//------------------------------//
// Friday 
// Story: M.A.N.E. 
// by BRBrony9 
//------------------------------//

For Twilight Sparkle, Friday was unlike any other day of the week. Every Friday evening, she would pack her lunch and her notebooks into her saddlebag and trotted up into the western hills not far from Ponyville, near the Hoofer Dam hydroelectric plant. 

Atop the tallest peak, about a mile south of the dam and three miles west of town, sat the Central Equestria Observatory. Its mammoth reflector telescope was the largest in the nation, and Twilight, amateur astronomer and egghead, loved to compare the results she could obtain through her own modest telescope with the ones the observatory could capture with its vastly superior equipment. Since the observatory was state-owned, Princess Celestia had arranged for her favourite student to be able to visit every week to see what she could learn about optics, astronomy and the universe.  

This week was no different. She, or rather Spike, had packed her lunch, and she had made her way out of town and up the paved track to the peak, the observatory dome looming above her like the top of a giant salt shaker. She paused near the entrance and turned around. The only sound she could hear was the tumbling gush of the water as it flowed through the spillways of the Hoofer Dam.

Equestria stretched out before her, as far as her eyes could see. The peak, while not particularly high, had unobstructed views in all directions. She could see the faint phosphorescent band of surf far to the west where Equestria's coastline met the ocean. To the south, nearly a hundred miles away, she could see the distant sodium glow of Baltimare. To the east, across the valley, the towering peaks of the Foal Mountains sprung up like a row of jagged teeth, easily visible in the light of Luna's moon because of the snow covering their upper reaches. Ten miles north and easily distinguishable thanks to its blinking anti-collision beacons was Cloudsdale, the floating Pegasi city. In the far north, just visible on a clear night like this, was Canterlot, the capital, perched high above the valley floor on the edge of a rocky outcropping of the northern Foals.

Below her sat Ponyville, her home. A town of some 100,000 ponies, it had grown rapidly within her lifetime. Some of the older ponies, like Granny Smith, told of how in their youth it was little more than a quaint backwater village. While it did still retain some of that charm, especially in the Old Quarter of town, for the most part it was beginning to look a lot like any other mid-level provincial town, like Trottingham, Canterbury or Whinnyapolis. 

Twilight smiled as she looked down at Ponyville. All her friends lived down there, in that roughly circular bowl of lights. Her family, however, lived in Canterlot- her parents, and her older brother Shining Armour, commander of the Royal Guard. Canterlot was far enough away that all she could see was the faint glow of the city's lights, but she could picture in her mind the tall, elegant spires and domes of the buildings. 

South of town, between Ponyville and distant Baltimare, she could make out the faint lights of some of the string of military installations that dotted the wide southern end of the valley. She knew little of the precise nature of any particular outpost- they were top secret and closely guarded and patrolled, after all. But she knew their general purpose- they were installations of the Equestrian Strategic Command, the branch of the military responsible for the operation of Equestria's strategic nuclear arsenal, and defence against those of the enemy. Headquartered just outside the town of Omareha, the ESC commanded fleets of both missiles and long range bombers. Though they were theoretically under the auspices of the ESC, the Air Force operated the bombers for logistical reasons. The Navy had long been clamoring for its own nuclear weapons, but when tests were made fitting a shortened ballistic missile to one of their submarines, something- although nopony knew precisely what- had gone wrong, and the ENS Phoenix had been lost with all hooves.

There were defence radars out there somewhere, probably up in the hills, and there was a large cluster of missile silos in the southern valley, almost equidistant between Ponyville and Baltimare, each one loaded with a long-range Minutemare ballistic missile. Twilight had read an article somewhere that the Minutemares were so named because only 60 seconds would elapse between the crew starting the launch procedure and the missile clearing the silo. Though she knew nothing of the inner workings of the silos, that seemed like something of an exaggeration to her, but it allowed ponies to give the missiles an amusing nickname- their official designation, according to the same article, was SLS-4, which stood for Strategic Launch System No. 4. What the other three might be, Twilight had no idea. 

She loved coming up to the observatory on clear nights like this. The views were great; though what she could see was only a small fraction of Equestria, she loved the scale; everything she could see belonged to her home nation. It was what those missiles silos were built to protect. She felt a surge of pride rush through her every time she looked out across the valley. Being patriotic was rather in vogue at the moment, thanks to the tensions between Equestria and their northwestern neighbour, the Union of Saddle Republics. 

Though the two nations shared no land borders, being separated by some hundred or so miles of frigid ocean, tensions had been high for years, ever since Equestria first developed nuclear weapons, testing their bombs in the arctic wastelands of the frozen north. The USR had followed suit shortly after, their test detonations taking place in the western deserts. Over the next few years, tensions had grown as the range of their atomic arms had extended steadily. Within a few years, both sides possessed weaponry capable of reaching the coastal and near-coastal cities of their adversary, and a few years after that the new intercontinental missiles entered service, capable of striking any city and any point in their enemy's homeland. 

And so it had remained, for almost a decade now. The missile fleets of both nations had sat, unused, in their silos, their heavy bombers never deployed in anger. Apart from a few naval standoffs and several small proxy wars in places like Azebraijan and Saddle Arabia, there had been no direct violence between Equestria and the USR. Both sides maintained a hefty military buildup, in both the nuclear and conventional fields, both to protect their allies and to dissuade the not insignificant threat of potential invasion. 

