ECY 1008.12
Beta Cygni
“Pinkie Pie!?”
“Applejack! I knew you’d make it! Well, I knew that somepony would make it, not specifically you, but somepony! And you’re right at the top of my list of rescue ponies, so thank Celestia!”
The marine ponies pushed themselves beyond the pink prisoner as she hurriedly talked in Applejack’s direction. Their captain might as well have been wearing a full space suit, though, as she failed to hear-- or at least comprehend-- a single word her friend was saying.
“. . . and then when my neck started creaking, I knew help would be on the way because my neck always creaks when I’m about to catch up with an old friend! Although usually when you are going to drop by, my back right knee. . .”
Applejack continued to not listen while she stared at Pinkie Pie. The past year had been a whirlwind of excitement, for sure, but for the most part it all made some sort of sense. This discovery, though, made very little. An explosion further down the corridor stirred her from the trance.
“Pinkie Pie!?”
“You already said that, silly! What, were you not expecting to see me?”
“Not quite. . .”
Before she could explain, the marine sergeant floated back towards the airlock.
“We’ve got them all, Captain. We’re good to go.”
“What was the explosion?”
“Had to blow a door. Thought we’d need more than just one charge, but it gave way real easy. Too easy, one might say. Where are the bad guys?”
Pinkie replied before Applejack had a chance to process the thought.
“If you check cellblock B, you’ll find about thirty Antarans locked in.”
Applejack’s jaw dropped a few inches closer to the floor.
“How. . .”
Pinkie smiled, but before she could elaborate, Applejack’s radio crackled to life, with Reign’s calm voice seeming somewhat stressed.
“Captain, you might want to hurry up down there- we’re showing some increased activity in the fleet. I think they know something’s up.”
“Roger. Send the shuttle for a pickup.”
“Roger. Reign out.”
Pinkie looked at Applejack expectantly. The captain raised an eyebrow.
“You’re going to ask me what I’m doing out here, right?”
----
Shining Armor had not slept in 16 hours, most of which he’d spent in his command center. He was tired, obviously, and the hunger he felt did little to soothe his aching backs.
Had he been asked, though, the Admiral wouldn’t have traded places with any pony in the universe.
The battlefield had devolved into a chaotic scene within minutes of the Equestrian fleet’s entry to the sector. This, Shining Armor figured, was not entirely a bad thing. His idea for a three pronged attack had been based on the need to quickly dispatch as many Antarans as possible, and he was only slightly surprised that it had worked. Sword and Hammer had eliminated the left flank of the enemy formation before most of the Antarans could get their shields up, and Shield, while it took heavy losses, was able to hold the right flank from rejoining the battle proper. The strike force had departed for Vega as planned, and Daring, presumably, had snuck through to Beta Cygni.
Over twenty Equestrian vessels had fallen in the early stages of the engagement, including the carrier Ingram and the cruisers Dodge City and Hoofington. Shining Armor aimed to ensure that their sacrifice was not in vain. After holding his cards for much of the battle, he finally saw an opening.
Hooves flew across the room as he directed the fleet. Lama Jax and her carrier group were being beaten up after he sent them into the center of enemy lines, and the Antarans had pounced on what they perceived as a mistake. As the enemy’s guns drew inwards, he pulled Shield group away from the right flank and towards the center. He gathered the remnants of Sword and Hammer groups and plunged them in the same direction, surrounding a large portion of the Antaran fleet between the canons of nearly every Equestrian gun in the system. By the time they realized their mistake, half of the Antaran fleet had been vaporized.
From there things became almost too easy. Shining had kept a carrier group out of the worst of the action, giving the Krogers’ bomber squadrons free reign once the battle had fully swung in his direction. Within the next hour, most of the enemy had retreated through the Ribos portal, leaving behind a small group of frigates to keep an eye on things. They were probably not observing much, but they were certainly annoying the Admiral; as they’d jump back through any time he sent a vessel to deal with them, and as much as he wanted to keep a complete overwatch, he could not spare the vessels to do so.
