//------------------------------// // Chapter Thirty-Eight: Evening the Odds // Story: STAR WARS / FiM: Realms of the Heavens // by Tathem_Relag //------------------------------// Location: Fillydelphia Local Date: 1/15/4 Local Time: 08:09 “Everyone clear the area!” Sergeant Darian threw himself behind a dumpster, then popped up to fire a few bolts in the general direction of the insurgents hurling spears and knives at his squad as the few nonviolent ponies in the area fled. There had been resistance from the civilian populace ever since the start of the invasion, but after the pony garrison commander had surrendered, rioting had consumed the city. Half of the industrial district was on fire, and the other half had been placed under total lockdown to protect the factories as they were converted into repair facilities for Imperial tanks. The residential and commercial areas, like the one Darian was in, were even worse. “Dracen! Put a det in that building! Third floor, second window from the left! Garn, Krik, give him cover!” The three privates emerged from their makeshift cover and unleashed death against the enemy, but just before the thermal detonator erupted in nuclear flames, a shiv planted itself in Krik’s shoulder. “Medic! Medic!” Cold Steel frowned as a human in a light blue uniform ran out into the open, carrying a white briefcase marked with a strange symbol that vaguely resembled the red plus sign that signified the Equestrian medical services. But surely that was just a coincidence – there was no way this was some sort of doctor. Bringing medical personnel onto the front lines was insane. There was no way they could be kept safe. And the human had one of those strange “pistol” weapons at his side, so he clearly wasn’t a non-combatant. No, Cold Steel decided, this had to be yet another of the humans’ specialized soldiers. He didn’t know what was in that briefcase, but he really didn’t want to wait to find out. Taking careful aim, he sent his makeshift spear flying, and was rewarded with the sight of the human clutching at his chest and collapsing. It made him sick. He had convinced himself that he had to kill, that it was that only way to save pony lives. But as he watched the human’s blood pool in the snow, he realized he couldn’t do it again. His stomach heaved, and he added more steaming mess to the churning, filthy slush underhoof. He turned, unwilling to contribute any more to the slaughter. Then, he felt an intense heat blaze in the side of his chest. “You karking murderer!” Darian sprayed a few bolts at the source of the spear, then ducked back down when he felt something bounce off his helmet. Hal fell with a knife in his eye. A burst from Corporal Traken’s rifle took down three more ponies, but there seemed to be an infinite number of them. “Third Squad! Fall back!” Darian was perfectly content to throw himself against hundred-to-one odds when he had as huge of a technological advantage as he did on this planet, but thousand-to-one was far too much. He wasn’t even supposed to be here – assault regiments were intended to take enemy positions, then move on and leave the mopping up to a line regiment. But Imperial forces were spread thin across the planet, and there had been no time to bring in another regiment. The Intrepid had left, along with the troops onboard, for another operation as soon as the official surrender had occurred. Garn hauled Krik to his feet, and the surviving Imperials fled for their lives, abandoning yet another block to the ponies. Celestial Sea 4:37 P.M. Admiral Heavy Gale looked out over the combined forces of Equestria’s Second, Third, and Fourth Fleets. One hundred and eighty ships, led by three of the largest ships in history – the H.M.S. Victory, the H.M.S. Royal Decree, and the H.M.S. Neighagra. Though none were quite as large or nearly as expensive as the Royal Princess, they were all formidable craft, and the Neighagra was actually better armed, with one-hundred-and-twelve ballistae. After the debacle that was the Battle of Trottingham, Celestia wasn’t taking any chances. He didn’t show it, but Admiral Gale was worried that it still wasn’t enough. The exhausted pegasi who managed to escape the battle had described how the griffon ships had been armed with human weapons, spewing waves of energy that tore apart the pride of the Equestrian Royal Navy in a matter of seconds. The ballistae-armed pony ships simply couldn’t compete. Judging only by the number and classes of ships at play, the coming battle should have been an easy Equestrian victory. The entire Griffon Royal Navy consisted of only the one-hundred-and-thirty-eight-gun H.M.S. Eagle of Griffonstone, ten thirty-two-gun frigates, five eighteen-gun sloops, and four eight-gun