Location: Everfree Imperial Garrison
Local Time: 15:47
Aerin glared at his holocomm, tuning out the normal buzz of the command room. The Inquisitor was becoming increasingly unmanageable. He had always been psychotic and totally outside the chain of command, but at least he hadn’t done anything objectively stupid before. Still, maybe this would finally get him killed and out of the way.
A shout from one of the sensor officers tore him from his musings. “What the –?! Incoming fire! Raise the shield!”
Aerin rushed over to the warrant officer as alarms went off. “What do you mean, ‘incoming fire’?! We’re the only ones with long-range weaponry on this planet!”
“Apparently not, sir,” the man replied. “We’ve got one incoming energy signature from Canterlot, five and a half thousand degrees and moving at twelve hundred kph. Expect impact in fourteen minutes.”
“Object is four meters long,” a radar operator reported.
Aerin frowned. The reports sounded about right for an artillery-grade plasma cannon, but such weapons, while far more powerful than turbolasers of similar size, were hampered by incredibly short range. They weren’t the sort of weapon you could use for striking at a target three hundred kilometers away. Not to mention the fact that the ponies were much too primitive to have created such a weapon. “Get me a visual,” he commanded. A moment later one of the screens was filled with the image from one of the security cameras mounted on the base’s sensor tower. A streak of flame could be seen arcing across the sky towards the base.
“That doesn’t look like a plasma pulse,” Aerin muttered. Those had a very distinctive appearance – a white-hot ball followed by a colored helical trail. In fact, this didn’t quite match any of the weapons systems he had seen before, and serving in the Outer Rim exposed a person to all sorts of exotic armaments. If the range was shorter, he would think it was a burst from a flamethrower, but no liquid fuel in the galaxy could burn both as long and as hot as the incoming fire. “Zoom in as much as you can while maintaining this resolution.” The image focused in on the tip of the flame. There was a strange distortion there, as if there was an object in the fire, obscured by its light. “Reduce brightness by fifty percent.” The distortion came into clearer view, and Aerin squinted, trying to figure out what it was. There was definitely an object wrapped in the flames. That looks like… No, that’s not possible! “Tannis, Seth,” he called, his even voice masking his fear. “Get over here. What’s this look like to you?” Major Regnuff and Lieutenant Hawkins left their stations overseeing internal security and intelligence, respectively, and peered at the image. A moment later, their eyes simultaneously widened.
“By the Emperor,” Regnuff murmured, dumbfounded. “Is that…?”
“Celestia,” Hawkins snarled.
“I thought so,” Aerin said, a sinking feeling in his stomach. “Tannis, bring the laser cannons online and prepare to fire as soon as it enters range. Have the tractor beam crews lock it there. We’ll see how well it survives without any maneuvering ability.”
“Yes, sir. Should I give the order to Fifth and Sixth Companies?”
“No, for two reasons. One, so long as the traitor didn’t reveal their presence, the ponies don’t know about them. If we use them now, we lose the element of surprise. Two, their shells would just melt against something that temperature. No, the base defenses can handle this.”
“Yes, sir.” The command room went quiet for the next few minutes, aside from the radar operator’s regular updates. “Target is two hundred klicks out… One hundred klicks… Ninety klicks… Eighty klicks… Seventy klicks… Sixty klicks… Fifty… Forty-five… Forty… Thirty-five…” And finally, “Target is thirty klicks out!”
Regnuff gave the order. “All laser cannons, fire!”
The Imperial base still looked small to Celestia when the first beams flashed around her. But she was unconcerned. In the form of the avatar of the sun, nothing could stop her. Dragons, ursa majors, and entire armies had fallen to her rage. She wove through the crisscrossing bolts of energy, leaving a trail of fire in her wake and sublimating the snow off the trees beneath her. Suddenly, she was gripped by an invisible force that held her in place. She struggled, her flames growing even larger and hotter in her anger, but she couldn’t free herself. Then her vision filled with red.
