Strange Bedfellows

by BRBrony9

Patience

The surface of the moon was not a place to spend your time, being a desolate, airless wasteland. That did not matter at all to the thing that was dragging itself through a gash in reality itself. A great presence, a creature most foul, born from the deep darkness of the Empyrean. A beast, whose true name was all but unpronounceable to humankind, it crawled free of its strange and ever-changing prison, out of the world of Chaos and into the world of men.

Almost lizardlike in appearance, with great curving wings that burned with a dark fire. A monster, many would say. Evil, certainly. A being of Chaos, of maleficence, of confusion and fear. Wearing tattered rags, the creature carried a long, ornately carved staff clutched in one eldritch claw. It looked around, surveyed its new location. The dark side of the moon. Not ideal for observation of the planet, but conversely, ideal for remaining hidden, for now. The creature was content to bide its time, to wait. Patience, it urged to itself. Patience was the key. It was finally here, but there was no need to hurry. Everything would work out exactly as planned. There were so many variables to consider, but consider them it had. Perfection, as always. Every outcome mapped, every choice borne in mind. Like a tree with infinite branches, the possible futures were so numerous that it almost caused the creature physical pleasure to think about them all. It liked choice. It liked change. It was fun to see the mortals scramble to alter their plans in response to the countless different twists and turns along the path of fate.

The creature settled down to wait among the lunar dust and boulders. It had always known that it would end up there, sitting in the crater with nothing but the darkness of space above and pale rock all around. Sure enough, it had come to pass, for it had been called to this plane by the death cries of a million souls, who had been snuffed out in an instant in a great event that had been designed for one single purpose.

To summon the Daemon Lord.

There was not much left of the Chaos battleship. The Daemonfate had ripped itself apart, its reactors overloading and unleashing torrents of energy throughout the ship's hull, shattering it entirely. Its crew were dead to a man. Despite the fury of the ship's destruction, there were still hundreds of bodies floating in space among the debris. There were only fragments of the craft remaining intact, nothing larger than a few feet in length. Several Imperial shuttles and lighters trawled through the wreckage, spotlights playing over the pallid, grey faces of the dead and the thousands of fragments of metal that slowly spun, tumbling endlessly end over end in the void, at least until they were pulled down by the planet's gravity and burned up on reentry. The search parties were looking for something, anything, that could explain the strange actions of the enemy ship. Why had it simply launched itself on a seemingly needless suicide mission against the Imperial fleet?

Lord-Admiral Marcos wanted to know. He needed to know. If this had been some last ditch gasp for glory or a vain, forlorn hope of success in battle by the enemy captain, then that would make sense. That could be accepted. It would not be the first or the last time that such an action was taken, either by a ship of the Archenemy or one of the Imperium's own. That was not the case here. The Daemonfate had made no attempt to fight. It had simply come swooping in and exploded. What was even stranger was that, judging by the report from the Polaris Maxima, it had seemingly fought with, and annihilated, destroyer section Tertius in the outer system. That was assuming, of course, that the same ship had been responsible for the loss of the escort section. If not, then they might have more problems than merely explaining a suicide run.

The erratic behaviour of the Daemonfate puzzled Marcos the most. Why fight, and then not fight? Why raise the shields halfway through the engagement. after exposing itself to heavy fire, and not raise them at the start of the battle? Or, given the eventual nature of its mission, why raise them at all? Chaos forces did not simply commit suicide, at least not en masse like that. There had to be some ulterior motive that the Imperials could not see, some reason for their sacrifice.

But the search teams found nothing. There was only broken metal, twisted plasteel, and the bodies, burned by the heat and scarred by the blast. Nothing of any importance had survived the explosion, which was hardly surprising. The main reactors had overloaded and any force which could obliterate a battleship that was several miles in length was unlikely to leave much behind at all.

More destroyer sections and small groups of frigates had been deployed to both 'sides' of the planet in order to continue monitoring the space that lay beyond it and was hidden from the sensors of the main fleet. If one Chaos ship could come from seemingly nowhere, then there could most certainly be more of them out there, and Marcos did not want to get caught again. The Polaris Maxima had estimated one day's work to repair its vox system. Marcos had offered to send over a team of maintenance personnel, but the message from the signal lamps had been a negative; no need. Problem is well in hand. A simple task, no doubt, some easy but relatively time-consuming fix, and all would be well once again.

