Earth Calendar: 2117
Equestrian Calendar: 15 AC (After Contact)
Twelfth Month, Thirteenth Day, Celestial Calendar
Sildinar
"When was the last time that your kind, and mine, sat down together at this table?"
Luna raised an eyebrow, and glanced appreciatively around the chamber. The room occupied the entire top floor of one of the mid-sized towers of the castle, and had apparently previously been used by one of Celestia's students.
"Notwithstanding the obvious fact that your observation is metaphorical, rather than literal, because this specific table was obviously not the table in question... More than one and a half thousand years. Long before this castle, or this city, were built. Long before the first castle my sister and I shared was even a gleam in our eye."
As she spoke, I scanned the room with my eyes once more, taking in as much detail as possible.
One entire wall was given over to an impressive plate glass window, something that would have seemed more at home in Gryphon architecture than anywhere else, but for the fact that it could not open.
Much of the rest of the circular chamber's walls were given over to book shelving. The formed roof far above bore an ornate night sky mural, and was supported by columns that ended in carved horse heads.
Much of the previous furniture had been cleared out to make room for the addition of an immense circular wooden table. Judging by the stains in the surface, it had spent most of its life as a dining table for guardsponies.
Near the window stood an immense brass hourglass, perhaps too heavy to be moved out. Or on second thought, perhaps something Luna had left there intentionally to act as an immediate visual aid to the more recalcitrant, or hesitant members of the War Council.
Canny. As always.
Her next words reminded me that she was not only canny, but quite old, by even Gryphon standards. Alicorn age was best thought of in the same proximate terms as Draconic age.
"I remember those meetings well. That was before my sister and I had ascended. We were born into a dark, and difficult age. Much of what all of our civilizations had once been was then already lost to centuries of chaos amid Discord's wars."
I sat back on my haunches beside the table, and cocked my head to the side. Precious little accounting existed to describe the time at the end of the Chaos Wars. Virtually nothing existed of recorded history before that.
Most of what could be found was buried in Dragon hordes, or encrypted in Changeling Hives.
Celestia and Luna were not at all predisposed to discussing their early lives either, and I was both honored that Luna would confide in me, and boundlessly intrigued. I wondered just how
few beings over the millenia had been graced with the knowledge I was about to receive.
Luna took her place in one of the high-backed Pony chairs that had been brought up with the table. Apparently furniture more suited for Gryphons was already on-order. She continued in a dour tone, casting a thoughtful glance towards the hourglass as she did so, rays of the morning sun glinting off the brass finish and reflecting onto her muzzle.
"Celestia was an adept caster of magic even then. I was one of Pegasus-kind's strongest warriors. We never knew our sires and dams; Slain in the wars, or far worse. We were, and are, sisters bonded in battle and hardship rather than by blood ties."
I knew enough of the Chaos Wars to understand what she meant by 'far worse.' Discord himself was both the avatar of Chaos, and the chief practitioner of it, but hardly the most aggressive, nor the most dangerous thing those times had produced. The whole situation had started with him, and ended with him.
But it had gotten rather far out of his grasp by the end, with twisted versions of Ponies, Dragons, and Diamond Dogs contorted by magic run amok acting as vicious war lords and serial destroyers of civilization.
The magical natural disasters had been brutal as well, sometimes turning whole settlements into the stuff of nightmares. Tortured souls begging to be put down to escape the hell their existence had become.
Sealing Discord in stone had been but one of the necessary steps to restoring Thaumatic balance to the world.
Luna's words refocused my train of thought sharply as I first studied her expression, then watched the grains falling through the hourglass, counting each individual one, and marvelling at the way light played through it as I listened.
"We'd made good account of ourselves, and the War Council saw fit to invite us to attend as representatives of our tribes. The Alircons who then ruled Equestria, and would later go on to be our adoptive mother and father, presided together with the Gryphon who would go on to found your Kingdoms, a great Red Dragon named G'narax. Zebra, Buffalo, and other members from the three Pony tribes all sat on the Council as well."
I nodded slowly, picturing the incredible image in my mind's eye. We had a long way to go yet to achieve anything so magnificent.
