//------------------------------// // Chapter 3 // Story: New Equestria: The Harmony Age // by Roguewire //------------------------------// Sabar was not happy. The ambush had begun without a hitch. He knew that the ponies had eyes in the Aunenen system, which is why they had followed them through the stargate instead of waiting for them on the other side. Everything had gone to plan until the Kitsune showed up, and their whole plan went belly-up. They lost the shuttle, they lost the Iteron Mark V, and they lost the opportunity to get payback. The dark-brown griffon ran his talons through the feathers on the back of his head. He was being paid to scrap ships in order for the rest of his pirate team to come in and collect, but now they had nothing. His employer would not be pleased. Sabar was no capsuleer, and the Bloodclaw, the Hurricane which Sabar was the captain of, was no pod-pilot's ship. Each system was maintained, manned and cared for by a living breathing being, and was a genuine ship instead of an extension of someone else's body. Right now the crew was at rest, but they were on a razor's edge; they could not settle down, because at any time they could be called to general quarters and be out of the station. He called his employer through a video call. If he answered with a video call, he would be displayed on the screen. He swore to himself when he did. A midnight-blue unicorn with black mane appeared at the other end of a desk. His front hooves were on his desk, and his piercing ice-blue eyes made for a disconcerting contrast to his dark surroundings. The shadowy lighting made his face difficult to make out, leaving only his bright blue eyes. "I don't understand why you are calling me, Sabar. You were to move in with the clean-up crew after you destroyed them. So have you?" He asked coldly. "That's the thing. They got away," Sabar replied. "A Kitsune swooped in and jammed me. There was nothing I could do." The unicorn's eyes narrowed. He tapped a hoof on his desk, pondering his next words. "I gave you one job, Sabar. One. Job." The unicorn's tone alone could be used to commit murder. "Do you know what that job was?" Sabar swallowed. "It was to hit commerce coming through the Aunenen system." "It was to hit Harmony's commerce, Sabar. That was your one job and it appears that you have failed to deliver. At this time my ponies are supposed to be sifting through the wreckage of their ships looking for something of strategic value, and instead of paying them for a successful job they are being paid to sit on their flanks." The unicorn sighed quietly. "There is not much more that can be done in the Aunenen system, we are pulling you out. Fortunately you have not failed me before this time, so you will receive a reprieve from such action. As soon as Harmony's Chimera has left the system, you will report to me. No later. We will send in a carrier to extract you. I am certain that you know the price of failing twice? I advise you not to let it happen again. Are we clear?" Sabar was no moron. He knew that he was dead if he failed again, and he also knew that sometimes this unicorn preferred his failing agents to be alive and conscious as they suffer. "Yes, sir." He answered, keeping the contempt out of his voice as best as he could. "Then we have an understanding. You will contact me when Harmony's carrier is gone, and we will send in ours to extract you. Don't fail this time." The unicorn abruptly hung up. Sabar exhaled the breath he did not realize he had been holding. Dealing with that pony, as well as the ponies he had been paid to deal with, was becoming increasingly difficult. ••• "Um...Pinkie Pie?" "Yeah?" "How long exactly are we going to wait here for that Hurricane?" Pinkie Pie was silent. Her Chimera-class carrier sat lie still in space, a squadron of Firbolg fighters orbiting lazily around the carrier in a loose patrol. It had been close to an hour since she had opened the cynosural field to allow the carrier, aptly-named Party Boat, into Aunenen. While there was not much partying to be had on a warship manned by hardened mercenary pilots, the party starts when the Party Boat is hot dropped into the action. "You mean you don't know where he is either?" Pinkie Pie asked playfully. "No, Pinkie Pie. I've tried to scan down the Hurricane, but I've had no luck in finding it." Fluttershy thought for a minute about the possible whereabouts of the Hurricane. There was nothing on her directional scanner, which was capable of detecting objects in a selectable range and radius. There was also nothing that could be detected by her scan probes, which she could launch into a star system and precisely retrieve navigation data. Certainly, the Hurricane was not equipped with a cloaking device, which would have rendered it invisible to all scanners and scan probes, and had not left the system through other