My Little Starcraft: Friendly Fire is Magic

by DuncanR

D10: The truthiness is out there

The halls of the crippled science vessel were dark, with only a few blinking lights decorating the walls and door frames. A low, fluctuating hum filled the air. Faint sounds of distant machinery reverberated through the walls.

A searing burst of light lit up the far end of the hallway: a white-hot pinpoint that slowly traced its way along the edges of a doorframe, showering the walls and floor with bouncing arcs. A calm, robotic voice played over the loudspeakers, warning of a hull breach.

The armor-plated door fell inward and struck the floor with a clang. The sun shone in, and a pony stood framed in the doorway... a black silhouette bleached by the cold light of dawn.

Rainbow Dash stashed her portable fusion cutter on the side of her harness and marched into the corridor. She made no attempt at stealth, and glared at every door she passed.

I just need a little bit, she thought. She’s gotta have a personal stash around here somewhere. If I work quickly enough she won’t even notice it’s gone... not until it’s too late.

As she moved further into the vessel, she saw more and more rooms filled with clutter. Laboratory equipment was scattered across tables and counters, and there were stacks of half-opened crates everywhere. Not once did she see any trace of movement, mechanical or otherwise. She passed by a bunk room large enough to house a hundred ponies.

What’s going on here? Twilight couldn’t have been the only survivor... and even if she was, where’s all the bodies?

A faint green light on the wall up ahead caught her attention. She rushed down the corridor and threw open a pair of sealed doors that had been left ajar. Inside, she saw a dark laboratory room dominated by a massive tank of bubbling green liquid, with the number 616 stenciled across the front of the glass. The luminescent substance cast the entire room in a pulsating viridian glow.

“Yeee he-he-he essss!” Dash rubbed her hooves together. “Now that’s what I’m talkin’ about!”

She turned the lights on and rushed towards the tank, but hesitated as she saw a stack of binders scattered across the floor. Loose sheets of paper fluttered in the sterile, air-conditioned atmosphere, and yet the smell of dry-erase markers hung heavy.

She turned one of the binders over and read the title: ‘The Psychotropic Effects of Vespene Solution 616 on the Parietal Lobe.’ She opened the front cover and saw numerous diagrams of a Pegasus pony’s brain, each labeled with a different time and date.

“What the...?”

She glanced at some of the other titles on display: ‘The Effects of Solution 616 on Unicorn Nerve Tissue.’ ‘A Preliminary Study of Crytoss Energy Matrix Technology.’ ‘The Amplification of Telepathy and Telekinesis Via Solution 616.’ ‘Potential Military Applications for Forced Evolution via Biochemical Stimulation.’

Rainbow Dash reached down and picked up the heaviest binder of all. She wiped a thick layer of dust of the front cover—all the books were dusty. Everything in the room was dusty. The title was short, and scribbled more hastily than the others.

‘Ling Mutagenics.

Dash swallowed, hard, and opened the binder. It was full of pictures... terrible, terrible pictures. Not diagrams or sketches, but photos and x-rays. Some depicted things that had been carefully dissected, others that were charred or blown apart by weapons fire. Each series of pictures was plainly labeled: The Drone. The Banefly. The Devourer. The Purifier. The Nervebreaker. The Hallucinox. The Nydus Lasher. Glowing antennae, insectine wings and shiny black carapaces. Teeth, claws, spines... uses forced evolution to adapt to any environment... devours the genetic data of other species... a sentient, shapeshifting parasite... slays the host and assumes their identity... can easily bypass retinal scans and blood tests... leaves no survivors.

The further she read the less hard data there was, and the less legible the writing became. Dash flipped to the very last picture and her blood ran cold: a blurry, haphazard image of a slender black mare covered in riven shells. It had been photographed midway through a flurry of activity, and only its eyes—those slitted, baleful eyes, green as poison and hot as acid—were clearly visible. There were no labels on this page. No names or dates. No tables full of data. Merely a single phrase written in a drunken, jagged scrawl: ‘The Queen’.