"Your kind, and the Zebra, were the most important allies we had. While innate magic such as your birth magic, or cloudwalking, is relatively immune to Chaos, all actively wielded magic is terribly susceptible, as are any natural sources of it. The very thing Ponies, and even Dragons, most rely on in time of need could be twisted against us in horrible ways by both natural phenomenon, as well as the dark abilities of those tainted by Discord."
It struck me, as it always did when I thought on those times, how useful our nature was for dealing with corrupting physical or magical influences. Even Discord himself had no power over our forms.
All young Gryphons were taught about the vital role we had played as the only warriors on the battlefield completely immune to polymorphic or corrupting spells, and our first King's critical part in triumphing over Discord at the end of the Chaos Wars.
While Celestia and Luna worked to seal him in stone. Not a difficult realization to make, but an interesting one. I'd wondered before if they had been the element bearers during that final battle, but Luna's next words confirmed it outright.
"Without the defensive artifacts the Zebra made, and their magical expertise in general, we would never had had the hoofhold we needed to survive. Protected settlements. Enchanted armor. Detection magics. Without the Gryphons? We would never have been able to fight at all, much less reach Discord himself at the end. King Anvard shielded Celestia and I with his own two wings, fighting beak and claw with Discord's personal defenders and champions as we prepared the Elements of Harmony to do our grim work."
I nodded, and interjected a murmured thought as it sprang almost unbidden to my beak.
"His exploits are legend. His victory united our kind in a way in which we had not been brought together since before the Chaos descended. We've never fought with each other... We are physically incapable of striking out against another Gryphon with murderous intent, actually. But we were also sadly disinterested in interclan cooperation in those early years."
Luna raised one eyebrow, and shifted her gaze to lock with mine, responding with an almost chastising nip in her voice.
"Your kind nearly went extinct. There were far more of you before. More than even you likely remember. You have always been slow to grow your numbers, but quick to lay down your lives in battle. I fear that soon we must again lean on your valor, and sacrifice."
She looked up at the night sky mural above our heads, and my gaze followed her as she brought an end to the bittersweet tale.
"It was the act of sealing Discord that granted Celestia and I ascension to be Alicorns. Though all Ponies, of any kind, have the potential to reach this state, so few ever attain the precise combination of skill, experience, desire, harmony, and need, to unlock it. The ruling King and Queen were kind enough to take us in as their own. They raised us to be their successors, as is tradition amongst Alicorns. When they perished in the fight against Sombra... Failed to save the Crystal Empire from centuries of exile..."
Luna exhaled slowly, and hung her head. I could put much of what had come next together from my own study of history, but it was illuminating to hear it in her own words, difficult as they were for her.
"Knowing they died in vain was the thing that opened the door, deep down inside. Gave darkness a seed, and then a root, in my soul. I blamed my sister for trying to reason with Sombra. To stop the fight before it started. Neither of us could have known then that he was possessed by a Wisp. The same way the Nightmare possessed me. Only with the benefit of hindsight."
When she brought her head up to fix her sad gaze back on me, I could see she was fighting tears. For the moment, at least, she was mostly winning. But I could hear the tiniest hint of the depths of her grief in her words too.
"Far more than blaming Celestia for holding us back, I blamed myself. Felt that if I'd been more ready... Had more power... I could have saved them. After that, my sister and I drifted apart. I grew not only more loathsome of myself, but jealous of her. It took many years of sliding into darkness, and of allowing ever more of the Nightmare's whispers into my ears... But at last I granted her access. And the rest is both myth, and history alike."
I struggled to imagine her pain. To think of something I could say that would give her comfort. As I mulled, she laid a front hoof on the old oaken table, and traced the patterns of the grain absently with one hoofguard, muttering to herself all the while.
"All that we suffer now is born of my decision that day."
In frustration I slammed the palm of my claw against the table, almost by reflex. Her words lit an anger in me, not against her, but against the darkness inside that still gnawed at her. I did nothing whatsoever to restrain the anger in my voice, nor the accompanying volume.
"It is born of many facts and decisions. Most of all it is born of the Nightmare's malice. Far more is our last potential hope born of your actions. Without your insight into her? Your willingness to act to call this Council? The love you share with your sister that has kept her alive these last hard years? There would be no hope. You of all people should understand the danger in giving in to these kinds of recriminations. They are beneath you."
Her whole body stiffened, muzzle setting into an expression of resolve, and tempered fury directed at the same fell thing as my own rage. She nodded once sharply, and tapped her hoof hard twice against the table.
