Celestia looked forward through a spyglass, watching the stern of the fleeing airship. She stood on the prow of her flagship, clad in her armor. Her sister stood by her side, likewise armored, and all about their ship floated the Equestrian navy -- the whole Equestrian navy.
It was past Celestia's usual bedtime by several hours, and she had been drinking cup after cup of coffee to keep herself on her hooves. Her eyes were bloodshot, and she quivered slightly with exhaustion. Still, she would not sleep; they were gaining on the Red Whatever, and she wanted to be awake when they closed to within cannon range.
The pirate vessel altered its course slightly, and she caught a momentary glimpse of its nose art as it redirected itself forward.
"It's absurd," she said. "Me as a pinup girl! Who would even imagine such a thing? Why, never in all my years..."
"Thou art more deeply troubled by this than perhaps thou shouldst be," said Luna. "'Twas hardly an insult; more an homage, if anything. 'Tis really quite common for a crew to paint the image of some muse or other on their vessel. 'Tis reputed to bring good fortune. Thou couldst even consider them to have beseeched thy own blessing."
"I do not mind being used as nose art!" blurted Celestia. "I just feel the way I was portrayed was distasteful!"
"Hardly," said Luna tugging at her bard's peytral to realign it. "'Twas at worst very mildly suggestive and not even nearly obscene."
"They could have at least asked my permission!" said Celestia, looking down at Luna, wide-eyed and indignant.
"To paint a likeness of thyself on the battleship they had just stolen after breaking out of prison and robbing a merchant?" Luna replied.
"Yes," said Celestia. "They... They could have done that."
"Sister," said Luna, "I really can manage command of the fleet. I feel thou wouldst do quite well to go and lay thyself down. Thou art becoming... unsettled. Go to thy cabin, and leave this matter to me."
"No," said Celestia, shaking her head. "I don't think I can sleep right now. I have to be here when we catch up to them. I have words for Discord, and I keep wondering how poor little Derpy Hooves got mixed up in all of this."
"I doubt it was of her own volition," said Luna, "and I doubt the pirates will do her any harm. Now, I beg thee: go lie down."
"Is that really what you think would be best?" asked Celestia.
"I would recommend it, yes," said Luna.
Just as Luna finished speaking, a number of flickering lights appeared in the water beneath the distant, fleeing pirate ship. They grew ever more intense for several seconds, drawing the gaze of both princesses, and soon the grinding, grating sounds of something horrible, mechanical, and immense reached their ears.
"I rescind my recommendation," said Luna.
Before either Princess could speak a further word, the sea beneath the distant, red airship began to roll, seeming almost to boil with an upwelling of bubbles and the thrashing of foam and waves. In a few moments, a thing barely within the scope of imagination burst upward from the water.
It was a machine; that much was apparent merely from looking at it. What its purpose might have been and how it could even possibly function, however, were matters beyond any reasonable conjecture. It was comprised mostly of gears, some so large they must have been several miles in diameter, and some so small that Celestia could not even perceive them through her spyglass. What structure bound these gears together was difficult to perceive. There were pins and axles and massive frameworks that wove together like huge latices, all buried in and among the conglomeration of twisting, turning gears, but there was no logical arrangement of them that seemed it should be able to unite the whole.
There were other moving parts than gears, as well. There were huge springs, taller than the skyscrapers of Manehatten, compressing and decompressing rhythmically as the contraption whirled and spun and twisted its many parts about itself. There were pistons wider than city blocks that rose and fell in long rows, some inexplicably out of time with the others. There were massive flywheels that drove huge belts woven together from cables and chains, and some of these rotated in trios, quartets, and even quintets on long arms of steel that extended outward from the device to no apparent purpose.
All over it were lights, some on the gears, some on the structural steel that seemed to do so little in holding it together. Many of them moved, and they appeared to be of every color perceivable to the eye. Some flashed as rapidly as a strobe light. Others glowed only dimly. Still others were cast towards the sky like huge, whirling searchlights.
It gave off an air of impossible antiquity, being fully covered in a patina that was equal parts rusted steel, tarnished silver, and greened copper or brass. It was thickly layered in many places with barnacles, coral, and alien-looking deep sea life. All of this covered over much rich embellishment in patterns purely geometric, some curvilinear where others were polygonal. In many places the two patterns intermingled and overlaid one another, sometimes in harmony, other times in complete disarray.
