The targeting cogitators of the Indefatigable had been tracking the enemy ground forces since the ship had been alerted to the Chaos advance. The ship had been out of position at first; she was in orbit, yes, but not above Canterlot or its surroundings. The re-entry back into orbit after the Chaos fleet was destroyed had been hasty, just to get them back around the planet, not necessarily in any specific position. The battlecruiser had been forced to maneouvere to place itself above the pony capital where it might be needed, abandoning their search of the debris field left by the Emperor's Judgement, by which time the Chaos forces were upon them. Orbital strikes had blast radii, they had potential targeting errors, they had a circular error probability, all of which meant that hitting the enemy in such close proximity to the city could cause a catastrophe if something went wrong and a projectile went off target.
The solution to that was to use lances to strike the ground targets. They traveled almost at light speed and did not lose much accuracy over such a short distance, yet could inflict heavy damage to anything caught beneath them. Lord-Admiral Marcos had called the liaison team in the capital to get them to ask Princess Celestia if she desired his aid from on high, but they had told her she was not there. She was fighting, and she was fighting the Daemon Lord once more. Marcos had been taken aback by the news, but only for a moment. It was logical that Malaranth would try to strike the city; after all, it contained what seemed to be the most likely prize sought by the Archenemy- the Princess herself. She seemingly intrigued Chaos as much as she intrigued the Imperials, and along with her sister and the defeated Changeling Queen, she represented the greatest concentration of the unknown particle anywhere on the planet, and perhaps in the universe. A source of such power as she had demonstrated several times was well worth the investigation and even potentially worth the many deaths suffered as a result. Marcos was still wary on whether he should release the full detail of the operation to capture Kuda Prime to his superiors, but it seemed increasingly futile to attempt anything else. So many members of the Crusade had seen the Princess or some other pony performing feats of magic. There were sensor records, vid recordings, eyewitness testimony, after action reports, not all of which could be covered up, besides which, the Adeptus Mechanicus may well have already been in possession of the facts, relayed by the Ferrus Terra.
Marcos, having come to learn something of the Princess and her ponies, did not wish them any harm. He hoped that by continuing to aid them in cleansing their land of the taint of Chaos, Celestia might offer her knowledge and expertise regarding her magic to the Imperium willingly. He did not want to take it by force; he never truly had, and now he very much doubted his ability to do so even if he did. Celestia had destroyed an entire Chaos fleet, had battle the Changeling Queen and a Daemon Lord, and marshaled her ponies through perhaps the toughest test they had ever faced. Bringing down a few damaged Imperial vessels would be child's play for her. Now they were in the endgame, and she showed no signs of backing down even when her own capital was being besieged. The guns of the Indefatigable could help, but they could only do so much.
At Marcos's order, the ship had moved to prepare for an orbital strike. It rolled over in space to present its dorsal lances to the planet below. The Auspex scanned the terrain below, providing a precise geophysical survey of the landscape and feeding it into the targiting cogitators. The lance batteries swung their barrels around, rotating them in the horizontal and vertical axes alike to bring them on target. Thermal imaging showed strings of glowing white shapes below, grinding their way up the mountainside track. Enemy vehicles, tanks and personnel carriers and mobile artillery, the last gasp for the Chaos troops. This was surely it. There would be no more, certainly not from the planet itself. It was always possible that another enemy fleet could warp into the system, but they had already lost two. Would they be so willing to expend a third? Whoever was in command of the operation, at least from the human side of Chaos, would either be reluctant to continue wasting his or her forces in a meat grinder, or would look at some fellow warlord's failures and decide they wanted no part of the embarrassment.
Unable to contact the Princess, Marcos made vox contact with Major Barritt and another pony, Shining Armour, who apparently was the commander of the Royal Guard and the pony defence of Canterlot. It was an unenviable task given the nature of the enemy attack, both from outside the walls and from inside. The city was well designed, to funnel the enemy into but a single ground route up the mountain road, which could be blocked with mines or remote-triggered landslides if needs be. But when the ponies had designed Canterlot, they had planned on facing their own threats, not human ones. Changelings, dragons, other ponies, Griffons- not Daemons from another dimension, not tanks, not dropships and not orbital firepower. It was something of a miracle that the city had not been wiped out entirely by this point. The Chaos forces had several periods of time where they could have erased it from orbit, assuming they could have punched through the defensive shield. That they did not, and that they had attempted to conquer it and were now trying the same thing again, gave proof to the suggestion that they were after something, most likely the Princess and her sister.