Dash dropped the binder on the floor and looked back at the laboratory walls behind her. Every available surface was plastered with printouts and maps and pictures. There were X-Rays of hideous alien bodies, blurry scans of glittering, golden spaceships, and newspaper photos of prominent Pony politicians. There were lengths of color coded string hanging between each page, with many more leading to particular points on a large map of the known galaxy’s local spiral arm. At the center of this vast network was a blurry picture of the Queen, situated under a banner that bore a single question. ‘Who is the Queen of Pyres?’

Dash stared at the books on the floor and the pictures on the wall. There was a thick layer of dust on almost every surface. She thought about all the empty rooms, and the terrible rips and tears that riddled the science vessel’s armored hull.

Leaves no survivors...

Her eyes locked on the tank of liquid Vespene.

Only one thing to do.

---

Jack walked through the command center, glancing at all the empty rooms as she passed. She paused by the door to the commander’s quarters but there was no point in knocking. Rainbow Dash had been gone for two days and all of her messages had gone unanswered. She hadn’t even logged into the communication network... though there wasn’t much point to that if you were listed as a civilian.

It’s only been a few days, she thought. Maybe she just needs some time to cool down.

She looked further down the hall. She nudged her hat up, took a breath, and marched to the central control bridge; the nerve center of the entire (admittedly very small) outpost. She stood in the doorway and watched Professor Sparkle, currently seated in the commander’s chair. There were dozens of control monitors hovering nearby, and she manipulated the interface with alarming speed and grace.

“Professor? I think we need to talk.”

“A little busy here,” she said. “It’ll have to wait.”

Jack stepped into the room. “Listen... about Dash.”

“We’ve been over this before. It was a temporary measure. As soon as I’ve sorted out a few things, her command will be restored in full.”

“A few things, huh?” Jack glanced at a nearby monitor. “Whatcha up to?”

“As I said before. I’m trying to make contact with Strategic high command.”

“What for? If ya don’t mind me askin’?”

“I need more information.” She tapped a sixteen-digit code into a control panel. “It’s the most important element of any war. Whoever has the most information... wins.”

“Y’know we’re just an outpost, right? We’re just buildin’ things. We’re not really prepared for a real fight.”

“Every little bit counts, doesn’t it?” Twilight paused to stare at the map above. “In fact if you have the right information, you can win a war before it even begins. Clean sweep.”

“Ohhh... kay.” Jack glanced back at the exit. “So, what about Dash? When do you think she’ll be back in business?”

“That’s a complicated question,” said Twilight. “As soon as I’m done with this one little task, I’ll deal with Dash myself. Promise.”

Jack sighed and turned to the exit. Her headset bleeped, and she quickly tapped a button on the side. “Dash? Is that you? Where’ve you been all this—”

“No time to explain!” Dash shouted back. “I’m on my way right now, but it’s gonna take awhile! You gotta try and stop Twilight Sparkle yourself!”

Twilight looked up from her control panel. “Jack? Who are you talking to?”

Jack held her headset close and whispered harshly. “Stop Twilight? Are you outta yer blinkin’ mind!?”

“That’s not the real Professor Sparkle! It’s a freaky alien spy!”

Jack reached into her flak vest and whipped out a sawed-off double-barreled shotgun. Twilight Sparkle threw a switch and activated a series of armored doors, but Jack somersaulted into the room just as the massive plates slammed shut.

Twilight held her hooves up. “Now, Jack, let’s not—”

She pointed the shotgun at her. “You get the hell outta that chair this instant!”

“Okay! Okay, I’m getting out of the chair! Let’s just calm down and think about this rationally.”

“Move!”

Twilight stepped down from the chair. Jack rushed over and activated the main communication array. “Can ya hear me, Dash? Talk to me!”

One of the main screens lit up, showing Rainbow Dash seated in the cockpit of a heavy vehicle. She was dressed in a leather vest, and had a pair of bronze-colored aviators sunglasses—the kind worn by fighter pilots and small-town sheriffs. She was wearing a beret with three aluminum cans strapped to each side, with bendy straws reaching down to her mouth in place of a microphone headset.

