Rainbow Dash lay in her hospital bed with a heavy, hard-cover book in front of her. Daylight shone in through the window and soft classical music played in the background. She paused to look to the narrow vase of flowers sitting by her bed.
The doorbell issued a soothing tone, and she looked up with a smile as Jack and Twilight Sparkle stepped in. “Hey, strangers! What took you so long?”
Jack ran to the side of her bed, frowning. “ I woulda visited you days ago but little miss fuss-budget here wouldn’t allow it, even though she said the operation was a complete success.”
Twilight Sparkle set a clipboard on a nearby counter. “The surgery to remove the shrapnel from between her ribs was a complete success. The detox procedure to remove the vespene from her cardiovascular system was an altogether different issue.”
Dash rolled her eyes. “Twi told me to avoid being awesome for a while. Lying in bed, listening to classical music, meditating...” She lifted the book up. “She even has me reading books without pictures.”
“Actual literature?” Jack arched an eyebrow. “Careful you don’t accidentally enjoy yourself there. Wouldn’t want you turning into some sorta egghead or somethin’.”
Dash rolled her eyes. “No worries. It’s horrible.”
Twilight smiled. “Marecel Proust was one of the true masters, and her works will no doubt be celebrated for all time. They’re also slightly less painful than a visit to the dentist without the benefit of anesthetic. I had to do a book report on her, in university... I begged one of my friends to slam my head in a door until I couldn’t recognize written language anymore.”
Jack blew a raspberry at her.
“Oh I believe it,” said Dash. “Though I gotta admit, the music’s kinda growing on me.”
Jack went to the window and opened the blinds, giving them all a view of the island outpost. “Still feeling lazy, are you?”
“I wouldn’t go that far.” Dash tossed the book onto a nearby end table. “I haven’t stretched my wings in over a week now. Starting to go a little stir crazy.”
Dash and Jack both turned to Twilight.
“She looks clean to me,” she said. “She’s made a full recovery from the surgery and I’m not picking up any residual vespene contamination. As long as you don’t stress yourself too much, I think you can afford some exercise.”
“Finally!” Dash sat up and climbed out of the bed. Jack went to her side, but she waved her away. “I’m fine. Really.”
“You’re sure?”
“Totally. I can’t wait to hit the command center and see what you’ve been up to.”
Twilight and Jack shot each other quick glance.
“What was that all about?”
Jack cleared her throat. “So, if we did build something without asking you... would ya be angry about it?”
Dash looked away. “Hey, Twi? I’m sorry I lost my temper before. If you really think I’m a bad commander, then I guess... that’s the way it is.”
Twilight shook her head. “Don’t worry about it. I’ve restored your rank and returned you to active duty. The base is yours again.”
Dash’s eyes widened. “After all that ’tude I gave you before!?”
“The attitude was never a problem,” she said, “it was the vespene symptoms I was worried about. I had every intention of restoring your command after we got it out of your system.” Twilight’s horn glowed and an aura of sparkles levitated a small badge over to Dash. “Here’s your official insignia. Sorry it took so long for us to get it to you.”
Dash stared down at the badge for a while.
“I’ve got to get going,” said Twilight. “The Megalith has been repaired, and I’ve got a lot of other colonies to inspect.” Twilight walked to the door, but paused before leaving. “One last thing, commander.”
Dash looked up from the badge. “Yeah?”
“You saw some of my research papers, many of which are classified above top secret. I’ll have to ask you not to share what you learned under any circumstances.”
Dash frowned. “Don’t ponies have a right to know?”
“The government has a right to protect its citizens,” she said. “The Confettiracy is aware of this new threat, and is working on a number of solutions. If those secrets become public, it will only undermine our ability to prepare a defense.”
Dash clenched her jaw, but kept her tone respectful. “Understood.”
Twilight Sparkle nodded, and left the hospital room.
“Stupid conspiracies,” muttered Dash. “Now I’m a part of this whole mess.”
Applejack shook her head. “You already were, since the day you signed up for the space navy. Come on... let’s get you back to your outpost.”
Jack and Rainbow Dash walked out of the room and through the corridors of the science vessel. Halfway through, Dash glanced at a nearby door and stopped in her tracks.
“Dash?”
“That’s... that’s the...” Dash ran to the door and stared at the lever. “I swear it was this very room! You believe me, don’t you?”
“I believe we need to get back to base. Just do yourself a favor and forget the whole thing ever happened, okay?”
“How can you say that!? You’re asking me to lie to everyone I know about the fate of the galaxy! It’s like lying!”
Jack glared at her. “It’s not lying. It’s for the public safety. Ponies might panic and throw riots if they found out, and then we’d be in a complete state of higglety pigglety.”
“But... you believe me, don’t you?”
Jack bit her bottom lip.
“Well let’s prove it! You’ll see!”
“No, wait!”
Rainbow Dash pushed the door lever down and threw the doors open, charging into the featureless white room beyond: the shelves and counters were all empty. The floors had been scoured with cleaning chemicals and the walls had been recently painted over. The big cylindrical storage tank in the wall was an ordinary water-heater.