Whether they wanted the two ponies alive or dead was another question entirely. They had been eager enough to throw everything at Celestia when she had been aiding Imperial forces in Manehattan, and again down in Fillydelphia. The Daemon Lord itself seemed to have something of a fixation on battling her in single combat, perhaps to test her strength or perhaps with the intention of killing her itself. The ways and intricacies of the creatures of the warp were usually beyond the ken of mere mortals, no matter what rank they might happen to be, and Marcos had no idea of its true intentions. All he knew was that he could not engage it from orbit, as it was over the city; not that doing so would achieve much necessarily, given that it had failed the last time it had been attempted. What they could do, however, was to engage the approaching enemy vehicles, at least once they had permission.
'My Lord, I will be more than glad for any support you can lend us from orbit,' Major Barritt was saying over the vox, the link crackling with interference from some source or other. 'So far as I know the Princesses are keeping the Daemon at bay, at least for now, but we have large numbers of creatures and enemy infantry inside the city. We're in danger of losing the main gate entirely. If I thin my line any more to reinforce it, then we might risk a breakthrough elsewhere.'
'Understood, Major. Please put me in contact with the pony commander there,' Marcos replied, hands clasped behind his back like always, though he was no longer on the bridge of the Emperor's judgement. His faithful steed was nothing more than a huge debris field, an artificial nebula destined to float around above the planet, perhaps for months, perhaps centuries, until the orbit finally decayed and the remains finally burned up on re-entry.
'This is Commander Shining Armour,' came the muffled reply a moment later. There was some fumbling and knocking over the link before his voice came through much clearer; evidently the pony was not used to using the vox handset. 'This is Commander Shining Armour,' he repeated. 'Go ahead, Admiral. What can you do for us?'
'Commander,' Marcos replied. 'My flagship...my new flagship...is in orbit above Canterlot. We are standing by to engage the enemy outside the city walls. We have identified and are tracking numerous targets that we can safely engage without damage to the city.'
'Are you certain, Admiral?' Shining Armour asked. 'I have seen what some of your space weapons can do. Can you be absolutely sure there will be no collateral damage?'
'Yes, Commander,' Marcos assured him. 'Our targeting systems are accurate, and the enemy targets we have identified are a significant way down the approach road from the city itself. We can also dial down the power output of our lance weapons to ensure there is a smaller blast radius.'
'Is there a danger of causing landslips?' Shining asked. 'Weapons of such violence could cause great damage to the mountain itself, no?'
'They could if they were fired at full power,' Marcos replied. 'At full power the mountain itself might well cease to exist if we gave it a full barrage. But we would be cutting back significantly on what they are capable of. The city shield itself was struck numerous times by enemy orbital weaponry during the initial invasion, from what I understand, and the terrain survived that. It will survive this, you have my word, Commander. Are you empowered to approve this attack in the absence of the Princess?'
'Yes, Admiral,' Shining replied. 'As city commander, the defence of Canterlot falls to me if the Princess is occupied elsewhere. If you are absolutely certain there will be no risk to the city, then you have my permission to engage enemy targets that are a minimum of one quarter mile away from the city wall, and any and all targets that lie in the valley itself.'
'Understood, Commander. You have my acknowledgement of your parameters,' Marcos informed him. 'We will adhere to them.'
'Thank you, Admiral,' the pony responded. 'I think we need all the help we can get.'
'We have reinforcements en route to you,' Marcos advised. 'We have ground units coming north from the Fillydelphia containment line, and I am organising a drop from orbit, once conditions permit, with more Guardsmen to join the city defences. We are also sending a large contingent of our surviving fighter aircraft to help clear the skies for you.'
'Thank you again, Admiral,' Shining Armour replied. 'It is all much appreciated. The city would still be under enemy control If not for you and your men.'
'And my men and I would be dead if not for your Princess,' Marcos answered. 'I think that is a fair trade, Commander. We shall commence our strike shortly. Marcos out.'
