Iron Hearts: Book 3 - The Sept Lamman

by SFaccountant

Siege of Canterlot (Part One)

Iron Hearts: Book 3

Chapter 9

Siege of Canterlot (Part One)

****

Canterlot plaza

Twilight had to admit that, under very, very different circumstances, she would have been amazed and thrilled by the sight of a Tau deployment. It was a remarkable thing; advanced beyond her wildest imagination, just like human technology, but different enough from the Iron Warriors' means of war that it didn't merely feel like the same aliens setting up camp in different colors.

For one thing, their vehicles were much smaller and more purpose-built, skimming high over the ground and floating briefly before dropping their payloads and zipping away. Crews of Fire Warriors, assembly drones, and the odd Tau in a lightly-armored jumpsuit would descend upon whatever was dropped off and set it up, and it wasn't always obvious what it was by the time they were done and had moved on to the next object. It was a very different approach to creating a temporary base to the 38th Company's method of raining buildings and guns down from the sky and hammering them into the ground, or constructing a massive iron city that they only planned on living in for two months. She would have found it refreshing if it weren't happening in Equestria's capital and her old home of Canterlot.

"Whoa! What're those things? Those aren't Tau!" Rainbow Dash shouted, staring up at a slow-moving transport that had opened up while still high in the air. Spilling from its access ramp came tall, winged, bipedal creatures whose bodies were encased in a light blue carapace. They were obviously some kind of insectoid alien, and they took off into the air with a loud hum not unlike a bumblebee as they gripped heavy rifles in their claws.

There were Kroot, too, coming out of an Orca lander and stalking toward the gardens with their arms laden with supplies. They were being guided by several Fire Warriors who seemed to be yelling at them emphatically. While pointing to the train of pony prisoners and making "No" gestures. Not a good sign.

"Aw, no. Ya gotta be kiddin' me..." Applejack said breathlessly.

Twilight turned forward again to see what the farmer had seen, and her eyes widened. Standing in formation next to the streets was a rather large collection of humans. Not prisoners, either. Each one of them was wearing the Lamman Sept's body armor of blue and black and carrying pulse weapons. Their helmets were also much different from that of Fire Warriors, exposing more of the face. There was no mistaking them for Tau with their noses and skin visible.

"What the hay?! You traitors!" Rainbow Dash shouted, hopping into the air and hovering as she shook her hoof at the homo sapiens.

She immediately found herself with a dozen or so pulse carbines aimed at her, and the pegasus yelped before dropping down onto the ground again and carefully folding her wings.

"No shouting," one of the Fire Warriors commanded in halting Gothic, beaming a markerlight on Rainbow Dash's forehead briefly before shouldering his weapon and nodding.

The train of prisoners started moving again, passing by the human platoon as it was briefed by a Fire Warrior Shas'ui.

"You're to move in teams of four and patrol the assigned routes for shifts of five hours each!" the Tau barked, his Gothic quite fluent. "The native aliens inexplicably speak your language, so you're best suited to acting as enforcers! Keep the peace, break up any large gatherings or outbreaks of violence, and seize any weapons you find! It doesn't matter if it's a boltgun or a knife, but keep in mind that there have been reports of the aliens using Imperial weaponry!"

The human auxiliaries shared a chuckle at that, finding the idea of hooved animals firing rifles understandably silly.

"That is all, men! Tau'va!" the Shas'ui barked.

"For the Greater Good!" the humans shouted back, saluting before they dispersed.

The ponies flinched away from the enthusiastic shout, watching as the human auxiliaries broke into small teams and headed into the winding streets of Canterlot.

"Twilight, do you know what that's about? Why would humans be working with Tau?" Rarity asked softly, adjusting her pace to match the alicorn's.

Twilight sighed as she recalled her studies of the species. "The Tau Empire frequently integrates alien worlds into their fold, and they often do it peacefully, with propaganda campaigns and cultural assimilation," she explained, "then they enlist some people from those worlds into their army. The Tau have taken many planets from the Imperium, which is apparently the pre-eminent human power in the greater part of the galaxy, and they seem to have recruited some there."

"Those Space Communists!" Pinkie growled, shaking a hoof angrily.

"... I don't know what that means," Twilight confessed, "but in any case, who is and isn't an enemy may not fall on racial lines anymore."

"They don't have Space Marines on their side too, do they?" Fluttershy asked, looking horrified at the thought.

She was far from the only one. The idea made Twilight's blood run cold. "I... don't know. I don't know enough about the worlds they've captured, or about the Space Marines outside of the 38th Company."

"Hey, Ah've got a question," Applejack mumbled, "they said they were givin' the city back after they're done with it, right? Not that Ah really trust 'em, but why would they do that?"

Twilight tilted her head to one side thoughtfully. "Well, Applejack, holding a city under martial law isn't easy. It's not just a matter of displacing the original rulers, you kind of have to run the city too, and-"

"Yeah, Ah get that," the farmer interrupted bitterly, "but what Ah mean is, don't these guys usually do that sorta thing all the time? Take over planets? But with us they just want us out of the way so that they can do their thing, and then they're leavin', right? At first Ah thought they were leavin' because we asked 'em to, but that don't make sense no more. They don't even wanna try to keep us."

"Hey, yeah! What're we, chopped crabgrass?" Rainbow Dash demanded.

Twilight frowned. "You have a point. I've considered it before, but mostly from the perspective of whether they were trying to conquer us or not, not why they wouldn't."

She paused for several seconds as another Devilfish APC swooped overhead, a Riptide battlesuit hanging off the side.

"I don't think they've considered it, honestly. The Tau didn't know much about us until recently. This entire operation they're running seems... I don't know... rushed and desperate. They made it clear when they were negotiating that they were willing to leave us in peace, and I don't think that's changed. They never even seemed to think about taking us into the Empire, even after bloodlessly conquering our capital."

Her forehead furrowed. "It's almost like... they're... just throwing the planet away..."

"Halt!" shouted one of the Fire Warriors, holding up an arm. The entire line of ponies stumbled to a stop.

Twilight leaned to one side to get a good look past the many stallion soldiers ahead of her, and then she grimaced. A set of assembly drones were finishing up construction of a long line of large cages.

"Oh, you canNOT be serious!" Rarity said, recoiling at the sight. "Do you mean to tell me that we're to be locked up like barnyard animals?"

A nearby Fire Warrior gave her a lingering glance before turning toward another. *Should I tell them?*

*Nah. They'll crack.*

Several of the cages shifted open, and Twilight could see a few Earth Caste members walking away from a humming generator tower. Thick cables led from the generator to the various clusters of cages, and she correctly guessed that the power supply was for more than the opening and closing mechanisms of their new prisons.

"All right, ponies, in you go!" barked the Shas'ui. "Cooperate and this will all be over before you know it!"

****

Canterlot Castle - lower halls

"And here are the palace vaults," Celestia said wearily, nodding her head toward a vast iron door, "within, you will find your accursed core. Do with it what you will."

Voidsong was following behind Celestia and Luna in the halls with four attendant Heavy Stealth Suits as a bodyguard. Standing before them was a set of massive double-doors covered with strange runic symbols.

"Open it," Voidsong commanded.

Princess Celestia snorted. "I can't. I open it with magic. Which I cannot presently use, thanks to you."

The Commander turned her optics on the white alicorn. "You mean your psionic abilities."

"Call it whatever thou likes. Thou hast removed it, and with it, any ability of ours to access the vaults," Luna said sharply.

