The four allied Queens looked on at the various shocked and surprised looking Queens that had just recently made their way to the underground fortress tired and hungry, but also safe. They had certainly not expected over half of the hives to join them, but from how their drones looked starved... It was just pure luck that Patina had had revealed her progress at that moment. Other hives, having long found respect within Chrysalis, had hesitantly refused their offer and had decided to stand with Chrysalis. Some hives, including Miasma had decided to sit in the sidelines to do the thing they do best.
Whoever won, they would join them. A cheap tactic, but a valid and smart one.
"Eins! Have the others lead them to their new living quarters and explain the rules to them. And please specify how we will operate from now on. Also explain the three strike rule, understood?" Calliphora ordered one of Patina's drones, the 'cyborg' Senior Sergeant Major, and the drone smiled before saluting her and moving off to lead the newly arrived drones to their living area while the queens would be debriefed by Myxine at the Command center.
"Radar and cameras picked up large movement at the southern border of Equestria." Patina said in an offhand manner as she watched the new queens look awed at the massive underground installation from within a modified Savannah Master Hover Scout tank designed to be a ‘bus’ that went from facility to facility.
"Chrysalis?" Myxine inquired as she stifled a yawn from waking up thirty minutes ago and shook her head to stave off sleep.
"Surprisingly no. It's the ponies." Patina scoffed as she handed the other queens a manila folder. "Around ten detachments of fifty ponies each with three large troop transport airships."
"And you are not worried?" Calliphora looked at the brains behind this base.
"Let them come, I have naval grade weapons topside that can take apart the Griffon Bombard ships." Patina frowned at the memory. “Those airships are armored to the point where AC/2 (Autocannon) can only scratch them and require at least an AC/5 to damage them effectively.”
"So defensive weapons wise..." Calliphora looked at a smugly grinning Patina.
"Unless they somehow miraculously create battlemechs and armored cavalry in massive numbers, it would be like trying to steal gold from literally under an awake dragon's head." A modified hover ‘bus’ stopped in front of the command center and the driver saluted them as the drone held onto the wheel with his hooves. They all returned the salute as they left the transport. "But of course, all available troops will be out alongside our new tracked vehicles, or rather two Sekhmet Assault Vehicles and one Von Luckner Heavy Tank, so we are essentially prepared to drive off a force five times the current detected size."
"And these... 'tanks' are?" Myxine asked as she walked into the command center followed by the four arrivals while Patina followed behind them. "Aren't you coming inside, Ambrosia? Calliphora?" Patina asked as she poked her head through the open door.
"I have to go 'welcome' the newly arrived drones and lay down the laws of this place. Also, Patina? Don't forget that they also need to..." Patina merely nodded and saw a half-asleep Ambrosia.
"Ambrosia..." The three queens shook their heads at the half-asleep queen and was caught by three of her drones who had quite literally popped out of nowhere as she began to fall to her side. As their queen snored, clearly asleep, they smiled sheepishly before moving towards her bedroom. "She's Ambrosia, alright." Myxine shook her head with a smile before allowing the blast doors to close behind her.
"The Sekhmet Assault Vehicle is a 65 ton heavy tracked vehicle primarily focused on defense with nearly fourteen tons of armor and powered by a fusion engine you designed, Myxine." Patina informed her fellow queen as they sat in the control center of the overall command structure. “That engine powers the two large pulse lasers, two Short-Ranged Missiles (SRM)-6, and followed by a pair of armor piercing gauss rifles.”
"Sounds like overkill." Myxine hummed as she watched the frames of various tanks being built. "You know, ever since you finished that fabricator, most of our production capabilities are most likely beyond any nation on Equis combined."
"Of course! With the ability to fabricate anything mechanical in origin with nothing more than any solid material is genius if I do so say myself." Patina 'glowed' as she puffed out her chest. “Especially that Von Luckner Heavy Tank that I modified to run off the M-Fusion Engine. With an AC/20, two SRM/6, one SRM/4, one LRM/10 (Long-Ranged Missile), followed by a machine gun paired with a flamer? I would like to see the ‘Elements of Harmony’ to try and ‘purify’ that 75 ton beast!” Patina quickly deflated before looking sadly at her artificial limb.
"What do you think?" Patina glanced at the cameras showing topside sighing, not willing to acknowledge Myxine’s question.
