//------------------------------// // Chapter: 8 A Rare Sight in the Sky // Story: Mega Mares // by Keeper of time RD //------------------------------// “Thanks, starting launch sequence now!” Twilight’s voice came from the small monitor on the spaceship’s interment panel. With that, Rarity had nothing more do but listen to the sudden rumbling coming from the ship’s engines and admire the acceleration that pressed her into the back of her chair. Beyond the window she saw the ship shoot out of the hanger at incredible speed. Halfway down the track the roar of the engines suddenly tripled in volume and the acceleration increased to match. Then for a brief moment, the acceleration pushing Rarity into the back of her set suddenly started pushing her toward the floor and the windows showed only blue sky ahead of her. A moment later and the controlled rattling of the ship changed with the district clank noise of the spaceship leaving the launch track. Shortly after that the blue sky beyond the windows began to darken until even the stars could be seen. Among the stars, one particular star stood out, mainly because it was growing in size and rapidly taking the shape of a cylindrical tower with what looked like a building-sized wagon wheel at one end. Gazing on the distant structure, Rarity felt the main engines cut out. Almost immediately a new softer noise rattled the ship and the feeling of acceleration was replaced by the feeling of deceleration. A slight glow from the side windows drew her attention to the forward-facing thrusters now slowing the spaceship. Despite this the building before her continued to grow larger and larger, causing Rarity to realize just how distant the structure was. As the ship approached the wheel end of the tower the thrusters stopped for a moment. The true feeling of weightlessness came over Rarity, as she felt herself no longer being pushed into the seat or held into the seat by her harness but just floating in the few inches of free space between the two. The repose was short lived as a few minor thrusters fired, lining the ship up with the opening gate at the wheel end of the tower. Nearing the awaiting docking bay, it became clear that the facility was large enough to accommodate four spaceships of the same size as the one Rarity was in. The ship glided gracefully into one of the ports and a set of docking clamps latched down, providing one last jolt and bringing the journey to an end. Releasing her harness, Rarity tried to stand up properly and was sent floating right into the ceiling. After a moment of flailing her limbs around uselessly, it occurred to her that if she weighed so little that she could float it would be well with in her ability to carry herself with her magic. With a few slight nudges of her magic Rarity managed to right herself and make her way to the exit of the spaceship, pausing only once to bemoan how dreadful her mane looked floating about as if it where underwater. Among the docking bay was another ship and more importantly a line of robots that seemed to consist of little more than a sphere, a couple of tubes on their backs that looked like they were some sort of proportion devices, and two arms with clamp-like graspers on the end. Said robots were ferrying crates to and form their own ship. Of particular interest, their path showed Rarity the exit from the docking bay to the rest of the station. Rarity gave herself a slight push and started drifting toward the docking bay exit. If she’d had muscles they would have been tense, instead she had to settle for charging up her beam cannon to ready herself for combat. Yet, much to her relief the cargo-bots didn’t seem to care about the new robot pony drifting into their field of view. Entering into a large curricular room, Rarity found the cargo-bots to be taking abrupt ninety-degree turns and heading down one of the many the hallways. The hallways in question were too long to remain confined to the central tower, so Rarity figured they had to be the spokes of the wheel-like part of the space station. Before her was a wall the covered most of the path ‘up’ the tower portion of the station, with a door-like gap that was currently ‘below’ her. To either side of the doorway were two more robots, sharing a design similar to the cargo-bots only they were bigger and instead of wrench-like hands they had beam cannons at the ends of their arms. The one on the left side hovered toward Rarity and spoke in a distinctly mechanical voice. “Unregistered robot of unknown design. State your name and purpose.” Grasping at the hope that she might be able to perform more of her mission diplomatically, Rarity conjured up her most lady-like voice and said, “My name is Rarity. And I’m here to…” Seeing as ‘destroy this place’ probably wouldn’t fly as an acceptable answer she quickly glanced around and just as quickly found something she could be convincingly passionate about. “…To give this place a makeover. Seriously, what’s with all this industrial gray? You could at least add some silver and gold accenting to make this place a little bit presentable.” The guard-bot’s eye narrowed like a camera shutter getting suck halfway through taking a picture. “Style is irrelevant. Only function matters. Concern