The city wall was taking a heavy pounding, tank shells slamming into it and rivers of dust pouring from the impact points. It could take shells; they were just modifications of the kind of projectiles that pony and Griffon field guns hurled. What was inflicting the real damage was the lascannon fire and plasma bolts, both of which melted the stone at the impact sites, weakening the structure around it more than a simply high explosive round could do. The hole that had already been torn in the wall by the aircraft crash was fiercely contested, as enemy infantry had made it to the breach, a trio of personnel carriers making a suicide dash for the gap and unloading their cargoes. One was knocked out immediately, the second just before reaching the wall, but most of the passengers survived to leap from the wrecks, and the final vehicle disgorged its complement entirely before being destroyed by a point-blank shell from one of the defending Leman Russ tanks, which was in turn knocked out by a pair of melta-bombs applied to the rear engine deck by Chaos troops.
Other men crossed the approach road to deal with the other two surviving Imperial vehicles. Many didn't make it, but some were able to clamber up onto the deck and turret of the nearest tank. Heavy bolter fire from its companion pinged off of the hull and tore most of the Chaos troopers to bloody ribbons, but a melta-charge applied to the turret hatch burned through and set the crew afire. A few moments later the ammunition supply detonated, a dozen high-explosive battle cannon shells shattering the turret as a great blast mushroomed up out of the wreckage. The final surviving tank found itself protected by defensive fire from the walls that kept the enemy infantry from mounting a similar suicide charge to plant melta-bombs, but though the Leman Russ was able to knock out two more enemy tanks as they advanced, the numbers were not in its favour, and a lascannon round cut straight through its turret armour, killing the gunner and commander and inflicting severe burns on the loader.
The enemy vehicles continued advancing to support their infantry at the base of the wall, fighting for the breach. There were only a couple of dozen, but there were more on the way aboard armoured personnel carriers, a long string of vehicles extending down the roadway like a snake, all heading for Canterlot up the single, relatively narrow mountain path. That made them an inviting target.
A blast from the heavens rocked the valley, shaking the defenders on the city walls as a brilliant streak of bluish-white light appeared from nowhere and slammed vertically into the mountainside some several hundred feet below, right on the third hairpin turn the road took after leaving the city gate. There were vehicles there, a cluster of tanks trying to negotiate the sharp bend, their tracks clawing at the ground to drag them up the mountainside. The blast struck in amongst them, practically vapourising one of their number and melting the external armour of several others. The explosion of the lance beam striking the ground rolled two of the tanks over, and one of them tumbled away down the cliff, with nothing to stop its momentum until it struck the hard boulders below.
The vehicles behind the blast site halted. Some tried reversing in a panic, but the next strike hit farther down the trail, detonating with a loud rolling boom and instantly blocking the road both with a smoking crater and the burning wrecks of several personnel carriers. Chaos troops, their uniforms aflame, tumbled desperately from the shattered vehicles, rolling and writhing on the ground. One man plunged over the edge of the cliff and fell like a comet, ablaze from head to toe. There were some hundred or so vehicles, a large portion of the enemy force, caught between the two strikes, unable to advance and unable to retreat. That allowed the massacre to begin.
The Indefatigable unleashed its fury, its lances glowing as they began to pound the target area. Though their yield had been reduced, as Marcos had assured Shining Armour they would be, the weapons still possessed more than enough power to destroy a column of enemy vehicles, and that was exactly what they did, pummelling the approach road and turning it into a charred wasteland, pockmarked with craters and broken wrecks of Chaos tanks and carriers. Platoons of infantry burned in the white heat, with nowhere to run to and nowhere to hide from the steely, unblinking gaze of the Indefatigable's thermal targeting sensors.
It was over in a matter of minutes, pillars of smoke rising from the mountainside and a pall hanging above the approach road. The enemy forces which had reached the city, or had gotten closer than Shining Armour's designated cut-off distance of a quarter mile, were separated from the rest of their force down in the valley, and that was where the Indefatigable's attentions turned next. There were large numbers of other vehicles and infantry on the move. They had begun their march when Chaos still held sway, when their ships were in orbit covering their advance and providing protection. Now they were exposed, in danger from on high and unprotected by their own vessels. The Indefatigable had free reign to engage; there was nothing the Chaos troops could do about it. Those that were caught on the mountain road below the initial target site had begun to retreat, falling back to the valley floor as the road was impassable. But there would be no escape there, either. The valley floor was a flat plain with no cover from the heavens. The Chaos troops tried to scatter, to present smaller targets to the Imperial flagship. They knew what was coming, and they knew that there was nothing they could do except pray to their dark gods for salvation.