“Six direct hits!” Regnuff crowed. “We got… her?” The triumph disappeared from his voice as the explosions faded. The white alicorn was gone, but an alicorn of pure flame floated in its place. Regnuff slumped back in his chair, his eyes wide and staring off into nowhere. “Emperor preserve us,” he said, his voice a whisper cracking in defeat.
“The tractor beam projectors are overloading!” one of the warrant officers reported. “We’re losing –!”
The alicorn of fire shot across the screen, continuing towards the base.
Celestia cut through the sky, the forest below her igniting as she passed. The raw physical impact of the human weapons hurt, but they were fools to think they could stop her with such hot weapons. In fact, each bolt that hit her felt like they were bringing a portion of the sun to her, revitalizing her far more than the kinetic impact hurt her. Not since she had to defend the burgeoning nation of Equestria on her own after Nightmare Moon’s banishment a thousand years ago had she felt like this. Enemies had quickly learned that it was futile to resist her, and in the ensuing peace, she had driven away her rage and forced down this power. When the ancient threats had returned, the Elements of Harmony had chosen new bearers, and she never needed to summon her true power. But the humans had caused many times more deaths in only a few days then she had seen in all the wars of her long life. And they had killed her sister. She was done with mercy. The humans had to be exterminated.
Finally, she came in range of the base. She called on all the power of the sun, and the dark fortress disappeared in a wave of fire.
“Shield at ninety percent! Seventy! Sixty…”
Aerin whirled to Regnuff, not making any attempt to conceal his panic. “Contingency Orenth Seven! Now!”
Out of the blazing inferno came beams far larger than those first directed at Celestia. But she wasn’t their target. The Imperials had revealed their desire for isolation from the ponies and a wilder environment than existed in most of Equestria when they built their base in the Everfree Forest, but its exact placement was the result of a far crueler reason. One hundred kilometers away, Ponyville was just within the range of the Imperials’ turbolasers. Homes and businesses disappeared in a hail of fire from weapons designed to cripple frigates in only a few shots.
Taken by surprise, Celestia broke off her attack. The flames died down, revealing that the land around the base had its grass scorched away and was pitted with craters. Large sections of the fence were melted, and the guard towers and walkways were littered with charred corpses. The base itself displayed a faint, dark red glow.
Celestia’s growing rage quickly overcame her shock, and she looked away from the destruction of Ponyville to resume her attack. But before she could summon the fire again, a squad of Imperial troops rushed out of the base, armed with long rifles with strangely wide barrels. When they fired, it wasn’t blaster bolts that came out, but metal cylinders. They shattered around her, spraying her with a pale blue liquid that sucked away her heat. In only a moment, she had been caught in the blasts of three dozen cylinders. She lashed out with her magic and slew the Imperials, but her attack was her normal energy, not fire. The vehicle bay opened, and three AT-STs walked out, their grenade launchers buffeting Celestia with shockwaves and shrapnel. They, too, were quickly dispatched, followed by the three turrets firing on Ponyville. But Celestia had lost the strength to penetrate the base’s walls, and more and more troops and vehicles were pouring out to oppose her. She couldn’t fight an entire battalion by herself, not in this state. “I’m sorry, Luna,” she whispered, tears pouring from her eyes, as she turned back to Canterlot.
The Imperial command room was filled with a mix of cheers and sobs of relief. Regnuff was bent over his station, clasping his pendant in shaking hands and stammering quiet prayers to the Cosmic Balance. Aerin wiped sweat from both terror and heat from his forehead and lifted his canteen to his lips, chugging down several mouthfuls of brandy. Hawkins gave Aerin a nervous grin. “I told you keeping Caspels with CryoBan cylinders near the front door was a good idea.”
“Kark off, Seth,” Aerin muttered, leaning heavily on the holotable. After several long minutes, he stood straight again, though his eye refused to focus on anything and his voice shook. “Okay… Okay… Let’s, let’s try to identify all the dead. And, uh, get a damage rep– report.” He swigged more brandy. “Someone tell Sturm what just happened. I… I…” Not finishing his sentence, he stumbled towards the door. He didn’t make it out of the room before throwing up and collapsing face-first into his vomit.