Jack’s eyes widened. “What the hey!?”

“Golden goddess,” whispered Twilight, “she found the vespene cider reserve!”

“Yeah, that’s right!” sneered Dash. “You think you’re the only one who can play with the science? Well I’ve got a quarter-million tons of heavy-metal that says otherwise!”

Jack stared at the screen. ”Dash, what have ya done!? What’s goin on!?”

Twilight pointed at the screen. “She’s ingested—”

Jack pointed the gun at her face. “You jest stay right there, ya filthy alien spy!”

“I’m not an alien! I swear!”

“Don’t listen to her!” Dash shouted. “I found a secret laboratory in the science vessel that’s filled to the brim with top-secret conspiracy stuff! Aliens, psychic powers, genetic mutations, the whole enchilada!”

“Of course I study that sort of stuff!” said Twilight. “I’m a scientist! It’s what I do!”

“Except for one little detail: the real Twilight Sparkle got munched by some new kind of shape-changing doppelganger, and it took her place! That’s why the science vessel was damaged: it was attacked by aliens!”

“You don’t understand! It’s not what you—”

Jack stepped towards her, keeping the shotgun level with her nose. “You got twelve seconds to prove her wrong. Professor.”

“Okay. Yes. The changelings are real. But I’ve been researching them!” Twilight slowly took out a gadget and held it towards her. “Here, take this changeling detector I just invented: it’ll tell you whether or not a pony is actually a changeling spy!”

Jack and Twilight glared at each other, sweat trickling down their brows. Jack took a few short steps closer, shotgun at the ready, and swiped the gadget: she pointed it at Twilight, and the device whirred for several seconds.

A bright blue button lit up and a display read “Totally not a changeling. Seriously.”

Jack turned her head towards the screen, without taking her eyes off Twilight. “Dash? The gadget says she’s not a spy. Maybe we oughta think about this.”

“It’s gotta be a trick or something!”

“But it’s just a machine!” said Jack. “Machines don’t lie!”

Dash slammed her hoof against the control panel of her vehicle. “I want that alien blow’d up this instant! That’s an order!”

Jack stared at Twilight’s face. Her lower lip was trembling.

“Please,” she whimpered, “your friend isn’t thinking straight! She needs help!”

“What sorta help?”

“Vespene gas is a universal catalyst. You can use it to improve anything at all: technology, psionic power, even genetic enhancements. Every sentient race in the galaxy uses it, but if you aren’t a specially conditioned scientist there’s all sorts of side effects... paranoia, megalomania, emotional instability... you start to think you can do anything, and that the whole universe is out to get you!”

Jack bit her bottom lip. “How do I know that’s true? What if yer lyin’ to me?”

Twilight held up a plastic binder. “It’s all right here in this book I just wrote! It proves everything!”

Jack swiped the binder, set it on the floor, and flipped through the pages. Her brow furrowed. “Dash? Some of this is startin’ to make a lot of sense. How much of that vespene cider have you had so far?”

“A few,” she said. “...Barrels. I guess.”

Twilight gasped. “You’re drinking it straight!? Dash, please! You need immediate medical attention!”

Dash reached to the side and cranked a throttle lever all the way down. “More like you’ll need immediate medical attention! Because I’ll be blowing you up momentarily!”

Jack lowered the shotgun and turned to the screen. “Dash, she’s in the command center right now!”

“Well, I guess I’ll have to blow up the command center first.” Dash stroked her chin. “Yeah, I should have more than enough flamethrower-powered chainsaw rockets to do that.”

“You... wha... buh!?” Jack’s left eye twitched in unison with her left ear. “You’re gonna blow up your own base to keep an alien from blowing it up!? You’re completely bonkers!”

“Doesn’t mean I’m wrong!” Dash opened a fresh can of Diet Vespene, downed the contents in one gulp, and crushed the can against her forehead. “I’m not paranoid, Jack. Not one little bit. And I’ll prove it, even if I have to blow up everything in my way!”