On the bridge of the Emperor's Judgement, as usual, the Lord-Admiral stood at the command lectern. Things had taken yet another strange turn, in orbit around this strangest of planets. A single frigate had been dispatched to check on destroyer section Tertius. The Polaris Maxima had reported no further contact with them since they said they were moving to investigate unknown signals. The frigate scouted out the area among several large asteroids, and sure enough, it found the wreckage of the Imperial escorts, destroyed either by the Daemonfate or, potentially, some other, as yet unknown enemy craft that might still be lurking out there. With no detailed information from them, no report received by vox due to the Polaris Maxima's system failure, it could not be determined for certain what had actually destroyed section Tertius.

With no evidence to the contrary, Lord-Admiral Marcos had to work on the assumption that the Daemonfate had dealt the killing blow to the destroyer section. A few escorts would pose no threat whatsoever to a battleship, unless it was completely caught napping with its shields down, perhaps during repairs. Even then, the destroyers would need some very lucky torpedo hits in order to inflict significant damage. Escorts alone taking out a capital ship had happened before, yes, but very, very infrequently.

Even though, before the Daemonfate appeared, there had not been any space combat for weeks, the strength of the Imperial fleet was still falling. The loss of the destroyer section was not a huge setback in and of itself, but when the fleet was as understrength as it already was, every ship was precious. Any more losses and their ability to even defend the planet at all would be questionable. Then again, that was not their aim. Their aim, at least in theory, was just to defend their forces that happened to be operating planetside, as well as the supply and transport ships in orbit. Yet Marcos, at least, could not help but feel that their role had grown significantly since they arrived at this particular planet, unlike all those they had visited before during the Crusade. He felt that they had brought Chaos and death to these ponies and the other species of Kuda Prime. The forces of the Archenemy had surely been tracking them across space, Even if they had truly been led to the planet by something upon its surface, as the princess had suggested, and the testimony of Navigator Pericles had backed up, the Chaos warfleet would probably not have been operating this far out in the first place if not for the Imperials. Even if their presence had nothing whatsoever to do with the Crusade, though, there were humans among the enemy fleet, and, though the fundamental forces of Chaos had nothing to do with humanity, predating them by aeons, the traitor forces who had aligned themselves with the Dark Gods were most definitely a result of the Imperium's very existence.

Marcos continued to feel that something, in some way, was warping his view of this place and its inhabitants. Why did he feel the desire to help and protect them, these strange Xenos creatures? Before arriving here, the Lord-Admiral had never met an alien that made him feel anything other than one of two things; disgust, or pure hatred. The haughty, self-righteous Eldar with their disdain for the 'lower species' that humanity represented to them, and the Tau with their socialistic philosophies and superior technology inspired the former; the brutality and pure aggression of the Orks, the cold and unfeeling arithmetic of death exhibited by the Necrons, and the unbridled horror of the Tyranids, inspired the latter.

Yet here was a species, these ponies, Xenos like all the others, but somehow different. He could not quite place why, despite his meeting and conversations with the princess, despite studying all the data collected by the scouts, reconnaissance patrols, orbital scans and that which had been provided by the ponies themselves. It could not simply be that they possessed the power of psykers; there were other alien species with similar abilities, notably the Eldar and certain species of Tyranid.

Perhaps an explanation lay with the Tau, those distant dwellers of the opposite fringe of the galaxy, bipedal humanoid creatures with blue or grey skin, physically frail but possessed of fantastically advanced weaponry. They possessed powerful fusion plasma weaponry, a far superior version of the Imperium's own plasma technology, and anti-gravity technology that rivalled or exceeded that of the Eldar. They had the only working system of faster-than-light travel to have been developed that did not require the use of the warp and its inherent dangers. They had harnessed autonomous technology and artificial intelligence in a way that humanity had never succeeded in achieving; the history books told of the dangerous Men of Iron, failed attempts at creating ancient robotics and AI constructs, which had at first proven loyal and highly capable fighters, but later had risen up in an attempt to overthrow their human masters. The war to defeat these constructs was long and bloody, but mankind eventually triumphed, though much of its power across the galaxy had been shattered. As a result, the development of artificial intelligence or related technologies had been banned ever since on all human worlds, yet the Tau had possession of a great many autonomous systems and drones for combat and other purposes. Intelligent central computing systems were fitted to all of their vehicles and combat battlesuits, a vast improvement, though it might be blasphemous to say it, over the Imperium's relatively simplistic machine spirits.

