Strange Bedfellows

by BRBrony9

Critical

The skies above Fillydelphia were ablaze with light. Magic and psychic energy were being unleashed in quantities scarcely seen in Equestria since the royal sisters had done fierce battle with Discord so long ago. The disturbances were affecting the weather, and in addition to magic lightning, natural lightning now flashed from clouds that had suddenly formed seemingly from nowhere. A gloriously sunny day had become an overcast battlefield.

The Imperial ground forces looked on with twin fears. As well as the Daemon, they had now learned through broadcasts from fleet command that their ships above were under attack from a newly arrived Chaos task force. A lot of worried eyes, though formerly glued to the fight raging on the planet, had turned skyward in the knowledge that death could rain down upon them at any moment, so far as they knew.

Celestia and Luna were untiring, fighting with every fiber of their beings. They could sense the malice that continued to radiate from the Daemon, and they knew it had to be stopped. Whatever needed to be done, they were willing to do it. Unaware of the arrival of the Chaos fleet, the two sisters worked in unison, using their numbers advantage to strike at the Daemon from two places at once whenever they could. Despite their power, and despite the Daemon's trickery and use of its lesser minions, a stalemate had developed. Neither side were able to strike a killing blow, nor even one to cripple their opponent. They were too agile, their defences too strong. Both Princesses and Malaranth the Infinite could teleport away from danger, block strikes with their shields. Celestia and Luna were not willing to give up ground, for this was their land, their home, their demesne. Many had tried before to take it from them, and ultimately, all had failed. They were determined that this would be no different, whatever powers Malaranth might be able to field against them.

The Daemon seemed equally determined, but in a rather lackadaisical fashion. It was fighting hard, of that there was no doubt. But was the creature merely fighting to buy time for some unknown event to occur? It had intimated as much to Celestia, boasting that it was trying to stop her from interfering with the plans of its god, but that it would not really matter if it failed to do so. Its cryptic and hollow words meant little to either Princess; they were concerned merely with defeating the foe, regardless of its intentions or schemes.

More magic flashed as Celestia tried yet another blazing beam of magic. Malaranth flashed out of existence for a moment before appearing elsewhere, swinging down low toward the city. The Princesses followed it, getting in range of ground fire again but with no effect. The Chaos infantry must have viewed the seemingly invincible Princesses in the same light that the Imperial ground forces viewed the Daemon; they kept fighting, taking no damage, no matter what they or their Daemonic patron were throwing at them.

The rooftops of Fillydelphia flew by beneath them. The abandoned city was still intact, for the most part, a sign that maybe one day it could return to being the thriving seat of industry and military output it had been until the invasion. Inaccurate fire came up at them from below, small arms an an occasional rocket, mostly missing wide of the mark and having no effect even when it did make contact with the shield of either Princess. Buildings swept by, rooftops, chimneys, smoke stacks and power lines. Blasts of magic and energy flickered between the cooling towers of a power station on the edge of the town. Before the war it would have provided power for most of the city and its factories. Now the plant lay silent, generators unmaintained and turbines stationary, perhaps never to turn again.

Another column of magic blasted from Luna's horn, narrowly missing both Malaranth and the smoke stacks of the factories and the power plant, sailing away into the distance. The return shot from Malaranth's staff struck one of the chimneys, and it began to topple, folding up on itself like a deck of cards and collapsing in several distinct sections to smash into rubble upon the streets below. The Daemon teleported away again, moving clear of the power plant. The Princesses followed, and again rifts were opened in reality. Lesser creatures of its evil kind poured forth from the other dimension to join the fight, another of Malaranth's seemingly endless distractions that were stopping Celestia and Luna from being able to deal a killing blow.

The Daemon took them soaring high into the sky, far above the city. The plains of Equestria stretched out before them, the clouds, newly formed thanks to the energies being unleashed, hung just above them, lightning playing out its fancy show around them, a most prophetic and grand spectacle, making Malaranth appear as the bringer of the apocalypse while simultaneously casting Luna, and especially Celestia, as rather messianic figures. If any ponies had been around to witness the struggle, they would have found their faith only strengthened to impossible new heights at witnessing their leaders defying this creature and the fundamental laws of nature in their efforts to protect Equestria and its surviving citizens.