"Thank you. Well spoken. And practical as well... If we are to survive, this Council must be more than merely Ponies and Gryphons. And of those, we must have the best and highest in authority."
She gestured expansively to me with her right hoof, and right wing.
"I would ask that you request the presence of your own Father and Mother. I would have all three of you on this Council as equals to myself and Celestia. I intend to ask Inside Joke to sit as well. I will choose four Ponies to be representatives under me, as she will have the right to choose four Changelings to vote with her, and you should select four Gryphons to serve under you. I do not suppose that I need make any suggestions on that last point? I suspect your heart runs the same course as mine."
I nodded, a smile tugging at the corner of my beak as I began to picture the table filled with representatives. I confirmed it aloud.
"Oh yes. I have four Gryphons in mind."
Earth Calendar: 2117
Equestrian Calendar: 15 AC (After Contact)
December 13th, Gregorian Calendar
Taranis
In the time before, when I'd gone by the name George Fried Puller, and worn a Colonel's bars, Yorktown had been home. Fireteam Sigma had been all the family I really had.
So much had changed in fifteen years. First Contact, and Conversion, loomed largest in that blink of a half-second of history. Yorktown had changed a great deal as well, now fitted to fully accommodate so many different kinds of soldiers, from two worlds.
Personally, the biggest change had been my own cobalt blue scales, and all that they brought with them. Chiefly in that change, perhaps, a very different perspective on time. It was not that the fifteen years felt as though they had passed more quickly than the fifteen before that, but rather that they did not feel as long looking back on them with Dragon's eyes.
I had friends from many species. All of them would be dead before I was middle-aged, save for the few other Dragons I had made some effort to get acquainted with, native at first, then convert later, when the official program had come to pass.
A sobering thought, but not an alien one. Leading soldiers into battle was familiar territory.
I had parlayed that grim experience into a sense of peace about the relationships I had with those whom I would long outlive. Providing I did not fall in battle myself, a fate which I took no issue with at all if it was to be mine.
It was certainly a better fate than dying of aggressive mutated bone cancer, as experimental quasi-legal medical nanites fought a slowly losing battle.
I had always thought death in combat would take me first. Counted on it, to spare me a horrific suffering end. And then came Contact. Those events had changed everyone's worlds, in striking and literal terms, and mine no less than anyone else.
My actions cost me my military career, and my treatments with it, but opened doors that I had not foreseen. The Gryphons were so fond of saying that 'Valor always brings its due.'
I suppose I'd become living proof of that.
For every ten dozen politicians who waste precious air and do more harm than good, there is a diamond in the rough who truly cares. I sided with the diamond. She did not forget it. When it came time for Dragons to seek pilot members for their program, I was still clinging to life.
She moved me to the head of the line.
Soldier, to geologist, to Dragon, and then warrior again.
Where death by spatial anomaly, railgun, suitcase nuclear warhead, or cruise missile had failed to free me from cancer's scourge, wings and claws and scales finally triumphed.
I watched the buzz of action on the hangar deck with keen interest, using the exercise in perception as a way to silence the louder voices of memory.
EarthGov had insisted that Army soldiers take part in the raid to come, and CAA-7s had been landing and taking off non-stop above our heads for the better part of the morning.
Alongside the disembarking heavy assault troopers, technicians moved to unload and prepare APCs, two L-RACs, several heavy powered armor suits, and six breaching mechs.
Further down the bay Ponies, Gryphons, Humans, another pair of Dragons, a few Zebra, and a half dozen Diamond Dogs worked to prepare squadrons of fighter and bomber aircraft, JRSF assault equipment, and a limited number of next generation powered armor suits loaned from the Genesists.
I was looking forward to trying my own equipment on, very shortly. I'd been told I had a Gryphon named 'Fyrenn' to thank for the fact that the Genesists had sent not only an Alicorn fitted suit, but multiple sets and armoring chambers for several species.
I knew of Fyrenn for the same reason most anyone else did, having followed current events, and I had always been interested in making his acquaintance. Doubly so since he was bringing such princely gifts.
The old Human salty soldier down inside was very, very pleased with the idea of even more armor, and weapons than were strictly speaking necessary for a Dragon. The part of me that was all Dragon had no complaints either, certainly.
