//------------------------------// // The Face Of The Enemy // Story: [Forlorn Ascension]|[Rites of Dominion] // by Desrium //------------------------------// It was simple in thought. It was difficult in practice. All in all, it wasn't something new to the extraordinary silver stallion. Take them by surprise, hinder their ability to fight back then finish them off. He had the know-how and he had an arsenal to do just that. It was beginning to become a science to him. And that was when everything changed. "What the hell!?" Phineas exclaimed as his screen started to flash red. INTRUDER ALERT: UNIDENTIFIED ENTITIES LOCATED - WEAPON BAY The holographic text overtook everything else that was on display on his terminals. *** Up until that point, he had been in pitch combat with a Hoof-Talon cargo ship, a ship that looked like the head of a shovel. It was broad and rounded at the front with various mechanical hubs dotting various points on its hull, along with glowing nodes. Just looking at the asymmetrical design conveyed a sense of organized chaos. The Equestrian fighter weaved in between the maelstrom of firing weapons; scorching rays and explosive orbs avoided in an intricate dance. To make things interesting, this Hoof-Talon ship had missiles! The arcane projectiles were bulky things that were nearly half the size of the shuttle. The cylindrical bombs had three radial engines belching green and yellow fire and a section of the explosive spun like a tunnel bore. The metal teeth at the front of the missiles made it clear that being hit by those things would ruin anyone's day. They would burrow into a ship and detonate their diabolical payload! Phineas was being chased by no less than six of these missiles, relying on the maneuverability of his shuttle now more than ever. It ran the gauntlet of beams and spheres, rolling from side to side and navigating a treacherous three-dimensional maze. Flying near to the hull of the transport, whenever a wayward shot struck a missile, the ensuing blast rocked the Hoof-Talon ship and caused a respectable amount of damage, eating away at the hull and causing flames to billow out into space. *** This method of offensive defensiveness had rendered the transport without most of its guns, the sight of rising smoke and cannons laced with sparks being familiar to Phineas Startrot. He readied himself to go in for the kill when the alarms started to flash before his eyes. Intruders on his ship. Hoof-Talons on his ship! Thinking at the speed of light, Phineas had the shuttle's automation take control and he unstrapped himself from his seat. He turned away from his screen decorated by icons and fluctuating multicolored bars and raced through the small ship. He sped from the cockpit to his personal quarters and down the short hatch to the lower portion of the shuttle, to the weapons maintenance hold. "Bastards want to take away my fire power, huh?!" he boomed as he went, heralded by the roaring red of his thruster pack. Immediately after the entrance parted, Phineas soared out with his hover-platform rifles deployed. He expected a team of artificial Unicorn soldiers to be tearing into his phaser cannons. After all, only Unicorns had the ability to teleport, right? Wrong, evidently. *** There they were, four of them in the relatively cramped space of the maintenance hold. Phineas dropped onto his hooves and struck a low combat stance, his legs spread out underneath his body which he held low. The blank yellow eyes of his helmet bore into the single circular red visor that the Hoof-Talon armored helms sported. Of the four he saw, one Hoof-Talon soldier had a helmet which dipped down sharply at the front, the perfect shape to fit a gryphon's beak. Their armor was onyx with a red and gold trim. Like him, they had a utility pack on their backs, though more rounded and smaller, blending seamlessly into the rest of their armor. Their suits were sleek as opposed to Phineas' bulkier appearance. At the back of his mind, the silver stallion wondered if this was what Federation equipment would have evolved into if fate had taken a different path. All four of them had wings, covered up completely by their suits and all of them had claws. Even the ones that were clearly equine in figure. "Super pegasi..." The standoff did not last for long. Popping up from their utility packs, held up on a small metal base were the Hoof-Talon blasters, jet black weapons that had a row of red bulbs which contained volatile magic. The Hoof-Talons fired and Phineas was quick to react, his jets lifting him from the floor. Not quick enough. He couldn't have hoped to be quick enough. A burning stream of concentrated heat sliced over one of his forelegs split seconds after his hooves had risen, the armor plating deformed and glowing on either side of the incision. Phineas cried out in pain but could not spare the time to inspect the injury. He started shooting as well, his rifles sounding like screeching firecrackers with each magical bolt volley sent at the Hoof-Talons. *** He didn't know how long the whole thing lasted. A minute? Maybe two? All he knew was the lights and sounds. The muzzle flash in the corners of his vision as his hovering rifles retorted to the buzzing and droning of the blasters with pops and squeals happened in slow motion, as if time had become molasses. He saw the light flicker across the black figures as his shots collided with their shields, dispersing at first then punching through when their barriers had weakened. His body started to move on its own when one of them lunged at him and he reared up, directing his fire onto the soldier. He saw the magical bolts tear right through them, vapor exiting out from the holes made in their back. In spite of the wounds, the soldier was unstoppable in their approach. In no time at all, they were like a