But there were only humans and Daemons watching, and the humans were leaving. From their vantage point on high, Celestia and Luna could see the Imperial formation, north of the city, was on the move. They were heading north, away from Fillydelphia, raising a dust cloud from their many vehicle wheels and tank treads, for reasons unknown. Were they just repositioning, or had they lost confidence in the ability of the two Princesses to defeat their enemy? Was there some other reason unknown to the sisters as to why they would be leaving their posts?

'Do you see your friends, how they flee?' Malaranth pointed it out in case they had not noticed. 'I call them friends, but I should say allies of convenience, of course. That is all they are, and that is all you are to them. Do you worry that they are abandoning you?'

'We worry about nothing, Daemon,' Luna replied impetuously, in her loud Royal Canterlot Voice, booming across the rooftops for the Chaos infantry below to hear. 'All that we are concerned about is defeating you.'

'Yes, of course, Princess,' Malaranth chuckled. 'Your allies are concerned with the same thing, but they have failed, and I am afraid you will fail also. They flee because they will shortly be facing another threat. But as you say, you do not concern yourself with such things. Why would you? Let your allies handle the other problems while you fight the good fight here. Well, it may be good, but it is ultimately futile.'

While Luna traded barbs with the Daemon, Celestia had been wondering exactly why the humans would be retreating now. Not at the start of the battle, but halfway through, and not at a time when it seemed as though the Daemon was about to emerge victorious. They were still there fighting it, both Princesses, clearly visible to the human spotters even from twenty miles distant as they flashed about the sky. The news, however misleading and obfuscated it may be, that there was another threat about to emerge made Celestia immediately wary. She had felt another sensation at the back of her mind, beginning just a short time earlier, that was similar to that which she had felt when the enemy were making their first landings. More than just the sensation of a single entity, a single mind somewhere that was trying to contact her, to influence her, as Malaranth had manifested itself. This was more of a collective sensation, a general feeling of unease from the presence of something malign. Not some grand intelligence like the Daemon, but a collection of small voices, small sensations, combining into one larger pressure.

Whatever she had felt, she imagined it had to be the threat to which the Daemon was referring. No doubt it would reveal itself in time, but her focus remained firmly on Malaranth and finally ending the fight. Everything they seemed to try had no effect, and the stalemate was clearly continuing. The only thing that was aiding Malaranth was his constant streams of underlings. With thousands of them throwing psychic attacks at the two Princesses, some were bound to connect, and though they were a fraction of the power wielded by the one that had summoned them, together they all added up, impacting the shields of both sisters.

Once again Celestia tried her expanding magic bubble, incinerating hundreds of the smaller Daemons as they came into contact with the sphere of death. Malaranth again evaded, simply teleporting away, sitting tantalisingly close yet too far away for it to harm. Each time one of the sisters got a clear shot, surprising the Daemon, it still managed to presciently disappear somehow, in a most aggravating fashion, almost as if it were deliberately toying with them.

As Celestia rose up into the sky again to try and get a better angle to strike the Daemon with her lightning magic, something appeared above her, and began to fall, dropping past her vision just a couple of feet from her face. She reflexively caught the object with her magic, bringing it back up. It was a scroll, tightly bound with the royal seal of Equestria. But scrolls did not simply appear from thin air, except when...

She rapidly unfolded the scroll and scanned over its contents. It was just a couple of lines, but it told her all that she needed to know. She teleported to Luna's side and relayed the new information to her sister. It took both of them mere moments to decide on their next course of action.

Luna let fly with a swirling maelstrom of magic from her horn, flying off in all directions, striking down countless smaller Daemons, igniting the sky around her. Celestia's horn produced another of her spheres of magic, so deadly to the lesser creatures. Malaranth teleported away nonchalantly again, but when it looked for its foes, it found nothing. The Princesses were gone.

Twilight nervously paced back and forth along the stone and marble floors of the throne room. She was terribly bad at waiting, even at the best of times, and this was far from being the best of times. She had been observing the skies as a way to try and distract her from her thoughts, but had instead seen something much more concerning, both for herself and the rest of Equestria. There was gunfire in the heavens, flashes of what she would have assumed to be magic if she didn't know better. The human starships were equipped with immensely powerful weapons, the workings of which she could not even begin to guess at. Anything with the power to destroy some of the ships she had seen, which were several miles long at a minimum, had to be capable of unleashing massive amounts of energy that could only be matched by the strongest unicorns and, of course, the Princesses. The fact that she could see the flashes of weapons fire from the surface meant one of two things; either the Imperial fleet was testing its weapons for some reason, or they were engaging in combat.