Aside from the computer’s voice informing him of ships going down in various manners, he hadn’t been disturbed for some time, meaning that the voice over the intercom startled him more than he would have liked.
“As if somepony would like being startled,” he muttered to himself. He opened the comm without looking at his console, still choosing to devote his gaze to the rapidly changing orange figures in the CIC. Though the twenty vessels lost in the battles opening moments was a significant loss, only six had been destroyed once he sprung his trap on the Antarans. Still, once the ships too damaged to continue-- including two carriers-- had been sent back to New Phillydelphia, he’d lost nearly half of his original fighting force. Harmony had come through the fracas relatively unscathed (and with four confirmed kills from the forward beam cannons alone), as had most of his cruisers. He left Winsome near the portal with the carriers while the minelayers got to work, taking the rest of the fleet into positions in and around the debris field that had once been an Antaran fleet. Using the debris as cover, he could force any approaching fleet to engage at short range, assuring the EqCom ships that they did not need to stray from their exit point. The chunks of metal probably would not withstand a blast from the forward cannons of a Sathanas class, to be sure, but Shining figured it was better than nothing.
“Sir, Winsome reports that the minelaying is on schedule, and the self replicators are functioning within parameters.”
“Good. Do we have anything on long range sensors?”
“Negative.”
“Also good. Send frigates to the four portals leading out of Deneb to plant sensor probes, if you please. Contact me on my comm if you need me for the next fifteen minutes or so.”
“Roger. Something wrong with the CIC, sir?”
“I haven’t pissed in over seven hours.”
“Understood. Bridge out.”
----
“. . . thus overloading the Antaran’s cerebral cortex to the point where it needs to reset. Like you after you drink too much cider! You take a quick nap and you’re right back to it! Although the Antarans don’t really need to vomit as much. . .”
Pinkie Pie tapered off as she observed Applejack’s look of confusion. It hadn’t changed much since she’d started her explanation as they’d boarded the shuttle with the other scientists. The small craft decelerated as it began the approach on Daring’s hangar.
“Okay Pinkie, let’s try again. And this time, pretend I’m. . . lets go with Snails. Real simple like, okay?”
Pinkie Pie giggled.
“Sure!”
“Okay. So you never were joining the mining corps?”
“Nope! Poor Rarity, we didn’t get to bunk together after all!”
“And you had to pretend that because you got picked for Starside Research and Development, which is top secret?”
“Yep!”
“And they assigned you, of all ponies, to work on the HCD program?”
“Not right away. They wanted to use my Pinkie Sense, but it’s too vague to be of any use to anypony but me.”
“I guess that makes sense. Then. . .”
“. . . so the scientists were really sad, and that made me really sad that I couldn’t help them! So I started to try and list things that I was good at, and then one of the scientists was all ‘I can’t think with you jammering on in my ear all day, Pinkie!’, and then everypony got real quiet, and they all had these looks on their faces, you know, the kind that Twilight gets when she has a really good idea? So they wired me up to some science-y stuff that made me look really funny and then. . . voila! Hive connection disruption!”
“And so when we use the HCDs, the Antarans are bombarded with. . . you?”
Pinkie squeed.
“Yep! Turns out that hearing my voice bouncing around in your skull millions of times at once over and over again really messes with an Antaran’s brain! Who would have thought that, right?”
Applejack stared at her friend. Pinkie smiled back at Applejack.
The shuttle landed in the hangar, and Pinkie skipped out the door. Applejack followed slowly behind. As they reached the turbolift, Pinkie came to a sudden halt, causing Applejack to bump into her flank.
“Something wrong, sugarcube?”
“Well, my neck is creaky, which means I’m going to meet a friend soon, but I already met you! Is somepony else onboard?”
Applejack started to answer, her head cocked to the side.
“No, it’s just me. . .”