corvettes. In contrast, the three Equestrian fleets had fifty-one ships-of-the-line with eighty or more ballistae, ninety-nine frigates, nine sloops, and twenty-one corvettes. But the griffons’ human-supplied weapons surpassed the destructive power of all but the most powerful unicorn battlemages. It would be a hard-fought battle. Still, if the Griffon Royal Navy was destroyed here, the griffons would lose the ability to engage in offensives against Equestria. A shout came from the lookout. “Admiral! There’s something out there!” Admiral Gale shot a glare up at the pegasus in the crow’s nest. “‘Something’? Give a useful report, or don’t report at all, you enlisted puke.” “I… I’m sorry, sir, but… I have no idea… I’ve never seen anything like it.” With a heavy sigh, Admiral Gale lifted his telescope in the direction the lookout was staring, and promptly almost dropped it overboard. In the distance was an island that looked like it was made of gray metal. No, not an island, he realized as it turned towards his armada. A ship. He could barely make out the huge letters on its side – INTREPID. Surrounding it were twenty small dots, one of which was just large enough to be identifiable as a ship-of-the-line. He turned to his signalpony. “All ships! Ten degrees to starboard! Full sail!” The pony had barely begun to swing the signal flags when beams of red energy crashed into the Equestrian armada. Mighty vessels splintered and erupted in flames. Beams that missed boiled the water and hid the ships from each other with a thick cloud of steam, mixed with the smoke of burning vessels. Pegasi took to the air and flew at top speed towards the enemy ships. Many fell to the Intrepid’s point-defense weapons or griffon blasters, but hundreds survived long enough to land on the griffon ships. In the hoof-to-talon fighting, a pony and a griffon were essentially equally matched, and the ponies had superior numbers. As the few surviving pony ships entered ballista range, the Griffon flag fell from the Eagle of Griffonstone’s mast, and the ponies turned the humans’ own weapons against them. Local Time: 17:03 Captain Odan Dor watched the last of the primitive wooden vessels sink beneath the waves as a couple dozen or so pegasi fled over the horizon. The Griffon ships had been armed with E-Webs – anything larger would have required a centralized reactor. His Acclamator-class assault ship had never been at any risk. The battle, on the surface, was an overwhelming tactical victory, but he took no pleasure from it. He had failed to secure the strategic objective. The Griffon Royal Navy was gone. His heart was in his throat as he commed base. He wouldn’t end up dead for his failure – “Grampa” Gavrisom was far too kind for that sort of punishment – but he would certainly be given an admiral’s mast. The picture flickered to life. “Admiral, Sir. I… regret to inform you that the Griffon Royal Navy has been lost, with all hands.” “Irrelevant, Captain,” Gavrisom said, shocking Dor. “Return to Griffonstone immediately. The dragons have attacked, and we’re losing. Badly.” Griffonstone 5:12 P.M. Twilight dodged an energy beam, then retaliated in kind against the griffon-operated weapon. After helping Ember draw up the battle plans – such plans as dragons needed, at least – she had decided to accompany the dragons in their attack instead of heading back to Equestria. As a Princess, she felt like it was her duty to be actively involved in the war effort. And, while she would never admit it, even to herself, she felt an urge deep inside to take revenge on the Empire for all the suffering they had caused. Around her, Griffonstone burned. The sky was thick with dragons. Most were teenaged, but some fully-grown members of the species had answered the Dragon Lord’s call. Those titans shrugged off all but the most powerful beams. A large component of the damage blasters dealt was heat, and even crust-melting temperatures were nothing to creatures that spent much of their time lounging in volcanos. Two of the giant lizards lay dead on the ground, crushed in their own scales by the sheer kinetic energy of turbolaser volleys that found their marks on the dragons’ relatively soft bellies, but the three Carracks and dozens of TIE fighters the humans had deployed mostly kept to the edges of the battle, unwilling to directly face such mighty foes. The sole exception was a giant triangle that sat directly in the middle of the dragon horde. The letters on its side identifying it as the Dauntless had been torn and melted away, providing a way for the dragons to invade the ship. So far, all of their advances had been repulsed by thousands of humans and their armored vehicles. This craft was far better guarded than the vessel that had been