//------------------------------// // Daring // Story: The Price of Citizenship // by Colgate is best pony //------------------------------// ECY 1008.7 EqCom, Canterlot Shining Armor stepped away from the podium, happy to finally be free of the flashbulbs in his face. His two security guards flanking him, the white stallion slowly dredged his way through the forest of microphones. He had stated several times that he wouldn’t be taking questions, but the media, as usual, didn’t care. The shouting was unbearable.         “Why is General Chessmaster being given a full burial?”         “Do you have any more details on the draft?”         “Where is Princess Celestia?”         “When will casualty lists be made public?”         “What are you hiding?”         The lift doors closed, and the noise stopped. The guard to his left punched in the code for Shining’s office, and the flock of cameras disappeared below the rapidly rising elevator. He’d soon be moving into Chessmaster’s former space, but the blood splattering all over the wall would take a few days to be disinfected. The newly promoted Supreme Commander didn’t really mind, as his office was well hidden within the labyrinthian halls of EqCom. In his youth, it had been perfect for sneaking Cadance in for some late night rendezvous, but today he just wanted a reprieve from being asked questions that he didn’t know the answers to.           The lift stopped, and the trio of stallions stepped into his office’s antechamber. His secretary, Due Diligence, had been given the day off to be with her family; her brother was an officer on Celestia. He entered the office, leaving the guards in the first room, and trudged to his desk. The room was normally quite messy- Twilight had flipped when she witnessed the chaos on a visit the previous year- but today it was a total disaster zone. Papers lay on every possible surface, containing everything from long range sensor data to reservist rosters. All of it would have to be sorted through, at some point. Maybe, he thought, I can wait until I move offices, and some of it will get lost on the way.         Levitating some of the papers out of his chair, the unicorn sat behind his oaken desk. He liked the feel of the wood beneath his hooves, despite the laughs he got from some of his comrades that were sporting magically woven glass versions. It reminded him of home, of a simpler time when being Captain of the Royal Guard meant nothing more than dealing with some changelings. He longed for those days.         He used magic to activate his viewscreen and saw that he had over three hundred messages. He looked for a place to bang his head on the desk, but couldn’t find a space devoid enough of paperwork. With a heavy sigh, he started browsing through emails.         The bulk of the communiques were casualty confirmations and officer promotion orders. Nopony really knew how bad the Equestrian Invasion force had gotten smeared, but initial reports were much worse than anybody had originally imagined. Entire battalions, and in some cases, entire divisions, had simply disappeared. A few had been lucky enough to see the writing on the wall and get off of the planet in the early stages of the counterattack, but they were in the extreme minority. Nearly 10,000 infantry ponies were certainly dead, and over 70,000 remained unaccounted for from the ground based units alone, and most of them would eventually become KIAs. Intelligence suggested that as many as ten thousand were being held captive, but it was impossible to know for sure. The non pony units had fared just as poorly, and Armor guessed that their casualties could reach 75%. Looking at the data, he guessed that it would take weeks to get a remotely accurate account of just how bad the infantry had it.         Arguably, the fleet did much worse. Many ships had been able to launch some escape pods, but with nopony to pick them up, the actions were tragically in vain. The ones that didn’t, however, saw total losses. Luna  had limped back to celestium, as well as twenty other vessels, but over ninety wrecks would remain in the system for the Antarans to pillage.         He read the list of confirmed fleet losses. Hurricane had burned up, presumably with half of Manticore Squadron still in it. Manerheim broke in half, Canterlot was abandoned, and Celestia self-destructed. The list went on. It would take years to rebuild.         He had very little solid numbers to go on, but it was looking more and more like he’d have to lead the Equestrian Military with only two operating fleets. The ranks could be filled easily, as EqCom would no doubt spin the loss in a way that would double volunteering, and a draft of sorts was being discussed in Parliament. But without a fleet to put the troops anywhere, the numbers could be utterly useless. Worse still, he had to keep the Fourth Fleet at Home, leaving Celestium largely unguarded and most of the colony worlds completely vulnerable. It was a risk he had to take, however, as the Antaran fleet’s actions above their homeworld showed just how much of a threat they’d be to Home if they reached it.         Shining went through the rest of the emails, and looked up at his clock to see that three hours had passed. He had a fairly good idea of what he was up against now; an army that was largely untested and very afraid, and no navy to put them anywhere. He wondered if anyone else had ever been “promoted” to such a mess. It was really too bad that Chessmaster had taken the easy way out- Shining could have at least used a tour around his new facilities, if nothing else.         