Voidsong considered this briefly, looking up at the doors. "Understood. Shas'ui?"

Two Heavy Stealth Suits bore fusion blasters in addition to their burst cannons, and they stomped forward toward the barrier as their guns started to hum.

Celestia and Luna grimaced and stepped back, flinching away as the mighty anti-armor weapons discharged into the vault door. Flares of light like miniature suns slammed into the barrier, and a loud hiss filled the hall as the weapon flash slowly abated.

"... Huh." Voidsong was most displeased to see the vault door completely unscathed as the patches of seething yellow energy faded away. In fact, the afflicted portions of metal looked cleaner and gleamed brighter than the rest of the vault door, having had their surface layer of tarnish and dirt utterly vaporized.

"Ah, it seems the spells of protection art still in effect," Luna said smugly, "We were not certain whether thy magic-foiling effect merely prevented us from using magic, or undid magic entirely. It would seem it is the former."

Celestia was more careful not to sound like she was taunting the aliens when she continued. "I'm not certain how you expect to get the Warp core now. The magic over these doors renders them all but indestructible, and we cannot use our own magic to open them unless you restore our power."

Voidsong considered the matter for several seconds as the Heavy Stealth Suits turned to look at her.

Then her own suit nudged its sensor head to the side.

The other battlesuits moved over in front of the wall next to the vault door, and their fusion blasters cycled up again.

Luna's expression fell as the weapons melted huge holes in the stone wall without difficulty, and a cloud of hot, dark vapor spilled up toward the ceiling.

"Well, that's another obstacle overcome by the might and ingenuity of the Tau," Voidsong said dryly as the battlesuits prepared another salvo to widen the opening, "are there any other defenses we should be aware of?"

Celestia sighed, shaking her head. "No. Just... be careful. Many of the objects within are dangerous or unidentified."

Voidsong nodded her sensor head. *You heard Princess Horse, no mucking about in there. Get the Warp core and get out.*

The Heavy Stealth Suits muttered a brief acknowledgment before they walked into the hole in the wall, their steps slow and deliberate.

The Warp core was easy to spot, standing in the middle of clusters of large gems and right next to a large vase covered in glowing spirals.

The battlesuits duly ignored the various other objects in the room and surrounded the core, reaching down toward the base and gripping it carefully.

They lifted the device up, and then two of the suits turned their facing about toward the new hole in the wall. One of those two turned a little too quickly, however, and without checking how much room he needed.

The sound of poly-ceramic plating slapping against more mundane ceramic broke the eerie silence within the room, and the battlesuits twisted their sensor heads just in time to see the large vase tipping over and falling to the floor.

*Oh, blast!* shouted the pilot responsible as the strange pottery shattered into a hundred glowing pieces.

*Smooth, Haliel. That vase only looked to be about a thousand years old,* murmured another of the suits.

*I didn't... ugh. Never mind, let's just hurry this up.*

A deep, echoing chuckle caused the soldiers to halt, and their sensors focused once more on the shards of the ensorcelled pottery.

"Heh heh heh heh heh... at LAST... after nine hundred and ninety-seven years of imprisonment within that accursed jar..."

The Heavy Stealth Suits carefully put the Warp core down as a dark mist rose from the shattered remains of the vase.

"I, Golthar, Lord of the Desert Wastes, am FREE! Free at last!" the dark mist took shape into a sort of huge scorpion creature, but with an extended thorax that curled upright into a torso and a vaguely humanoid head.

The battlesuits silently took aim with their weapons, and an electric hum began to fill the room.

"Now that I am free, all of Equestria shall feel the sting of... hm? Wait, who are you? What do you think you're-"

Celestia squeezed her eyes shut as a howl of agony briefly swallowed the sharp, high-pitched whistle of the battlesuits' burst cannons before it fell silent.

The sound of the Tau's weapons stopped moments afterward, and was soon replaced by the sound of heavy footsteps once more.

"Poor Golthar. He only had a few more years left on his sentence, too," Celestia said with a sigh.

Luna rolled her eyes. "We shalt never understand thy penchant for arbitrarily long periods of solitary imprisonment as a punishment for threatening the kingdom."

"Luna, please, not this argument AGAIN!" Celestia groaned.

"We think it quite pertinent," the younger Princess insisted, "no villain is reformed by a millennium of isolated misery. Thou may as well have them purified by the Elements of Harmony immediately or destroyed outright."

"MUST we have this discussion now, right in front of the alien overlord?" Celestia asked, jabbing a hoof at Shas'o Voidsong.

"We both know that they'll lose eventually, Sister," Luna chided, "so what method for punishing this wastrel, then? Purification? Turn her to stone? An eon trapped in utter darkness?"

Princess Celestia rolled her eyes. "Purification won't work, Luna. She's not tainted by evil, she's just violent and generally unpleasant." Then she noticed that Voidsong's sensor head was facing her way. "Ahem! No offense."

The Tau Commander continued staring at the sisters for a few seconds, and then turned away. "I think I'd prefer stone."

"Well, this is novel," Luna said with a wry chuckle, "a villain deciding her own sentence."

"I've always wanted a statue in my own honor," Voidsong continued casually as she watched her bodyguards maneuver the Warp core out of the vaults, "the humans have lots of them; a tribute to the vanity and ego of their selfish creed. The Greater Good demands that all sacrifice for the success of the whole, and personal rewards and grand acknowledgments work counter to this ideal."

Luna snorted. "Space Communists," she mumbled under her breath.

"But I must confess that I've always wanted a statue dedicated to me. Of course..." she looked back at the Princesses, and the main sensor node pulsed a blazing red, "... you're going to have to beat me, first. You're a long way away from taking your little city back."

Without further comment, she moved toward the Warp core and started leading the Heavy Stealth Suits up the stairs. *All right, let's hurry up! We only sacrificed a sixth of our fleet for this blasted hunk of metal! Go!*

****

Canterlot - outside the train station

"So, wait, I don't get it. Are you humans on their side, or our side?" asked the royal guard as he peeked out from behind a water barrel.

The source of his confusion was a squad of four human men talking to a very angry conductor on the train platform.

Gaela stood further behind the corner of station building, watching the scene with her optics in thermal vision mode while she considered her options.

"Humans are on whatever side we choose," she mumbled to the stallions in front of her, "although in this particular conflict, we find ourselves aligned either with a pantheon of cruel, bloodthirsty gods from beyond the veil, or with an idealistic philosophy emphasizing galactic unity and collective achievement."

The unicorn guard looked up at her. "So those humans out there are some kind of evil space cultists?"

"Guess again," Gaela said dryly.

The ponies took a moment to digest that, and then their eyes widened.

"Wait, YOU'RE the evil cultist?" the earth pony hissed.

"Yes. Do your leaders ever actually brief you? This should hardly come as a surprise by now."

The unicorn groaned. "Nopony tells us anything. I was off-shift during the changeling invasion, right? I heard about it from the NEWSPAPER two days later. It's ridiculous."

Gaela nodded in agreement. She supposed the ponies' military ineptitude shouldn't come as a surprise anymore.

"All right. I have a plan. You two run up there and drag away the conductor as if you're going to imprison him. I need him separated from the human soldiers." Gaela reached for her belt and unclipped a cylinder not much thicker than her thumb.

"Look, mate, I don't CARE what your schedule is. Your city has been occupied, if you haven't noticed. This train isn't going anywhere."