She would have added something had Pinkie not shot off of the floor like a bottle rocket. She spun around in mid air and landed on her tail, using the pink ball of fuzz as a spring to rocket right back up. She floated down to land softly at Applejack’s hooves. Being an absolute believer in the power of the Pinkie Sense, Applejack waited for a prognostication with bated breath. Pinkie looked up with true fear in her eyes.
“Somepony near by is in trouble. . . and I think it’s Rainbow Dash!”
----
“Sir, we’ve lost contact with Defence.”
Shining Armor shook visions of a certain Crystal Princess out of his mind as the comm buzzed through the CIC.
“What?”
“Defence, sir. They missed their check in, and we’ve lost them on sensors. They were monitoring the portal to Ribos.”
“The Ribos portal? That’s, what, two hours from here?”
“Roger. We haven’t heard from them in twenty minutes, and they aren’t registering anywhere on sensors.”
Shining furrowed his brow. They hadn’t expected a counter attack so soon-- though he had no real proof that that was indeed what had swallowed Defence. A thousand things could have happened to the frigate in deep space, after all. Things happened all the time out in the deepness of the galaxy, as Shining knew all too well.
He also knew that this train of thought was wishful thinking at its worst.
“Understood. Send Indefatigable to investigate. CIC out.”
He stood from the chair a Lieutenant had dragged into the CIC for him and reactivated the holoprojectors, allowing him to toggle the comm link with Winsome.
“Captain, how goes the mine business?”
A harried sounding mare replied.
“Slowly, captain. One of the minelayers caught some flotsam from the battle, so we’re behind schedule.”
“How behind are we talking?”
“A half hour, maybe? We’re still looking at a few hours at least, Admiral.”
Shining Armor did not respond. Winsome’s captain understood at once.
“We don’t have that long, do we?”
“I don’t know yet. But suffice it to say that sooner is better, Captain.”
“Understood. We’ll get things moving, sir. But we’ve got a bigger problem, I think. The ML that went down was the command module. All of the mines were slaved to that one for instructions, so we could deactivate the field if we wanted to. Without it, if we want to use this portal, we have to either leave someone behind or deactivate part of the field completely, and all of the field still needs to be at least disarmed. We can’t risk a faulty component blowing the whole field with the fleet in it.”
“So either we leave it unfinished or we find another way home?”
“Correct. And the deactivation process would take a while. At least a half hour, maybe more.””
“Fine. Just get it done, we’ll think of something. Armor out.”
Shining left the CIC and wandered back to the bridge. Nodding to acknowledge the salutes he received, he strode to the Admiral’s chair, dispossessing the lucky Ensign that had been keeping it warm for him.
“What is the status of the strike team? We should have heard back from them by now, no?”
The comm officer frowned at him.
“Nothing yet, sir. They should be on the return leg by now though. A communique probe was expected within the last hour or so.”
Shining closed his eyes.
“Does anypony have any good news for me?”
The bridge officers looked around nervously. Shining Armor laughed.
“Relax. Just keep doing your jobs the way you have been, and I’m sure we. . .”
The comm pony cut him off.
“Sir! Incoming from Indefatigable!”
“Already? They shouldn’t be able to see anything. . . unless. . .”
The viewscreen changed to show a live feed from Indefatigable’s long range sensors. The bridge went silent.
“Captain,” Shining Armor said to the frigate, “can you confirm what we are seeing?”
“Yes, sir,” came the frightened reply. “We count over one hundred Antaran vessels through the portal already, and new ones continue to arrive by the minute. The whole lot of them too- Sathanases, Rakshasas, Cains, plus some I don’t recognize.”
“They look like troop transports!” volunteered a pony to Shining’s right. He had to agree. He stood up, dozens of eyes following his movements.
“Captain, I need you to keep an eye on things. As soon as they start moving we need to know. Understood?”
“Aye, aye, sir.”
“Good. Armor out.”
The comm shut off, and the Admiral looked around the room.