Amongst the comings and goings of armored beings, munitions carts, and larger vehicles, I spied a familiar face. I'd been told to look out for a beak and feathers rather than the weather and world worn skin I'd last seen him in, and his new visage brought warmth to my heart.
I lumbered across a transfer aisle, suppressing a smirk as a tug operator had to step on the brakes more for his safety than mine, moving to embrace Hutch's foreleg with my own as my body cleared the line of travel and settled into the safe zone.
Hutch beamed and clapped my shoulder with his free claw as he spoke. I'd never heard him quite so happy in the year I'd known him. After the victory we'd shared at Fort Hamilton, we had stayed in touch, and even worked together on several more occasions, much to our mutual enjoyment.
"Taranis, you old jackass. How have you been?"
I cracked a grin of my own, noting with amusement that though he was still a fair bit smaller than I was, at least he was no longer pitifully fragile and tiny by comparison. I could at least embrace him without fearing for breaking his spine, and so I did.
"Hutch, you stinking feathery baggage; I am doing far better than you look. I see Fyrenn has fully led you astray at last. Surely you aren't intending to grace this mission with your presence? No offense meant, but I heard you made your change not even long enough ago to have full flight proficiency."
He splayed one wing and smiled at it as we released the half claw-shake, half embrace, and he sat back onto his haunches, as I did onto mine.
"No, Laura and I are here to sit in on CIC. Lend Brendt some of our expertise, and eyes and ears to run ops. I'd kill to be out there with you again... But I have the distinct sense there will be time for that soon enough. As for the feathers? You know I never wanted anything else. No offense meant."
In spite of myself I felt a deep chuckle rising in my diaphragms. I decided there was no harm in letting it out, for once. Best to enjoy the humor when one could.
"Ha ha ha! Oh I always knew you were the Gryphon type. It ran in your veins even before, the same as these scales ran in mine. In truth? You look excellent. A warrior reborn in noble shape, and not a moment too soon."
Hutch nodded, and exhaled in a whistling sound over the edge of his beak, his eyes widening slightly, and ears flattening in irritation, worry, and general distress.
"Damn straight. I know you've probably only been partially briefed, so let me tell you... I still ain't sure which scares me more. The *thing* that's waiting for you in Amazonia, or the fact that the Council finally handed the nuclear keys to a fucking Humanist, after you and I almost died saving their sorry asses at Hamilton. I can't decide which hurts more either. Some of the things I know about the Nightmare... Or the things I know now about what our own superiors spent most of our careers doing."
I shifted my sightline out back down the length of the deck. And old force of habit, leftover from deeply ingrained Human social normatives. I could hear the joviality drain from my words just as much as I could feel it leaching from my heart.
"I knew something was wrong a long time ago. Deep down at the roots. Your friend Fyrenn may be the talk of Centcom these days, but during the Contact incidents? I was the pariah of the hour. Putting thirty five thousand rail rounds through the bridge of an allied ship will have that effect on you."
Hutch whistled through his beak again, and shook his head slowly, meeting my eyes as my gaze returned to him. His head tilted in that Gryphic inquisitive way.
"I knew you were kicking around on this boat during the Contact incidents, and I knew you had serious red flags in your EarthGov military file... You suppose you can tell me the whole story sometime?"
I nodded, rolled my shoulders, and reseated my wings, tail reflexively lashing as the thought of discussing what had happened brought both a slight hint of nerves, but also anticipation. I had discussed those trials, triumphs, and failures with so few people. Most no longer living. The rest all in hiding.
"Gladly. But suffice to make a long tale short for the moment; The Council and central command have a long history of willingly allowing dark operations to work unethical objectives in service of their power. The HLF and Echelon Twelve are merely the evolution of splinters from the ExCET project."
Hutch expelled a great 'whuff' of air and his crest puffed up in the process. I bit back an amused smile. The subject matter was nothing to laugh about, even if the image of all his feathers puffed out was very much an amusing one.
"I thought that crap was an old noncom ghost story. Bullshit you tell around a camp stove in basic. Extraterrestrial Containment, Exploitation, and Threat response? Sounds like something even the finest connoisseur of pork expenditures would turn their noses up at."
Inclining my head, I allowed myself a small, sly grin at one corner of my mouth.
