//------------------------------// // Chapter 37: Siege and Spellfire // Story: Evening Star Also Rises // by Starscribe //------------------------------// For the months leading up to the first battle in Icefalls, Hayden had imagined what it might be like on the day the Grand Fleet arrived at her gates. Somewhere subconsciously she had been imagining her own experience in war—a few dozen insurgents at a time, never clearly seen. They would man some defenses, hide behind some sandbags and occasionally return mortar fire. This wasn’t Icefalls, but even so it wasn’t anything close to what she had pictured. Glancing at long-distance radar images could not have prepared her. Even the worst conjuring of her imagination produced ranks of soldiers marching in time, or riding in APCs while jets occasionally streaked overhead and tanks blasted at one another. Seaddle didn’t have a moat of soldiers around it in two dimensions—it had been submerged in three. In a single moment, Hayden realized the critical flaw in her strategy. Not just in this battle, but Icefalls as well. Birds surrounded the city so thick in places that she couldn’t see the buildings. Not that they were very large—there were no skyscrapers in Seaddle, not even any walls. It was a slaughter of the very worst and most unprepared kind. God, we need a new plan. What the hell did I think I was going to accomplish building walls? I could’ve made more cannons, or maybe flamethrowers, or… Hayden stared through the window-like viewfinders at the front of the Excellus, watching the boiling sea of adversaries. Occasionally she could make out a few golden fish passing through them—pony ships, with glittering golden armor. Even without using the ship’s optics to zoom in, she imagined she could see them devoured by the cloud of enemy combatants. They really did bring a fleet of ten-thousand ships. Silence had settled onto the bridge—it wasn’t just her who stared. Most of the ponies weren’t looking out at the screens, though. Even her captain was watching her, with something between fear and desperation. “We need orders,” said Skylark. “Are we going into that?” “Equestria is doomed,” muttered a lieutenant from gunner relay control. “It’s like the Dragon Invasion. It’s worse… at least dragons don’t build ships. At least they don’t carry away slaves…” “Skylark, red alert. Spellfire shells on the port, nets the starboard from all guns. Prepare to bring us to starboard on my order.” Unlike an actual ship, or even a true zeppelin, they could change direction in maybe twenty seconds. Faster than they could reload. Though she had spoken calmly, her captain shouted, far more loudly than normal. Ponies rushed to obey, whispering into the radio about wind speed and distance and picking targets. There were obvious targets on the very outskirts of the battle—massive hulks that didn’t look so much like ships as huge buildings that had been ripped out of the ground and learned to fly. They didn’t have sails at all, but instead trailed long cords down the air below them. As though whenever they needed to go anywhere the birds hitched a thousand slaves out and started whipping. They probably do, she realized. They don’t just eat them. It doesn’t matter how brutal they are, that’s such a waste. Ponies can raise cows and pigs, and eat the same food they give to their livestock. It’s probably better for the griffons to just make them work. So she thought, but she didn’t intend to find out. They wouldn’t be capturing anyone today. “You should know,” Skylark said, as they slowed to a stop behind the battlefield. They had been noticed by a few scouts, though at this distance they looked more like angry horseflies than fierce birds of prey. They weren’t overly large compared to the size of the other ships in this battle. Maybe the griffons thought they could be safely ignored. “You should know that those boats carry their land-troops. When the fleet moves, it stays in the air until the enemy’s fleet is destroyed or captured. Once their ships have retreated, they land their army and take anything on the ground. Those boats probably have a thousand soldiers each. Mostly wood, looks like. Confined space.” Hayden read the implication in his expression. He was asking whether she could morally accept the consequences of burning the griffon ground troops alive. Judging by his eyes, he didn’t expect a positive reply—not from a pony. Hayden nodded. “I understand.” She raised her voice a little. “Port guns, make those big ships your targets. There are… ten, it looks like? Not for much longer.” Skylark saluted. “Aye, ma’am.” Hayden lifted one hoof to the window, which became a control interface as she got closer. The hoof itself couldn’t use any of it, but the fleshy bit between each side could. It was awkward to manipulate, but she was patient. Ahead of them, the grand fleet devoured Seaddle like a ravenous animal, ignoring the Excellus as a lion might ignore a single jackal, watching it devour its kill. Hayden found what she was looking for—the switch that would allow her to use the exterior speakers instead of the internal ones, and she turned the volume all the way up. She wasn’t sure if any of the attackers would even hear what she was saying—but it didn’t matter necessarily anyway. It wasn’t about communicating, it was about intimidation. “All cannons ready to fire on your order, general!” called the cannon relay officer, looking up from his own little radio. She raised a hoof as a sign to stop, then turned the screen of her kindle on. She stepped to one side by the microphone, and leaned against it. Her voice seemed to shake the world as she read, not distorting and blowing out as she might’ve expected of Earth speakers turned up all the way. She hoped it didn’t hurt her own cannon-crews too much to hear. They had hearing protection, so they ought to be alright. “This far you have come to torment, but no further. He also will drink the wine of God’s wrath, poured full strength into the cup of his anger, and he will be tormented with fire and sulfur in the presence of the holy angels and in the presence of the Lamb. And the smoke