“We all know what that is, and where it’s headed. If we panic, we die, and Home dies with us. Everypony needs to stay calm. Maintain comm silence. I’ll be in the CIC.”
He strutted out of the room, trying to mask his fear with bravado. As he entered the CIC, though, he did so with defeat on his face.
What now?
He sat back down in the darkness of the Command room, hoping for an answer to appear from the technology surrounding him. None came.
How am I supposed to win if they’re holding all of the cards?
He thought back to his youth, when Twilight and he would play board games to pass the time before their parents got home from work. Things seemed simpler then.
He and Twilight had gotten pretty competitive at times, and they’d both learned a lot from the experience. One thing he had learned very well was to not challenge Twilight to any game that involved her brain too much. He rarely won those matchups.
Too bad I have to play this game.
Or do I?
He sat forward, eyes closed, and tried to think. He ran some calculations through his mind, then had the computer run them to check. Both came to the same conclusion. Feeling ten pounds heavier than he did when he sat down, Shining Armor arose and left the CIC.
The dozens of eyes followed him intently as he entered the bridge. He stood tall and nodded to the comm officer.
“Open a channel to the fleet.”
When she confirmed that it had been opened, he began to speak.
“All bridges, this is Shining Armor. If you haven’t noticed yet, about one hundred and twenty Antaran vessels are about two hour’s cruise from here. That figure appears to include troop transports, which means that they are most likely heading for Home. We don’t have many options here. We cannot hold them if we try-- even if we take an equal number of them with us, we’ve done no good for Equestria. We need to regroup with the other fleets and make a stand as one. If that stand is above Home itself, so be it. We stand a better chance together than on our own out here.”
Shining looked around the room, and the sea of nodding faces prodded him along.
“It appears as if the strike force has failed to reach the Vega system and destroy the artificial portal that leads to Beta Eridani. That’s our ticket home. We’re going to get that minefield up and take the long way back. If everything works out, we’ll be back at Equus before the Antarans reach New Fillydelphia.”
“It sickens me to run, believe me. But throwing our lives away here won’t help as much as getting back to Equestrian space and linking with the other fleets. The Antarans haven’t won a battle where we’ve matched them toe to toe yet, and they never will. Prepare to jump to FTL drive and to the Vega portal. Armor out.”
Once the channel closed, he closed his eyes and looked at his feet.
“Give me Winsome,” he said quietly.
“This is Winsome.”
“Captain, how far are we from having the minefield up?”
“Too long, sir.”
Shining felt his head drop further.
“Then forgive me for what I’m going to ask of you, Captain.”
He expected silence on the other end, but was surprised to hear back immediately.
“I understand, Admiral. You need all the time you can get for your end around to work. The minefield will go up. I promise.”
“Thank you, Captain. Go with Celestia.”
“And you, Admiral. But don’t you worry, sir. We won’t go down without a fight.”
----
Head tilted to one side, Cloud Reign blinked several times before responding to her superior officer. She paced around the Captain’s cabin, where Applejack had briefed her on the mission’s new developments.
“So, Captain, you are suggesting we disobey our orders, risk the lives of our crew and the ponies we just rescued as well as one of Equestria’s most important war resources because Ms. Pie here thinks that Lieutenant Commander Dash on one of the dozens of Antaran vessels in this system?”
Applejack stood her ground. Pinkie, to her credit, did her best to simply stand on the ground.
“To be fair, Lieutenant, Pinkie doesn’t just ‘think’ Dash is in the system-- it’s more of a. . .”
“Yes, I’m aware of the merits of the ‘Pinkie Sense’. But,” she said, visibly tensing, “even if I was convinced by Ms. Pie’s. . . inclinations, I don’t think it’s a good idea. The life of one pony, no matter how important she may be to us, is not worth the success of this operation.”
This time it was Applejack that raised an eyebrow in confusion. Cloud Reign had never been this. . . professional about things. She’d often been sort of a mentor for the rookie captain, giving subtle guidance and assistance. Why the sudden change of demeanor?, thought Applejack.