Dash stared at the room in shock. “But the books... the pictures! It was all here, I swear!” She looked back at her friend. “You do believe me, don’t you?”
Jack waited by the door, quietly.
“It wasn’t the vespene,” said Dash. “I know it makes you all paranoid and stuff, but I swear it really happened! Twilight Sparkle must have cleaned everything up and hidden it away somewhere!”
Jack arched an eyebrow. “This again? You still think Twilight’s a... something else?”
“No, of course not. But... well...” Dash pawed at the floor with her hoof.. “I don’t know what to think anymore.”
Jack walked over and gave her a hug. “Y’all don’t worry that pretty little head of yours, Commander. Everything’ll be just fine.”
“What do you think about all this? Is there any truth to it, or am I just... crazy?”
“Honestly?” She gave Dash a pat on the back. “I think the truth always comes out in the end. By the time we really need it, we’ll know all about it.”
Dash and Jack walked out of the room and continued down the corridor.
“So,” said Jack, “I don’t suppose you’re up for a surprise?”
Dash lifted her head a bit, and her ear twitched up. “Surprise? What kind of surprise?”
Jack grinned at her.
A few minutes later, Rainbow Dash walked into the darkened assembly hall of the barracks. Jack followed behind her and flipped a wall switch, bathing the main hall in fluorescent light. There in the center of the room stood a recently assembled suit of pony battle armor, painted sky blue. It was about the same size as a standard space marine outfit, but with some key additions: a pair of wings with built in jet thrusters, and a pair of high-tech rifles strapped to its sides.
“Whoaaaa...” Dash walked around the suit in a circle, marveling at the sight of it. “When did we get this?”
“Twilight invented it. She said you had a lot of good ideas, and she couldn’t get them out of her head... so she finally sat down with a design computer and worked out the details.”
“My drawing? No way! But I thought she said it was dumb?”
Jack walked over to the suit and pointed at the dual rifles. “Not exactly. She came up with a new kind of field-jacketed electro-laser Rifle and a micro-gravity vortex generator that creates typhoon-shaped gravity wells. They’re both powered by a pegasus’s innate weather control magic, and they’re equally effective in air and space.”
“Wow... she did all this for me?”
“She said we needed a high-mobility infantry option... and she was getting bored waiting for you to recover.” Jack nodded to the suit. “She said you could pick a name for it.”
A smile crept over Dash’s face. “The ‘Wondervolt Commando’ suit,” she said.
Jack smiled back. The two of them turned to the suit and simply watched it quietly.
“Wanna give it a test run?”
Dash nodded, but her smile faded. “That’d be... great.”
“Yer leavin’, aint ’cha?”
Dash continued to gaze at the suit.
Jack took her hat off. “Listen. I can’t claim to understand you... but I won’t try to stop you.”
“All I can think about is what you said earlier: that I don’t know where my loyalties lie.” Dash turned to her. “And now I know. I know exactly what I have to do. I know exactly who the real enemy is. And I can’t sleep easy until I’ve finished them for good.”
“I’ll keep the base running ’till you get back.”
“I don’t know how long I’ll be gone. Maybe a month, maybe a year... maybe forever.”
Jack nodded. “It takes as long as it takes. You can count on me.”
She held her hoof out, and Rainbow Dash thumped her own hoof against it. She walked out of the barracks without a second glance, leaving Dash alone with the suit.
Later on in the day Jack toured the outpost as part of her routine inspection. When she came to the barracks, the main hall was empty. She continued about her duties without a second glance.
It takes as long as it takes. No more, no less.
The vast, empty plains of Mare Sara stretched on in all directions, from horizon to horizon. A gentle, intermittent wind swept up dust and sand in little whorls. Faint, wispy clouds dotted the sky, offering no rain to the prickly weeds scattered across the craggy soil.
A great armored beast lowered its head and slowly clamped its teeth around a particularly gnarled bush: it tore off a branch and chewed for some time, staring straight ahead at nothing in particular. The rest of the herd was scattered about randomly, content to stand around doing nothing more exciting that scrape at the dirt or swat their tails at insects. Occasionally, one let out a long, gurgling belch.
A heavily armored hoof slammed to the ground nearby, crushing a tiny green sprout into the dirt. A few of the beasts looked up at the disturbance, utterly placid: A suit of gleaming, vacc-sealed powered armor was flexing its wing-shaped thrusters. The high-performance turbines let out a low rumble and their inside blades glowed with the bright blue flame of an acetylene torch.
The helmet’s visor slid open, slowly, and Rainbow Dash squinted at them. “I’m lookin’ for the Rhynadon that attacked my base,” she said. “I got no quarrel with the rest of you.” Dash’s rifles crackled with a galvanic burst of neon-blue electricity, and her mouth twisted in a vicious, cruel grin. “Of course, you all look the same to me... ain’t that a shame?”
The Rhynadons stared back at her, frozen midway through their chewing. One of them went slightly slack jawed and dropped a mouthful of half-chewed slime on the ground.
Rainbow Dash leapt forward. The loudspeakers built into her shoulders blasted epic, techno-trance orchestral music with a choir of voices chanting in latin. Her twin rifles spat thunder and judgment.
The heavens exploded.