The screen blinked off.

Jack climbed into the commander’s chair and took control of the massive, three-dimensional map being projected on the domed ceiling. She scrolled the view over to the crashed science vessel and zoomed in: a section of the vessel’s hull crumbled apart, and she and Twilight stared in shock as something emerged from the wreckage.

The vehicle was a perfect fusion of land and air superiority: a colossal fighter jet fixed to the top of an ultra-heavy main battle tank. The tank’s armored, segmented tracks were wrapped around monster-truck tires instead of wheeled gears. The fighter jet’s wings appeared to be made out of fully-functional Gibson Flying V electric guitars, and there were a pair of oversized aviator sunglasses affixed to the front of its cockpit. The entire vehicle was painted in rainbow-colored lightning bolts, with an airbrushed illustration on the front that depicted a dragon suplexing a great white shark into a basketball net affixed to the mouth of an active volcano.

“Unbelievable,” Twilight said, “crushing the can against your forehead must amplify the awesomeness of vespene gas by at least eighty percent...”

“You did this.”

Twilight shook her head. “I’ve never seen this sort of vehicle before. Rainbow Dash must have consumed enough vesp-apple cider to invent—”

Jack grabbed Twilight by the shoulders and shoved her against a wall. “This is all your fault! You see what you and your science has done!? It’s driven a good mare completely bonkers, and now she’s comin’ to blow us all up!”

“I... I didn’t know! Please, we never imagined Vespene was this powerful! We didn’t even know non-scientists could use it at all!”

Jack gave her another shake. “How do we stop this!?”

“The effects of vespene are temporary,” she said. “We’ll have to keep her in a hospital bed and wait for the biochemicals to filter out of her system.”

Jack looked up at the map screen. “Then we gotta capture her alive. Got any bright ideas?”

“Here, let me try.” Twilight grabbed a nearby control panel and began typing. “If I can hack into the vehicle’s main computer, I might be able to trigger the emergency ejection system. Then, we should be able to—”

There was a deafening buzz, and every screen on the bridge flashed bright red, displaying the word “Nope!” It soon gave way to animated pixel art of rainbow Dash sticking her tongue out.

“A class seventeen firewall!?” Twilight stamped a hoof. “Dangit! She’s thought of everything!”

Jack stared at the flashing screens. “She never told me she was a programmer!”

“She isn’t,” Twilight said, “but vespene amplifies the raw power of science... and with enough science, anything is possible!”

Jack grabbed Twilight and dragged her out of the command bridge. “Come on. If you want somethin’ done right, you’ve got to do it yerself!”

Jack and Twilight climbed into the outpost’s lone Siege Tank and took up positions as driver and gunner, respectively.

“Status check!” Jack shouted.

“All systems nominal,” Twilight said. “All weapon systems are online. Siege tech actuators are fully functioning.”

“Good to hear. Now what do we know about the enemy so far?”

“Rainbow Dash’s prototype mega-tank has unknown range and firepower, but it has extremely limited mobility: very slow top speed and target tracking. We can outrun it if necessary.”

“Running away won’t do us no good if she keeps going for the base,” said Jack. “Can we outmaneuver it? Maybe get behind it, and avoid the big guns entirely?”

“That might work. Its turning rate is very poor, and most of its firepower is forward mounted. And if we’re lucky, the armor will be weaker from behind.”

“Lucky, huh?” Jack gunned the engine and slammed her hooves against the dual throttles. “Let’s make our own luck.”

The Siege Tank roared to life and moved across the rocky flatlands, tearing apart the arid field as it went. After a few minutes, they reached the raised butte that blocked off the middle of the long, peanut-shaped island.

Jack parked the tank right by the base of the cliff. “This is as far as she goes,” she said. “The rest is up to you.”

Twilight climbed out of the tank and took out a bulky flare-launcher. She fired a glowing micro-probe high into the air, and waited for it to fall on the top of the butte.

“Wink Beacon deployed,” she said.

“You sure this is gonna work?”