Having rapidly decided it could only be the latter, Twilight had hurriedly tried to focus her telescope- Luna's telescope, she had to keep correcting herself- on the points in space where most of the gunfire seemed to be ending. It must be where the targets lay, and she zoomed in again to the maximum she could manage and still retain a decent field of view. There, yes, were more ships. These were different in design, though broadly similar in appearance to those she had already seen. There were more curves and flowing lines, in contrast to the blocky sharpness of the Imperial ships that made them seem like flying palaces or castles. Some of these new ships did possess such a design, however; older versions of the same class of vessel, perhaps, or copies designed by the human Archenemy? From what she had been told, Twilight remembered that the Chaos forces had betrayed their Emperor and turned against the Imperium millennia ago. Perhaps they stole the plans for Imperial ships and built some themselves? Surely it was impossible that any mechanical construct, especially one of such impossibly vast scale, could still be in functioning, spaceworthy order after thousands of years?

Assuming, of course, that she was indeed looking at Chaos ships. Mention had been made in passing by humans of other species out there in the galaxy, with strange names. Orks, Tyranids, Necrons, Eldar...she thought she was remembering the names correctly. There was always the possibility that these ships were from some other race, despite their similarity in appearance. After all, Griffon airships looked broadly like those of the Royal Equestrian Air Corps, did they not?

Twilight had watched the titanic exchange of fire for several minutes, lost in the scale and scope of what she was witnessing. These ships were hundred of miles above the planet's surface and thousands of miles apart from each other, yet everything was as clear as a bell, despite it being daytime. She then remembered that she had to tell somepony about this, and quickly teleported herself down to the throne room where she now found herself. Cadence had been there, and Twilight had hurriedly explained what she had seen to the acting regent of Equestria.

Cadence had not known what to do; what could she do? Other than Twilight's vague sightings, which, while visually clear, had not exactly given her any intimate knowledge of what precisely was happening up there. It was only guesswork; somewhat educated guesswork, but guesswork nevertheless, and national action could never be taken based upon that. It was only a few minutes later that the human liaison team, Atter and Mons, had approached Cadence with a report from orbit. The Lord-Admiral was too busy to speak, but had ordered an alert message to be sent to the palace. The message confirmed the fears of Twilight. The ships she had seen were indeed new arrivals, and they were indeed ships of the human Archenemy, come to support their Daemonic patron, no doubt, or perhaps to rescue their surviving forces on the planet. Either way, it was critical that the news be relayed to Celestia and Luna at once. If the Chaos fleet managed to drive off their allies, it would leave Canterlot completely open to destruction from above, or to another occupation attempt by enemy landing forces.

But the Princesses were miles away. Cadence could have teleported down to them, but it would have taken time and left the city and the nation essentially leaderless, especially if anything should happen to her on the way there or the way back. The Princesses had no vox system, as the humans called it. The team assigned to them were right here beside Cadence, and not with the sisters. It had seemed that they had no way of communicating, until Twilight remembered Spike.

She felt bad not to have thought of him immediately. It gave her pause when she thought about how she felt more distant from her friends than she ever had since she had met them, and Spike was her oldest friend of all. She had known him all his short life, and yet she felt like she had hardly spoken to her since she had been captured. But then, she had hardly spoken to anypony, except when they had intruded on her thoughts, such as when they had visited her while she was bedridden, or Applejack sitting with her in the catacombs. In a way, she found that she was alright with that. She had partly returned to the mindset of how she had lived her younger years when studying in Canterlot; even with friendship she had always enjoyed being alone at times, to gather herself and think the thoughts that she dare not think when in company, but since she had returned from the Hive she found that she actively wanted to be alone, a condition she had not experienced since before she moved to Ponyville. It was one of those thoughts that she only wanted to think when she was alone, but now, she felt like it most of the time. If I was alone, I could think about this properly, she told herself. That's why I want to be alone. A self-fulfilling philosophy, driven by something that she did not fully understand.

Spike's ability to send enchanted scrolls to Princess Celestia directly using his fire breath, no matter where the Princess might be located, was the only way anypony could think of to contact her while she and Luna were out fighting, and so Cadence had sent a guard to bring Spike to the throne room as quickly as possible. When he arrived, Spike was eager to help, having felt like a bystander ever since the invasion, not being able to fight and not being able to help Twilight with her studies, since she had no time for such things and then had disappeared for almost two weeks while in Changeling hooves. Now, here was his chance to be the big hero that he so longed to be once more. Having helped save the Crystal Empire, Spike had just been waiting for his time to come again.