The glue that held this advanced society together was the Ethereal Caste. These spiritual and societal leaders, like all Tau, had almost no presence in the warp whatsoever, which had no doubt helped to protect their nascent civilisation from the attentions of the Dark Powers during their development, which was a relatively recent phenomena, according to the data that Imperial scholars had managed to gather. The race possessed no psykers, at least not in the way humanity would recognise them, perhaps as a result of their lack of warp presence; alternatively, that could be the cause of it. Either way, despite their lack of psychic power, the Ethereal ruling caste held a peculiar sway over their subjects. There was loyalty, yes, and then there was absolute, unquestioning, unthinking obedience. This was very much a case of the latter condition. There were reports from the few Imperial teams that had made peaceful contact with the Tau that being in the presence of these Ethereals had an almost calming effect, soothing, feelings of peace and tranquillity.

There was certainly no guarantee that the mechanisms, whatever they might be, were even remotely similar, but that kind of feeling was exactly what Marcos had felt when in the presence of the pony princess. Others had noticed it too, both on board ship and noted down in combat and diplomatic reports. It was not an overt sensation, not a feeling of being forced into a certain frame of mind or to think a certain way. There was no pulling at the psyche such as one might experience from the foulness of Chaos. Marcos had never felt compelled to do or say anything as a result; rather, it made him feel that certain things should be done, that it was the right thing, the only thing, that needed to be done. To stay in orbit, to help the ponies eradicate the last traces of Chaos rather than leave them to their own devices to either continue the Crusade or return to Hydraphur. Celestia had never told him he should do these things. She had never demanded it, not even raised her voice. Yet whatever she suggested felt instinctively to be the right thing to do.

This subtle persuasive power, it seemed, was one that Celestia shared with the Tau Ethereals. Though Marcos knew nothing of the mechanism the latter used to project such an aura, it seemed almost certain that Celestia's ability was a result, in some fashion, of the unknown particles which she, and every other pony, gave off to a greater or lesser extent. The quantity and intensity of particles the princess produced was vast compared to the normal 'unicorn' ponies and Changeling drones which had been measured or dissected. Indeed, an orbital scan for the concentrations of the particle while Celestia had been aboard the ship had shown that the rest of the planet combined produced barely more than half as much again as the princess alone.

The problem was that the ponies had no presence in the warp. Rather, as Navigator Pericles had said, they lay outside of it, pressing in. This was where things differed from the Tau and their Ethereals, who did, at least, have a presence inside the warp itself, albeit an incredibly minimalistic one. That alone surely meant that the incredible psychic power displayed by Celestia, her sister, and the Changeling Queen, were not actually psychic at all, at least not in the way Imperial science understood it. Without a presence in the warp, one could not tap into its incredible energy and potential. That was how human, Eldar, and Chaos psykers operated, how they were able to hurl bolts of pure energy, weave complex illusions, levitate, and perform other fantastical feats. Celestia and the other ponies, outside of the warp, could not draw on the same resources to supply the powers they wielded.

So how the hell did they do it?

Time underground passed slowly. It reminded Twilight too much of the Hive for her to be comfortable with such a subterranean existence, even if it was only for a few days. It was dark and it was wet, but at least it was not hot. That would have been the last straw, filling her mind completely, instead of only partially, with memories of the volcano that she had been imprisoned beneath. She fervently hoped that they would not have to remain underground in Canterlot for as long as she had spent in the Hive. Yes, she was safe here, in theory at least. She had her family, her friends, and her Princess around to help and support her, but she still couldn't quite shake the fear that had gripped her as she had been assisted down the smooth, stone staircase into the palace catacombs.