His gaze found the picture of Cadance on his desk. She had flown to the Crystal Empire earlier the previous night, knowing how fragile the collective mentality of her people was. He longed for her embrace. She was the only pony that could ever hope to calm or soothe his nerves, and he missed her more than anything. She didn’t even need to use her magic to warm his spirits; just seeing her or hearing her angelic voice could do the trick. But she had her duty, and he had his. It was getting late, and he hadn’t slept in days. A good nap, at least, would give him the energy to read more casualty lists, as they would certainly pour in as more information was collected         He was about to shut down his terminal and head home when another email popped into his inbox. He wanted to ignore it, but figured that, as the new Supreme Commander, he should devote at least a glance to the subject line. He was immediately glad that he did.         The subject simply read “EC Starswirl the Bearded CN-1313 Recovered Survivor List”, and the word survivor was not something he had seen in the batch of 300 emails he had chugged through so far. Hooves shaking, he opened the document.         It was far too short. He counted before reading the names and saw that thirty seven ponies had been pulled from the planet’s surface. Thirty seven. Not even an entire company. Armor shuddered. If the rest of the “survivor” lists were like this, the casualty count would certainly climb above 100,000. Distraught, he read through the list of ponies, if only to prove that the thirty seven indeed existed. Two names caught his eye near the bottom of the list. He smiled, probably for the first time in days, and clicked to forward the message, dictating out loud to the terminal. “Dear Twili. . .” ---- Celestium          Applejack lifted her head and a stab of pain greeted her entire body, followed by a soothing wave of numbness. Glancing around the room, she took note of a magical medicine dispenser to her left, thus explaining the euphoric feeling coursing through her veins. There were dozens of tubes sticking out of various parts of her body, some with liquids flowing in, others draining things out. Unlike Rainbow Dash, she had never woken up in a hospital bed, so she was quite unsettled by the entire situation.         She tried to sit up, but a wave of dizziness met her, suggesting that she had been in stasis for some time after a sub-space flight. Loosening the straps lashing her to the bed and floating upwards confirmed that she was at least on board a space going vessel. Which one, or how she had arrived there, remained a mystery.         Feeling spasms of pain in her wounded leg, Applejack tried to lay down, but the lack of gravity prevented it. Rolling her eyes, she searched for a nurse call button, but none was in reach. She lay there, suspended, for a few more minutes before someone walked in. Applejack recognized her immediately.         “Joy! What are you doing here!”         Nurse Joy Redheart smiled at Applejack, and lowered her back onto the bed.         “Same thing as you, Applejack. Serving Celestia and all that. But not quite as dangerously as you are, it would appear. How are you feeling?”         Applejack told her, the white earth pony listening as she read the readouts on the various consoles surrounding the bed. Seeing that things were normalizing, the mare took some notes on a datapad.         “Joy, how long has it been?”         “Eight weeks. You’re on board the medical ship Mercy, and we’re orbiting Celestium. We’ve kept you in stasis since you returned on Starswirl the Bearded. I’m sure I don’t need to tell you how lucky you are to be here, do I?”         Applejack grimaced at the thought.         “How bad was it?”         “I have to go check on some of the others, but activate the console to your right.”         The nurse spoke harshly, her demeanor doing a complete one eighty. She didn’t make eye contact as she spoke, and she left the room quickly after speaking.         Somewhat shaken, Applejack activated the console. She was even more displeased by what she saw. After a few minutes of catching up, she’d seen all the she could bear and turned the screen off, wishing that the magical medicine device was manually operated. ----          Two more weeks of crushing inactivity passed before she was released from Mercy’s care. Rainbow Dash had already been transferred to an intensive care unit on the surface, and with most of the ponies onboard Mercy still in various states of physical decay, Applejack had not had anyone to talk to besides her doctors. With her leg still not properly healed, she wasn’t even allowed out of her room until day ten of the confinement. She spent her time writing letters, searching for news, and crying. Only 36 members of Cadenza’s Spear had survived Antara. Only six from her company, and one from her platoon. First platoon, the people she had spent every waking moment with for half a year, was completely gone, with Applejack having witnessed the brutal slayings of many of its members. She hadn’t felt so alone, or guilty, in a long, long time. Time passed in a haze, and she found simple tasks frustratingly difficult. Pointless, even. Even a letter from Big Mac sucked all of the energy out of her. It was a heavy burden to bear, and not the physical kind she was used to. She had been relatively lucky, though, even among survivors. Her wounds were not too bad in comparison- she hadn’t lost any limbs or organs- and she still maintained most of her sanity. As she would come to find out, a significant portion of the seven thousand or so infantry ponies to make it off of Antara had completely lost their minds at the sight of the carnage the planet held. Applejack would eventually come to wonder if they had seen a worse fate than their fallen comrades.                  