Twilight and Cadence rapidly drafted a scroll to be written and sent, informing Celestia as succinctly as possible of the arrival of a Chaos fleet and the fighting now underway in space. Once it was prepared, the scroll was affixed with the royal seal, given to Spike, and sent on its way by a flourish of magical flame.

Then the waiting began. Would Celestia receive the scroll? Would it reach her at all, when she was so far away? Most scrolls Spike had sent to her had gone from Ponyville to Canterlot, a fairly short distance. This was much farther away, as Celestia was down in the south at Fillydelphia. There was no cast-iron guarantee that the scrolls would function as designed over the longer distance. Even if they did, she might not receive it, perhaps not noticing its arrival among the maelstrom of battle, which each of them pictured in their minds. Doing battle with some monstrous creature from another world would stretch even the great minds and talents of the two royal sisters. It was far from unlikely that the scroll might not even be seen, instead simply falling to earth in some remote location, on a rooftop or hillside, never to be seen again.

Twilight especially found her mind good at conjuring up disaster scenarios, reasons why Celestia might not receive their message and warning. Perhaps she was dead, but no, they would know, as she had told herself before. They would have felt it. Perhaps she was incapacitated, unconscious, trapped, a prisoner somewhere. Perhaps she was desperately trying to save her sister, or the human ground forces, Perhaps...

Perhaps she was in Canterlot. A sudden flash of light illuminated the throne room, and there she was, and Luna, too, both royal sisters returned to their capital. They looked tired, a little drained perhaps, but they were not injured.

'Princess Celestia! Princess Luna!' Cadence quickly jumped up from the throne. 'Thank goodness you received our message.'

'Yes, that was good thinking, to use Spike's scrolls,' Celestia nodded, slowly settling down onto the floor of the chamber, with Luna landing beside her. 'We received your message and decided it was prudent to withdraw from the area until we know more about this new threat.'

'Indeed,' Luna agreed. 'The Daemon mentioned another threat would be coming. One presumes this is what it was referring to.'

'I saw them, Princess!' Twilight blurted out. 'I was using your telescope to look at the Imperial ships. I noticed they were moving and I didn't know why, then I saw...'

'Slowly, Twilight, slowly,' Celestia urged her. 'You saw the Imperial ships, and then you saw these other ships, correct?'

'Yes, Princess.' Twilight nodded, pacing herself better and continuing her explanation. 'I saw them moving and then I saw flashes. I guess it must have been weapons fire. I looked at where the fire was going, and that's where I saw more ships.'

'And you are certain these ships were not merely more Imperial vessels?' Luna questioned.

'No...I'm not sure at all, Princess,' Twilight replied. 'I don't know what the ships of any of these other species look like. Before today, I had only seen Imperial ones. The first ship I saw before the invasion, that was an Imperial ship, according to what we know. They arrived before their enemy did. In fact, the only non-Imperial ship I had seen was that one that blew up in the atmosphere.'

The ship, the Grand Cruiser which had detonated so spectacularly upon its reentry dive had not exactly been clearly visible, being shrouded in an ionised sheath of superheated plasma thanks to the compression of air in its path during its descent, and there was precious little left of it now, being scattered across the southeastern coastal plains in billions of tiny pieces. All Twilight had to go on was the fact that the ships she had spotted newly arrived in orbit did indeed look different to those they seemed to be fighting.

'Well, we can safely assume that at least some of the new ships you saw were Chaos vessels, given that the humans reported it through their spotter team,' Celestia pointed out. 'Clearly they are engaged in a battle, though how many of these enemy vessels there might be, I cannot say. Have the humans been able to get into contact with their Admiral again?'

'No, nothing,' Cadence replied. 'They are trying now. I sent them up to the top of the Celestial Tower. They thought they might get better...what did they call it...reception? Better reception from up there. I don't know how that gadget of theirs works.'

'Radio waves!' Twilight piped up again, causing all three Princesses to look at her, as well as Spike. 'I mean...at least, I think so,' she added. 'Something like that. Different wavelengths of electromagnetic radiation can propagate through different media at different rates. In a vacuum they will travel at the speed of light, and...'

'Thank you, Twilight. We do not need a physics lecture at this point,' Luna rebuked her. 'What we need is a plan. How do we defeat this Daemon, and how do we prepare for this Chaos fleet?'