means. A cynosural field would have shown up on the sensor systems of every ship in the star system, and there were no detectable fields at that time. "If it's ok with you, I'm going to dock at a station. Maybe he's hiding there," Fluttershy spoke. "Gotcha covered Fluttershy!" was Pinkie Pie's cheery reply. The squadrons aboard her Chimera would keep her company until their next move. Fluttershy chose the Joint Harvesting Mineral Reserve station orbiting Aunenen V. With any luck, the station would have the Hurricane which attacked them. Although, what Fluttershy really hoped for was that the Hurricane had just gone home; she did not want to threaten anyone else. Sometimes she even frightened herself with how threatening she could be. Entering warp, many of the features of the Aunenen system whizzed past her Kitsune on its way to the station. The Aunenen system was dimmer than the other systems that she had flown through before, which gave the entire system a foreboding presence. On top of that, the Aunenen system had a nasty reputation for being a pirate system, and that point was accentuated by her friends being attacked by a Hurricane on their way into the system. As the Gentle Butterfly approached the station, the Kitsune's navigation computer collapsed the warp bubble keeping the ship in warp. The ship came to a gradual halt in front of the station. The mammoth structure was horizontal in construction, with several large exhaust stacks spewing flaming noxious gas into space. This station was intended as a Caldari mineral reserve station, and inside it was a highly-secured building. Outside, the structure stood alone. Being a low-security area, the State did not have the time to place sentry cannons near the stations and stargates, and CONCORD, the interstellar police element , did not have the resources to allocate police elements to the system. These stations were the only safe bastion from nefarious and cutthroat pirates. "Fluttershy, requesting permission to dock," Fluttershy spoke shyly into the radio. "Permission granted, hold position and wait for tug drones," replied the traffic controller. Several objects, which Fluttershy's displays and camera drones identified as tug drones, gathered to her ship and latched on with mechanical limbs. The powerful engines of the tug drones moved her to the station's docking bay at a rather fast pace, slowing down only once they entered the cavernous space within. As she passed multiple ships that were moored in their docks, she took note of their class and their registered affiliation if they had one. She saw several Badger-class industrials owned by Joint Harvesting. Several frigates of various empire and capsuleer-owned corporations, a Thrasher-class destroyer owned by no particular corporation, and... A Hurricane-class battlecruiser. It was identical to the Hurricane which had attacked them earlier. No, Fluttershy realized upon looking up its identification number, it was the Hurricane which had attacked them. Of the corporation which employed them there was no indication. It was moored securely to the station, and its many guns were retracted into their assemblies, clearly deactivated. Her camera drones spotted maintenance drones making passes across its hull, and she zoomed in on an airlock corridor. Its transparent walls revealed personnel moving in and out; some were dressed like Joint Harvesting station personnel, some had the haggard look of a pirate. One of them was a brown-furred griffon, and it was staring right back at her. Her drones could see the absolute disdain on his face, and she felt like he was staring right back at her through her drones. ••• Sabar recognized the Kitsune. It was the same one which had interfered with his ambush. Why was it here though? Did it come in a gesture of gloating about ruining his day? Or, did it dock here to scout his presence, and relay his position here for allies who would no doubt want a piece of his battlecruiser. He knew that the ships he had attacked were piloted by capsuleers, and he knew how cruel and merciless they could be. To them, living creatures and starships worth hundreds of millions of interstellar credits were merely toys to be broken and replaced. He knew that the camera drones of the Kitsune were upon him, gauging his every move. He did not want to think about what kind of pony could be the pilot of that ship, as to him they were all the same—cold-blooded murderers with god complexes who cared nothing for the "mortals" around them. He stared down the Kitsune for a few minutes, in the way that a predator and its prey stare down before the chase. Just as suddenly as it docked, the tug drones latched into the frigate and pulled it out of the station. Already it was leaving. Sabar saw the Kitsune as a rabbit, and saw himself as a patient hunter waiting to strike. While this rabbit ran, Sabar