Smoke Stack slammed his hooves onto the ground stubbornly. "And I don't care what your stupid army is trying to do! I kept up train service through every major disaster faced by this kingdom over the past nine years, and this one isn't going to be different! Do you know how long Discord delayed my train? SIX MINUTES! And that was only because Filthy Rich insisted on buying everypony's ticket and reimbursing those who already had one!"

"I don't know what any of that means," the human sighed, "look, I don't want to hurt you. But this transport is going out of service until the Lamman Sept leaves the city."

"NO, it is NOT! Do you know how many ponies depend on this here train? Hauling goods, passengers, loved ones to their families! You might as well stop my heart as stop this train!"

"Don't tempt us," grumbled an auxiliary as he leaned his pulse rifle on his shoulder.

Before the utterly fruitless argument could go any further, a pair of stallions marched up past the humans toward the conductor.

"All right you, you're coming with us!"

"This area is on lockdown, by order of... whoever exactly is in charge right now!"

Smoke Stack recoiled as the two other stallions approached him. "Wait! Aren't you two Royal Guards? Why aren't you fighting off these alien creeps?"

His question went unanswered as the two hefty ponies seized him, hauling him away from the moderately confused humans.

"Aren't the pony guards supposed to be locked up?" one soldier mumbled.

"If they're helping us, who cares? Now let's see about disabling this train."

Another member of the squad heard the ringing noise of metal bouncing against stone, and he glanced back at some kind of small, unfamiliar rod tumbling toward his foot. "What's that thi-"

The plasma grenade detonated mid-sentence, blasting a cloud of superheated gases into the troopers. Two were killed in moments as their entire bodies were cooked alive, while the other two were blasted off their feet and horribly maimed by the explosion.

Gaela stepped out into the open and walked over to the three wide-eyed stallions.

"You. You are the pilot for this vehicle, correct?" she asked as she spared a glance at the two wounded men gasping breathlessly on the ground.

"Y... Yes?" Smoke Stack replied.

Gaela raised a foot and stomped on the neck of one of the survivors, putting him out of his misery.

"Enter the train at once and await my signal to depart. You are not to move the train without my confirmation."

Smoke grimaced. "Now look here, human, just as I was telling these other fellows-"

A loud cracking noise interrupted him as Gaela drove the butt of her power axe into the remaining living soldier's back, silencing him for good.

"... Yes? What were you telling them?"

"I was telling them all about my wife and kids whom I would REALLY like to live to see again!" Smoke Stack sputtered, his legs quivering.

Gaela nodded calmly. "Then it sounds like we understand each other. Guards."

The two military stallions stiffened nervously, obviously terrified.

"Drag these corpses past the tracks and throw them over the side of the mountain. Then meet me in the passenger car."

"Sir, yes, Sir!" the earth pony shouted, tripping over himself in his hurry to obey.

"Are... Are we leaving right away?" the unicorn asked nervously.

Gaela didn't answer, her head facing the tracks that bordered the edge of the city. Beyond the tracks and over the tops of the faraway mountain range, the setting sun splashed a beautiful cascade of orange and red across the sky. It was very picturesque, and as far as Gaela was aware it had been that way for almost an hour now.

"Er... Miss Evil Cultist?"

"... Negative. For now, we wait," Gaela mumbled as she stepped up into the train car, "I have a feeling a certain group of ponies will be along shortly."

****

Canterlot - city center

"C'mon now! Move along! Break it up!"

Three squads of human auxiliaries marched through a plaza with their pulse weapons aimed to fire, causing the ponies that had been gathering together to scatter and flee.

The insectoid Vespid Stingwings buzzed high overhead, landing on the roofs of the buildings and scanning the crowds below with their many eyes.

One of the Stingwings pointed a claw at a small cluster of pegasi hovering next to a tower, its wings vibrating rapidly and emitting a sub-sonic wave that alerted the other members of its unit. The flying ponies yelped and darted away through the air in all directions.

"Be advised!" yelled the human. "There are to be no large gatherings so long as this city is under occupation! In addition, a curfew is in effect! Any citizen found out of doors after dark will be detained and imprisoned!"

Then the man glanced at the sun, which was partially hidden by the distant mountains. "Whenever that is. Wasn't the sun already setting when we unloaded?"

"Slow rotation?" guessed another soldier.

"Wasn't in the deployment brief. Whatever, let's go."

Spike watched from a nearby alleyway as the troops headed deeper into the city, chewing on the ends of his claws. His initial urge upon seeing humans was to greet them enthusiastically and ask how Company soldiers had gotten to the city so fast, but luckily he'd restrained himself long enough to make sense of the situation. He wasn't sure why humans would be helping Tau, but that hardly mattered at this point. Blue and black armor meant that the soldiers were enemies, and gunmetal, gold, and red were friendly. At least they had the decency to color-code their allegiance if certain species couldn't pick a side and stick with it.

"Dang. Where the hay IS Gaela, anyway?" Spike grumbled. All he knew was that she was supposed to be escorted by a pair of Royal Guards, and that if she had been found by the Tau then all hell would have broken loose already. "If I were her, where would I be waiting out an alien invasion?"

This was a much harder question than asking himself Celestia's course of action in a crisis. Even if he could boast about knowing the Dark Acolyte well enough to converse with her on a regular basis, he still didn't possess much insight into her thought process. It was too... rigid and logical, yet at the same time strangely arcane. Completely devoid of ethical and emotional imperative, but also prone to bursts of selfish whimsy. Gaela was a bizarre person from a bizarre species attached to a bizarre army.

"This is getting me nowhere," Spike grumbled, crossing his arms over his chest, "I need a better plan."

"And I happen to have one!" shouted a happy voice from behind him.

Spike emitted a high-pitched shriek as he jumped in fright, and then quickly clapped his hands over his mouth before he whirled around.

Spike could only be so surprised to see the long, serpentine mesh of various creatures looming over him with an amused grin; he had recognized Discord's voice immediately, even if he was still quite surprised to suddenly hear it behind him.

"It's about time you showed up!" Spike snapped as he moved his hands. "Nopony's heard from you in over a week!"

Discord rolled his eyes. "Oh, yes, of course. EVERYPONY wants to see good old Discord around... when they want something." There was a cloaked and hooded figure standing silently behind the draconequus, although he hardly warranted much notice next to the spirit of Chaos.

The young dragon scowled. "Yeah, well now's one of those times. Twi and the others are trapped. I need your help to get them free!"

Discord tsked. "Yeah, no, that's not happening."

"Why not?" Spike asked, raising an eyebrow. "Don't tell me you're afraid of a bunch of aliens! They have Fluttershy too, you know!"

"Oh, it's not that," Discord assured him, "it's this." Then he raised his bird-like claw and snapped his fingers.

A tiny puff of smoke came from his talons, accompanied by an appropriately pitiful "pfth" noise.

"No way! You too?!" Spike asked, cringing.

Discord sighed as he crossed his mismatched arms. "These 'Tau' are clever little pests, I'll give them that. They've got some gizmo around here to help enforce the laws of boring old reality. I couldn't even teleport in; I had to sneak into the city with THIS weirdo." He jabbed a thumb behind him at the cloaked figure.

Spike leaned to the side to get a good look at the second person. From seeing under his hood, Spike could see it was a dark-skinned man with a strikingly calm expression on his face.

He frowned. "Who's he?" he could only guess that it was someone from the 38th Company, given that he wasn't wearing any Tau armor, although the stranger's wrists had thick iron shackles on them.