“That’s where you’re wrong, Reign. The Antarans would agree with you, but we ponies don’t deal in such cold calculations. If we have a chance to rescue even one pony. . .”
Pinkie Pie interrupted, almost exploding with excitement over the prospect of reuniting with Rainbow Dash.
“Don’t forget the Griffons!”
“. . . and six Griffons, we take it. That’s what separates us from them. Have Beakerman meet us on the flight deck, if you please, Lieutenant. I’m going to trade my EV armor for something a little more comfortable.”
Applejack turned away from Cloud Reign and took a few steps towards her bedroom area. After a few seconds, though, she paused, and slowly turned back. The first officer had not moved from her position in front of the doorway.
“Something wrong, Lieutenant?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
Applejack turned completely to face the pegasus, who stood up straight. Pinkie Pie watched from the side, enthralled and worried at the same time. Her nose tingled.
Reign spoke clearly and slowly.
“Captain, I cannot allow you to undertake your current course of action. I suggest you stick to the original plan as given to us by the Admiral. Failure to do so would be. . . unwise.”
Applejack stepped towards the mare, trying to mask both her confusion and her anger.
“What are you saying, Lieutenant?”
Reign gestured angrily at Pinkie Pie.
“Your friend here is the most important pony alive right now. Whatever is going on in her head is going to win this war. I’m not going to risk her so you can go on some swashbuckling adventure to save your mare-friend.”
Applejack’s attempt at keeping a level head shattered as she stomped closer to the Lieutenant. An inch from her face, the Captain prepared to lay into her.
“Now you listen to me, that has nothing to do with . . .”
Reign smirked, causing Applejack to step back. Regaining control of her bubbling rage, she collected her thoughts and spoke quickly.
“Well, Lieutenant, your opinion is all well and good, but I happen to be in charge here, so if you’d be so kind to step aside. . .”
Reign’s smirk grew into a fierce grin.
“I wouldn’t be so sure, Applejack.”
Applejack recoiled.
“What do you. . .”
“Oh Applejack," the pegasus teased dramatically, "you don’t think we would have lost track of you that easily, do you?”
As she spoke, the pegasus stuck a hoof inside her uniform, quickly withdrawing it and, with a flourish, tossing an object to Applejack. She caught it and drew her gaze downward on the small pendant-- a jet black crescent moon. The realization hit Applejack at about the same time as Reign’s hoof hit the back of her neck. The room spun as she collapsed in a heap.
----
“. . . We won’t go down without a fight.”
The bridge of Winsome fell into a hushed silence as the captain ended her conversation with the Admiral. A dozen pairs of eyes stared at her, silently begging for their to have been some mistake. They would soon be disappointed.
The captain rose to her feet and punched a code into the arm of her chair, opening a channel to every pony on board.
“All hands, this is Captain Lightning Dust. The fleet won’t be able to get through the portal, and they need time to withdraw. We’re going to buy them that time.”
She paused to gather her thoughts.
“I’m issuing a ship wide evacuation order for all non-essential hands. All class one and two departments are to go to minimum strength. We’ve got about thirty minutes before we need to seal the minefield, so let’s get the escape pods through as quickly as possible. Everypony else-- we have a job to do. Let’s get it done-- and let’s give them a reason to remember the Winsome while we’re at it. Dust out.”
She sat back down, doing her best to remain strong in the face of her mortality.
“I can do everything important from up here on my own. Begin the Coal protocol: arm everything, start overheating the engines, you know the drill. Helm, have us ready to jump to FTL at a moment’s notice. Understood?”
The room nodded as one.
“Good. I’ll be in my quarters. Best of luck to you all.”
The next twenty minutes flew by for Lightning Dust. Returning to her room, she allowed the tears to flow for a few minutes, relishing the release of the emotions that had been building. Soon enough, though, her composure returned, and the pegasus tried to come to terms with her fate. It was not an easy task.