“The theory is sound,” she said. “Though to be honest, I’ve never actually teleported anything this big before.”

“First time for everything, right?”

Twilight climbed back into the tank, strapped herself in tight, and clenched her eyes shut. Her horn glowed with raw psionic energy, and a cylinder of electricity formed around the tank. There was a flash of light and everything turned white for a moment. When their vision recovered they were atop the mountain.

Twilight pumped a hoof in the air. “Yes!”

“Let’s not get ahead of ourselves.”

Jack drove the tank across the top of the butte, parked at the edge, and activated the tank’s siege mode: a pair of heavy metal clamps extended from each side of the vehicle and braced against the ground. The dual plasma cannons retracted into the turret and a single massive barrel extended in their place.

Twilight pulled a periscope-viewer down from the roof and pressed her face against the viewfinder. “I have visual confirmation of the enemy dude.”

Jack peered out of the tank’s narrow window. “Celestia have mercy on our souls... it’s as big as a barracks!”

“It’s just entered range. Permission to fire?”

“Permission granted,” Jack said, “but remember to aim only for the tracks. If we can stop it, we won’t have to blow it up completely.”

The tank’s main battery spat out a jet of white-hot plasma and the entire vehicle rocked violently. A plume of incandescent fire splashed against the front of the target’s tank tracks.

“Give ’er another shot!” shouted Jack. “If we can take out one of the other tracks as well, she’ll—”

Twilight gasped. “There’s no damage!” she said. “Not even a scratch!”

“What!?” Jack looked out the window just as the giant tank emerged from the cloud of smoke, moving just as slowly as before. “Impossible! That was a direct hit from a siege tank!”

Rainbow Dash’s laughing voice came through the comm channel. “Is that all you’ve got!? This thing’s nearly invulnerable!”

“Invulnerable!? But... but how!?”

Dash grinned at her from the view screen. “Easy! It’s a simple, scientific fact that the bigger and tougher a dude is, the slower they move... right? Well I designed this tank to be as slow as possible! And because it’s the slowest land vehicle ever created, that means its physical durability approaches infinity times ten! Your siege tech is useless!”

Jack glared at the display screen. “That don’t make a lick of sense!”

“I am done making sense!” shouted Dash. “I’m giving you five seconds to exit the vehicle and run away. I don’t wanna blow you up, Jack... but I will if I have to!”

“You think y’can scare me like that? Well, you’ve got anoth—”

Dash’s prototype tank reared up slightly, and a pair of giant rotary cannons popped out of the hull and began spinning: each of the twelve barrels was a full-sized siege cannon.

“Oh lawsey,” Jack whispered. She twisted around in her seat and shouted at Twilight. “Activate the escape doohickey! Now!!”

Twilight whipped out the gadget and pressed a button.

The twin rapid-fire siege cannons opened fire, bombarding the entire surface of the butte with a constant rain of destruction. The siege tank detonated almost instantly, exploding in a cloud of flame and twisted metal. A massive chunk of the cliffside crumbled apart, and the landslide of broken rock slid into the shape of a ramp. The Megatank trundled towards the freshly made entrance.

Jack and Twilight lay on the floor of the command center, gasping for breath. They were both covered with ash stains and their manes were slightly singed and frazzled.

Twilight held up the doohickey. “Emergency teleport... seems to work.”

“Shame we couldn’t save the tank,” said Jack. “What else we got?”

Twilight struggled to stand up. “An experimental problem requires an experimental solution. If we can get close enough, I could use my amoeba launcher: the blob bypasses the victim’s defenses and attacks their vital hit-points directly. No amount of armor upgrades will stop it.”

Jack stood up and stretched her back. “What’s the catch?”

“It’s a damage-over-time attack so it’ll take awhile to kick in. It’s also optimized for groups of small dudes, so it’ll probably be less effective against a single big dude.”

“Sounds like we got a hit’n run to carry out.” Jack ran to her Buzzard and activated the twin turbines. “No time to waste, is there?”