"I'm Virgil," the man answered, sounding curiously bored for someone sneaking through a city held by an enemy army.

Spike frowned, glancing up at Discord. "What's wrong with him that YOU can call him a weirdo?"

"I'm a sane man in an insane universe," Virgil explained unhelpfully.

"See? Can you THINK of a more boring character flaw than that?" Discord challenged Spike.

"Whatever. If you're not here to help, why ARE you here?" Spike grumbled.

"Business call, Spikey," Discord said, wishing dearly that he could magic himself up a suit and tie, "I'm here on behalf of one 'Vel', acting as his representative in the world of those of us with actual bodies, in his dealings with you, Spike."

The young dragon scratched his head. "Vel? Who's Vel?"

Discord rolled his eyes. "Right. It's been a while, hasn't it? Here."

Then Virgil stepped forward and pulled out a very familiar amulet from his pocket.

"WHOAH!!" Spike yelled, leaping backward and slamming his head against a crate.

Virgil quickly tucked the amulet back away as a distant buzzing noise rapidly became less distant.

A Vespid Stingwing landed on the edge of the roof overlooking the alley, its neutron blaster aimed down at the largest of the creatures gathered there.

Discord looked up at the alien in annoyance, his arms clasped behind his back. "Yes? Did you want something?"

The Vespid briefly aimed its blaster at the cloaked figure and the terrified dragon in turn before lowering the weapon. Nothing about this group matched the list of specific behaviors that it was told to watch for, and as it couldn't see Virgil's face and body, it couldn't identify any of the three species. Lacking the cultural experience to consider a small gathering in a darkened alley suspicious, the Stingwing lifted off from the roof and continued on its patrol.

"ANYWAY," Discord said, clearing his throat, "I see you remember our friend Vel now."

"I've been trying my best to forget!" Spike hissed. "So what's the deal?"

"The deal is this," Discord said as he leaned over the much smaller creature, "the effect of the amulet is not intended to be an involuntary affliction corrupting anything dumb enough to wear it on a whim. It's supposed to be the implement of a daemonic contract."

Spike glared up at him, but unsurprisingly the draconequus didn't seem to care.

"Vel's failure to offer any stated terms before twisting your body and soul, even amusingly misleading ones, means that you get a chance to accept or refuse the established contract, negotiable at an appropriately dramatic decision point in the narrative. Like now."

Spike didn't really understand much of that, but he quickly fixated on the "accept or refuse" part. "I refuse! Refuse!"

Discord smiled, his head twisting slowly to one side. "Are you SUUUUUUURE?"

Spike glared up at him some more, and then reluctantly asked. "Why wouldn't I refuse?"

"Well, it just seems to me that you're in a bit of a BIND, here," Discord allowed, shaking his head sadly, "all of our cute little pony friends, captured! All their magic, useless! And who's left to rescue everypony and save the day?"

Spike frowned. "... Gaela?" he guessed. That had been HIS first choice, after all.

"Won't work," Virgil mumbled, "something about sensors and power armor..."

"I'm talking about YOU, little buddy," Discord said with a conspiratorial grin, grabbing Spike by the shoulder, "it's up to YOU to rescue them. The humans aren't going to do it for you. But you'll need help. MAGIC help."

Spike cringed. "But... I thought magic wouldn't work in the city thanks to the Tau!"

"No, that's not it," Discord insisted, "the field simply prevents me and the other 'psykers' from shaping the raw stuff of the Warp into any useful form. It doesn't stop the Warp from affecting us. It's complicated. And probably obsolete under the new psychic rules, actually." He shook his head. "Here's the deal, plain and simple: you accept the amulet, and you get power. Camouflage scales? Super strength? Breath as hot as the surface of the sun? Claws that can rip through metals with intimidating science-fictiony names? All this and more can be yours, if you just ACT NOW!" He spread a hand toward Virgil, who once again brandished the amulet.

Spike gulped. He had to admit that possibility of rescuing the others himself sounded great, and that he had zero confidence in doing so without help. "So this is the kind of pitch Vel was supposed to give me before, huh?"

"Now you're getting it!" Discord said slyly. "And don't get me started on his ATROCIOUS timing! Who offers ultimate power and a shot at immortality while the vict-ERM! While the client is relaxing at home? Where's the imperative to sacrifice your soul and everything you stand for? Sometimes I wonder if we're even training these guys!"

Discord glanced down at Spike, who was now gnawing on his claws nervously as he stared at the ebony Chaos Star.

"So that's the bargain, little buddy. You take the dark bling, and you have a decent shot of rescuing everypony and looking like a total stud while doing it. I know a certain marshmallow mare will be impressed." Then Discord looked away. "Or, you can be a chump and leave it, instead. You'll immediately lose the few little mutations you've already acquired, doom everypony you could have rescued, and go back to being a useless, second-rate sidekick with no chance of scoring with the hot chick."

Discord leaned against the wall of the adjacent building, a lazy grin on his face. "Totally up to you. Take your time, the sun isn't going down any time soon."

Spike groaned as he thought over the decision in front of him. Even if he were to give no thought to the selfish reasons for accepting such a bargain, it sounded like a pretty good deal. And really, what would he be losing? His soul? His "purity?" Twilight and her friends were already getting along splendidly with Chaos worshipers that were blatantly awful people. What did he have to be scared of? And if, perchance, there was some deep, unknowable sacrifice involved that Discord wasn't explaining up-front, wouldn't it be worth it to save his friends?

Heck, the CMC had already gone and become Chaos cultists themselves! Everypony was doing it! He'd be fine!

Spike gingerly stepped closer to Virgil, his claws trembling as he reached for the amulet.

"So, if I do this, will I have that guy's voice in my head again?" Spike asked suddenly, halting.

"Oh, yes. No getting out of that this time. You two are going to be CLOSE partners," Discord said with a smile.

Well, that was a mighty big disincentive. But really, what choice did he have?

"There's no other way," Spike mumbled as he reached for the amulet again.

Then he noticed the butt of a laspistol poking out of the side of Virgil's robe.

"Hey, is that a gun?" Spike asked, dropping his hand away from the corrupted artifact.

"Yes," Virgil answered simply.

"If I don't want the amulet, can I have the gun instead?" the young dragon asked hopefully.

"No. It's my gun," Virgil said decisively, placing his free hand on the weapon grip.

Spike looked annoyed, and Discord chuckled. "Don't kid yourself, Spikey. You'll be needing something a little stronger than a puny little laspistol for this job," the draconequus said with a smirk, "although I applaud your desperate search for other options."

"Other options..." Spike mumbled, his eyes narrowing as he remembered something. "You're right. I DO need something stronger. And I know just where to get it!"

The young dragon slapped the amulet before turning away, sending the heavy artifact swinging from side to side. "Keep your stupid evil jewelry and the stupid daemons inside of it! I'm outta here!"

Discord watched as the red color drained from Spike's eyes, and then clicked his tongue as the young dragon raced out of the alley filled with a new, inexplicable sense of purpose.

"Well, that went poorly," Discord mumbled before turning his head toward Virgil, "you know, you could have backed me up a little. Given one of your deadpan monologues about the 'wisdom of the Eightfold Path' or something."

"You were doing fine. You almost had him," Virgil noted blandly.

"You always do this! Clamming up at the crucial moment and letting your partner do all the heavy lifting! It's like you don't even care!" Discord insisted, crossing his arms over his chest and looking away sharply.