Private Jack walked across the command center’s main bay, dragging a large metal washtub behind her. She opened the massive front door, went to the edge of the ramp and dumped the tub onto the ground: a heap of garbage tumbled out, adding to an ever growing pile of foam plates, plastic cutlery, and half-empty snack packages.
Something heavy landed on the ramp beside her, and she glanced up: Rainbow Dash tromped over in her commando battlesuit. She was completely covered in dirt and dark-purple alien blood, and her electric rifles hissed with a faint trace of steam. Dash opened her visor and walked up the ramp, whistling cheerfully.
“Morning,” Jack said with a tip of her hat.
“Hey. Miss me?”
Jack glanced at her ankle-watch. “You’ve been gone for all of twenty minutes.”
“It took no time at all to sweep this entire sector. Man, I love this suit! I might have to start sleeping it it. It’s got air conditioning and everything! Hey, we got any popcorn? I feel like popcorn.”
Jack nodded towards one of the side corridors. “Main mess hall. Second shelf on the left.”
“Cool.” Dash tromped inside, whistling to herself as she trailed purple blood across the floor.
Jack shook her head with a smile, and went to the closet where the industrial floor-sweeper was stowed.
Hours later, the plains were still awash with the detritus of total war. Barren craters and rows of scorch marks littered the landscape. Thick trails of oily black smoke drifted up through the air. Huge swaths of land had been swept with gale force winds and crushing gravitic storms. There were bodies everywhere... the ruined, smoking husks of once living organisms, too numerous to count. Apart from the dust and ash stirred up by the breeze, there was no sign of motion. Nothing had been left alive.
No... one thing yet lived. A single Rhynadon dragged itself along the ground, gasping for breath. Its lumpy, armored hide was riddled with electrical burns and both of its hind legs were limp and crippled. Each step it took was more painful and exhausted than the last.
It reached out to drag itself one step further, but stopped as its clumsy hoof bumped against something solid. Its beady eyes squinted up at the new obstacle, and the beast let out a strangled gurgle: A tall, slender creature loomed over it like the spectre of death. Its armored carapace was dead black, and shot through with with crags and crevices. A slight mist of vile green gas exhaled from its fanged mouth. Its eyes—those slitted green eyes, green as poison and hot as acid—fixed upon the beast, cruel and uncaring.
A huge zipper opened up along the front of the Rhynadon and its body collapsed into a heap of painted canvas as a trio of changelings tumbled out. Two of themimmediately fell to the ground in a tangled pile, gasping for fresh air and glistening with grimy sweat. One of them stood at strict attention.
“Queen Chrysalis,” he said in a hissing voice, “we live only to serve.”
“Report,” she snapped.
“The enemy has constructed a small defensive expansion near the north-eastern plateau, and has been gathering resources at a slow pace.”
The queen gazed aside, disinterest. “Build order?”
“One ’rax one fac, with a bunker for defence and an ‘engie’ under construction.”
“And what of their forces?” she said. “What troops have they deployed, and where are they located?”
“Unknown, my Queen. For weeks now the enemy has been slaughtering the local wildlife without the slightest hesitation or provocation. They have nearly exterminated every living beast on the continent... even those that pose no threat whatsoever! There are no living things left for us to impersonate. Even some of the trees have been bombarded with artillery.”
The queen arched an eyebrow. “They would annihilate an entire species of peaceful herbivores, simply to deny us an opportunity to gather intelligence?”
The drone bowed his head and knelt on the ground. “Forgive us, Queen of Pyres... we have failed you.”
“Such ruthlessness... such merciless, bloodthirsty brutality...” A sly, lopsided smile crept across her face. “At last. A species worth killing.”
The drones looked up, puzzled. “My queen?”
She turned away from them and walked over the crest of a hill, pausing to admire the vast horde of monstrous black aliens swarming across the terrain behind her: insects of all sizes crawled across the ground and buzzed through the air, and massive spires of jagged black chiton thrust up from the ground like talons. Bursts of vile green fire occasionally belched into the sky, searing the atmosphere with corrosive biochemicals.
A crack opened in the ground before her and a segmented limb rose into view: a bud on the end bloomed open, revealing a massive, pulsating eye with a slitted green pupil.
The queen nodded to the eye. “Take a small force to the north-western plateau, find a suitable location, and spawn a Hatchery and a trio of Shmooze Colonies. I will arrive shortly thereafter to lead our forces in battle.”
The eye let out a deep series of vibratory growls, varying sharply in pitch and volume. Its vertical iris flexed and changed shape in time with the sound.
The queen frowned. “I intend to spearhead this assault myself. It is the only way to judge this new enemy’s genetic value. Or, failing that, their nutritional value.”
The eye drew close and let off another series of gurgles and hisses, much lower in pitch. The queen pursed her lips. The two monstrosities stared at each other in silence.
“Very well. We will approach the initial battle with subtlety and efficiency, as you insist.”
She looked back over her shoulder and gazed at the distant horizon. Her pristine white fangs glistened, and the tips of her crown-shaped antennae pulsed with an ominous green glow.
“We shall devour them ourselves, in a fashion befitting the swarm... from within.”