Their gods were not listening, indifferent to the plight of their minor minions. The lances fired again, each one aimed at a different target, and the slaughter began anew. The Indefatigable had free reign to strike at will, picking each target one by one, striking fear into the hearts of the hardened Chaos troopers as they knew their death was inevitable. It was just a matter of time, a violent lottery as to which vehicles or which cluster of sheltering infantry would be struck next. It was a taste of their own medicine, the equivalent of a poor wretched pony family cowering behind a locked door or down in a darkened cellar, listening to gunfire above and the screams of their neighbours as Chaos soldiers rampaged through their town, killing indiscriminately, waiting for the sound of splintering wood as their own door was kicked in and the lasgun raised.
Even as the battle for Canterlot raged, the valley was slowly cleansed of Chaos presence, one by one, vehicle by vehicle, soldier by soldier. The Indefatigable and her crew carried out the task with grim satisfaction. The best way to strike at Chaos was from a position of absolute power and superiority, where you could not be struck in return but could inflict maximum damage upon the Archenemy, and that was exactly what was happening here. In the city itself, however, things were not so clear cut in favour of the Imperials or their pony allies.
The decks of the EAS Fillydelphia were a hive of activity. The main batteries thundered, with the clanging of spent shell casings interspersed with the rapid boom of the anti-air guns firing flat out, their barrels glowing beneath their cooling jackets. There were just so many targets; enemy aircraft and flying Daemons were all around. Together with the EAS Las Pegasus and the vast bulk of the EAS Luna, the Fillydelphia was engaged in a mutually supportive formation. The trio of airships hovered above the city, maintaining position over the east side of Canterlot and able to protect each other with their guns. If a cluster of Daemons tried to peck away at the shields of one airship, the others could pick them off with their anti-air batteries. Though the airships had been loaded up with extra ammunition supplies, they were burning through it at a prodigious rate thanks to the sheer proliferation of targets presented to them.
Early on in the fighting, Captain Ironside had ordered the gunners aboard the Filydelphia to ignore the great monstrosity that was the Greater Daemon, and not to waste their rounds on it. An initial volley had done nothing to it; besides which, the Princesses were dealing with the creature, and there were so many other enemies that needed to be engaged. Bombers were dropping their payloads upon the troops below, fighters threatened the airships with their red beam weapons, and swarms of Daemons offered the prospect of overrunning the ground defences with sheer numbers. The airships were able to thin their ranks somewhat, and sharpshooters on board each vessel took an additional toll, but there were five of the creatures for every one that fell, with more coming through the rip in reality every few moments to add to their numbers.
An enemy fighter swooped in with its twin lascannon firing, punching through the Fillydelphia's shield and destroying one of the main guns, killing its crew and igniting a fire on the top deck. Sand was poured over the incipient flames to quench them, and medics dragged the wounded to the relative safety of the sick bay below. Nowhere on board was truly safe, however, not as long as the red beam weapons could penetrate the shield. The airships were able to repel everything else that was hurled at them, but only Alicorn magic could stop the las-fire. Another fighter came running in with the same weapon, and Ironside ducked as a spray of burning splinters whizzed around him. One of the machine-cannons was ripped from its mounting, the gunner and loader both dead, tumbling to the deck. The fighter tried to pull up and target the airship's gasbag, but could not get an angle before it had roared past in a wide turn, clearly intent on coming about and trying again.
The Luna was also coming under fire. Several enemy ground units had seemingly taken it upon themselves to futilely engage the airship from below, as well as a few fighters that swirled around the mighty craft with the potential for much greater success. The Luna was positioned so that its main bombardment cannon could be fired toward the city gate, ready in case of enemy breakthrough and standing by to strike enemy vehicles outside of the city walls. As the largest and most visible pony military assets, the trio of airships were drawing plentiful attention, which was, in part, their purpose in normal operations, to potentially distract the enemy from a drop by the Pegasi Assault Corps, or an advance on a key flank by ground troops, both to keep the attention and ire of enemy gunners and also help to prevent them from repositioning easily by shelling them from above. Normally that was a mostly foolproof tactic, as hardly any force on the planet was capable of breaking through their defensive shield. These human beam weapons, however, possessed some special property, some quirk of science interfering with magic, that allowed them to cut and slice straight through, and that was not good when there were so many enemy aircraft all armed with the same weaponry.