Twilight had long been a kind of shut-in, almost hermitlike in her lifestyle, preferring to simply read and study rather than get out and socialise, but taking things to extremes until Princess Celestia had ordered her to go to Ponyville. Her old self might have enjoyed exploring the caverns, which offered a close, cosy feeling; or claustrophobic, depending on one's opinion. Twilight, after her experiences in the Hive, now leaned more toward the second point of view.

She was keen to try and change her mindset back again. Twilight knew she had to overcome her worries. She could not let herself succumb to the memories of her imprisonment and torture. Princess Luna had told her that several times, and Twilight knew that she was right. However hard it might be, and however unusual the conditions in which they now found themselves, Twilight could not afford to be consumed by her doubts. At any time they might get her Element back, and she could be called upon to use it. Whatever else she felt, she was determined not to let her friends down if it came to that. If she had to use her Element, or fight in any other way to protect them, then she most certainly would, that was one thing she was certain of. She had never let doubt cloud her judgement when it came to her friends. They had never let her down, and she would never let them down either.

Doubt may never have clouded her judgement, but it was still gnawing at the back of her mind. Twilight knew that she would be ready and willing to fight if she had to, but would she be able? Would her body be up to the task? The palace doctor told her she was making good progress, and advised her to stay out of the damp areas of the caves. She had not suffered any direct physical harm from her ordeal other than malnourishment and dehydration, but Twilight, to her dismay, found that she still needed help getting up and down stairs or anything similarly arduous. Living in a dark and damp cave was most decidedly not the best place to be recuperating from any kind of ordeal, but it was a necessity, according to the humans.

One of their teams had arrived yesterday, one of their strange hovering aircraft apparently landing in the palace gardens. A dozen humans had appeared at the decontamination area, and been thoroughly hosed down as a precaution, even though they had only spent a few minutes above ground in the fallout area. Their leader, a Major Endis, had held a long conference with Princess Celestia and Princess Luna about both the nature of the hazard posed by fallout, and the methods they could employ to help clean it up and mitigate the dangers. Twilight was not party to the discussions, but Celestia and Luna both seemed satisfied with the results.

While the princesses talked, Twilight had been resting as best she could. She was in one of the dryer caverns, relatively speaking, and had been given one of the precious few actual beds available; only a military style metal cot, but certainly better than a mere sleeping bag like most ponies were having to use. Half a dozen blankets had been issued to her, and she had spent most of the day wrapped in them, partly for comfort and partly for her health. The doctor had insisted, and continued to monitor Twilight's progress even while they were underground. She was appreciative of the attention, but also feeling a little smothered by it.

To try and get away from it, Twilight had left her bed and wandered off a little deeper into the caverns, still wrapped in one of the blankets. She had found a small, empty chamber which had been cleared out of most of its supply crates, which had been cracked open to distribute the emergency rations which lay within. Nopony was there, but there was a decent amount of light provided by a few candles, and Twilight sat on the edge of one of the crates, just thinking. Being alone was how she had spent much of her life, and after several years of happiness around her friends, it was nice to just be able to take a few minutes to focus on her own thoughts. She found that it helped her to process everything that had happened, not just her capture and imprisonment, but the whole invasion, the appearance of aliens, and the catastrophic damage that was being done to Equestria. Not healthy topics to dwell on, some might say, but for Twilight, thinking was healing. It was what she did best, and what she had always done whenever she felt down, sad or confused.

'Hey sugarcube...you ok in there?' Applejack had appeared at the cavern entrance, her trademark hat planted firmly on her head as always. 'You should be in bed. Least that's what the doc said.'

Twilight looked up, and managed a smile. 'Hi Applejack. I'm ok. I know what she said but I just...wanted to stretch my legs a little. Since we can't go up for a walk in the gardens, well...I figured this was the next best thing.'

'You want some company?' Applejack asked. 'Or do ya want to be alone fer a while? Ah'm supposed to be helpin' with the dinner soon, but ah can spare a few minutes if ya want.'

Twilight decided she had spent enough time inside her own mind, and nodded. 'I'd like that.' She patted the crate beside her, and Applejack trotted over, sitting down. 'I just felt like being alone for a while without everypony fussing over me, just giving myself some room to think.'