You know, I'm chill with being slapped around - no pain nerves and all - but that "stupid" comment? That was unnecessary. Really hurts my feelings, you know?

"Shut up, Vel," Discord and Virgil said in stereo.

Then the draconequus sighed and looked up at the perpetually setting sun. "So, what's the story now?"

"We should probably find a nice high place on the mountain to watch the inevitable attack on the city," Virgil said.

"Ooh, that sounds nice. Want to loot some snacks and drinks first?" Discord asked with a wide smile.

"Meet you back here in an hour."

****

Canterlot - The Iron Chest

"Hello?! Is anypony in here?!" Spike pounded a fist on the door of Canterlot's one and only human goods shop, checking behind him every few seconds for any approaching soldiers.

Although he had nothing to do with The Iron Chest himself, as someone who spent as much time as possible around Rarity he had inevitably overheard a great deal of her complaints about the troublesome nature of her side business. Many of the details he had been privy to, in fact, were of the sort that Rarity probably would have kept hidden from even her close friends to avoid any nagging lectures or complicated letters to Princess Celestia, but to Spike that just meant that she trusted him that completely. Or that she thought of him as a tool that didn't even possess independent thought and free will, like her servitor. Probably the first one.

"Please, let me in!" Spike shouted as he continued banging on the front door. The windows were shuttered, but considering the speed with which the Tau had descended on the city, Spike was hoping that the store manager had simply shut herself in the shop rather than locking it up and going home.

"Stop that!" hissed a voice from the other side of the door. "We're closed due to alien occupation! Go away!"

Spike barely stopped himself from fist-pumping in victory. "Listen, I need your help! I'm a friend of Rarity's!"

Silence. Then a clicking noise came from the window shutters before they shifted up. Spike spied a mare's face peeking out at him, and then the shutters fell back down again.

"All right, I'm opening the door. No sudden moves, all right? And you'd better not be lying to me!"

"I'm not, I swear!" Spike whispered back, lowering his voice now that he was about to be let in.

A thumping noise came from the door, and then it rattled as the unicorn fumbled with the lock.

"Why the... urgh... hay did my... oomph... magic stop working? Grgh! Got it!" the lock finally clicked, and the door cracked open.

"I have no idea how earth ponies even get out of their houses," Orchid Flair grumbled as she poked her head out and glanced at the street behind Spike, "using locks and knobs with hooves is impossible! Okay kid, come in."

Spike eagerly did so as soon as the green unicorn stepped back, and he quickly shut the door behind him.

Orchid stepped back from the young dragon, regarding him silently. She had stripped off her normal ensemble that she wore when minding the shop, and had thrown large sheets over much of the inventory to hide it from being identified by a casual glance from outside. In its current state, anybody that didn't bother to force their way in and search the place would be unable to tell the store specialized in human tech.

"So. You must be Spike," Orchid said finally.

"Yeah, that's me!" he said excitedly. "I'll bet Rarity's told you all about me, huh?"

Orchid Flair raised an eyebrow. "There aren't exactly a lot of friendly dragons running around Equestria, and Twilight Sparkle is a pretty well-known pony. I've never heard Rarity mention you."

Spike deflated somewhat, but reminded himself of why he was here. "Well, anyway, Twilight, Rarity, and a lot of other ponies are being held captive by the Tau. I need some help to get them free."

"You forming a resistance or something? That was quick," the unicorn mumbled, "and I'd totally love to join and fight the good fight or whatever, but something's wrong with my horn."

"The Tau did something. Magic won't work," Spike explained vaguely, "that's why I have to rescue them!"

Orchid Flair barely stifled a laugh. "Uh huh. Look, dragon or no, any one of those aliens could punt you like a hoofball. How do you think you're going to fight them?"

Spike's eyes narrowed. "Simple." Then he thrust his arms toward the skeptical pony, causing her to recoil in surprise. "OPPOSABLE THUMBS," he said darkly, flexing his claws in front of her.

Orchid's eyes widened, and the unicorn sat on her haunches in stunned silence for a few seconds.

Then she nodded seriously. "You've come to the right place, Spike. Follow me."

Orchid Flair reached under the counter, and she grimaced as her hooves fumbled with a small key. "Here, just let me open up the back room, and... dang it!" the key slipped away and bounced onto the floor, and the green mare growled before reaching her head down in order to pick it up in her teeth.

"Allow me," Spike said suddenly, causing her to halt as he deftly swiped the key off of the floor.

Then, with a dramatic flourish, he gingerly held the key between two claws and stabbed into the lock before twisting it sharply.

The lock opened with an anticlimactic click, and the door creaked open.

"You really might have what it takes to pull this off," Orchid admitted as she walked past the young dragon into the darkened room, "but it's going to take more than fingers to get past the Tau."

She kicked on a switch next to the doorway, and the overhead lumen strips flickered on as a deep thrumming noise came from a plasma reactor built into the corner.

Spike's gaze scanned the room interior. There were all manner of intriguing items here that would have seized anyone's attention, no matter their level of interest in xenotech. Bottles and injectors filled with chemicals, servo limbs, flak plating, batteries, micro-generators, and even a pair of automata folded up and plugged into the wall. His eyes, however, fixed upon a weapons rack prominently displayed next to the mechanicals.

Walking up to it, he reached for one of the lasrifles hanging near the floor, only to have a green hoof intercept his claw and push it back down.

"Ha ha ha no." Orchid said, smiling slightly as she shook her head.

Spike glared up at the unicorn. "Look, if this is about me paying, or being too young, now isn't the time for-"

"Relax, my little dragon," Orchid Flare chuckled, "it's not that. See, I've talked to the guys that use these things, and even fired a few of them myself. You know, when my magic was working." She stepped up to the weapon rack and tapped the body of the lasgun. "Laser rifles are nifty, and they have a lot of good qualities, but they lack punch, and you've probably never even fired one before. Every single alien soldier out there probably has a better gun and is actually trained to use it." Then she jerked her head to the side. "Over here."

She walked over to an armored metal case on the floor and then swept a hoof over a console on the top.

"Gene-print confirmed," buzzed an electronic voice, "armory lock disengaged."

"You know, a little while back, Rarity said that she was going to talk to Delgan about getting the more dangerous items moved out of here," the unicorn mare said as the lid of the case opened up, "when I asked the delivery pony that brought in the last inventory shipment about that, she just laughed. Dangerous SELLS."

Spike leaned in to look at this other weapon sitting in the armory case. It was shorter and bulkier than the lasrifle, with a thick cylinder making up the barrel and a tube hanging under it linking the main body of the weapon to a capsule attached to the side. There was some kind of symbol on the body - an eagle with two heads - but a Chaos Star had been carved over it, defacing the emblem.

"This is a melta gun," Orchid Flair explained with a predatory grin.

Spike looked up at her uncertainly. "What does it do?"

"Exactly what it sounds like," the unicorn answered giddily as she stepped aside, "you point it at something nearby and pull the trigger, and that something goes away. Wide impact radius means missing is hard if you're close enough to use it. And the damage it causes makes those sissy lasguns and even the bolters look like a straw and spitballs, from what I hear. The main downside is range; if the enemy sees you coming at them with that, they're going to get a lot of shots at you before you get one at them."

Spike gently took hold of the melta gun, hefting it from the armory case. It was a bit lighter than it looked; the boltgun he had handled before at Ferrous Dominus had been much, much heavier.