The bridge was empty when she returned. She was glad to see it that way-- she really could operate everything on her own, and didn’t want to see her crew mates throwing their lives away just to make her feel better.
She sat in the command chair and observed the view screen. Over two hundred Antaran vessels were bearing down on her. She could just barely make out the EqCom fleet’s engine trails on the far side of the system. Hopefully she could buy them-- and Home-- a few minutes.
And here I was thinking that being a Wonderbolt was the only way to become a legend.
The minefield was still not completely replicated, so she needed to keep Winsome alive for at least a little while longer. Cracking her neck, Lighting Dust decided that she was more than up for the challenge.
“This is the Captain speaking,” she said to the hoof full of ponies still on board. “We will be entering mass driver range momentarily. We’re going to give them a few broadsides before they get a bead on us, so strap in-- this won’t be good for the spaceframe, to say the least. Out.”
She hovered down to the helm and grasped the controls. Once she calculated that the broadside cannons were at a range where they could hit something, she rolled the ship hard to port.
“Starboard battery! Fire as she bears!”
Winsome lurched slowly as the starboard gun batteries opened their gunports. She could see bright lights coming from the approaching fleet, and the corresponding beams of energy passing by as she rolled Winsome over. The ship shook as thirty two guns unleashed upon the mass of jet black Antarans.
“Port battery! Prepare to fire! Strap yourselves in!”
Lightning Dust wiped the sweat from her brow as she rolled her cruiser in a way that would have baffled its designers. She realized with a start that she had forgotten to buckle herself in to the pilot’s chair, but a few flaps of her wings kept her glued to the controls as Winsome rotated one hundred and eighty degrees over, the port side now facing the enemy.
“Fire at will!”
Thirty two more batteries unloaded. She saw some impacts, but was unable to confirm anything from where she was hovering. She began to roll the ship back upright while setting a course for the center of the Antaran fleet.
“Good shooting, ponies! Get reloaded and fire at will here-- you’re going to have plenty of targets real soon!”
Winsome shuttered as it caught the blast from a Sathanas’ beam cannon flush on the starboard side. The impact caused the ship to list, but she compensated to bring it back to stability.
He efforts were soon outdone as another blast of energy ripped through the starboard shield and into the hull, cutting across the gun deck and presumably spacing dozens of ponies. As if in confirmation, seven cannons on the punctured side went dark.
Shrugging off the bad news, Lightning Dust drove Winsome forward, bypassing the picket of frigates at the lead of the fleet. The ship was constantly rocking from both impacts and cannons (including, finally, the fore and aft chasers) firing. Another blast from a Sathanas tore away the conning tower-- though the captain doubted that anypony was still there. Seeing that her gambit was just about up, the pegasus rolled again, weaving in and out of the Antaran crafts relentlessly pounding her cruiser. By the time she had oriented it towards the portal, only thirteen guns were reporting in. An automated message telling her that the minefield had finally gone into operation made her feel less annoyed by this deficiency.
“All hands, the mines are good to go. Get off the ship if you want-- we’re not going down without taking one of them with us. Celestia be with you-- Lightning Dust out.”
As she spoke, she began the FTL drive sequence and aimed directly at a Sathanas that she had flown past earlier. She knew that jumping to FTL at this range would only destroy both ships, though, and her aim was to do much more damage than that. Impulse engines maxed out, she begged Winsome to push forward. It crawled in pursuit of the Sathanas, still taking fire from the rest of the armada, but managed to catch the larger vessel just as it began to about face towards the cruiser.
Seconds before impact, Lightning Dust fired everything she had at the dreadnought, shorting its shields just enough for the Equestrian vessel to sneak through. She closed her eyes as the two crafts collided, making sure to engage the FTL drive before she disappeared from existence.
Winsome exploded in a ball of octarine flame. The Sathanas it had lodged partially inside of followed suit. Its explosion was significantly larger.
In another plane of existence, Lightning Dust smiled.