It was so large that even at such a great distance, the whole of it could not be taken in without turning one's head, yet pieces of it moved and rolled about the whole at such speed that they still moved visibly across its entire surface in a matter of seconds. It stretched so far that, being built in a single plane, it actually seemed to pull up and away from the edges of the round horizon, and it left a void in the water beneath it that formed into an immense whirlpool, which after over a minute had hardly decreased in its apparent size.
Celestia was certain that the Red Whatever must have been destroyed by the immense mechanism's uprising, but when she checked again through her spyglass, she realized that the ship was still there. She rocked her head left and right in an attempt to create parallax, and realized, to her astonishment, that the Red Whatever did not give any shift in its apparent position relative to the gigantic machine.
It looks that big, she thought, and we're still twenty miles away from it, at least.
"Discord?" asked Luna.
"Discord," said Celestia, and she put away her spyglass.
"Luna," she said, "tell them to bring me more coffee. This is no longer about nose art."
On the deck of the Red Whatever, Derpy Hooves stared forward at the unthinkable engine that had just risen from the sea ahead of the ship.
"There's... no... way..." she said. "That thing can't be real!"
"Things that can't be real are kind of what I do," said Discord.
"How am I supposed to find anything in that!?" asked the pegasus, gesturing frantically at the immense object. "It's... It's... There is no word for how big that is!"
"You think it looks crazy from out here?" asked Discord. "It's bigger on the inside."
Derpy turned towards the Doctor, and scowled.
"Sorry," he said. "I mean, really, what else do I say?"
"Where do I even get inside?" asked Derpy, turning back to Discord. "I don't see anything like an opening or a doorway."
"It doesn't have one," said Discord. "Well, not one that I remember, anyway; you'll just have to figure something out. As for me, I need to go see what I can do about getting the navy here a little more quickly. We're going to need them shortly."
"Discord, I can't do this," said Derpy. "There's just no way; not even on my best, luckiest day."
"That's the spirit!" shouted Discord, and he picked up the little pegasus and hurled her forward directly at the engine.
Derpy rolled forward in the air, flapping her wings to stabilize herself. She turned then to face the ship, and shook her head in disbelief.
"I'd keep moving if I were you!" shouted Discord. "I think from over there you're just barely in range of the artillery, now."
"The WHAT!?" cried Derpy, whirling in midair.
Everywhere, all over the machine, from one horizon to the other, fire and searing light erupted.
"Wow," said Celestia, as everywhere, all over the machine, from one horizon to the other, fire and searing light erupted. "We should probably get in there."
"Indeed," said Luna, "but we're already at full steam."
"There has to be some way we can go faster!" said Celestia.
"May I ask how?" asked Luna. "Full steam meaneth 'full steam,' Celestia. These ships go no faster than this, and if we simply teleport over, we will be badly exposed and unsupported against... that."
Luna gestured at the machine.
"Well," said Celestia... There was a trick that Starswirl once suggested to me, but it's risky... Absurdly risky, really."
"Elucidate," said Luna. "Absurdity seems to be the order of the evening."
"Well," said Celestia, "that thing is so massive that it has to be exerting palpable, measurable gravity on the planet, and of course vice-versa, right?"
"I move the moon," said Luna. "I can tell thee precisely how the water that thing is no longer displacing will affect the tides for the next several decades; I do not require a physics lesson. To wit: I can do calculus in my sleep, Celestia. If I don't, in fact, everypony dies."
"You know it's more impressive if you just don't make a big deal out of it," said Celestia. "When they figure it out on their own; that's when the real horror sets in."
"Well, it's nice to talk about it with somepony who can appreciate the strain," said Luna.
"I know," said Celestia. "You can't blame them for not understanding though, Luna. Most ponies forget how to do basic long division before they finish college."
"I just..." said Luna. "I just want somepony to say, 'Thank you Princess; thank you for not allowing catastrophic global flooding last night. Thank you for maintaining a steadily, infinitesimally decelerating orbit so my farmer's almanac is accurate year-to-year. Thank you for knowing and maintaining the exact position of the Lagrange point, even though it will probably be thousands of years before we realize we could use it as a relay station for a moon base. Thank you so much. I love you Princess.'" She sighed. "That's all I want to hear, Celestia. Just once."