"While I wish it wasn't so, one of the Changeling hives is..." Myxine nodded as she looked back at the living quarters of the base.
"But none of those that came are them. It's one of the other hives that arrived earlier." Myxine stated as she observed a satellite view of the approaching Equestrian airships while Patina observed the three tanks topside that had her armored drones on stand-by.
"We'll figure it out later after we deal with the ponies. Perhaps we should take prisoners?" At a silent nod, Patina began to form a plan of action in her head.
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"Should you really be here, Captain Armor?" An armored unicorn asked as he watched the 'chaotic' south outside from within the airships. "You just got married to Princess Cadenza."
"It'll be fine. We just have to force the Changelings to give up their holdings in the south." Shining Armor, newly made Prince and still Captain of the Royal Guard. "And if we get lucky and capture this machine of theirs, we could have the Changelings work for us instead."
"What? I thought that-" Shining Armor shook his head.
"No. The princess hasn't informed me of anything else, but she doesn't want anything to potentially threaten Equestria. I mean, they couldn't be that strong so it should be pretty routine." His subordinate nodded as he looked out of the ship and at the midday sun. "What's the worst that could happen?"
What followed next was thoroughly a surprise. The left-most airship’s magical shields lit up as a pulsating blue lasers slammed harshly against the shields and was followed by the sound of a ‘whirr-fwoosh’, which simply shattered the shields and going through the enchanted armor as if it had been made of paper. The stricken airship was assaulted by the pulses of blue lasers that burned its way straight through the armor and that was when they heard something in the distance.
"What happened to our shields?!" Shining Armor shouted as he felt his own airship turn around. "Why aren't our own cannons firing?!"
"We don’t know where they are to shoot, Prince Armor! Not to mention that blue light show seemed to melt their way through the shield!" The pilot of the massive airship hissed as she turned the ship around. "Something is clearly out-ranging us, so we must fall back for now! We don't have a choice and frankly you are a Prince!"
"No, Damn it! We have to assist the other ship! Turn us bac-" Shining Armor was thrown off the floor as their ship suddenly lurched to the right once before moving forward once again. "Damn it, who in Celestia's name is firing on us!" That was when he saw ten smoke-trailing objects slam into the left airship that simply detonated and seemingly splitting the airship into four pieces of scrap wood and armor. Another explosion threw the newly made Prince to the side, knocking him out as his head impacted a wall rather harshly.
The ‘command’ airship turned around rapidly as the other airship’s shield and armor melted away from a massive blue bolt of ionized particles. As massive arcs of what appeared to be lightning arced across the hull, the magical engines sputtered before dying entirely. The airship simply crashed into the ground burning as their reactive magical shells and weapons detonated within as they were rendered unstable by the ionized weapon.
As the last ponies' airship 'limped' away, dozens of armored Changelings rushed to save any ponies within the crashed airships. As the night became bright from the fires that licked at the crashed Equestrian airships, a duo of drones pulled out several surviving ponies before the entire ruined ship collapsed on itself as the fires raged throughout the ruined airship. At least there were some survivors.
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Patina looked at the half-dozen surviving ponies that were all rendered comatose from the N-PPC strike. All of their injuries were treated and had also been given a full medical to make sure they would not die anytime soon. They were not cruel like Chrysalis, but who would have thought that the PPC had the capability of rendering pony-based magic unstable?.
"I did not expect the Naval PPC to be so destructive." Myxine commented from within a Savannah Master watching drones salvage what they could from the Equestrian Airship.
"Maybe. But it did the trick, didn't it? We have a lot less prisoners to deal with." Patina sounded doubtful but paused before looking curiously at their sandwiches and diluted love in a glass. "You know... I know that this sustains us like food, but I wonder what would happen if a pony ate it? Not the water seeing as its bright glowing pink, but every other produce that is grown with love."
"I wonder..." Myxine mused as she took a bite out of her sandwich. "Perhaps one of the more magical of the Queens would know?"
"I'll go ask around. Would you..." Myxine waved her off as she observed the ruined magical aerial drive that allowed the Equestrian airship to fly. While Patina was more of an engineer, Myxine's quicker grasp in science gave her an advantage in developing new theories and tests to produce the final product. "Thanks. If you need something, just call me later as a favor~"
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Hours later, Patina sat with another minor queen; whom had been living in a unicorn-filled town, learning from them via deception at a park table with the other queen eating a generous bowl of salad.