Her discharge transport landed at Port Royal, Celestium’s largest space port. With orders to report to the barracks, Applejack began to walk, slowly and clumsily, down the main avenue of the city. At the second crossing, she waited for the stream of automated chariots to slow before attempting to hobble across. A jet black vehicle stopped in front of her, and the door opened. A black unicorn mare sat inside, levitating a pistol at her.         “Get in.”         Too weak to resist or even to shuffle out of the way of the gun, Applejack clambered in. The door slammed behind her, and the chariot took off. The mare lowered the weapon and smiled.         “Sorry about that, but I’m not really supposed to be out in public, Applejack.”         Applejack raised an eyebrow.         The mare lowered the weapon and smiled, releasing a violet aura from her horn. The magic filled the cabin, radiating with a familiar warmth, and Applejack was forced to shield her eyes from the incredibly bright shine. An popping noise fizzed about, and when Applejack looked up, the glow was gone, replaced by a jittery, unkempt Twilight Sparkle.         “Its great to see you alive, AJ. How have the last two weeks been treating you? I wanted to wake you sooner, but the doctors said you needed rest, and who am I to argue? I mean, I am the head of Equestrian Intelligence now, but that doesn’t make me a doctor, so “let her rest!” I said. Anyway, it seems to have worked, because you look a whole lot better now, although with all the tubes removed and the bruises gone that is kind of a given. How is your leg? We were worried that the Antaran’s would have some sort of poison in their claws, but you don’t appear to be suffering any ill after effects. Are you?”         Applejack’s mouth fell open. She hadn’t seen her friend in months, and it had been years since she’d seen her in such a nervous state. A familiar twitching of her right eye accompanied nearly each sentence the unicorn said.         “Oh no! You’ve been deafened, haven't you! This is horrible! But I may be able to find some spells. . .”         Awoken from her shocked stupor, Applejack cut her friend off.         “Relax, sugarcube. I’m not deaf, just surprised to see you.”         Twilight visibly relaxed, the presence of her fully functional friend calming her. Still, her eyes seemed to be going a million places at once, her ears struggling to keep up.         “Now, would you mind telling me what the hay this is all about?”         Twilight, invited to give a lecture, smiled a devious grin. Applejack nervously mirrored it.         “This is going to be a long ride, isn’t it?” ----          It indeed was a long, but informative, ride from Port Royal to a much smaller, secret spaceport some ways away from the city. In Twilight’s office, deep beneath the planet’s surface, Applejack stared at a 3-D schematic in front of her. The orange light of the projector contorted and wove itself into a sleek, pointed form, looking like the dolphins that Apple Bloom had once sought to train. This shape, though, looked much more aggressive than a dolphin, and had the metaphoric teeth to back up its stature. Torpedo launchers, laser banks, disruptor cannons; the ship was loaded for one purpose- hunting.         “I still don’t understand, Twilight. I get that these ships. . .”         “The Friendship Class,” interrupted Twilight.         “The Friendship Class, are all stealth. . .”                  “And fast! Celestium to Home in three days!”          “. . . and fast. But how can these help us, especially if we’ve only got one of them?”         “That is where you are going to come in! You take one of these ships behind enemy lines, and figure out what they are up to. While you’re at it, annoy them! Smash their ships, supply lines, anything you can get at. It is very, very important, Applejack. You of all ponies should appreciate how difficult it must be to feed an entire army!”         “But Twi, how is one ship going to make any difference? And how am I supposed to even find their supply lines? We obviously aren’t very good at tracking them, remember?”         Twilight’s eyes lit up, as if something of extreme importance had suddenly manifested itself within her cavernous intellect. Her horn glowed, and a familiar black disk, now on a chain, appeared around Applejack’s neck.                  “I completely forgot! As it turns out, your Lieutenant Focus, or “agent one five six” as they have me call him around here, although I suppose that is you now, isn’t it, was able to do a little bit of intelligence gathering before things got. . .bad. He was able to find two things- first, that the Antarans definitely are a hive mind, although we kind of knew that already, and second, that their collective brain wave signal can be detected by our sensors! Isn’t that great!”         For the second time in a few hours, Applejack’s jaw dropped. She hadn’t thought of Focus in quite a while. It was hard to believe that he was really gone, and she hadn’t fully processed the absence yet, and it seemed that Twilight wouldn’t give her any time for grieving, either.         “Well, it is great, and I’ll tell you why! We can’t tell what they are saying, but we can tell where they are saying it from! With this data in your system, you can see every Antaran vessel for five light years!”         Applejack’s ears perked at that tidbit.         “For real? Every single one?”         Twilight beamed with pride.         “You bet! Told you it was great!”         Applejack, for the first time in a long time, felt a deep sense of optimism. If the Friendship class could really stay hidden, and it could see the enemy at that kind of range, then the prospects of success were a lot better than any plan she could have devised. Especially with the arms it bore, and the speed it had to get out of dodge when the situation got too hairy.         “Well, Twi, I think this might actually work then. And you sure you want me in charge of it? I’m not even really in the Navy, right?”         Twilight’s smile somehow got bigger.         “Oh, don’t you worry about that, AJ. You have some friends in very high places. Some rather Shining friends, if you catch my drift. Friends wearing some very nice Armor, if you know what. . .”         “I think I got you the first time, sugarcube.”         “Sorry! It’s just so exciting!” Twilight blushed. “My two best friends working with me on a mission to save all of ponydom! Sort of just like old times, right!?”         Furrowing her brow, Applejack gave Twilight a quizzical look.         “Beg your pardon, but, your two best friends?”         Again, Twilight seemed to explode with energy.         “Oh my gosh! How could I have forgotten! I’m so sorry!” She turned to a console, and activated a comm unit.         “Send her in, please!”         She turned back to Applejack and smiled. The earth pony returned the grin, and the two stared at each other for a few uncomfortable moments. Finally, the door to the room opened, and a cyan figure strode in.         “‘Bout time you showed up, Applejack! I was about to go take our new ship out for a spin myself!”         Relief washed over Applejack, as she found herself galloping towards her friend. Of all the people she had seen that day on Antara, Rainbow Dash was the only one she had seen alive. The mare was about to give the pegasus a Pinkie Pie caliber hug when she stopped short, staring at Rainbow’s back, noticing for the first time something very different.         While Rainbow Dash’s right wing reflected the same cool blue it had always been, her left wing was now a metallic silver, with the pegasus’ six color motif streaked across it. At first, Applejack thought it was some odd paint, adopted by the Manticores, or even just a trick of the light, but closer inspection proved her wrong. The entire apparatus, from the base of rainbow’s back to the feather tips of the wing, was metal. It gave Rainbow a very weird look, as if she were not fully pony- which, in reality, was correct.         “Like the new wing, aye Applejack? Or just jealous of the awesome new paint job?” Rainbow extended the appendage, allowing her friend to take in its majesty. Shape wise, the wing was largely identical to its twin on Rainbow’s right side, but the similarities ended there. Fully extended, Applejack could see the rainbow streaks formed a sort of lightning bolt down the length of the design- it made Rainbow look quite formidable.         “Rainbow! What happened to you?” Applejack’s first reaction was shock, and then concern. At the back her mind, a nagging feeling that she had some seriously unfinished business with Rainbow Dash festered, but she chose to ignore it. For now, at least.         “Left my old wing on Antara. No biggie, we just have to go get it back some day, right? Besides, this bad boy is sweet- just as fast as my old one, and a million times less likely to break. I even told them to leave take the fake skin off of it- looks cooler that way. I designed the paint myself. Like it?”         The pegasus was absolutely beaming, and Applejack sensed that it was not just because of the new wing. Applejack felt it, too- the first bit of real happiness she had experienced in a long time. Despite all that had happened, she honestly felt that, with a friend back at her side, things could only get better, even with the baggage they would need to work out.         “I sure do, sugarcube. But lets be a little more careful this time- I’d hate to see you with a matching set.”         “Fair enough,” replied Rainbow, blushing. “But before we do that, I’ve been telling Twilight here for three weeks that Friendship 1 is not exactly a great name for the best ship in galaxy.”         The two ponies looked at Twilight, who’s blush now matched Rainbow’s.         “Well, I told Rainbow that it was symbolic, especially with you two on board, but I guess the captain can change the name, if she wants. What do you think, Applejack?”         Applejack considered for a second, but her thoughts were interrupted by Rainbow Dash frantically waving, begging for attention. Applejack could guess where this was going. She exhaled loudly.         “We’re not naming the ship Rainbow Dash.”         Rainbow seemed to deflate a bit, and Twilight laughed at her consternation. Undaunted, Rainbow pressed on.         “Sonic Rainboom? Wonderbolt? Best Young Flier? Daring Do?”         Applejack raised an eyebrow, and raised a hoof to quiet her.         “How about just Daring?”         Rainbow Dash considered for a moment.         “I could deal with that. Not as cool as my idea, but cool enough.”         Applejack’s already high spirits rose again.         “Good to have you back, Rainbow Dash.”