'Ah know what ya mean.' Applejack nodded. 'Like when granny won't leave ya alone when you're sick n' ya just wanna rest. She'll bring ya another blanket, and another, and an extra pillow, then she'll come back with a hot water bottle, then a bowl of soup...' She trailed off rather abruptly, and Twilight could tell that she had found herself caught thinking about her family. She had still referred to Granny Smith in the present tense, but Twilight was well aware of her anguish about her missing loved ones. There had been no sign of them since the invasion, and Applejack had not had the chance to return to Ponyville, though that likely didn't matter now. Perhaps she never would. The town was gone, and it might end up being completely leveled and the land turned over to some other use; farming, perhaps, since Equestria would need to rapidly try to regain food security before the winter.

Twilight took hold of Applejack's hoof comfortingly. 'I'm sorry, Applejack. I know there's nothing I can say that would make you feel any better. There's still hope, though. There's always hope. Ponies survived from Canterlot when it was taken...' Her words just made her feel worse for her friend. She was lucky. Her parents had survived in the hills, and Shining had been with the princesses and well protected. Applejack's family, and those of her other friends, had been left to their own devices. Maybe they had reached safety, escorted by local Royal Guard units. Or they could be living in the woods or the mountains like ponies from Canterlot had. Or perhaps they were all dead, every single one of them. Big Mac, Applebloom, Granny Smith, Sweetie Belle, Scootaloo, Maud and the other Pie sisters. Nopony knew, and perhaps they would never know the truth.

'S'ok, Twi,' Applejack assured her. 'Just...hard not ta think about them, ya know? Can't help wonderin' where they are right now. Are they in some cave somewhere like us? Or are they up there now with ma and pa?'

Twilight knew that Applejack's parents died years ago. 'I don't know. But we'll find out. It might take a while, but we'll find out what happened to them all,' Twilight assured her, with false confidence. 'I guess we'll be living here in Canterlot for the foreseeable future.'

'Yeah...Rarity's pleased with that, at least,' Applejack replied. 'Can't say ah'm too enthusiastic about it. She's changed her tune too, now that we're essentially livin' in the basement.' She managed to chuckle and gave a small smile to Twilight, who returned it.

'We'll be back on the surface before you know it. Those humans that came were talking about how to clean up the fallout. Once it's gone then we can go back to living in the palace, and Rarity can be happy again,' she assured Applejack.

'Yeah, ah hope they can get rid of that stuff. Ah hate to see Rarity sad like this,' the farmpony replied. 'And ah hate to see you sad, too. Ah can't imagine what ya must be feeling after what you went through. Ah know it's a cliche to say, and it might not make much difference, but ah'm always here for ya, and so are the rest of the girls. If ya wanna talk, or just sit in silence, or ya need a shoulder to cry on, or whatver it is. We'll be there for ya, sugarcube, always.'

'Thanks, AJ.' Twilight smiled. 'I know you will. I know it's something that I can't really talk about or explain too well, what happened to me. It's all still a little unreal. But it was thinking about all of you that kept me going.'

Applejack gave Twilight's hoof a comforting squeeze. 'You'll work it out, sugarcube. You'll move on and one day you'll forget all about your troubles. It's just gonna take a little patience, that's all. Just patience.'

Comments

[Booster Spice]

A Chaos Lord who in and of themselves can wait. But has their predictions covered, from past experience, the extra summoning force by Chaos Sorcerors, or the Equestria varient, or Pinkie or Discord?

Something the Admiral might have come accross, depending on historical teachings if the research model was still acepted, or even just his experience betweem energy of planet bound civilisation, space based, and warp based, every time you add an extra layer, the amount of power available increases immensely. Equestrian magic pushes on the Warp from Outside.

If the model was even approximately correct, then the power available would eclipse the Warp, if only it could be controlled.

Luna cant feel the distortion on the moon through her link, or theres no link because she and Celstia just affect the World?

[RDDash]

I guess Discord is using all the chaos to make his grand entrance, and then I don't know, humans are going to completely demolish the self proclaimed God of Chaos.