chose to wait, and let it go. There was no doubt that the Kitsune was likely baiting him, hoping that he was too jumpy to remain inside and lure himself and his crew to a swift death. Hunters chose their prey, and they dictated how their prey was caught. Sixty seconds had not passed after the Kitsune had left before a Thrasher-class destroyer loomed into his view, pulled by tug drones. He knew exactly what this Thrasher wanted to do; it wanted to claim the kill. He would have tried to warn the captain of the destroyer just how bad an idea it was to go after the Kitsune right now, but did pirates ever listen to advice from pirates? The answer to that question was yes, and the still-alive pirates are testament to that fact. ••• Fluttershy had bolted from the station after spotting the Hurricane. Half of it was out of the anxiety that she was being used in an active scouting role when her ship was an unarmed electronic warfare frigate. Another part of it was the desire to leave the Hurricane alone, as she had done enough to upend its day and did not want to be rude by upending it more. As her Kitsue was pulled out of the station, the traffic control issued to her the usual protocol involving undocking procedures. She willed her engines to full power flew straight ahead as she opened a channel to Pinkie Pie. "Pinkie Pie? I found the Hurricane." Instead of a coherent reply, Pinkie Pie was loudly singing a song in Gallentean, presumably with the pilots of the Firbolgs, who were former Federation Navy pilots themselves. "Pinkie Pie? Pinkie Pie?" Fluttershy repeated politely, failing to get Pinkie Pie's attention. She sighed to herself, then heard the alarm claxon. The capsule's systems directly stimulated aural nerves, and overrode the radio systems when the alarm sounded. A yellow box appeared in her peripheral vision as a threat indicator, causing her to wheel her camera drones directly behind her. The yellow box was around the Thrasher which was previously docked in the station. It was an indicator showing that it was targeting the Gentle Butterfly. Suddenly the box turned red, and she spotted the Thrasher's many cannons, more than the Hurricane before. All of its cannons flashed, and with a tremendous shudder half of her shield were stripped away. She yelped and dove downward, sending her Kitsune into an evasive spiral dive. Another salvo of shells knocked off another quarter of her shields. Just as quickly, another alarm sounded indicating that her warp core had been suddenly disrupted. Thoroughly panicked, she activated her shield boosters to give herself a few moments more of survival. With each cycle, the shield boosters injected additional energy into her shield projector. The shield booster was very intense on a ship's capacitor, however, and an inexperienced pilot or captain could quickly drain his own capacitor and be defenseless and dead in the water. "Pinkie Pie! Pinkie Pie!" She shouted, desperate to get Pinkie Pie's attention. "What is it, Fluttershy?" Pinkie Pie asked, the concern apparent in her voice. "Thrasher! Getting shot at! Help me Pinkie Pie!" "Percheron group! Captain Tonnerre! Get out there and give Fluttershy cover!" Pinkie Pie ordered. A howitzer shell impacted squarely with Fluttershy's frigate, removing the shield which had just been recovered by her shield boosters. She was running out of time and options, and Pinkie Pie was running out of time. Another salvo impacted the Gentle Butterfly, leaving her devoid of valuable defenses. With a whoop and energetic chatter in Gallentean, five Firbolg fighters in a delta formation swooped over her Kitsune at full speed. Their blaster cannons flared, ovoid packets of supercharged plasma pounding away at the offending Thrasher with speed and ferocity. Their strafing run had given the Thrasher palpable pause, and it began to target the fighters with its cannons. The small, agile fighters were a very difficult target for the larger destroyer, whose shots were frequently missing. One shot found its mark. The wing of a Firbolg was smashed to pieces, causing the hapless fighter to spiral out of control. The cannon which landed the shot continued to track the spinning fighter. The whole cockpit assembly ejected from the fighter just moments before a titanium sabot obliterated the Firbolg. The pilot had decided to eject instead of sharing the fate of its fighter. The compartment drifted through space, slowly tumbling through the void. The Thrasher aligned to one of the planets of the Aunenen star system, and it warped away. Aggressive Gallentean chatter filled the radio, and the four remaining fighters warped off in hot pursuit. It all happened so fast that Fluttershy was completely overwhelmed. Suddenly she was left with the drifting debris of the Firbolg, and a spaced pilot whose time and oxygen were dwindling rapidly. ••• "That cockroach got