"So Magica, the love we harvest is like a..." Patina was seriously confused now. How could love she made and the harvested version had one thing in common.
"An addictive aphrodisiac? Yes." Magica was a rather small queen, a few inches smaller than Patina. Her short mane and tail were colored bright red while her ruby red eyes looked around the park where other queens were eating, chatting with their drones, and/or simply enjoying the location. Her horn was shaped much like a unicorn's horn with three 'voids' that went from the base, mid, and near the top of her horn. Her back were colored a dull red color and the wraps around her barrel were various shades of red. "I've experimented before and the 'love' we produce directly influences the pony's brain. It quite literally sends a mare into artificial heat and a stallion to become crazed to rut something. The effects differs amongst individual ponies, but the average time of effect seemed to last around six hours."
"And the addictive part?" Magica smiled as she ate another mouthful of salad, enjoying the wonderful flavors.
"After the first dose of around most likely around half a cup, they would act normal and would seek resistance to consume the next dose. But after a couple of doses, the pony, be they a unicorn, earth, or pegasi; think they cannot love without it due to the slight void they described to me after a dozen doses. The strange part is that they do not develop a solid 'resistance' to it." Patina closed her eyes thinking on how to use this on the prisoners, and opened her eyes.
"I sense a but coming on..." Magica nodded as she sipped on a cup of diluted love mixed with tea leaves.
"Yes, there is actually one problem with this though. Whomever had been feeding them the love would become the object of their ‘love'. And no matter how much we disguised ourselves, the addicted pony would find the one that had been feeding without fail and literally try to became their 'beloved' by any means necessary..." Magica looked saddened at the last part.
"Happened to you?" Patina didn't miss the longing look in the Queen's face.
"I... I had tested it on a unicorn mare who had called me a monster when she was captured, but to have her call me 'Her love' a few weeks later felt wrong. Then..." Patina stopped her with a raised hoof and merely nodded. She could 'see' what had happened and merely smiled.
"Even if our extracted 'love' is an addictive drug to the ponies, the love she saw was not from the depraved mind of a lust-driven pony. Ponies are xenophobic at base and when we break that, they would love all." Patina said as she smiled wider at the startled queen. "You'll know why I said this tomorrow, Magica. I merely hope that you realize that our kind cannot be victorious against anything divided. Only when we are united, can we stand at the top and go beyond."
"Yes... I just hope magic has a place here." She looked ruefully at the various vehicles moving without the assistance of magic. "My hive has the highest known magic amongst Changelings and this..."
"Of course magic has a place here." Patina deadpanned as she looked around her. "We’ve managed to develop a magical version of the power generators I used before and I know Myxine could use a hoof in develop more magic-oriented gear." She looked at Magica and smiled brightly. "You know what, why don't we meet up tomorrow to test what kinds of spells could be repurposed to work alongside our technology?"
Magica nodded eagerly as she watched the glint in Patina's eyes. While Calliphora was the leader of this Umbra Commonwealth, she could tell that Patina was the true mind behind this operation. Looking at her salad as Patina walked away with an excited look in her eyes, she hoped that this peace would continue, no matter how small that hope was.
She could see it in the distance, and it was coming. War was inevitable and it would be fought on a scale never seen before.
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"Two entire airships!" Princess Luna shouted at the injured Shining Armor in sheer disbelief. Said Prince was being consoled by his wife, Princess Mi Amore Cadenza, or rather Cadence. "How could some backwater Changelings have such destructive magic?"
"I don't know Princess. I also received a report on what hit us so hard that our shields were rendered useless." He looked frustrated as he looked outside of the infirmary window.
"And?" Luna was already frustrated. She had sent along fifty of her best and now she had lost them far too quickly.
"Nothing. There was nothing wrong with any of the magic that made up both. Whatever was hitting us was beyond our scale of power and range." Cadence could only watch as the two premiere military commanders in the Equestrian military tried to think on why their vaunted magic had failed so easily.
"We've already confirmed that the hives had split into three factions... We have constant monitoring on the other two, but the hives that migrated to the south are utterly blank!" Luna's magic flared violently as she teleported out of the infirmary and into her own room.
"JUST WHAT THE BUCK IS GOING ON!"