He turned toward Orchid, and blinked as he saw her standing before him with... something... hanging from her mouth and obscuring her legs and body. It looked like the wall behind her was being projected onto the object somehow, making the unicorn look almost like a disembodied face.

Orchid Flair swung her head in order to throw the fabric onto Spike.

"Camoline cloak," she said once her mouth was free again, "that should help you sneak around and keep from getting shot up before you can get close enough to retaliate." She paused as he adjusted the cloak around his body and pushed his head into the hood. "You'll also need a set of low-light optics. It'll be nightfall soon."

"No, it won't," Spike deadpanned as he folded up part of the cloak to keep it from dragging and started to adjust a strap to tighten it.

Orchid raised an eyebrow, and then her ears fell flat against her head. "Celestia?"

"Celestia."

"Is it bad?"

"Not that bad. Pretty sure her magic is just on the fritz, like yours," Spike explained with a shrug as he pulled the hood over his head fins. Then he took a deep breath. "How do I look?"

"Like a sliver of a face floating over a hovering melta gun," the unicorn mare said with grin, "go get 'em, tiger."

****

Canterlot - public park

"Out of ALL the worst things that could happen! This is the VERY. WORST. THING!"

Rainbow Dash sighed as Rarity screamed her catch phrase to the heavens. "Well, I suppose I could think of a FEW things worse than being stuck in an electric cage while aliens romp around Canterlot, but yeah, this is pretty bad," she agreed.

"Aliens, shmaliens!" the unicorn shouted back, absolutely livid. "I'm talking about these HORRID conditions! Is this how the Tau treat their prisoners? This HAS to be a war crime!"

Applejack quirked an eyebrow. "Well, they certainly ain't five star accommodations sugarcube, and ya know Ah ain't thrilled to be here either, but Ah'm not sure what ya were expectin'."

"Not this! Anything but this!" Rarity cried.

She noticed that she was getting strange looks from the other Elements of Harmony by now, to say nothing of the other soldiers locked up in the cages around them.

Rarity stamped her hooves furiously. "What? What's wrong with all of you? How can you accept this?!"

Then she pointed at the front of the cage, where there was a long trough filled with water. "One trough to provide fluids..." she then beckoned to another trough on the opposite side that was empty. "... and another to accept them?! Can you BELIEVE this?!"

Rarity glanced around at the others, not comprehending why they weren't likewise bemoaning the infrastructure.

"Speakin' as a farmer, Rares, some cages don't have that second trough," Applejack mumbled.

"That is BESIDE the point, Applejack!"

"Of course it's beside the point!" Rainbow Dash growled, banging a hoof on the floor plate. "I don't plan on sticking around long enough to worry about where I'm going to pee! How are we getting out of here?!"

"Rainbow! Sssssh!" Fluttershy hissed, nervously eyeing the guards. There were two squads of Fire Warriors spread out around the park where the cages had been set up, surrounding the cells, and two pairs of Crisis Suits plodding about in-between the electrified prisons. At least some of the aliens spoke Gothic, although none of the ponies had kept track of which ones.

Twilight grimaced as one of the battlesuit teams stomped past, and her horn flared as she yet again tried to cast a spell. It flickered out as expected, but she was making sure to try every five minutes in case whatever effect was blocking her magic had weakened.

She and the Elements of Harmony had been placed together, which was a small mercy, and just one other guard had ended up in their cage. Shining Armor had eventually been hauled in as well, and he was imprisoned in the cage across from them as he spoke quietly to his guards.

"Twilight?"

The alicorn jerked her head around to face her older brother as he suddenly addressed her. The unicorn stallion looked rather dispirited, which she supposed should be expected under the circumstances.

"Do you think that this plan of theirs will succeed?" Shining Armor asked, nudging his head toward the back of one of the Crisis Suits. "Can they really beat the 38th Company?"

Twilight placed a hoof against her chin, and her eyes idly traced the flight path of another troop transport landing next to the palace.

"They can't beat the 38th Company," Twilight finally decided, frowning, "granted, I'm not as well-read in Tau or Iron Warrior battle strategy as I'd like to be, but I've been to Ferrous Dominus, and I've seen their fighters in action. I don't think all of Canterlot could hold the number of soldiers they'd need to destroy the fortress."

"So then the humans will win anyway? Then what's the point of all this?" mumbled a pegasus guard as he tapped a hoof against the cage and winced away from the crackling sparks.

"I don't think their real goal is to destroy the Chaos fortress," Twilight decided, "but just to keep the Iron Warriors occupied so that they can get the Warp core to safety. Everything the Tau have done here revolves around that device."

"Shoulda broken the dang thing when we had the chance," Applejack snarled.

"And, uh... any chance the 38th Company might show up here and save us?" asked another guard uncertainly.

"Not if they don't know the Tau are here, obviously," Twilight said, her voice lowering as the Crisis Suit guards stomped by once again, "they might get tipped off somehow, though. I'm sure Gaela will tell them when she gets out of here!"

"Why would she run away? She should sneak over here and bust us out!" Rainbow Dash insisted.

In the bushes at the entrance to the park, Spike silently reflected on how helpful it was for his friends to argue loudly enough for him to pinpoint their location from halfway across the park.

The young dragon currently had his borrowed melta gun tucked against his side under the folds of the camoline fabric, awkward as it was to try to hide something that big. He had made it to the park easily enough, having followed far behind a pair of Canterlot guards being escorted to their cages, and had avoided discovery thanks to his small size and camouflage.

But now what?

The park was ringed by Fire Warriors, they had battlesuits for back-up, and the cages were sturdy and electrified. Melta gun or no, he couldn't possibly fight so many guards, and even if he got to the cages undetected he couldn't see how he'd free anypony without alerting the Tau.

He wasn't even that confident that he could sneak past the Fire Warriors in the first place; lots of foliage meant plenty of cover to obscure him, but it also made his movements more noisy.

Maybe he could free the royal guards? But what would that do besides get them killed? Would they even help when they were so obviously and completely outmatched?

No, he needed a diversion. A big diversion. Something that would not only distract attention away from the cages, but take at least some of the guards out of the equation. Maybe he could start a fire? Or destroy a nearby machine to draw them away?

Or wait until some clueless pony wanders into the park and makes a nuisance of himself?

"Hey! Hey, you! Stop right there!" barked a Fire Warrior, immediately attracting the attention of all the other guards in the area.

The focus of their ire was a slate blue, bespectacled earth pony that was walking down the path into the park as if it weren't obviously off-limits to Canterlot's citizens. The pony had stopped as instructed, apparently unperturbed, and then sat down on his haunches. He had a pict-capture unit in his teeth, and as the armed and angry soldiers dashed toward him he shifted a view scope up over his eye with a hoof before pressing the button on the side of the machine.

He only got one pict, however, before he was forced to address the muzzle of a pulse carbine pointed squarely at his face.

"This is a restricted area!" shouted the Shas'ui. "Leave or you will be detained!"

The earth pony blinked, looking surprised. "Oh. Well, okay. Where's the exact perimeter of the restricted area? I can take pict-captures from there."

The Fire Warriors glanced at each other, their incredulous expressions hidden by their helmets. One of the Crisis Suit pairs stomped up behind the foot soldiers, bracketing the single pony with a truly absurd level of firepower relative to his potential threat.

"What is your name, native?" asked the Fire Warrior Shas'ui.