"I once believed so. Until one of their agents tried to use a nuclear device on the barrier, and then attempted to murder one of the chief scientists working on Conversion with a naval railgun. I disagreed with his decision making process. We could not reach a verbal agreement on a solution. I killed him and everyone on the bridge of that ship. It solved the problem quite elegantly."
In spite of myself, I found some enjoyment in the impressed look gracing Hutch's face. He shook his head slowly, and glanced down the bay in the same direction I'd looked.
"They picked the right people for this assignment. You and Fyrenn are going to be a terror together. You think a lot alike. You'll get along like a house afire. Not sure the world is ready for that... I'm still tryin' to get over him and Neyla and Alyra all together."
As he mentioned their names, Hutch gestured with a claw, pointing out the three Gryphons each to me in turn. I recognized Fyrenn from the news broadcasts. Alyra as well, from the interview she had given. Several connections fell into place for me all at once, and I fully understood not just the moral reasoning behind what Fyrenn had done, but the emotional reasoning as well.
I let out a deep appreciative thrum in my chest, and clapped Hutch on the shoulder as I rose to all fours.
"Now you truly have me interested. Perhaps you would be so good as to provide an introduction?"
Hutch stood to his hind legs, and chuckled as he began leading the way down one of the transfer aisles.
"Sure. And may God forgive me."
Fyrenn
As the hiss and whir of machinery died away, and mechanical arms scissored back into the storage bays from whence they came, I couldn't resist an appreciative whistle.
Judging by Alyra, Skye, and Neyla's expressions, they shared the sentiment in full.
Clad in the dark gray composite armor plating, trimmed at its edges in gold, and emblazoned on the wing joint, front shoulder, and peytral with a blazing sun, Celestia looked like something out of an ancient epic carved on a temple wall.
Even in the undeployed configuration, the Genesist armor gave ten times the coverage of her usual ceremonial regalia. As a post-fitting diagnostic cycle triggered, the rest of the plating blinked into existence with a sound resembling tank treads rolling on thick steel decking.
Covered muzzle to flank but for her tail, her mane, her horn, and part of her face, she presented a hostile, warlike figure. Though grim, and resigned, her expression was one of unmistakable anger as well. Another novelty for me; I'd never known her to be anything but compassionate and peaceable.
Maybe frustrated at times. Never furious.
And she was furious.
I could tell she had been working herself up ever since she arrived. And far more so once she had learned what the Nightmare had done. Having a slightly more complete understanding of what had happened to Luna, I was not surprised.
Celestia took any threat to her Ponies personally. Veritas had hurt her host, nearly killed Luna, doomed the Earth to die, forced Skye to take a life, and made Astris' a living hell. To say nothing of the damage the HLF had done at Nightmare's own behest.
For the first time in three years of knowing her, I saw a killing fire dancing through the violet glint of her eyes. The spirit of a warrior long buried, sleeping since the end of the time of Chaos.
And now reawakened.
Someone was about to regret not just their choices, but perhaps their very existence itself.
A small part of me hated to think what she was going through. A much louder, more significant part was thrumming with pure distilled anticipation. I wanted to see my enemies scream. Writhe. Panic. Take their own lives in fear at the mere suggestion of what was coming.
My warrior's wrath had never been buried, or stilled for any significant period of time. I was no stranger to the stellar fusion of hatred for an enemy that deserved it. And the Nightmare, and her ilk, were the most deserving things I could imagine ever existing.
For what she'd done to Astris, I was angry. That she had nearly forced Robert to kill me, and thus ended his life? That made me livid.
That she had almost killed Aston opened the door to the kind of furnace that could power a battleship.
What her actions had forced Skye to do? What the doing of them had in turn done to Skye?
That pushed me over the edge of the red line.
There would be time for arguments about the best course of action later. I would hear them out, at very least.
But as far as I was concerned, this war was only going to end one way.
I was going to see to it that the entirety of all Wisps were exterminated. Violently.
Celestia could talk ethics and diplomacy after I was done burying the shattered corpse of their entire species in a hole so deep that the Devil would have to dig to find them.
Ethics of genocide be damned. I'd seen directly into the hive mind of their whole civilization. I knew in agonizing detail what they had planned for us. To brook negotiation with something whose safe future existence depended mechanically, inextricably, on damning everyone else's?
Worse. To even think of mercy for beings who didn't just need to murder and enslave... But gloried in it by nature?