Twilight leaped onto the rear-mounted turret and clamped her amoeba launcher into the robotic gunnery mount. Jack stamped the accelerator, squealed a one-eighty, and shot out of the command center’s bay doors like an arrow.

Twilight shouted over the roaring wind. “My launcher only has a range of fifty meters. That’s not even close to the range of a siege cannon.”

“Guess I’ll just have to dodge ’em until we get close.”

“Dodge a siege cannon? Can you do that?”

Jack squinted. “Only one way to find out.”

They drove towards the distant cliffside in silence for awhile.

“Hey,” said Twilight, “when you said ‘only one way to find out,’ were you trying to sound totally badass in the face of unspeakable danger?”

“Nope,” she said. “I genuinely have no idea if it’s possible to dodge a siege cannon.”

“Well... do you know what our odds are?”

“No idea. None whatsoever. At all.”

“But if you really, really really had to guess, what would your best estimate be?”

“If I had to?” Jack stroked her chin. “Siege cannon projectiles are pinpoint accurate, they travel almost instantly, and they’re totally invisible before they land. So I guess our odds are probably nothing percent, times zero.”

“Zero?”

“Yeah. Just a guess, mind you.”

Twilight glanced back at the command center as it faded into the distance behind them. “I had a thought. Why don’t we go back to the command center, lift off, and fly away?”

“Well, because...” Jack worked her jaw back and forth. “ ’Cause there’s... well, I mean...”

Twilight nodded, encouragingly.

“The principle!” she said. “It’s the principle of the thing, mainly.”

“What principle is that, exactly?”

“Dirt Ponies never run away, and we never give up! If we run away now, then we’ll throw away our whole legacy.”

“Yeah... I guess so.”

They continued driving for awhile.

“You know,” said Twilight, “I’m not a Dirt Pony. D’you think I could—”

“Battle-zone sighted!” Jack shouted. “Everypony prepare for turbo jump!”

They streaked towards the sheer cliff wall. Jack popped a wheelie and activated the turbo boosters, and the Buzzard sailed high into the air: they landed just shy of the edge. Rainbow Dash’s Megatank had just finished climbing to the top of the makeshift ramp it had blown out.

Twilight struggled to keep ahold of her amoeba cannon. “Aaaah! Lookout!”

“Ah see it, ah see it!”

The Megatank’s twin rotary-siege cannons quickly began to spin up. Jack popped a wheelie for several seconds, waiting for just the right moment. Just as the rotary cannons reached full speed, she triggered a boost and jumped into the air: the massive barrage of siege blasts tore up the ground behind her. The Buzzard landed just behind the tank.

“Quick, before she can turn around!”

Twilight swiveled her amoeba launcher and fired a continuous stream of gooey, translucent liquid at the tank’s massive treads. The slime quickly seeped between the armor plates and into the machinery beneath, sizzling and wriggling.

“It’s working!” shouted Twilight. “Just keep us steady!”

Jack kept the Buzzard directly behind the Megatank, easily outpacing its ponderously slow turning speed.

Rainbow Dash’s voice boomed through a loudspeaker. “Aww, come on! Quit movin’ around, wouldja?”

“You don’t leave us much choice!” shouted Jack. “Once this is over and done with, you’ll see it was for your own good.”

“Like heck I will!”

A short, stubby cannon extended from the roof of the vehicle and pointed straight up. It let of a small puff of white smoke, and a shiny silver projectile sailed high into the air. It fell straight back down and impacted against the hull of Dash’s own vehicle, producing a massive ripple in the air: the shockwave of distortion washed over the ground and knocked the Buzzard slightly off course.

Jack regained control, and stared at the controls in shock. “My nitro booster... it’s completely drained!

Twilight hefted her amoeba launcher and pulled the trigger, but nothing happened.

“I’m out too... that blast must’ve been an electro-magnetic pulse!” Twilight shook her hoof at the Megatank defiantly. “You stole that from my science vessel, didn’t you!?”

“I didn’t just steal it,” Dash called back, “I improved it! Not only does it neutralize the enemy’s shields and energy reserves, it also strips away debuffs on friendly units!”