Twilight had heard the latest news. USR troops were massing on their border with Saddle Arabia, an Equestrian ally. The official report said it was 'large-scale combat exercises,' but Equestrian military and political planners were worried that it was the precursor to an invasion of the country. In turn Twilight was worried that, if war broke out, her brother would be shipped out overseas. She knew this was unlikely, though. As commander of the Royal Guard, Shining Armour's frontline combat days were long gone; these days he was as much a politician as a soldier, representing the Guard on the government's military advisory committee, as well as overseeing the day to day operation of the force. 

She also worried, though in a more distant sense, about the possibility of a full-scale war erupting between the USR and Equestria. She knew that, if that happened, sooner or later it would escalate and become a nuclear death sentence for both countries, and most of the rest of the world too. She knew that would be the end of Equestria. She took one final look out across the valley, then turned and went into the observatory.

Though the night air was mild, the air inside the observatory had a certain chill to it. The astronomers kept the air conditioning running to help cool and protect their computing equipment, which churned out a lot of heat. Twilight trotted along the corridor, heading for the telescope control room. As they were every Friday night, the two astronomers Starshine and Quasar were sat at the controls. They greeted her warmly as she entered.

'Hi, Twilight! How are you this week?' Starshine asked, looking up from a chart he was examining. 

'Hi, guys!' she replied. 'I'm doing great! How's the work coming along?' Quasar smiled broadly, removing his glasses and gesturing wildly with his hoof.

'Oh, it's simply astounding! We've already discovered so much in the Horsehead nebula, even though we have only scanned about a quarter of it so far. We're working in conjunction with the Las Pegasus Interferometer and...' he reeled off a list of discoveries and statistics. Twilight nodded, listening intently. She loved astronomy; the thoughts of what lay beyond their own planet intrigued her. As far as she or anypony else knew, the only pony to have ever left the planet was Princess Luna when she was banished to the moon. Twilight's thirst for knowledge was not limited to a single planet.

'Tonight we are going to be scanning another sector of the Horsehead Nebula,' Quasar continued. 'Would you like to take a look? We can tell you what you're looking at.' Twilight grinned.

'Would I?' She hurried over to the control panel and sat down to start her lesson. 




Princess Celestia watched as the immaculately attired USR ambassador trotted out of the throne room. Like most ambassadors, he was obsequious to a fault. It was almost sickening, she thought. Even if he had been delivering an official declaration of war, he would have been smiling and bowing to her. 

As it was, he had been delivering a message of moderation. A call for thought and reasoned debate; a call to the negotiating table. USR ships had sailed into Equestrian territorial waters twice in the past week. The ambassador had told Celestia that it was accidental, had occurred during naval training maneuvers and the ships involved had strayed across the invisible territorial division- 'an understandable but regrettable mistake,' he had said. Celestia knew he was lying. The USR Navy had probed into their waters to try and provoke a response and test their reactions. They had responded in force, by sea and by air, escorting the USR ships back into international waters.

These incidents were the latest in a long string of incursions by the USR over the last year. They had steadily grown in scale and intensity as political tensions between the two nations rose. The USR, as its name suggested, was a collection of republics; their political philosophy was diametrically opposed to that of Equestria, which was a monarchy. This had always been a source of tension between the two nations. As far as Equestria was concerned, Princess Celestia was, or should be, the ruler of all ponies. The USR disagreed- she was not a god, they argued; she was merely a powerful unicorn of royal blood, so what right did she have to rule over those who wanted to be independent? 

Originally, five hundred years ago, the USR, or rather most of it, had been part of Equestria, forming several overseas colonies. The revolution had been bloody, but it had long since passed from the memories of ponies, with the exception of Celestia. Foals learned about it in school, since it explained the seeds of the current tension, and political commentators loved to poke holes in the government's argument that the only reason the USR seceded was because they were godless heathens who refused to acknowledge Celestia's divine right; time and again the newspaper columns were riddled with lists of reasons for revolution- high provincial taxes, poor healthcare, inequality in the distribution of wealth. 

She had been there; she knew they were all legitimate excuses for the revolution. But, whatever the journalists and historians said, she knew the real reason was simple enough. It was a revolution against her, not against Equestria. The ponies of the USR had simply become disillusioned with her rule, for whatever reason; they were fed up. She had been on the throne for half a millennium already, and as far as they knew she would never give up her crown, no matter how much the citizens protested. They wanted change, they wanted elected officials, and so they rebelled. 

The army and the Guard had moved in to suppress the revolution, but they found themselves repulsed from the capital, Stalliongrad, and thrown back across the water by the citizens of the newly declared Union of Saddle Republics. Over the intervening centuries, the USR had expanded its borders, claiming empty lands to the west and annexing several smaller nations. An uneasy peace had been maintained with Equestria for most of that time.

All that seemed to be over now, though. As the ambassador left the room, Celestia sighed. Though he had professed a message of dialogue between the nations, his words contained thinly veiled threats. Back off, because we're not going to.

Celestia sighed. There was no way she was going to back down. She would protect Equestrian sovereignty, and that of her allies, no matter the cost, because, when it came down to it, that was all that really mattered. She had already seen the USR break away from Equestria on her watch- she would be damned if she would see them take any more of her nation away from her.