lion, pouncing onto their prey, claws extended. Phineas sent a left hook into the Hoof-Talon's lower torso. The blow threw off their form, making them contort around the forceful impact. Phineas recoiled away from the soldier and sent himself into a spin as his tail blade extended. The hybrid hadn't even touched the floor again when it was cleaved in two right across the midsection, the two halves tumbling through the air and coming down with a thud. Facing the other three, he cycled through them while firing bursts of magic bolts until they had stopped moving. *** He hurt. He had been shot several times, he was certain of it. When he lowered himself to the ground, he shouted in agony. He looked down to see several glowing incisions in his armor, some that went through him entirely. They weren't small and surgical like what his guns did to their targets. They were large and gruesome injuries that allowed him to see into himself. "By Luna's fucking mane!" he rasped. He was going to be sick. He was going to die. This was the end. He heard the voice of the enigma. The voice he heard in his nightmare. A voice beckoning his demise. "You will be mine... as is your destiny." "No damn it... no!" he thought defiantly. Activating his jetpack, Phineas flew himself to his only chance of survival. He flew himself to the pod. "Get me the hell out of here!" he muttered through labored breaths after he laid himself down. His hooves tapped the internal panel, ordering the shuttle to disengage and retreat from the battered transport ship. He then turned his gaze upward, staring into the ceiling beyond the window of the stasis pod. He winced, his body in sweltering agony, as if he had been laying in a fire. He might as well have been doing so, his flesh either inflamed or blackened and charred. He doubted that he would make it out of this predicament. He was convinced he had fought his last fight, knowing first hoof how so many others sharing his beliefs met their painful ends. But there was a slight chance this would work. The slight chance that the enchantment which preserved his life for almost four hundred years did not simply freeze his body... but healed it. When he woke from his slumber the first time, his life signs were healthier than when he entered the pod. Now... now it was time to discover whether or not that result was a fluke. He let the blinding light take him. The anguish faded away... to nothingness. To numbness. If his mind hadn't stopped working, Phineas might have thought it to be bliss. *** When he returned to lucidity, he was ecstatic. "I was right!" said Phineas in awe. Tears blurred his sight, running down his cheeks and welling up underneath his helmet. He didn't care. He was alive. He had a foreleg raised, finding that the healing magic did not just repair his body, but also restored his armor! He looked to the panel, finding that he had been out of commission for another four days. Four days was the price he had to pay for his life. He had no complaints. Phineas raised the screen and sat up, quivering when it occurred to him just how close he was to dying... again. His quivering transitioned to nigh uncontrollable shuddering when he realized he still had the bodies on board. For four days... "Oh sweet Celestia, no..." It a long time for him to muster up the courage to go down to the hold and deal with the issue. "I won't smell anything, I won't run the risk of getting diseased. The suit will protect me and I'll have the shuttle run sanitation protocols. I can space the refuse," he told himself as he went down the shaft. Referring to the soldiers as refuse made disposing of their bodies somewhat easier for the pony. It made the Hoof-Talon operatives objects instead of formerly living things. It made dealing with the fact that he killed them easier to cope with as well. He was starting to fear that his penchant for murder was inherent, whereas others would have hesitated, he did not. He had no qualms destroying entire vessels and taking the lives of their crews... but actually seeing his enemy and slaying them in quick succession? Did that make him a monster? Was the only thing fit enough to fight the despicable something even worse than they? It was a disturbing thought that Phineas tried not to think about. *** Their innards had become discolored. That was the first thing the silver stallion noticed as he steeled himself for his morbid task. As he gathered the bodies for jettison, a dark thought crossed his mind. "It could happen again... the next time I might not be so fortunate." Now he was looking at the bodies in an all new light. The technology in their armor... his ship was well equipped in waging war on the legion of hybrids, but his spacesuit was not. It only provided basic protection from the harsh elements of space and had little worth in an actual fire fight. "Am I really willing... to loot corpses...?" Phineas asked himself. Once again, he found himself at an impasse with himself for the longest time. When he finally came to a decision, he had four sets of advanced armor to study and adapt to his own purposes. The wearers were floating in the void, their hides a blend of feather and fur, a seamless combination of pony and gryphon. In spite of the fact they were derived from things that were anything but to him; he couldn't help feeling they were alien and wrong and that handling them like that was something he should never have done. Another span of time later, he was lying on his cot, the space suit in a neat pile on the floor underneath the bed. He stared up at the ceiling blankly, a foreleg draped across his midsection, around the same area where the soldier was cut in two. His suit had been incorporated with Hoof-Talon shielding technology and his hover-platform rifles upgraded with parts from the blasters. "I am so fucked up."