Twilight’s eyes widened. “You...! Wha...? But how!?”

“Fools! You said yourself that science is a way to harness the awesomeness of the universe... but you’ve forgotten it’s just a tool! I don’t need your gimmicks and gadgets: I am the awesome!”

Jack looked back over her shoulder. “Twi! Get that emergency teleporter ready!”

“Okay, but I’ve only got one more shot with it!”

“That’s jest fine...” Jack clenched her teeth and pointed the nose of the Buzzard directly at the Megatank. “We’ll only need one more.”

The hover-bike streaked across the terrain, bearing down on its target like an arrow.

Twilight held up a gadget. “Now?”

“Not yet!”

The massive Megatank loomed larger with each passing moment. The sound of its churning tracks became overwhelming.

“What about now!?”

Jack clenched her jaw and squinted her eyes.

“Applejack? Applejack!?”

Twilight leaped out of the gunnery turret and tackled Jack, pulling her out of the driver’s seat. They tumbled across the ground, bruised and dusty, just as the Buzzard crashed into the side of the Megatank in a ball of flames.

“Are you crazy!?” Twilight shouted, “You could’ve gotten us blown up!”

Jack shoved her aside. “Don’t you tell me how to pilot! I had things perfectly under control!”

Twilight shoved back. “If that thing can shrug off a siege tank, than a direct collision with a Buzzard would be less than useless! The amount of kinetic force isn’t nearly—”

Jack shoved her aside and stormed a few steps away, glaring at the Megatank. Twilight bit her lip, and watched the smoldering wreckage of the bike. She walked up next to Jack but couldn’t bring herself to give her a pat on the shoulder.

“Aw jeez, Jack. I...”

The sound of shorn metal and crumpled machinery cut her off. Twilight peered through the greasy smoke that billowed from the ruined Buzzard: one of the Megatank’s heavy, armored tracks crumbled apart and the monster-truck wheels fell to the side. The tank lurched forward a few yards, but settled back with a whine.

Jack’s ears perked up. “It’s stuck! We stopped it!”

“Impossible,” Twilight whispered. “And yet...!”

Dash’s voice crackled through the loudspeaker, but bursts of static rendered her words broken and illegible. The top half of the experimental vehicle transformed in a whirling ballet of metal plates and gears. When the process finished, a pair of colossal artillery cannons swiveled around and arced towards the sky. The twin barrels crackled with electricity.

“Get down!”

Jack tackled Twilight Sparkle from the side and held her against the ground, shielding her with her own body. Twilight jabbed a button on her gadget just as the Megatank’s weapons discharged. A burst of light and sound overwhelmed Twilight’s senses. For a moment she couldn’t be sure whether it was the emergency teleporter or the massive artillery cannon that had blinded her.

Slowly, her vision returned. She was in the main bay of the command center. She staggered to her feet, knees wobbling. She took out her emergency teleporter but the gadget was charred and smoking. She tossed it aside.

“Jack? Are you okay?” She looked around the bay. “Jack, we’ve got to get moving! We don’t know how long it will take her to fix the damage!”

Twilight ran through the bay and finally caught sight of Jack, standing by the ramp and staring out across the plains.

“Jack?”

“It shouldn’t have to be like this,” she said.

Twilight walked up beside her. “She’s not your commander anymore,” she said.

“She’s mah friend,” Jack said. “I’ve spent mah whole life trying to wipe out them pegasus, and now Rainbow Dash is the only friend I’ve got.”

Twilight reached over her shoulders and gave her a hug.

“We’re not gonna lift-off the command center,” she said. “I know we could just fly away and wait it out... but I’m not going to.”

“It wouldn’t do any good,” Twilight said. “Dash has consumed so much vespene by now that I don’t think she’ll survive without medical attention.”

Jack looked at her, sharply. “Whaddya mean?”