Not while I drew breath.
The sharp rap of Celestia's front right hoof against steel snapped me from my red-soaked reverie.
The Alicorn had stepped to the top of a stack of cargo crates, and the impact of her hoof had been both severe enough to dent the top crate, and loud enough to overpower every single sound in the hangar deck.
Within just a few seconds, all activity ceased, and all eyes fixed on the Solar Monarch, including Hutch, and a large blue Dragon whom I vaguely recognized, as they moved to join our group.
"Soldiers of Earth, and of Equestria! Hear me!"
Her voice seemed to fill the space as if it had been blasted through the ship's One-MC. Her appearance was almost backlit by sunlight, and her mane was surprisingly bright in and of itself.
Even weakened, and tired, she was like the avatar of a star descended to Earth to dispense cleansing fire.
I'd never heard such an intense edge of forged steel in her voice. Though it saddened me, knowing what she had to dredge up to reach that place of strength, it also gave me hope. We'd all have to fight if we were going to survive. And there was most definitely a fighter deep down inside her.
"We face extinction. Even as the Earth is consumed, dark forces seek to rule Equestria. To enslave Ponykind. To kill and burn all who will not serve. The being your briefing packets called Veritas, or the Nightmare, is older than I. Older than our recorded history. Or yours. She is vast in power, and boundless in her hunger. She has worked tirelessly for more than a millenia to lay both of our worlds in ruin. She has come very, very close to success."
No one in the entire hangar deck moved. I wondered privately how many of us had stopped breathing momentarily. I could see so many faces. Humans, Ponies, Gryphons, and a few from at least three other species besides.
Soldiers from two sides, still teetering on the brink of war themselves. There was more than a little appropriate fear, and awe, in the eyes of the EarthGov army soldiers. That too gave me a sliver of hope.
Nothing quite like a common enemy to unite the uncooperative. Celestia knew that too. Her words spoke volumes to that effect.
"Whatever grievances you have. Or fears. Lay them aside. As always, I fight to protect all who will accept a hoof in friendship. For the first time in your lifetimes, I will now lead that fight from the field of battle."
Celestia slowly swept her eyes across the assembled forces, seeming to search out and pierce every individual somehow with a personal glance.
"Make no mistakes, and hold no preconceptions. This is no longer the time for mercy. We will save those we can from this dark and foul place... But take no unnecessary risks to do so. Give mercy only to those who surrender at once. They are to be treated with care, but above all utmost suspicion. Those who do not should be slain without hesitation. Give no quarter. Human. Canine. Or Pony."
I knew those words cost her as much in spirit as the act of saving Vancouver had in body. Thinking back to how hard it was for me to overcome my built in sense of Ponies as something to be protected, I could only guess at how much it was going to hurt for Celestia to have to take their lives with her own horn and hooves.
But she'd seen what Skye and I had seen. Felt the magical side as well, which Skye could also reproduce for her in memory. She knew even more keenly than I did, the favor and mercy she would be doing to those who would be better off dead.
"Gather your strength! Sharpen your valour! Steel yourselves. For any who have ever lost someone to needless violence. For those of you who had your choice taken away, or know someone who did. For those who will come after us, seeking a better future. Today, we fight. Make ready."
The plates in my ears snapped shut as a tremendously loud sound echoed from the bulkheads, my own throat a contributor; A melange of Draconic roar, Gryphon keen, Human cry, Canine howl, and Equine whinny.
If there was ever a sound that Hell itself feared? That was the sound.
As the war cry died away, the blue Dragon rose, and extended a claw and foreleg. I grasped it enthusiastically as he introduced himself, and Hutch confirmed my suspicion.
"Fyrenn, this is Taranis. I think you two know of each other... Not sure anyone is safe now that you *know* each other."
I grinned and inclined my head in a gesture of respect; Rare for a Gryphon to bestow on a member of another species with whom we weren't more personally familiar. He returned the gesture in kind as he spoke.
"Gratifying to meet the one Hutch thinks of as a son at last. He never ceases to talk of you. It will be good to have you at my side in this battle."
With a nod, I released the foreleg hold, and dipped my head towards Hutch as I responded.
"I owe you much, not just for saving us all with your actions at Hamilton, but in particular for saving his thin wrinkly old skin. I'm glad to have a chance to fight alongside you, and I hope soon enough we will all share the battlefield together."