about style is irrelevant. Conclusion you are an enemy robot.” To punctuate the guard’s words an alarm started blaring around them. To punctuate Rarity’s disappointment, she released the fully charged blast she’d been holding in her beam cannon ever since floating past the cargo-bots. As one guard exploded in a radiant light-blue flash of destructive energy, the other opened fire. With a pulse of magic Rarity pushed herself to the side, while managing to only take a grazing shot on her energy-shielded armor. Rebounding off of the wall allowed Rarity to dodge a few more shots as she fired off a quick succession of blasts from her beam cannon, finally destroying her foe. Although the loss of shield energy on Rarity’s part was token, it was still more than she’d have liked for fighting such low-end robots like those. Her pondering was interrupted as she drifted into the wall opposite the one she’d kicked off of during the fight. After grumbling a rather unladylike curse she mumbled, “I know fighting isn’t my thing, but fighting without my hooves on the ground really isn’t my thing.” With a few more nudges from her telekinesis spell Rarity had herself drifting toward the doorway leading up the tower. At which point she pondered if that was ‘up’ the tower then wouldn’t that mean that the wall before was a ceiling with a hole leading up to the next floor, more like a pegasus tower that lacked stairs in its stairwells? The more she thought about it the more it made her head spin. Then the computer part of her brain was more then happy to remind her that ‘up’ and ‘down’ are directions relevant to a center of gravity and did not exist in gravity’s absence. “Oh sweet Celestia! This is worse than I thought! How are you suppose to know where to put the carpet and what side to hang the drapes from in a place like this? No, they were right! This evil place must be destroyed!” * * * * * * * The remainder of the tower… or hallway… or whatever buildings like this called these passageways, cosseted of several rooms, usually with a few guard-bots, but too few to be a real hindrance to Rarity’s warpath. Until she came to a narrow passageway near the ‘top’ of the tower. Barging into the passageway she found several blaster turrets at the far end. Darting right back out of the passageway amid a hail of blaster fire Rarity took a moment find the nearest wall she hide behind, while she lamented the distinct lack of any feeling of panic in her robotic body to match the moment of panic in her mind. “Stupid robotic body, you don’t have to make me feel like I’m use to being shot at.” Taking a moment to see her ragged, once windswept, tail floating about as if she were underwater she added, “Stupid missing gravity making it impossible to keep a decent looking mane!” Taking a pointless deep breath she glanced at her shields indicator to see that she had 73% shield energy left. For a brief moment she contemplating bum-rushing the turrets, then she took notice that she’d only been using her magic for propulsion, so her weapon’s energy was still at 95%. “Or I could just brake out the big guns, as Rainbow Dash would say.” Shaking the thought from her mind, she said, “No, no, Rarity. Calm yourself, just because you have to ware Rainbow Dash’s mane-style doesn’t mean you have to stoop to her level of tactics. A lady can be clever and cunning as well as stunningly beautiful, after all.” Rarity’s tail continued to fan out and invade her peripheral vision. “Seriously, was a ponytail the only way to salvage Rainbow’s hair? Actually that would be an improvement over this mess,” she concluded. After quickly patting herself down and even checking her own blueprints she snarled, “My kingdom for a rubber band.” Then a revelation that had nothing to do with tactics entered into her mind and a sinister grin crept onto her face. “Screw it, big guns it is.” Activating her specialized magic weapon system, her horn flared to life and seven blue crystals appeared. The crystals were the shape of four-pointed stars and had razor sharp edges that made them perfect throwing stars. Not that unicorns threw things in a traditional since. The crystal stars quickly hovered into a ring-like formation, spinning around Rarity like a shield of crystal blades, glittering in the soft blue magic that propelled them. Poking out round the corner Rarity’s horn pulsed once more and sent the sapphire stars flying down the corridor. Then the robotic unicorn darted back into cover just in time to avoid the volley of cannon fire the turrets at the other end saw fit to give to her. The sound of explosions proved that the turrets got the worse deal out of the traded gifts. After a quick glance confirmed the destruction at the far end of the hall Rarity continued forward. Although, as she floated down the debris strewn pathway she took a moment to snag some wires that formerly belonged to the defense turrets and used them to tie her mane and tail into proper ponytails. While the action brought a small smile to her face, it quickly faded as she glumly and sarcastically remarked, “Great, all I need now is a cowboy hat and I’ll be looking like Applejack.” The ‘top’ room of the space station ’s tower held more then enough computers and instrument panels to remind