"Well, suck it up," said Celestia. "I did my job and yours for a long time, remember?"
"If I get back, and my favorite mountain range is still where it was when I left," said Luna, "then it was not a 'long time.'"
"Look," said Celestia, "we can have this conversation later. Right now, I need you to focus."
"Fine enough," said Luna, "but after this is over, we shall have ice cream. I shall eat all of it I desire, and thou shalt say naught of it."
"Deal," said Celestia. "Now, that... thing... It's got to be in a geosynchronous orbit. All that really means is that it's falling towards the planet from its current height in such a way that the ground is actually moving away from it at precisely the same speed it falls, right? Well, if we just minutely slow the earth's rotation, it should come straight towards us."
"But it will also rise," said Luna. "It would pass straight over our heads."
"I thought it would fall?" asked Celestia.
"Well it would..." Luna began, but stopped herself.
"Hold on a moment," she said, standing briefly upright on her hind legs to move her hooves about one another in front of her face, thinking of one of them as the earth, the other as the machine.
"Now, you've confused me," she said, dropping back to all fours, "but there will be a change in altitude; that much is certain... If only Twilight Sparkle were here... She'd like as not have a plan for just such an emergency already waiting in the wings."
"No," said Celestia, shaking her head, "I do not want her seeing this."
"The machine or the pinup?" asked Luna.
"The two of us standing here in full armor trying to figure out a first year physics problem," said Celestia, "She'd lose all faith in everything good and worthy; probably turn the poor girl evil."
"Probably," said Luna, "but more to the point, we'll have to manage the relative altitude of that device. Oh, and there will be an immediate tendency for everything that isn't nailed down -- on the entire planet -- to roll to the east," said Luna.
"Well, those are the variables I need you to control," said Celestia.
"Just make sure thou rememberest to make relative adjustments for the rotation of the heavy metals in the planet's core," said Luna. "If thou dost not, 'twould destroy the planet's magnetic field, and... You know what? This. Is going. To kill. Everypony."
"Nah," said Celestia, "We can pull it off."
"An idea:" said Luna, raising a hoof. "Let us simply speed up the machine's orbit, instead, while introducing an eccentricity that keeps the planet at the same position relative to it. It will take it only a matter of seconds to cover the distance, and it won't even cause... immediately noticeable climate change."
"Well," said Celestia, shrugging dismissively, "if you want to do it the easy way."
Derpy dipped, dived, rolled and tumbled. All around her, glowing tracer rounds, bursts of flak, ancient rockets, and lasers of every color filled the sky with the unceasing threat of imminent death. Somehow, she dodged them all. Discord, the Doctor, and Teacup all watched in silence from the forward deck of the Red Whatever. Finally, after over two minutes of this lunacy, Teacup spoke.
"I guess it's a good thing there's essentially no chance of her actually dodging all that," she said. "Otherwise, I imagine she'd be dead by now."
"Not really," said Discord. "The defenses all exist in a dimension where probability remains inert. It intersects with this one on a spatial level, but doesn't fully synchronize with our own reality. That's why they're all plaid; it's a plaid dimension."
"I see," said Teacup, noticing for the first time that every single cannon, laser, and missile launcher on the distant engine was, in fact, plaid in its coloration. "What's that mean?"
"It means normal laws of probability apply to the machine's defenses," said Discord. "More-or-less normal, anyway; it's plaid probability, which has certain peculiarities, but it's functional enough."
"So she's dodging all that on her own?" asked Teacup.
"Yes, actually," said the Doctor. "It's really quite remarkable, isn't it?"
"Well, yes," said Teacup, "but wasn't there some way that we were supposed to help her?"
"Just a minute," said Discord. "The mobile defenses haven't launched yet."
"What exactly are these mobile defenses?" asked Teacup.
"Independent, autonomous assault drones," said the Doctor, "or, if you prefer, deathbots. Thousands of them, and every one plaid. It's hideous, really."
"But that's why I lured the navy along behind us," said Discord. "The whole navy."
"Something I've been meaning to ask you about that," said Teacup. "You do know they would have chased us without your... eh... aesthetic addition to the ship, right?"