"I'm Gear Works!" the pony said enthusiastically. "And let me say that, although I do not approve of your aggression against my home nation and occupation of my home city, I find myself fascinated by your amazing equipment and, objectively speaking, greatly admire your ingenuity!" He tilted his head slightly to look through the view scope, and then took another pict of the guards looming over him.

The Shas'ui largely ignored the spiel. "Well, Gear Works, I realize that I may have been somewhat unclear just now. Gothic is my third language, you understand. What I meant was: get out of my sight. NOW."

Gear Works looked annoyed. "Well that's even more obtuse! Does that mean I can take picts from any place where you can't see? Does that apply just to you, or all the guards? Help me out, here!"

The Shas'ui was about to start clubbing the pony senseless with his carbine when one of the Crisis Suits spoke.

*Hold. That device in its mouth is gue'la tech,* the armored soldier noted.

The Shas'ui hesitated, and then lowered his weapon. "Tell me, Gear Works, where did you get that machine?"

This question, as opposed to being faced with enough firepower to level a house, seemed to unnerve the stallion. "What, this? I, uh, got it from a cousin! In Ponyville! I believe your people conquered that town before! For about ten minutes, anyway..."

"And did your 'cousin' send you any more human devices?" the Fire Warrior asked, grabbing the pict-capture unit from the pony's jaws.

"Er..." Gear's ears fell flat against his head as the soldiers surrounded him, patiently waiting for an answer. "Well, maybe one or two things. Is that a... problem?"

"Show us," the squad leader demanded before looking back over his shoulder at the two Crisis Suits that hadn't joined the troopers. *Shas'la, remain here and keep watch! We may have a lead on a gue'la weapons stash!*

A Fire Warrior shoved Gear Works along, eliciting a startled whinny from the stallion before he moved into a trot and started leading the soldiers out of the park.

"Yeesh, what a dweeb," Rainbow Dash murmured as she watched the guards follow the stallion away.

Twilight chewed her lip, confirmed again that her magic was still nullified, and then started looking around closely at the cage, searching for any weakness that they could possibly exploit in its frame. If they were going to escape, they probably wouldn't get a better chance than this.

"Rainbow, Fluttershy, you've seen these cages before, right? Do you know any way to disable them?" She was pretty sure that they'd have brought it up before now if they did, but then her pegasi friends weren't always the sort to think things through.

Rainbow Dash snorted. "Oh, sure. Just get a Space Marine to rip the bars off. The current doesn't even bother them."

"Genius!" Pinkie declared. "Don't worry, everypony! I have secret stashes of Iron Warriors hidden all over Canterlot for just such an emergency!"

Pinkie was soon the subject of five wide-eyed stares.

"... Really?" Twilight asked, her incredulity tinged with hope.

"Pft! Of course not! That was a joke to try to ease the suffocating atmosphere of terror and desperation!" Pinkie replied, giggling behind a hoof.

Her giggling quickly trailed off as she detected a distinct lack of mirth in her friends. "It didn't work, did it?"

"Quiet down." The electronic growl of a battlesuit's voice startled the ponies into silence, and they stared nervously at one of the remaining Crisis Suits as it turned around and stomped away on its patrol circuit.

"Sooooo..." the Royal Guard that had been locked in with them finally spoke up, his eyes fixed on the upper corner of their prison, "just putting this out there, but we're kinda stuck here for the entire course of the occupation. Trapped together. Six mares and one dude. Not much to do." He started whistling nonchalantly as the Elements of Harmony gave him sour/uncomfortable looks and edged away.

"I swear to Celestia, I will have you court-martialed so hard your GRANDFATHER will end up in prison," Shining Armor growled from his cage.

"Oh, come off it, Cap. They're not ALL related to you," the guard snapped back.

As Twilight groaned in frustration, a rustling noise came from the bushes behind the cage. Fluttershy noticed first, being the one most attuned to the movements of small animals through foliage, and she brought her muzzle as close as she dared to the electrified bars of the cage.

"Hello? Is something out there?" she whispered. "Please be careful, this place is very dangerous!"

The bushes shifted, and a pair of bright green eyes appeared in front of her. "Flutter-"

"YEEEEEEEEEEEEEK!!" Fluttershy shrieked, leaping back. Every one of the other ponies also jumped in surprise, and Rainbow Dash yelped when her wing accidentally brushed against the electrified bars. Spike suppressed an expletive and dropped flat onto the ground, the camoline cloak covering him completely.

The Crisis Suits snapped around, their jet packs flaring before they blasted toward the source of the scream.

Twilight whipped her head around in confusion, and then made a snap decision as the battlesuits landed next to the cage.

"Something just ran past us!" she shouted, pointing a hoof toward the edge of the park. "It was almost transparent, like a ghost or something! Are any of your Stealth Suits moving through here?"

The Crisis Suits shared a glance. Their smaller and shadier cousins were not, in fact, supposed to be patrolling this area.

*I have point. Cover me from above,* barked one suit as he stomped forward and headed away from the cages.

Twilight nervously watched as the last of their guards left earshot, and then immediately turned toward her friends. "All right, that probably won't keep them for long. We need to find a way to-"

"Pst! Hey!" Spike interrupted, lifting the edge of the cloak up and glaring out at the ponies.

"Not now, Spike!" Twilight snapped as she shot a warning glare at the young dragon. "This might be our only... chance... to......"

Twilight trailed off as she stared through the bars of the cage at her draconic assistant, who was glaring back at her from under the cloak.

"Spike! It's you?" Fluttershy gasped as she and the other mares rushed past the stunned alicorn. "I'm so sorry! I almost gave you away!"

"All right! Tell me ya got a way to get us outta this joint!" Applejack said, grinning widely. Rainbow Dash and Pinkie Pie echoed her sentiments enthusiastically.

"I knew you'd come for us!" Rarity said brightly. She was lying through her teeth, of course, but there was nothing fake about her appreciation for his showing up.

Twilight took a few more seconds to snap out of her stunned status. "Wait... how... no, WHEN did you get free?"

Spike gave her a look as he stood up, the camoline cloak covering him with fuzzy, shifting blobs of green with every movement. "I was never captured. The soldiers were never ordered to take me along, so they didn't."

There was an increasingly awkward silence as Twilight considered this turn of events, and Spike's eyes narrowed.

"You didn't notice I was gone, did you?" he said accusingly.

"That... is... not..." Twilight began, droplets of sweat beading around her head as her eyes shifted from side to side, "... important right now!" she finished nervously. "Do you have a way to get us out?"

Spike sighed as he shuffled around in the cloak. "Yeah just a mi-aw, horseapples!" He quickly fell down under the cloak again at the sound of a jet pack approaching.

The Crisis Suit landed on the opposite side of the cage from Spike, its sensors glaring down at the mares that had gathered at the other side of the prison and were clearly observing something nearby.

Some of them started speaking nervously, but the battlesuit ignored them and walked around the cage to get a clear look at the other side.

It halted as it swept its targeting arrays over the cluster of bushes, picking up no visual locks or movement. There was a minor heat anomaly, however, and it switched its vision mode to thermal.

And that was when the melta gun fired.

A jet of superheated gas speared through the torso of the battlesuit, vaporizing the cockpit instantly as a comically understated hissing noise came from the weapon that had killed it. A moment later the limbs of the combat armor tumbled onto the ground, smoke wafting from the points at which they had previously been attached to a body.

Complete silence dominated the park as every pony there stared at the scene with wide eyes.

"Holy cow pies," Applejack finally said, summing up the equines' thoughts quite nicely.