The Fillydelphia took another hit, port side lower gun deck. An explosion rocked the gondola, and Captain Ironside swayed with it, leaning against the railing. The helmspony spun the wheel to port to counteract the inertia of the blast, which would push the bow of the airship to starboard.
'Fire down below!' came the cry.
'Damage control teams!' Ironside shouted, and they sprang into action at his command. If a fire found the main magazine, then the whole airship would turn into nothing more than several hundred tons of shrapnel, spread across the city. The nightmare spectre of a flaming gasbag slowly sagging and engulfing the gondola below, trapping and roasting the crew, was perhaps the only greater fear.
Both outcomes seemed entirely possible. As the main guns banged and roared and the anti-air cannons spat, more enemy aircraft wheeled in, their lascannons blazing away. Several ponies died, including one of the shield unicorns, charred holes in their bodies, and another gun was knocked out, the metal gunshield melting and warping from the heat. Spot fires ignited once more across the top deck, and something else exploded down below as the firefighting and damage control teams tried to contain the blaze on the lower gun deck. If it spread too far, the deck might have to be abandoned by the gunners due to the smoke and heat.
The enemy fighters were coming in again, two of them this time, side by side, guns flashing. Anti-air burst around them but they continued on undeterred, their eyes on the prize. They wanted the Fillydelphia to go up in flames. Lascannon fire struck the quarterdeck, and Ironside winced as he could feel the heat from the beams. Gouges were cut in the deck planking behind him, and he heard a scream, cut short. He whirled his head around in time to see the helmspony tumble to the deck, both of his forelegs severed at the knee, the wounds already cauterised by the heat. The airship's wheel had been mostly carried away, with the remains beginning to burn and char.
With a pop, the airship's shield went down. Ironside looked around in confusion, and then he could see why. Another of the unicorns powering it lay dead or dying, sprawled across the deck with a hole instead of a chest. Ironside called for the medics, and for the backup helm station to take control of the vessel, which was still swinging to port, the last control input made by the helmspony before he had been wounded. If it continued too far, then the front of the Fillydelphia's gasbag would strike the shield of the Luna. Without the shield for protection, striking the shield of the other airship would have the exact same result as if one of the enemy aircraft tried to fly into it; swift destruction, and the death of the Fillydelphia and her crew, wreathed in flame from burning lifting gas.
Ironside tried to spin the remains of the airship's wheel to starboard, but it was just a broken ruin now. The backup station would have to take charge, and luckily the call reached them just in time. The rate of turn slowed, then stopped, and then reversed, the huge gasbag and gondola turning back to starboard and safety. Safety, however, was a relative term, for even now the enemy fighters were coming around again. They were intent on finishing the Fillydelphia off, sensing its weakness now that the shield was down.
'Get that shield back up!' Ironside roared. 'Every unicorn, get to work! Pull them from the damage control teams if you have to, but get it working!'
The two fighters raced in again, guns chattering, including their autocannons this time, as they now had the ability to hit the ship directly. Luckily neither of them carried missiles, or if they did they had already expended them, but the autocannon rounds chewed up the deck planking. Ponies dived for cover, but there was little cover available, and several more of the crew died in the hail of gunfire. One of the aircraft aimed for the gasbag, pumping rounds into it before roaring away over the top, but luckily the armour plating held firm.
One more pass could finish the airship, either by igniting the gasbag, detonating the magazine, or knocking out the backup helm station. Even if the shield could be got back online swiftly, the red beam weapons could still penetrate it. The anti-air guns blazed away again, but the gunners had suffered casualties like the rest of the crew. A determined attack could be too much for the Fillydelphia.
'Airborne contacts!' somepony shouted. 'Twelve o'clock high!'
Ironside looked up from the shattered airship's wheel. Whoever had called was right, and had good eyesight. There were more black dots up there, a dozen in total, coming straight for them out of the blue.
This is it, then, Ironside mused. Two aircraft, they might survive, but not a dozen or more. The aircraft were coming in at such a steep angle that the anti-air guns could not even traverse enough to hit them, for their own gasbag would block their firing arc anyway. Ironside braced himself for the end of his vessel. The incoming aircraft opened fire.
But their weapons were not aimed at the Fillydelphia.