"Sure," said Discord. "Your point?"
The Doctor pointed forward, and cleared his throat.
"Excuse me, Discord, but I was under the impression that the machine was locked into a geosynchronous orbit."
"It is," said Discord. "Why?"
"Because it's coming this way," said the Doctor.
Discord and Teacup looked forward to discover that the machine had begun to close distance with them, moving closer and closer by the second.
"What in the..." Discord began, and then a tiny, literal light bulb appeared in midair above his head, and sparked to unsteady, wavering life.
"Oh yeah!" he said. "Princesses; they make physics happen, and stuff!"
"I do believe it's going to hit the ship," said Teacup, backing away from the deck railing.
"Probably not," said Discord, "because it probably should."
"True," said the Doctor. "Besides: any gravitational field they're using should carry us right along with it once the machine gets close enough."
"It should," said Discord, "but there's a more immediate problem."
"And that is?" asked the Doctor.
"We're now within range of the engine's artillery," said Discord.
The trio looked forward to see hundreds of plaid cannons and lasers beginning to track towards them. Teacup whirled quickly and shouted back down the deck.
"Helm! Come about and full ahead!"
Derpy continued to roll, bank, and twist, dodging an unthinkable barrage of impossible ordnance flung her way by the colossal machine. She was doing fairly well until it began to move toward her.
"You're kidding me!" she said, hunching her shoulders and pulling her head down as a rocket sailed within inches of her. "Nopony said it would move!"
Regardless of what had or had not been said, it was coming directly towards her, and as it closed the distance, she saw more and more of how insane it was in its design. There were smaller cogs mounted upon and within the larger cogs, circling radially around their inner circumference to no apparent purpose. The closer she drew to it, the more she could see, until she realized that it was made up of even more tiny parts than large ones, all turning upon one another, powering one another, grinding, twisting, and slipping into and out of the places where they were mounted, so that portions of the machine seemed to writhe as if alive.
There was nowhere she could enter. Not one part of the entire machine seemed stable and safe enough for her to have any hope of flying into it alive. Tiny gaps opened momentarily, but beyond them there was only more machine. There was no pathway through this behemoth. It was an impossible deathtrap, impenetrable in every way.
Her courage failing, she turned and attempted to fly away from the device, but whatever had given it the sudden boost of power that drove it forward towards her was simply too strong. It was gaining on her steadily, even as she made every effort to avoid the unceasing bombardment from its battery of turrets, lasers, and rocket launchers.
Suddenly, amid the deafening, dolorous, clanging clatter of the machine's innumerable parts, there rose a whining screech like a thousand angry saw blades all gone mad with rage. Derpy looked over her shoulder to see that the machine had opened up hundreds of small ports which had extended from within the mass of metal. Pouring from every one of them were things like pairs of mechanical insect wings. There was no proper body such as an insect would have, however, only a long, whipping tail of twisting cable and chain, tipped with a massive, spinning blade.
They swarmed towards her. Not even when the skeletal iron statues of Withers Deathray had pursued her nor when the changelings had poured from Queen Chrysalis' city had she felt so hopelessly outnumbered and doomed. She beat her wings as fast as she could, straining with all that was in her, but it was to no avail. The screeching, clockwork things, fully resembling nothing animal or mechanical, (and being also plaid) gained on her with every moment.
When the first sailed past, flinging its tail at her, she rolled starboard. The whine of the passing weapon was deafening, and left a brief ringing in her ears. When the second came from above, she dove nearly straight down, and it passed above her, though she was certain she felt its blade brush her the tip of her tail. When the third came from directly behind, she spread wide her wings, and took a lazy barrel roll that she snapped into a tighter spiral at the last moment. It passed so close she was forced to spread wide her legs to keep from losing them.
With each of these maneuvers, she lost momentum, and the engine drew nearer. Soon, she was so close that one more roll or dive would inevitably result in her plunging into the grinding, gnashing conglomeration of cogs, springs, pistons, and flywheels. To her dismay, the swarming, mechanical monsters were turning back towards her, bringing themselves directly towards her in droves that would soon converge to shred her to pieces.
Her heart sank inside her, and she grimaced with shame at her failure and fear of what she knew was soon to be her grizzly fate.
"I knew I couldn't do it," she said, and they were upon her.