//------------------------------//
// Chapter Forty-Five: Dragon's Breath 
// Story: STAR WARS / FiM: Realms of the Heavens 
// by Tathem_Relag 
//------------------------------//

Location: ISS Intrepid
Local Date: 1/20/4
Local Time: 09:01

Ensign Wenn snapped to a nervous salute as the shuttle’s ramp lowered. A CompForce squad descended, blasters at the ready. After confirming the hanger was clear of threats, their sergeant gestured for the rest of the shuttle’s occupants to unload their cargo. Four large men in the white uniforms and black hats of the Imperial Security Bureau gingerly carried down a crate with the same dimensions as those used to transport an Acclamator’s proton torpedoes. However, this one’s label was different from the normal explosive hazard warning. Carefully, Wenn leaned in to read the sticker.
Warning: Contains 2.0kg of trihexalon gas at a concentration of 2.5kg/m^3. Trihexalon has an LCt50 of 191.7μg-min/m^3 for humans. Handle with extreme caution.
Now sweating even more heavily, Wenn pulled away from the crate – not that it would actually do him any good. If the shell was ruptured, anyone in the hanger would be dead in seconds. And the shuttle was packed full of the crates.
The ISB agents loaded the weapons onto hoversleds, and Wenn led them to the torpedo bay.





Ponyville
9:36 A.M.

“Come on, guys, hurry!”
Ponyville’s few remaining pegasi were trying desperately to whip up a downpour to fight the inferno that blazed through the parts of the town that hadn’t been completely reduced to rubble, but making clouds without the Weather Factory was an incredibly difficult task, and between the skirmishing when the rail lines were bombed and the attack by the Imperial base, most of the normal weather patrol had died. Plus, at these temperatures, getting rain instead of snow was almost impossible.
A rumble of thunder brought a smile to Clear Skies’s lips. Maybe they’d be able to save at least some of the homes and businesses. But another sound made his grin disappear. A flight of TIE fighters shrieked down from the sky, their cannons ripping into the pegasi. A dozen fell before most even knew what was happening. Just as abruptly as they appeared, the TIEs turned around, making a strafing run on Sweet Apple Acres’ fields and soaring back into space.





The Dragon Lands
9:58 A.M.

Ember looked over the battle plans Gilda sent her, spread out on a rock with a map that had ironically been stolen from Griffonstone a few years ago. They seemed good, so far as she could tell. One force of griffons would rebuild the bridge between the Griffon Kingdom and the Crystal Empire, another would take passage on the Royal Saddle Arabian Navy, and a third would ride in carriages designed to be towed by dragons. The first group would combine with a special forces team from the Crystal Empire and travel south to meet up with the main Equestrian army in Canterlot. The second group would travel west, upriver from Horseshoe Bay, along with a division of the Saddle Arabian Army. The last group, dragons and griffons, would move north from Appleloosa. All three would meet in a combined assault on the Imperial base in the Everfree Forest.
It was a risky plan, to be sure. The humans seemed to know everything that happened on the planet and respond within minutes. A miles-long bridge, the entire Saddle Arabian navy, or a huge army of dragons would never escape notice on their own. It was simply hoped that all of them happening at once would either draw the humans’ attention to just one or two of them or divide their forces so much that at least some would slip through to Equestria.
Ember sighed as she rolled up the plans and map. Against the humans’ power, wave tactics seemed to be the only thing that worked, even with the most elite soldiers. Well, that or the Equestrian Princesses, but even they were suffering attrition. It was hard to believe. Until the humans had arrived, many dragons had difficulty grasping the concept of their own deaths. It just didn’t happen to dragons very often. Very little could kill a dragon, and their natural lifespans were incredible. Her father had ruled the dragons for a thousand years, and he still had a good bit of life left in him. Seeing dead dragons for the first time during the liberation of Griffonstone hadn’t been easy for her. She could hardly imagine what it must be like for the ponies, to have someone they considered truly immortal die so suddenly and with so little fanfare.
Still brooding, she took flight for a volcano, where blacksmiths were busy making armor for the hundreds of dragons milling about in the surrounding craters and scorched plains. As she flew, she saw something fall from above the clouds towards one of the craters. She thought it was a teenage dragon that had been knocked out in one of the regular fights until it landed and a green cloud started billowing out from its point of impact. More objects penetrated the clouds in a slow but steady rain. At first, she though the humans were using some kind of poison gas, but the green filling the craters and spilling out onto the plains wasn’t the same muted tones that could be found in Equestria’s darker swamps. This gas was a vibrant hue that glowed with an unnatural inner light.
An adult dragon swooped too close to one of the growing clouds, and the tip of its wing entered the cloud. The dragon let out an agonizing howl and plummeted to the ground. Ember saw with horror that its scales and flesh had melted away, and the revealed bones were dripping. Then the maimed giant was fully engulfed in the cloud. Ember flew higher, soaring above the creeping gas. A TIE bomber swooped down towards her. Instead of dropping a bomb, it fired a missile. She dodged it, but instead of flying off to explode in the distance, it shattered beside her, and more gas spilled over her.





Garble heard the screams of dying dragons, those that survived long enough to scream, and saw the spreading cloud. A sinking feeling in his stomach, he scrambled to his hiding place, pulled out his comlink, and pressed the button to call the Imperial base. “Answer me, you… you… pony!” he snarled as it chirped. Finally, the image of Lieutenant Hawkins appeared, a look of disdain on his face.
“What do you want?” he asked, sounding more annoyed than anything else.
“What do I…” Garble was dumbfounded. “You’re attacking us!”
“Yes.”
“But I’m still here!”
“We only needed you as a tool to get control over the dragons,” Hawkins explained, his voice devoid of emotion. “Now that we’ve given up on that plan, we have no further use for you. You, of all dragons, should understand that.”
“But how do I get out?!”
“You don’t. Die with the rest.”
“Seth? Seth?” Garble called, his voice breaking, but the channel had already been closed. He looked up to see that the cloud had blocked out the sky and was descending into his crater. There was no escape.