[HICHE] ADKoPD: Episode 6, Rescue at the Hive

If the title didn’t give it away, this is the first majorly hyped event in the story, the episode where the first big arc gets resolved as we finally adapt the rest of part 2 of SGA’s premiere. As it stands, unfortunately, it’s also the longest drafted chapter for the rest of the story, including the actual finale. I told you this thing wasn’t finished. Welcome, friends, to Episode 6 of “A Different Kind of Pegasus Device”.

[G-Docs Chapter Link – Rescue at the Hive]

We begin on a throwaway mission led by Rainbow and featuring a recovered Zipzee (remember her?) accompanying Pinkie as an extra member (get used to this pairing). What exotic type of pony do we meet on this heavily foggy forest planet? Fluffle Puff. I told you this was a throwaway mission. Actually, it’s a partial reference to the Furlings from SG-1, an important race whom we only meet in spoof in season 10. As per usual, some Darts attack, and amid Fluffle antics, Rainbow uses the Jumper in a dogfight, only to spot something I told you long ago was important for later: the dent she’d kicked into one of the Darts that had attacked Cloudsdale. These are the same Wraith as from Gaia. Letting the Dart flee to the planet’s Spacegate, she watches the address it dials and sends a drone through after it, reporting back to Atlantis that she knows where the captured pegasi are.

In the scattered scenes preparing for the rescue mission that follow, Twilight is trying to recreate the Wraith map she saw last episode, she rejects the idea of a “lethal force” spell, and we find out that background pegasus Dizzy Twister was supposed to be at the Equestria Games practice with the Wonderbolts the day the Darts attacked Cloudsdale but didn’t show, and is now trying to overcome survivor’s guilt. I should probably have made room for a bigger part for her in this episode, but hastily describing a vague plan for an unplaced scene of exactly what you’d expect for her character arc will have to do. The Expedition’s plan is to use the Dart they captured at Flutter Valley to lead a team of cloaked Puddle Jumpers (as in SGA, they’ve always been able to go invisible; they can also swap invisibility for a shield, but never both at once) and infiltrate the Wraith facility the Atlantis computer indicates is the likeliest place the prisoners are being held: a landed and dormant Hive Ship.

The Wraiths’ Hive Ships are the biggest things in their arsenal (or any arsenal in the Stargate franchise), easily being over three miles long (6 km). Atlantis dials in to the planet and the rescue teams arrive through a grounded Stargate a short ways away from a grounded Hive that has been there so long the landscape has grown onto it, the Dart’s autopilot veering it away and into the Hive’s cavernous Dart Bay, the cloaked Jumpers following it in and landing to let their crews sneak out and split up to begin the search. A number of rescue groups are going to be wandering around the Hive separately for most of the remaining episode, but some of them are less relevant than others, so most members will only be named in the draft (which also conveniently features color-coded highlighting to designate which scenes involve who). Though they’re woven together for greater dramatic effect parallels and such in the draft, I’ll mostly just run through the important arcs separately. Before that, however, the Wraith Commander returns to the prisoners to drag Rainbow Blaze away, where he is taken to a dim and spooky banquet hall to be fattened up for the slaughter, and also to be interrogated about the crystal ponies of Gaia by a red-maned female Wraith Queen, the true rulers of the Hives who boss the Commanders around (yet again, scene and lore as in SGA).

Rainbow’s Dart autopilots itself to an inspection dock, but seems to listen to her pleading and lets her fly it away without landing; she’ll stash it somewhere and head through hallways to eventually find her father and the Queen, but before that, we’ll check in on everyone else. Like the prisoners for instance, who try a daring strategy and manage to let Misty Fly and Surprise slip out of the cell; they’ll run into a passing rescue team later. The Jumpers’ pilots (Minuette, Electra Ski, Golden Harvest, and Cherry Berry) have stayed behind with the invisible ships, but after one of the rescue groups tips off the guards to intruders, the Wraith trigger a small device that clearly does not belong to them, which shuts down all Crystal technology on the Hive, Jumper cloaks included. The ships are discovered by a patrol, the pilots fighting to hold the flood of Wraith back, with Minuette complaining about being the only unicorn of the group (in the attempt to balance the basic team structure, a single unicorn is generally included among the four members, whose magic offers the sole replacement for any firearms SGA teams may have had in droves). Luckily, Twilight and crystal pony Night Knight (remember him from the beginning?) come across the Hive’s control room (now empty by unwritten plot contrivance) and discover the jamming device, whose design uses purple hexagons and pink crystal; keep that description in mind for the future. Twilight then fries it, letting everything turn back on. Simple enough, but the damage is done.

