the ship, since the XO had been killed by the falling gantry.
“Commander, structural integrity is being affected by these missile hits! If we suffer one more nuke hit, we might not be able to jump!” he shouted urgently across the smoke-filled room. A control console exploded, hurling a pony to the deck. The cries of the wounded pony were pitiful; a reminder that war is always a terrible thing.
Eta looked around the wreckage of CIC; she knew her ponystar was doomed; Titan’s last mission would be to save the survivors of the other ponystars. Perhaps the Colonies had been saved; perhaps Celestus had been able to warn them in time. Or perhaps everypony had perished in a nuclear holocaust. Whatever, these ponies were her responsibility, and she was going to make sure they survived, no matter what.
“Major, programme jump co-ordinates for Caprica waypoint,” she ordered. “Spool up the FTL drive!”
He obeyed. The ship was coming apart, fires all over the place, only two sublight engines working; how they would survive after the jump Major Epiphania had no idea, but he knew they had to survive.
“Commander, the Aletheia’s taking heavy fire from the Bellerophon!” a beige earth stallion on the scanners reported.
“Get me Aletheia actual!”
Ossian pushed controls on his console, and Eta lifted one of the few telephones in CIC that was still working. She trembled as she lifted it, afraid of what she would hear.
“Aletheia, this is Titan actual, pull back!”
“Negative, Titan actual,” the familiar voice of Admiral Cherryblossom came back. “We’re too badly damaged, and that rogue Ponystar’s our biggest problem. You get those ponies out of here; I’ve got my own plans for going out! All power to the engines!”
Eta knew precisely what Cherryblossom was doing, and she gasped in shock. But there was no way to stop the Admiral, they could only watch helplessly as the most senior surviving ponystar officer mounted her last attack and made sure that her death counted for something.
The twelve sublight engines of the ponystar Aletheia blazed into life, incinerating several Cyponian raiders that had been foolish enough to fly too close to them. Those guns that were still intact on the ship were still firing, main turrets directed forward, towards the Bellerophon, point defence trying to keep off the raiders that were determined to destroy the Colonial warship. But Cherryblossom was not counting on the guns. Her ship was on fire, both flight pods inoperable, FTL engines out of commission. Most of the crew were dead; surviving fighters had found refuge on board the Titan. The ship was doomed, and she knew it. She had seen most of the rest of the fleet go up, and was determined that the Aletheia’s destruction would mean something.
“And then there’s you, Altair,” the Admiral said, looking at the contact on the screen in front of her. The Bellerophon, the ponystar of the traitor Altair, and the ship that was keeping the Cyponians flying; just ahead of her ship, bold as brass, defiant in her treachery.
Aletheia’s CIC was a shambles, the deck slippery with blood, air thick with smoke. The many fires burning in the ship heated the air so that even the crimson alicorn commander felt it singe her coat and blister her skin. Her wings hung useless by her side feathers ripped out, her left front ankle was fractured, but she felt no pain, only rage directed at Altair and the Cyponians who had killed so many of her friends and her crew.
“Altair, may the gods curse your very soul, you’ve brought utter ruin on our people. I don’t know what those Tin Cans promised you, but by the gods I’ll see that you never get it! You deserve only death and the pits of Tartarus for ever; and now, traitor, I have you! Prepare to ram the Bellerophon!”
Aletheia’s surviving gunners were still at their posts, blazing away; a ponystar gunner was in a position that practically ensured death in a firefight, sealed in a turret, and they did not give up easily. Ordnance exploded all around the ship as she accelerated towards the Bellerophon, one of her main turrets erupted in a violent explosion as a shot from her opponent’s guns hit home. As her crew realised what the Admiral was doing, the treacherous ponystar began to turn, trying to flee, but she was too late. The Aletheia caught her amidships in a full-speed ram. Admiral Cherryblossom laughed as her ship exploded all around her.
“That is the reward of traitors!” she cried, moments before Aletheia’s CIC erupted in a sheet of flame, and she and the rest of her crew were vaporised in an instant.
The CIC crew of Titan watched in horror as their scanners relayed the death throes of the two ponystars. The ordnance aboard both ships ignited and went up in a fireball like a small sun, hurling debris in all directions, smashing Cyponian raiders and destroyers alike. The shockwave hit the Titan on the beam, and the huge vessel creaked alarmingly as it shook.
“Last ship on deck, sir!” Ossian reported.
“Cyponian destroyer incoming on missile run!” the beige earth pony cried. While many Cyponian ships had been destroyed when Aletheia and Bellerophon went up, there were many more still flying.
“FTL jump!” Eta ordered.
“Commander, if we jump we risk the ship breaking apart,” Epiphania warned.
Commander Eta nodded sadly. She had hoped to see Celestus again; he had been her mentor for so many years. But saving the ponies on her ship was far more important than her personal feelings. She was their commander, they were her charge, and she would save them whatever it took. Her horn began to glow as she reached out with her alicorn magic, touching every part of the ship.
“Commander,” Epiphania knew what she was doing, and he also knew what the result would be.
“Tell me, Major, how many ponies are on board this ship at the moment?” her voice was surprisingly calm in view of the stress she was placing on herself.
“Over two thousand, sir,” he said quietly
“And is the loss of one pony acceptable if by that action more than two thousand ponies are saved? Major, if that destroyer gets through, this ship will be destroyed. If we jump and I am not holding Titan together, this ship will be destroyed; this is the only way to ensure that the ponies on board survive,” she gasped in pain as her alicorn magic spread out through the vessel. At this point she was literally holding the ship together; she was one with Titan, and the effort was slowly killing her. Perhaps if she had been uninjured things would have been different, but they were not, and she was injured. An FTL jump would put the ship under enormous stress, and the result of that stress would be, as she well knew, her death.
“Jump!” Commander Eta screamed in agony. The FTL drive was activated just as the Cyponian destroyer launched its deadly projectile, and the nuclear missile streaked away into empty space.
Robbed of the Titan, the Cyponian ships turned on the crippled Ramilles like so many angry hornets.
The damaged Titan appeared in a blaze of light at the Caprica waypoint, close to the stationary Equestria. The CIC crew stared in horror at their Commander’s form; she stood in the centre of CIC, blood pouring from mouth, nostrils and ears. The effort of holding the damaged ponystar together had been too much for her, and her body was shrivelled up from the drain on her magic. She coughed weakly and managed a smile as she tottered on her hooves.
“There. It was worth it. Nopony left behind.”
And with that, Commander Eta’s body dropped to the deck of her CIC, stone dead.
“Nopony left behind,” Major Epiphania repeated, tears welling in his eyes. “Commander, it was an honour to serve under you.”
“So say we all,” Ossian added.
“So say we all!” the CIC crew spoke as one, honouring the commander who had made the ultimate sacrifice for her crew and all the ponies in her charge.
Notes:
1. The title is derived from the Bible, its application should be quite obvious
2. The Titan is my solution to getting fighters from Cimtar to the Equestria. The jumps to the Colonies were defined routes, and because the Colonial military knew that Equestria was headed to Caprica, they could jump to her waypoint location.
3. The Unicorn mechanic reflects the feelings of groundcrew in World War II faced with badly shot-up aircraft.