Hutch reached out to clap me reassuringly on the shoulder, then turned to search for Aston.
"I'll leave you to it. Laura and I have to get settled in mission ops. Come back alive, the both of you. Or I swear I'll hunt you down and kill you."
Taranis and I watched the ex-General depart, weaving carefully through the fray of piloted and drone tugs, munitions carts, cargo sleds, assault vehicles, and other armored beings.
I couldn't resist a small personal observation as we watched.
"I have never seen him happier. It's like becoming one of us freed a part of him that had been withering and dying his whole life. It took me three years to get to that place fully."
Taranis thrummed deep in his chest, the deck below our paws and claws resonating in time to his words as he turned to look at Neyla, Alyra, and Skye.
"For those of us who truly adjust to the change, I think that sentiment will always be true in some way. Is this your storied family, about whom I have also heard so many good things?"
With a nod, I gestured with my left wing, and introduced each in turn.
"This is Neyla, my mate soon to be. Alyra, our daughter. And Skye, who you'd best think of as a sister to me if you want to easily understand what she means to us all."
I caught the tiniest flutter of something crossing Skye's muzzle, in spite of all the armor plating surrounding the back and top of her head, but it was gone in an instant. And I was struck even harder by something else.
As Taranis sat back on his haunches and brought his head down to speak to my family, I felt as though a jolt of lightning had hit my nervous system.
"I am honored. Stay close to me in the battle to come, and no harm shall befall you, come whatever hellions may. Together, we will make our enemies rue the curse of their birth!"
Hearing his words, and seeing his smile, along with Neyla's appreciative smirk, Skye's relieved smile, and Alyra's awestruck grin, I realized that Taranis was one of the Dragons in my vision from the core chamber.
Just as William, Shierel, and Miles had been there too... Now that I gave it careful thought and detailed mental review. And Hutch, and Aston... Their colors and patterns had turned out exactly as I'd seen them in that moment.
I wondered with a start, accompanied by a physical reflexive jolt, whether what I'd seen was no mere hope nor dream, but an actual vision of a possible future. Not necessarily a far fetched idea in the context of some of my more spiritual experiences...
The idea gave me resolve. Pause, and consideration, gave way to grit-beak determination.
If we made it through the coming battle, I'd ask Taranis to join our small but growing clan as well. I liked him. I knew he was one of the best friends Hutch had outside our unofficial family group...
Keep your friends close.
And your family closer.
Skye
I'd spent plenty of time around feathers, and all his military types. Seen a few pitched battles. I'd even been on warships before. But I'd never been a part of anything quite like the world I found myself in on the Yorktown.
There should have been more fear. Maybe even more guilt and pain. But I had four strong comforts to lean into.
First, and maybe most important, I'd made myself a promise; I would take no Pony lives on this mission.
I wouldn't have to.
During the mission briefing, before we'd all descended to the hangar to suit up and kit out, Celestia had informed us that she would shoulder the responsibility of freeing those who could be freed. And killing those who could not.
Alicorn magic, applied to the spell I had worked out for Astris, would allow her to instantly free anypony who was still able to be freed. The price for that would be the deaths of those too far gone. Worse, because the way she had re-engineered the spell to be focused on disruption, the Wisps inhabiting those Ponies already doomed would only be dazed for a few seconds.
And then they would still have full control of fully functioning bodies.
We'd all agreed the trade was worthwhile, to the point that we had declined to even mention the other option to EarthGov; Dropping our remaining antimatter warhead on the facility and taking no risks whatsoever.
If some could be saved, risks were worth it. That, and the chance to have access to PER computer systems, equipment, and even non-possessed prisoners who might shed further light on the horrors we were trying to excise.
My other three pillars of support were people. There was Celestia herself... Seeing her in that armor, I finally understood a little bit of the mentality of those dimwits who worship her. But only a little.
Goddess? Nah. But a good friend? Someone who cared? A really, really, extraordinarily powerful mage? Yeah. Definitely. Great thing to have on your side going into the fray.
Three Gryphons too. Fyrenn, Neyla, Alyra... The best of the best.
And then there was the new guy. Taranis. Hutch had talked a little about him before...