'We may not need to prepare for the fleet,' Celestia pointed out. 'It is entirely possible that the Imperial ships will be able to fight them off.'

'What do we know about the strength of the Imperial fleet?' Luna asked her sister. 'You have been in contact with their Lord-Admiral on numerous occasions.'

'I have, but he has remained tight-lipped,' Celestia replied. 'I believe he is not too keen on revealing his strength, or otherwise, to me. However, the last time I checked, there were one hundred and eighteen vessels.'

Twilight blinked. 'What? But you just said that the Lord-Admiral didn't want to reveal his strength to you...'

'He did not,' Celestia nodded. 'But he had no choice. A simple spell was all it took to scan the sky and determine the exact number of vessels.'

'But Princess, why did you not tell us of this before?' Twilight stood with her mouth slightly agape, both at the casual way Celestia had admitted to determining the Imperial numbers, and at the fact that she had not shared the information with her.

'I told my sister, and I told your brother,' Celestia replied to Twilight directly. 'They were the ones who needed to know. You did not. I did not wish to unduly alarm the population by revealing exactly how many Imperial ships were in orbit around our planet. It was bad enough for ponies to know that we were being invaded by beings from another world without their apparent strength being revealed also. All it would have done would be to spread additional unnecessary panic and rumour.'

Celestia had a point, a very valid point, but Twilight could not help but frown. Was she not important enough to be told these things? No, she supposed. She was not. Whatever opinion others might hold of her, and whatever powers she might possess, she was still just an ordinary citizen. Celestia's student, yes, but not a soldier, not an airpony or a guardspony or a military planner, nor even a civil governor or mayor. She was just a student and a young mare, and what would knowing the true numbers have actually meant for her? Celestia was right, she might have simply panicked. She was sure the population as a whole would have done, and there had been enough panic as it was, just from the simple fact of coming under attack.

'When you saw these new ships, Twilight, how many of them were there?' Luna questioned. 'Could you count them?'

'I couldn't count them all, Princess,' Twilight replied. 'There was too much weapons fire...I counted about fifteen, I think, although some might have been the Imperial ships, instead. It was hard to be sure.'

'One hundred and eighteen ships against fifteen hardly sounds like a fair fight,' Cadence pointed out. 'If that's the case then there shouldn't be anything to worry about.'

'That is assuming having the numbers advantage is all that matters,' Celestia answered. 'I counted that many Imperial ships, but I do not know what functions they all have. There is no guarantee they all have the same strengths and powers, or the same armament. After all, many, in fact the majority, of those ships I detected were much smaller than some of the others. It is reasonable to assume that the larger ships are the more powerful ones, if the Imperials follow the basic principles that are applied to our own airships and naval vessels. Given the number of soldiers and the variety and quantity of equipment they have landed, it would also be reasonable to suppose that a large number of those vessels are transports of some form or another. That does not mean they cannot be a warship as well, but again, from our own experiences, transports and support craft tend to be less well armed than warships. Of the absolute largest vessels, I detected only two. One of them was undoubtedly the flagship to which I was taken to speak with the Lord-Admiral. If that is the most powerful vessel in the fleet, then it seems that the Imperial force may not be quite so large as we imagine.'

'Then it is possible they could lose this fight?' Cadence asked, with a worried frown. 'What then? Would they flee, or be destroyed, or...?'

'That would depend on the mindset of the Lord-Admiral, would it not, sister?' Luna queried, to which Celestia nodded.

'Yes, it would. While I have spoken to him on numerous occasions, I still cannot quite grasp his true feelings with regards to this planet. I believe it is unlikely that he would simply abandon his mission, but if the safety of his entire fleet were to be put in jeopardy, then who can say how he might react in reality?'

'But if they flee, we will have no protection against their Archenemy!' Cadence cried.

'That is not strictly true,' Celestia replied, calmingly but somewhat cryptically. 'If the Chaos fleet finds itself victorious and in orbit around our planet, then they may well come to regret it rather quickly.'

Comments

[BRBrony9]

10227609
Not when they're on the bridge of an Imperial warship with no apparent threats anywhere around.

[Booster Spice]

Celestia is planning to give the Chaos fleet a warm reception, while Luna just wants to go bowling?

[The_Grey_Knight]

Oh cool so the Tyranids are coming, assuming that presence Celestia feels is the shadow in the warp, which it sounds like.