Twilight held up a sheet of paper. “According this pie-chart I just drew, Rainbow Dash has become a self-sustaining quantum singularity of pure awesomeness. The only thing holding that tank together is sheer force of will, and if we don’t extract her soon—”

“She’ll explode in a blaze of glory,” said Dash. “It’s the most awesome way to die... even if it’s a senseless waste.”

Twilight’s communicator beeped, and she checked the tiny screen. “Unbelievable... she’s on the move again.”

“Hurry! This way!”

Jack bolted through the corridors of the command center, and Twilight followed behind. They burst into the main bridge and looked up at the holo-map of the island: The Megatank swiveled its main artillery cannon away from the command center and opened fire. The massive discharge blew a new crater in the ground, and the weapon’s overwhelming recoil sent the entire vehicle flying through the air. The Megatank landed on its side and tumbled a few hundred feet further, finally coming to rest in an upright position. The artillery cannons slowly swiveled around, preparing to repeat the process.

“No,” Jack said, firmly. “Just. No.”

Twilight tapped at a nearby control panel, and a stream of data flowed across several nearby monitors. “I don’t know what kind of weapon that is, but I think I recognize the energy source... she must be using the power of rock’n’roll to redline the vehicle’s reactor.”

Jack frowned at the data. “Is there any way to hear what’s goin’ on out there?”

Twilight nodded. “Establishing real-time audio feed now.”

The bridge’s main speakers switched on, transmitting several bars of hard-rock, new-wave music: a swell of electronic synth raged on behind a cool saxaphone solo.

“I recognize that bass,” Twilight whispered. “It’s a Yamaha DX7 synthesizer!”

Jack waved a hoof at her. “Shh!”

They listened. There was a voice following along with the beat, screaming out lyrics with the savage, burning passion of a natural born fighter pilot:

You’ll never say hello to you

Until you get it on the red line overload!

You’ll never know what you can do

Until you get it up as high as you can goooo!

Jack glared at the monitors. “It’s not just rock’n’roll,” she said. “It’s karaoke.”

Twilight gasped. “Oh god. We can use that! If we can dampen her music with a sonic neutralizer, we might be able to distract her!”

“And if she can’t sing, she can’t boost the Megatank’s power.”

Twilight took out her sonic stunners and plugged them into a console. “Just gimme a minute. I need to calculate the kind of music that’s the exact opposite of what she’s singing.”

Jack shook her head. “I’ll handle this myself.”

“Do you want another Buzzard? I can build one at the factory.”

“No time,” she said. “I’ll jest have to grab whatever’s lying around.”

“Lying aro...? We don’t have any combat vehicles left! What are you going to do, go out there and fight her with your bare hooves!?”

Jack jogged towards the exit without a glance back. “Desperate times,” she said.

The armored garage door of the command center’s main bay slowly opened, and the golden light of sunset crept across the floor. A large, pony-shaped figure stood near the ramp, cast in sharp silhouette: its two shoulder pylons were fitted with a pair of loudspeakers, and the vertically-mounted cockpit slid down and sealed shut.

A calm, robotic voice played over the loudspeakers, too faint to understand. The mech went to a nearby supply shelf and slung a huge violin case across its back and a broad-brimmed stetson to the roof of its head-shaped cockpit. It turned to face the ramp, and its bulky, oversized legs shifted with subtle skill.

The front window of the cockpit deployed an additional layer of heat-shield armor plates. The pilot’s face was visible for a moment, though only from the nose down. A massive explosion detonated across the horizon, rendered almost insignificant over the distance.

The calm, robotic voice broke the silence. “SCV ready for deployment.”

Private Applejack put a toothpick in her mouth and clamped her teeth tight, working it side to side for a few seconds.

“Hell,” she said, her voice a guttural drawl. “It’s about overtime.”

Comments

[DuncanR]

Almost at the end game, now.

Soon... soon!

[nemryn]

Obviously Applejack is the changeling spy.

[BlueNinja]

The vehicle was a perfect fusion of land and air superiority

Um, no. No, it's not. That would be a BOLO Mark XXXIV. Even Rainbow Dash isn't that awesome.