of their torment goes up forever and ever, and they have no rest, day or night.” “Stonebeaks—the day of murder is over—now I bring the day of wrath.” She switched off the microphone, tossing the kindle back in her empty satchel. Then she turned, nodding to the cannon officer. “Port cannons, fire.” Snow Feather echoed her command in a shout. For a second that stretched into eternity, Hayden felt stillness descend upon the airship. The engine had settled into a quiet hum, barely working to keep them in position. The battle for Seaddle was so far away that it didn’t penetrate the Excellus’s hull. After the deafening roar she had just produced, it made no sound. Then the cannons fired. All four, with the practiced five seconds between each one. The engines came to life, correcting for the sudden drift and trying to return them to their previous position. Outside the Excellus, she could see the meteors falling through the air. Four streams of bright purple cut through the sky, bright enough to be seen even in sunlight. Then they connected, and it seemed the flames had gone out. The eerie stillness returned, broken only by Snow Feather’s voice. “Port crews request munitions for next volley, general.” They had no more Spellfire rounds for the port guns. “Concussive shells,” she said into the silence, not even looking away from the battle. She was beginning to see something on some of the ships, thin wisps of smoke rising from distant decks. They weren’t the only ones who had fallen still, either. The birds—which had been swooping in on golden airships like animals—were all now frozen in place. It was like the snow in a badly compressed video, resolving once the video paused to give a clear picture. The entire battlefield was frozen now, watching. “What did you make for us, Star Swirl?” Skylark muttered, obviously not expecting an answer. “Will it be as terrible as you promised?” Hayden knew the answer a second later. Fire emerged from the decks on one of the ships. Hayden touched the screen in that location, zooming them in so they could see up close. The Excellus had excellent cameras, but this was no mercy. Purple flames were roaring out of every window, getting brighter and brighter and turning the whole thing chalky and gray. A few seconds later creatures emerged from within, their wings aflame with the same purple that was consuming the ship. The zoom on the Excellus’s cameras was so good Hayden imagined she could even see their terror. The little burning streaks didn’t last long before they went out—but she saw one of them make it to the next carrier in line. Purple flame lept immediately from the immolating body to the deck, tearing it open and descending into the airship like a fox set loose in a house of particularly indolent hens. “Celestia forgive us,” someone muttered—one of Skylark’s other officers, the only one who wasn’t a bat. She oversaw… supply, Hayden thought. She didn’t remember her name. The mare dropped to the ground, covering her eyes with one hoof and shaking visibly. The first of the airships began to fall. It seemed to be turning to ash as it did, leaving a trail of gray fragments. “Two hits, five targets destroyed,” Reported a pony from behind her, not using the viewfinder in the front but one of the rear projection screens. “Looks like…” He coughed. “Lost with all aboard, Ma’am. No one is escaping those ships.” “Port cannons ready,” reported Snow Feather, his voice not sounding as affected by the destruction as the others aboard the bridge with them. “New targets sighted.” “Fire,” Hayden said. “Ready with the rest of the concussive rounds after that. I want all ten carriers destroyed.” When they had first moved, the Golden Armada had been still, like a resting beast. Now it moved, without any of the grace and coordination she’d seen as it devoured pony ships. Even zooming back out, she could make out very little in the way of orderly patterns. There was a trend, though—towards them. Like a swarm of bees, many of the little specks were now heading back. Another roar, and the ship listed once again. No streaks of purple, but the impacts were much more dramatic this time. Apparently those carriers were more delicate than they looked, because one of them came roaring apart in two pieces. A few shots were misses—not surprising at this range, without machine guidance. It seemed as though a dark cloud had turned its attention on them. It wasn’t a single animal anymore, but a flock so dense that it shadowed the land as it flew. There was no coordination, no strategy, just numbers. Birds all focused on the Excellus. As they moved, she could make out the Equestrian fleet a little more clearly, and the haggard air force pulling back to what ships survived. They were not pursuing the attackers, or attacking the ships Stonebeaks left floating above their own city. At least, most of them weren’t. Where the hell is Celestia? Shouldn’t she be out there? “I don’t think our nets will stop that many,” Skylark said. “I don’t think this strange armor will be enough either.” Against numbers like that, the griffons could weigh them down, or get sucked into air intakes, or any other number of ways of stopping them. Fortunately, they weren’t limited to organic flight speeds. “Come about, starboard guns ready. Skylark, take us up. I want to stay ahead of that mob… but let’s start slow. Maybe if the Stonebeaks think they have a chance of catching us, they’ll keep following for longer. Give Seaddle a little more time.” “Not easy,” he said, but didn’t argue. “Helm, thirty degrees west, ahead standard. Prepare for flanking speed on my mark. Port guns, stow and prepare to be boarded!” Griffons might not be as fast as the Excellus, but they were fast.Faster than Hayden expected anything alive to be, coming from a world where birds seemed small and she never saw them flying up close. But here… that cloud was growing wider by the second, and getting close enough for her to easily distinguish individuals. It spread out as it neared, rather than concentrating on them. Like the birds inside were trying to guarantee they couldn’t escape. “Starboard guns, fire!”