Back in the hangar, the pilots spread shields and cloaks over the group as they try flying to safety, but because she’d helped a tired Minuette get to her own Jumper, Golden Harvest isn’t airborne before the coverage drifts out of range. Electra leads the group into a long tunnel in the wall among the alcoves, insisting Golden can easily catch up. Golden tries following them through the tunnel as a Dart arrives, but it shoots into the tunnel at her. There’s a corner a ways in, but the Dart’s lasers knock out an engine and start tearing through the Jumper’s hull, Golden Harvest defiantly scraping the tunnel walls to turn around and shoot off a drone before both ships destroy each other. After reaching safely, an emotional Minuette tears into Electra over this.

Electra Ski, I should explain, was an early OC I came up with, her entire existence being inspired by the headline “Electra Ski Report”, a Weather Channel ski report during Winter Storm Electra (vintage late 2013); initially a floating idea waiting for a purpose, I found a way to work her into this and several other of my stories. Though each is a unique variant, this story’s Electra is a midpoint between Rainbow Dash and Lightning Dust, a mix of stubborn and belligerent-when-pushed, but not diabolically so. She’s a good Jumper pilot, one of the best, but her C-gene is artificially activated, and she’s a bit put off by needing help to be useful. Electra’s actions here leading to Golden Harvest’s seemingly unnecessary death made sense to her in the moment for cold numbers-game strategy reasons, and though she is truly shaken and sorry for it, she was more “military-minded” and accepting of the hazards and prices of war than those around her and comes off as callous as a result. In terms of a punishment, she’s in the unsteady position of getting off on a technicality but being none the more popular for it, a fact which does not escape her.

Meanwhile, after disabling the jamming device, Twilight gets a telepathic flash of an unfamiliar blue unicorn pleading for help. There’s somepony else aboard the Hive. In other events, Applejack’s group finds the Wonderbolts’ cell, whose door is far weaker from the outside, and frees them with a single kick. Getting back to Rainbow, woven throughout she has come across the banquet hall with her father and the Queen, who tries “feeding” on Rainbow Blaze through the energy-draining toothy slit on her hoof until Dash tackles her away (sort of like a scene from “Rising, Pt. 2”) and the ponies make their escape as the Queen alerts the entire Hive. I’ll freely admit that the draft is horribly sparse on details for this sequence, including lacking nearly all conversation. Elsewhere, another rescue team finds and frees several other ponies in a cell, Fizzy, Shady, and Whizzer. Say hello to some familiar faces from the G1 cartoon. They were captured from G1’s main location of Dream Valley along with Ribbon, the telepathic blue unicorn Twilight and Knight are rescuing from a science lab right about now; though Ribbon may have tried Rey’s Jedi mind tricks to free herself, the equally telepathic Wraith wouldn’t likely fall for it. For clarity, it was Ribbon’s telepathic powers that the recurring Wraith Commander was distracted by that one time in “The Power of Flutter Valley”, which is when the G1s had been brought to the Hive.

All of the various groups meet up in some order at the Jumpers’ new location as we enter the final act of the rescue, the escape. Finding Darts galore whizzing around outside, Electra unleashes all of her Jumper’s drones to swarm around as a distraction, the line of Jumpers dialing the Gate to Gaia and slipping away in the confusion. Rainbow hangs back to confirm they all escape, expecting to be camouflaged in the captured Dart, but her position is compromised by one of two possibilities discussed in the draft and she jumps out while the Dart is blasted. After losing this tamed ally (which I think I dropped enough hints to label as sentient), Rainbow’s only hope is to dive through the Gate and reach the atmosphere under Gaia’s Spacegate fast enough, calling ahead her plan to the Crystal Outpost to aim the Gate. She zooms through at speed to trigger a sonic rainboom upon exiting, shooting like a bullet down to the ground and crashing a spectacular crater. Turns out she was wearing one of those personal shield emitters from “Harmony Under Pressure” that she’d been carrying around just in case and is perfectly fine. Meanwhile, back at the Hive, the Commander is planning to have this ship join the others heading for Gaia, wanting to act before “the Hives of other alliances” can interfere. However, Pinkie and Zipzee had left a present for the Wraith after splitting from the other rescue groups: the containment unit for the dark magic entity from “Harmony Under Pressure”, and it’s been released, beginning to engulf the ship from the inside. Suffice to say, we’ll never hear from this planet again.

And thus we’ve reached the end of the opening arc, but by no means the entire story. Sorry for the delay, but I have no excuse. That said, the next chapter’s draft is half as long as this one and is missing most of the action, so it should be faster to write. Join me next time as we bring the other lost souls home in lucky Episode 7, “The Path to Power”.