I liked to sort people into lists. Mostly as a fun exercise in classification, like the way Humans seemed obsessed with sorting quizzes and personality types, but also as a kind of therapeutic mechanism.
I had a particular list... Not one I ever shared, or wanted to share, with anyone else. People I would be attracted to, or at least interested in exploring attraction to, if I was remotely comfortable feeling attraction.
Not a lot of people made that list. Varan was one. IJ too, though I'd've sooner cut out my horn than tell her that.
Taranis had just made the list.
If you have never fought a battle beside a Dragon, let me tell you something; There's no feeling like it. You're safer under a Dragon's wing in the middle of Armageddon going down, than you are walking down a sunlit boulevard on a fall day in Canterlot.
When he stepped onto the Dragon-sized armor framer that Martins had provided, and those angular gray composite plates went on over his blue scales, trimmed like all of ours now were in Celestia's gold, and sunburst emblem...
Damn.
Forget your nukes, or your battleships. You can keep your swords, your particle beams, magic spells, or your fully armed and operational carrier air wing.
A Dragon in a power suit, studded in particle weapons, and missile hardpoints, with impulse drive impellers strapped to his shoulders is maybe the closest thing to packaging the actual unexaggerated power of a Nuclear weapon in something that doesn't explode.
I felt very, very small, marching behind Celestia, Alyra at my side, flanked by Fyrenn and Neyla, with Taranis bringing up the rear of our diamond formation. In a strange way, feeling small compared to them was comforting.
Believe you me, I knew my own strength. I'd had to fight plenty in my life, even before I met red feather britches. Put me in between three Gryphons, an Alicorn, and a Dragon?
If Veritas was stupid enough to still be home when we came knocking, it was going to be the last mistake the little shithead ever made.
I was gonna see to that personally, even if I had to break my promise.
All eyes in the bay were on us as we marched onto one of the fighter jet elevators. Our group took up the entirety of one platform. I desperately hoped that someone would snap a picture. I wanted to have that moment memorialized for all time.
We looked like archangels marching off to cast Satan and his demons into the pits of Hell. Maybe in a way, that's exactly what we were.
The steel and concrete pad rose slowly, bringing us from the harshly blue toned light of the hangar bay, and its echoes of final preparatory work, up into the howling din of a flight deck in the middle of combat launch operations.
The smell of aviation fuel and hot metal under tension was intense.
VTOL capable fighters, gunships filled with shock troops, and medium lifters with underslung APCs taxied in orderly lines from parking rows, and other elevators, to their takeoff points, rising elegantly on cushions of air as flight deck officers directed their tug drones with hand signals.
Bombers practically pregnant with heavy assault ordinance queued behind the magnetic catapults, zipping off into the gray afternoon fog just as quickly as the deck crew could get them unhitched from their tugs and strapped to the launch rails.
Formations of Ponies and Gryphons in heavy JRSF and Genesist assault armor marched in phalanxes to departure points at the sides of the ship, leaping into the air in orderly rows, first under power of their own wings, then switching over to the impulse or turbine flight assist boosters mounted to their shoulders.
Four other Dragons, two of them significantly older and larger than Taranis, were hovering at the stern, in the process of lifting L-RACs beneath them.
The immense bombardment canons were clutched like gigantic military toy sets in their claws, as Human shock troopers clung to hardpoints in their armor, and anti-ship sized missiles bristled from launch rails on their backs.
God-DAMN.
Whoever or whatever was waiting for us had no Earthly idea just how much fire and fury was coming.
Following Celestia's lead, we marched to our own takeoff point, and each silently completed the pre-start checklist for our flight boosters. A stubby set of fins irised out from housings on my shoulders to provide long duration lift assist to the thrusters in the absence of natural wings.
Hutch had laughed and made a 'Buff Lightbeer' reference when he first saw them. Or Light Buzzyear. Or something like that.
Fyrenn glanced down, and brushed my side with one wing as the whine of turbine jet engines mixed with the lower tooth-rattling thrum of the Genesist impulsive drives on our own shoulders.
"Whatever happens, like Taranis said; Stay close. And don't forget... Like Aston said... You are a steely-eyed missile mare."
As we leapt into the air in sequence, thrusters firing, and wings unfolding, to join the gargantuan formation of warplanes, Dragons, Ponies, Gryphons, and attack VTOLs...
I actually felt like the words were true. For once in my life.