Saule!" Captain Rafale bellowed over the radio to his Gallentean pilots. "When we get that little insect we're going to stomp him good. Everypony got that?" The three remaining wingponies issued their concurrence, and their formation broke as soon as their warp bubble collapsed. Their destination was exactly where the Thrasher was that they were in pursuit of. Today was absolutely not going to be his day. The Thrasher had taken some damage to its armor, but a combination of speed and insane maneuverability had kept it from taking any real damage. Rafale cursed inwardly as he saw that it had regenerated a good portion of its shields. "Hey Tonnerre, if we get his shields down you have to deliver the killing strike," Rafale radioed to their soon-to-arrive compatriot. "You get his shields down so we can do this in one run," was a deep, gruff response. "Right then. Let's go to work everypony!" Rafale declared as they drove through the cannon shells the Thrasher desperately threw at them. Their blaster cannons discharged with fierce energy. It was harder to beat down the shields of the Thrasher with just the four of them, and the destroyer's cannons were firing faster and more accurately than before. While the Thrasher was no easy opponent, fighters could overwhelm cruisers given time. "I'm almost there, do you have its shields down?" Tonnerre inquired. "Yes, yes its shields are down. Get your flank in gear and show this bug the power of a Cyclops!" was Rafale's strained reply. The hulking shape of a Cyclops fighter-bomber, easily the size of a frigate, lazily floated into the battlefield. It made one pass over the Thrasher before peeling away. The midsection of the Thrasher was blown to smithereens by the force of Tonnerre's thermal contact bomb. The fore section swung forward, disconnected from its aft section which was annihilated in a massive fireball by its fusion core going critical. Sent tumbling by the explosion, the fore section slowly rotated, its cannons falling quiet and lifeless. "And yet another glorious starship reduced to a scrap heap by the amazing Captain Tonnerre and his Cyclops," Rafale announced like an emcee on a holovision gameshow. "You're just jealous," was Tonnerre's reply. A small door opened at the top of the fore section, and a capsule slid out into the void of space. "Hey, we have a capsule here. Pinkie Pie, should we engage?" Rafale asked over the radio. After a few seconds, in which the capsule had aligned to warp away, Pinkie Pie replied. "Meh, let him go. He just learned what happens when you crash a Pinkie Pie party." There was a palpable silence which hung in the air. Nobody wanted to think about what happened to their fellow pilot, Saule. ••• Fluttershy gently pushed her Kitsune to the lifeboat. Her ship did not have any tractor beam modules on it, so she had to manually pick up the lifeboat. It was an easy task for someone who was a capsuleer as long as she had been, but there was little margin for error. The cargo hold opened, and she slowly moved forward. The lifeboat drifted into her cargo hold lazily, and her camera drones focused on the lifeboat. The pilot within was responsive, and was looking around the interior of the cargo hold. Medical scanners in Fluttershy's hold delivered data, pertaining to the pilot in the life boat. Earth Pony. Female. Blood pressure: elevated. Heart rate: elevated. Rate of breathing: elevated, due to elevated heart rate and limited oxygen. Neural activity: elevated. Subject stress levels within nominal parameters. No serious physical injuries detected. As far as Fluttershy could detect, the Firbolg pilot had survived unscathed, and was just shocked and shaken. She did, of course, had to let the mare out of the lifeboat before she suffocated on low oxygen. Genty, Fluttershy turned up the artificial gravity in the cargo hold, bringing the lifeboat down slowly to the deck. After closing the cargo hold doors, she repressurized the hold with oxygen from one of multiple backup storage tanks. After a moment, it would be safe for the pilot to leave her lifeboat. "Um...you can come out now," Fluttershy said over one of the many intercoms in the ship. "I turned the gravity back on, and there is plenty of air in the hold as well as the rest of the ship. You don't need to worry anymore." The cockpit door of the lifeboat swung open, and a fully-suited Earth Pony clambered out of the lifeboat. She landed on the floor in gravity just strong enough to make her landing gentle, and removed her helmet. The pilot took a deep breath of air, even though it tasted heavily recycled. Her coat was grey, and her green mane was cut short enough to fit in her helmet. Her coffee-brown eyes darted about, taking in her surroundings. "Thank you, Madame Fluttershy," the pony spoke to Fluttershy. "My name is Saule, and if you can get into contact with my squadron, please