nearly captured during the Battle of Cloudsdale. But it couldn’t hold out forever. According to the dragons, the humans had lost over a thousand troops, dozens of two-legged walkers and floating vehicles, and one of their six-legged walkers. A second triangle appeared on the horizon, and Twilight noticed three dozen of the white, three-winged Imperial craft emerge from its belly and swoop towards Griffonstone Castle, the TIEs coming in to escort them. Just over half managed to land. Twilight flew in to investigate, and she saw humans and griffons frantically scrambling aboard the vessels. Moments later, their ramps rose and they took off again, though only seven made it back to their mothership. Immediately, the human craft fled the battle – the Carracks, TIEs, and the new arrival into space, and the Dauntless towards Equestria. Seeing their allies abandoning them, the griffons and remaining humans promptly surrendered. When Twilight and Ember entered Griffonstone Castle, Gruff and the Idol of Boreas were nowhere to be found, and Gilda was declared the new Queen of the Griffons. Location: Fillydelphia City Hall Local Date: 1/17/4 Local Time: 12:07 “Make ready!” Darian lifted his DLT-19 rifle so its barrel was resting on his shoulder. It wasn’t a weapon or position he was comfortable with. He was mostly experienced with the short, standard-issue E-11. “Present!” He shifted the rifle to firing position. The DLT-19 was large, heavy, and hard to field strip. However, it was also much more powerful than the E-11, capable of taking down lightly armored vehicles. For what he was doing, firepower was far more important than ease of use. “Fire!” His finger tightened on the trigger, the heat from the bolt melting the dusting of snow that had already built up on the barrel since his last shot. The pony in front of him jerked violently as a hole was burned through her chest. He and his squadmates lowered their rifles, and other troopers ran up to unshackle the corpses from the wall. More ponies were hauled up and locked into the clasps. “Firing squad! Make ready! Present! Fire!” He carried out the lieutenant’s shouted orders for the third time since the public executions began at noon. Firing squad duty was Darian’s least favorite part of service in the Imperial Army. He could stomach killing a few high-ranking traitors, but this assembly line style of execution made him feel more like a mass murderer than a soldier. He had no idea why they were even going through the formality of using firing squads. After all, it wasn’t as if the ponies could watch the executions live on the HoloNet. Just shoot them in their cells and be done with it. “Firing squad! Make ready! Present! Fire!” Darian’s rifle clicked, and he muttered a curse from behind his respirator mask. It wasn’t just snow falling from the sky. He went through the slow process of field stripping the DLT-19, doing his best to shield the parts with his body as he cleaned the ash off of them. Fillydelphia was less a city, and more a firestorm. After losing almost half the occupying division, the Imperials had given over most of the city to the rioters and flames, focusing their efforts on saving the factories and government buildings. Surrounding the safe zones were borders of rubble three blocks across, where the Engineering Corps had detonated buildings to serve as firebreaks and deny cover to attacking forces. Behind Darian, a Sentinel-class landing craft touched down in the bulldozed park that had been converted into a makeshift spaceport. Shuttle traffic had been a constant ever since his division had seized control of the city center. At first, they had been bringing defensive emplacements to assist the beleaguered troops. Now, they brought durasteel panels, which were shaped in the few operational factories and sent back up as repairs for the Dauntless. Still, it was nice having a capital ship floating overhead again, even if it was badly damaged. Its heavy guns imparted a badly needed sense of security. After the repairs were done, his regiment might even get relieved by one of the eight carried onboard – or seven now, after the casualties it had sustained during the battle two days ago. He finally replaced the last part of his rifle and aimed it at the squirming prisoner in front of him. Before he could fire, however, a shout came from one of the guard towers. “Incoming hostiles! From the north!” The prisoners forgotten, he rushed to one of the makeshift pillboxes that lined the barricades. Blasterfire poured into the attackers as they struggled to make their way through the debris. A few pegasi tried taking to the air, but the rubble that slowed the ponies was also their only cover, and those that revealed themselves were quickly