Rarity of the command room back home. Even a window or three could be found, one of which looked out at the predominately blue and white world below. And yet even from here she couldn’t help but match the green and brown bits to the map of Equestria. “Ah, so the decorator has arrived,” a deep yet female voice said. The words drew Rarity’s attention to the mechanical spider about the size of a carriage. The spider’s colors were that of light and dark shades of green, making it the most colorful thing that Rarity had seen on the entire space station. “How did you know I said that?” “You have to ask?” the spider answered. Glancing to the monitors, Rarity said, “Ah right I must have been in front of a camera.” “You truly don’t know,” the spider said with a chuckle. “Perhaps you can enlighten me then?” “This place is too far from enemies that would use EMP weapons, so I am free to see through the eyes of all of my drones. When you spoke to my guards you might as well have been speaking to me. In fact I have been watching you fight you way through my station this whole time.” “If those drones were little more than an extension of yourself, then you know that I have bested every robot you put in my path. So why don’t you be a dear and stand down, my orders are to destroy this place, so I see no reason that I couldn’t turn a blind eye to allowing you to escape beforehand.” The spider laughed. “You’re offering me the chance to escape? Did you not realize that your pony masters have sent you to your doom?” With a raised eyebrow Rarity asked, “What ever do you mean?” “Either you’re incompetent or no one told you to disable the auto pilot feature of the spaceship once you arrived. Either way, once you left the ship unattended I was able to send it away.” One of the spider’s green limbs motioned to the side, where a monitor showed the now empty docking bay. While Rarity frowned at the revelation, she responded, “You underestimate my resourcefulness, Princess Luna does not.” “Perhaps you’re right. But in that case your precious Luna clearly underestimates me, I’ve watched you fight your way through my station and I’ve seen that, resourceful or not, you are clearly unaccustomed to fighting in a zero-gravity environment. Seeing as I’ll be destroying you I guess how you’ll be getting back to the surface is a moot point.” With that the mechanical spider made the first move. Presenting the twin weapon arrays on either side of her body, the emerald lenses at the ends of them glowed brightly for a second, before each produced a large emerald that was fired at high speed at Rarity. With a pulse of her magic Rarity slipped in between the two glittering spikes and charged her horn with magic. Summoning another set of sapphire throwing stars, Rarity sent one of them at her target while allowing the remaining ones to hold orbit around her. The sound of the emerald lances shattering behind her did nothing to draw Rarity’s attention. Not until she was hit in the back by fragments still flying fast enough to damage her shields anyway. On the other end of the exchange, the spider dodged the throwing star by skittering along the floor, using electromagnets in the tips of its legs to move normally despite the lack of gravity. Even as her own shields flashed from damage, Rarity reached out with her magic and grabbed the thrown star and brought it around so that it slammed into the spider’s back. Looking up, the station commander made the mistake of showing apprehension in her eyes. Quickly firing her emerald lances in a less than calm way didn’t help hide the vulnerability to Rarity’s weapon either. With a pulse of magic Rarity not only dodged the crystal spikes but also darted across the room and spun around to watch for and dodge the fragments that would come from said spikes when they shattered. As soon as she found a gap in the emerald shards scattering across the room the robo-unicorn released her remaining sapphire throwing stars. The barrage descended onto the robotic spider, making the station commander stumble in her attempt to back away. “How dare, you…” While the station commander’s words started as a threat, the last word was little more then a whisper. The sight before her was that of the mechanical unicorn holding an overly dramatic pose, not too dissimilar from a pegasus hovering with their body in a vertical stance and front legs spread slightly downward and to the sides, surrounded by twenty one of her blue crystal stars. (Not so incidentally, the pose she was mimicking was typically used in pony art to depict the angel of justice floating above the one being judged.) “As much as I hate to admit it,” Rarity said. “I’m a very petty pony. You see I’ve always hated icky and ugly things, and I find spiders to be among those icky things.” Trusting a hoof forward the magic around Rarity’s horn flared and the stars descended like diamond rain. “Now be gone you foul beast!” Halfway through the bombardment the Spider’s shields stopped flickering and the crystal stars started punching through the spider’s armor outright. As the station commander went limp and started floating away from the floor, she muttered, “I’ll still… destroy you…” With that the light in her camera-eyes went out. Rarity floated for a moment, ready to react if the husk of a spider robot moved. Yet the only thing that happened as she stared at her defeated foe was that her heads up display started flashing all kinds of numbers and symbols in her field of view before finishing with the text ‘compatible upgrade detected.’ A moment more and Rarity found a new weapon system next to her crystal stars listed as ‘Explosive Crystal Stars.’ Giving the robo-spider a friendly tap, Rarity said, “Idle threats will get you nowhere darling.” Just then a voice came from every speaker in the room. “Station commander deceased. Hostile entity detected. Engaging station self-destruct system.” “Oh, never mind,” Rarity added sheepishly. A chain of explosions demolished the computer terminals and was followed by tremors that shook the whole room. Making her way to the windows Rarity was able to see larger explosions racking the star-bound side of the station. At that moment Rarity was slammed to the wall, or more actually the wall was the thrown into her, as what was left of the station began to fall toward the world below. Rarity felt gravity take hold as she drifted off of the wall she’d been pinned to. Using her magic she forced herself to the planet-side wall and rooted her hooves firmly to it. Being close enough to a window she was able to watch the slowly growing world she was hurtling toward. Despite the impending disaster that atmospheric reentry would soon provide Rarity couldn’t help but smile at the prismatic shockwave of a sonic rainboom racing across the skies of central Equestria. And not long after the sonic rainboom had faded away a short-lived pillar of purple light shot into heavens from the ruins of Ponyville. By now the world was close enough that the mechanical unicorn could guess that her trajectory had her part of the crumbling space station aimed to land more or less in Appleloosa. Fire erupted everywhere as she entered the atmosphere, licking around the edges of the falling debris, and the friction tore the mostly intact room apart at the seams. As the other walls peeled away, disappearing beyond the sheath of flames, Rarity’s horn pulsed with magic and she gave her every thought to keeping the floor beneath her from flipping about in accord with the air friction flowing around it. When cracks began to form in the window Rarity scampered back a few steps. Her retreat came just before it broke and a geyser of flames sprouted from the window frame. The flames had been licking at Rarity’s makeshift heat shield too long, and pieces of it had been tearing away from the edges. Now granted this new weak point the process accelerated, forcing the robotic unicorn to retreat farther from the window frame. After the eternity that was actually just a few short minutes, the air friction had slowed Rarity’s decent enough that the flames petered out. What had once been a wall fit for a large ballroom was now little more then a five-foot by five-foot steel panel. Peering over the edge of her plummeting sanctuary Rarity confirmed that the ever growing desert below her was that of southern Equestria, and the impending landing zone seemed increasingly likely to be whatever was left of Appleloosa. Thankfully she couldn’t find any signs that the town was still inhabited these days. Forming a plan in her mind, Rarity laid down atop her metal parachute and listened as other, more free falling, debris of the space station started bombarding the ghost town. As the horizon and plumes of dust, kicked up by the preceding impacts, entered her view Rarity dumped as much magic as she could into her horn at the last possible second. Pouring that magic into her shield emitters she almost completely drained her weapon systems as she crashed into the ground. Needless to say, slamming into the ground at over two hundred miles an hour sent another plume of dust and dirt into the air. And this particular plum was accompanied by a fair amount of splinters that had belong to the wooden building that had just been demolished by said impact. Rarity’s eyes opened, and a good two seconds later she realized that she was, in fact, still alive and functioning. The computer part of her mind displayed the damage report of her systems. The short version was that her weapon and shield systems were at 0%, her armor’s structural integrity was at 50% and the motors in her front left leg were no longer responding. Looking herself over she saw that she was covered in dust, dirt and splinters. Her armor was scathed and dented beyond belief and even an armored plate or two had fallen off outright. “Of course, just as I’m getting used to the whole plated knight look I just HAD to go ruin that too! I swear, I’m starting to get the impression that the future hates good style!” Amidst the debris kicked up by her harsh arrival, a lone cowboy hat came floating down. Coming to rest on what remained of a wooden post, it dangling right in front of Rarity. Looking herself over she discovered that the wires she’d used to tie her main and tail into ponytails had miraculously survived the crash landing. Sighing and giggling at the same time, she grabbed the hat, slid it on and said, “Sure. Why not?” With that she turned to the northwest and hobbled off to begin her long trek home.