tell everypony that I am unharmed." "I'll do that right away," Fluttershy spoke before muting the input to the Kitsune's intercoms and opening a channel to Pinkie Pie. "Pinkie Pie? There is a pony her who I picked up from her lifeboat, her name is Saule, and I think she is from the Percheron group. Can you tell them that she is unharmed?" she asked. "Well, why not tell them yourself?" Pinkie Pie asked cheerily. "Um..." Fluttershy began to protest, but before she could finish the radio channel had been switched, and the voice of Captain Rafale was heard. "Madamoiselle Fluttershy, you have something to tell us?" Fluttershy was overcome with shyness for a moment, her natural reaction to the sudden injection of an in introduced person into a conversation. She regained her composure, and replied in a shy, quiet tone which was characteristic of the timid Pegasus. "Your lieutenant, Saule...she is unharmed and safe in my ship." There was an audible sigh of relief from Rafale, as well as some additional Gallentean chatter. "Merci a thousand times, Madamoiselle. We cannot thank you enough," he proclaimed. "You're welcome," was her humble response. She could sense herself smile in her capsule, happy that she was able to save a life instead of take life away, as was the impulse of many a capsuleer. "And you know what this calls for?" Pinkie Pie asked enthusiastically. "A Fluttershy-rescued-somepony-who-could-have-died-in-a-fireball party! But first, can you light me a cyno in Daras? I need to get this party boat back there because that is where I keep it in case we need it and I also keep the spare fighters there so that when somepony's fighter gets blown up..." Pinkie Pie carried on enthusiastically. She kept talking even as Fluttershy warped to the Otalieto Stargate. Jumping into Otalieto, she warped to the stargate leading to the Daras system. The Daras system, just like Aunenen, was a low-security system. However, it was populated by friends of Harmony, who often cooperated with them on regular roams through the Black Rise region in order to clear out pirates and other undesirables. As she landed on the gate, it flashed once and revealed a Harpy-class assault ship, a frigate with power rivaling most cruiser-sized warships. She recognized the ship and its pilot, who was a member of their ally corporation. "Hello there, Fluttershy," greeted the pilot over the radio. "Hello, Duster. What brings you out here?" She asked him. "Well, the Deacon needed to rebuild his Paladin, and needed me to get tech-two beam laser cannons for it. I'm headed through Aunenen to get them, because you cannot get them in the Malariya Constellation. So, wish me luck," Duster replied. It did not seem to him like a chore—"the Deacon" was a hardened capsuleer who had seen many fights in his time, and was also an Amarrian priest until the way of the capsule entered his life. It never stopped him from spitting fiery sermons at times, and his priestly life did nothing to prevent him from ruining his security status with CONCORD in the name of purging the galaxy of pirate filth. "Oh, you don't have to go all the way through Aunenen. I'm sure Twilight Sparkle would be more than happy to lend some to you. If that's ok with you, I mean." "Well that is mighty nice of you, Fluttershy," Duster replied, "but the Deacon already bought them on the regional market and asked me to go pick them up. I don't need another sermon about sloth and laziness and this and that." "Well, we did just clear out Aunenen after I got ambushed by a Thrasher. Pinkie Pie's Firbolg pilots really know their stuff. You should be safe when going through." "Well, thank you again, Fluttershy, and if I ever catch that slimy eel that ambushed you, I'll make sure he hurts for it. Gotta run now, see you next time," Dusty said with some cheer as he warped towards the Aunenen gate. Fluttershy was not all that shy around these pilots, because she knew them, as well as her friends knew them as well." She entered the Daras system and warped to the sole space station in the system. This was a common place to activate cynosural fields, as the station's sentry guns allowed someone to hover near the station in relative safety. Just as she ignited the cynosural field, she received an email from Twilight Sparkle. IMPORTANT: Please come to Lai Dai, we need to discuss matters important to Harmony. From: Twilight Sparkle. To: Applejack. Cc: Fluttershy, Pinkie Pie, Rarity. Pinkie Pie's Chimera tore a hole in reality as it jumped into the system in a bright display of lights. She would hover outside the station until Fluttershy's cynosural field generator turned off. Fluttershy would then drop off the stranded pilot, and then both would fly back to the Uesuro system. As much as Pinkie Pie disliked it, their Fluttershy-rescued-somepony-who-could-have-died-in-a-fireball party would have to be postponed.