cut down. After half a minute of blasting away at the enemy, the voice of another sentry crackled over his comm. “Hostiles incoming from the south!” He ignored the message. Attacks from multiple directions at once were far from unusual, and his division still had over a thousand men in fighting condition – much more than enough to defend both sections of the wall. Another voice alerted him to an attack on the east wall, and a few men ran off to assist in its defense. The next report shocked him. “The prisoners have escaped! The west gatehouse is open!” He couldn’t believe it. All the proper precautions had been taken – the unicorns’ horns were amputated, the pegasi’s wings were pinioned, and the Earth ponies’ calcaneal tendons were cut. Still, he rushed to the area. If the lieutenant died, he was the next-highest-ranking officer who had been in charge of the prisoners. He didn’t want to have their escapes considered his fault. Unfortunately, things were exactly as had been reported. The prisoners were running amok to the best of their ability, the lieutenant’s corpse was laying on the ground, ponies were flooding through the open gate, and the men on the wall had abandoned their blasters and were fighting the ponies with vibrodaggers. He shot several ponies, desperately looking around for whatever could have caused things to go so horribly wrong. Suddenly, he saw them – ten ponies dressed in all black were sneaking up the ramp of the shuttle that had landed just a few minutes earlier. He lifted his rifle to gun them down, then felt a stab of pain in his back. He pitched forwards as the pain blossomed into full-blown agony. The shuttle’s ramp rose, the pain turned to numbness, and the world went dark. Shadow Runner pushed the dead human pilot out of the chair and looked over the control panel. Thanks to the human diplomat’s cooperation and a memory spell, he knew how to read the humans’ strange alphabet – “Aurebesh” – and how to operate this bizarre contraption. He threw the switch for the “repulsorlifts,” and the “shuttle” rose into the air. His copilot settled into the most comfortable position she could in the seat beside him, and the gunners took their places. He activated the main engines, and the shuttle rocketed into the air. “Incoming fire from the Dauntless,” Sweet Talk informed him. He sent the bulky craft into a series of evasive maneuvers that anyone not acquainted with the Sentinel-class wouldn’t have thought the bulky craft could pull off, and the few shots that struck their target were absorbed by the shield. The shuttle quickly passed out of the large transport’s effective range and passed into open space. “Two minutes until we’re beyond the gravity well,” Sweet informed him. “I’m setting the navicomputer for Alderaan.” Two minutes. And then, if the diplomat was telling the truth, Equestria would be well on its way to getting the help it so desperately needed. “Lieutenant, if you don’t shoot down that shuttle before it jumps to hyperspace, I will personally rip your heart out of your chest with an hydraulic gauntlet, crush it before your very karking eyes, and fill the cavity with bantha poodoo before you die! Do I make myself clear?!” Even Aerin had to recoil at that threat. Gavrisom wasn’t like that at all – he never screamed, he never cursed, he never threatened his troops with death for failure, and he certainly was never vulgar. But there he was, doing all those things, plus being totally red in the face. If anybody needed any convincing that it was absolutely vital for the shuttle not to escape, they had it. “Y-yes, Admiral. Of course.” “Then karking do it, you damned son of a schutta! Kill them!” “One minute, twenty-three seconds. We’ve got a squadron of TIEs on our tail.” “Striker, get those weapons going. We just need a little more time.” Two of the TIEs in Lieutenant Jax’s squadron exploded, and a third fell behind with half of its port solar array missing. “Kark! How’d they get to be such good shots?!” “Stow it, Three! Take down those shields and the aft guns! We don’t have much time!” The shuttle shook from the impacts, and something detonated loudly in the back. “Striker got two more, but the shields are down and they took out our rear weapons. Slip and Tracker are gone.” “Just five more seconds…” Jax’s targeting computer beeped, telling him he had a lock on the shuttle’s engines. With a grin on his face, he depressed the triggers. “We’re clear!” Shadow gripped the lever in his jaws and yanked it with all his might. Gavrisom stared at the blank space on the tactical display where a shuttle had been just an instant ago. Slowly, stiffly, he turned to the base’s comm officer. “Recall Lieutenant Jax’s squadron to the Indomitable. And prepare my shuttle.”