Spike breathed heavily as he got to his feet, his heart thundering in his chest. "Well... that went better than expected. Now I-"

The roar of another jet pack took him by surprise, and once again he hit the ground as the other Crisis Suit blasted into view to investigate its partner's sudden demise.

Catching a hint of movement as the camoline cloak settled and its colors shifted, the Crisis Suit unloaded a fusillade of plasma bolts into the brush. Spike squeezed his eyes shut and hugged the melta gun as the projectiles screamed overhead, well aware that any move he could make in this situation would only make his demise that much more imminent.

The Crisis Suit landed and stomped forward as it continued spraying plasma bursts, and then its other weapon reached forward.

A fan of flames promptly washed over Spike's hiding place and swallowed Spike himself, eliciting a chorus of gasps from the ponies trapped nearby as they flinched away from the blaze.

The Crisis Suit paused after sweeping the brush with its flamer, cycling its vision modes to see if it could identify what had snuck into the park and killed its partner before it called in the incident.

Then the burning camoline fabric crumbled apart as Spike stood up, squinting his eyes through the blaze before he once again pulled the trigger on the melta gun.

His aim was a bit low this time, but at this range it didn't matter; Orchid had chosen his weapon well. The legs and pelvis of the Crisis Suit disintegrated before the blast, dropping the torso into the jet of melta gas and letting enough heat wash through the armor to kill its pilot instantly. The surviving chunk of armor hit the ground as an inert, smoldering heap.

Spike hopped out of the licking flames left over from the battlesuit's assault, hissing noisily as he held the melta gun up above his head. "Ooh! Whoa! Augh! That's hot!" he complained, finally bouncing clear and letting out a deep breath before he turned toward the cage again.

He noticed that the ponies had returned to silent, wide-eyed staring.

"What? Dragon. Fire resistance," he said as way of explanation, "now back as far away from this side as possible. I'm going to open up the cage."

The ponies eagerly did so, and Rarity cleared her throat as she back up.

"Spike, if we make it out of this alive, please remind me that I owe you a kiss for this."

"One kiss for killing two battlesuits and getting us all free," Rainbow Dash whispered to Applejack.

"Element of Generosity mah plot," the farmer replied with a snort.

The ponies flinched their eyes away as Spike carefully aimed another melta blast along the side of the cage, disintegrating the bars with ease.

"All right! That's my number one assistant!" Twilight said as she watched the remnants of the bars cool to a non-lethal temperature. "Now get Shining out, and-"

"No. There's no time, Twilight," Shining Armor said, "you have to leave now!" The other pony soldiers looked at him in surprise.

"But Shining-"

The unicorn stallion cut his sister off again. "Look, I've been thinking about this. Most of the aliens shouldn't be able to tell you six from civilians; you should be able to pass by the patrols like you're trying to get home before the curfew. If we go with you, we'll just paint a big, obvious target on your flanks. You need to get to the train station and get out of Canterlot!"

Twilight hesitated as her friends eagerly left the confines of the cage, each one thanking Spike enthusiastically as they passed by.

"We'll be fine!" Shining insisted with a grim smile. "When the guards come back we'll 'cooperate' and explain that some lizard came from nowhere, smoked two soldiers, and then let a bunch of townsfolk free to run off somewhere. They can't hurt us if we cooperate, right?"

Twilight swallowed noisily as she nodded. "All right. Please, stay safe Shiny."

"Same to you, Twily," Shining said as she joined her friends in a cautious gallop toward the edge of the park.

The stallion that had been imprisoned with the Elements of Harmony remained seated in the broken cage, frowning. Then he turned toward Shining Armor. "So if I ditch my armor, can I go with-"

"COURT MARTIAL! GRANDFATHER!"

The royal guard slumped onto the floor of the cage with a sigh. "Aye aye, Captain Cock-block."

****

Canterlot - train station

"Do I have to go through this AGAIN?! Look, I got the point last time! The train's not going anywhere!" Smoke Stack growled as he glared up at the human soldiers. Once again he was standing next to his train and arguing with a Lamman patrol, albeit a larger one. This time there were four humans joined by four more Fire Warriors. The latter squad of aliens were hauling demolition charges and holding hand scanners as they conversed with each other in their native language.

"You'll have to forgive us for not taking your word for it," snapped the auxiliary in front, "but never mind that. A patrol passed by here almost twenty minutes ago. They haven't checked in since they entered this quadrant. Any idea what happened to them?"

"Yeah, they left!" Smoke Stack lied. "Yelled at me a lot and said the train wasn't allowed to leave, and then took off!"

The soldiers looked skeptical. "They just told you not to go anywhere and trusted you'd listen to them?"

"Well, I'm still here, aren't I? So what's the problem?" the earth pony demanded.

"Gue'ves'ui, over here," called one of the Fire Warriors, leaning over a large black spot on the ground, "this looks like a weapon impact."

As another Tau brought over a scanner, the human sergeant glared down at the pony conductor. "So our men left, did they?"

"That's right! Walked off toward the city," Smoke insisted, sticking by his earlier story, "I don't know what's up with that black spot, but it probably came from one of your guys, what with you waving all your space weapons around in our faces."

Inside the train, Gaela knelt on the floor with her armor still on low power, her back against the entry door.

"Not looking good. Not good at all," mumbled one of the guards nervously as he peeked through the window to watch the proceedings. "Old man Stack isn't going to be able to stall them much longer, and I think they're carrying some kind of bombs."

Gaela expression remained cool and unconcerned as she remained hunched over on the floor. Sitting across from her was the other guard, the unicorn.

"Do you have a plan? There's no way these guys are just going to leave, right?" the unicorn asked anxiously.

The Dark Acolyte tilted her head slightly. "... How many enemies?"

"Eight," answered the earth pony, "four human, four not."

"You two step out of the train and surrender," Gaela commanded, "some of the enemy soldiers will be diverted to capture and escort you to a confinement center. I may be able to kill the remaining soldiers as they attempt to disable the train."

The royal guards cringed.

"Is there any way we can make that plan work... WITHOUT surrendering ourselves to the aliens?" the unicorn asked as his ears flattened against his head.

Gaela arched an eyebrow. "Only if Twilight Sparkle and her coterie arrive before you get the chance."

The earth pony at the window blinked at hearing that. "Oh, wow. We are SUPER lucky, then."

"Oh, what's THIS, then?" Smoke Stack complained as he noticed a group of mares approaching the train station at a purposeful trot. They were clustered rather tightly together, and didn't really look properly intimidated by the armed and armored soldiers standing between them and the only transport out of Canterlot.

"Hey! That's close enough!" barked one of the humans as he noticed the rather colorful miniature herd. "This area is off-limits, and there are no trains leaving the city!"

The mares halted as soon as pulse weapons were leveled at them, and a certain purple alicorn cleared her throat.

"We're not here for that! There's been a break-out! A bunch of royal guards are running loose!" Twilight said nervously, her ears pinned against her head. "We saw them sneaking into the sewers back there!"

Twilight promptly had the attention of all the Lamman soldiers, and one of the Fire Warriors spoke up.

"There WAS a break-out earlier. One of the cages was partially vaporized and two battlesuits were taken down."

"By the horses?" the human asked skeptically.

"We don't know. But there IS human technology scattered about this world."

The auxiliary looked back toward the cluster of nervous ponies, his eyes narrowing. "And why, exactly, are YOU telling us this?"

Twilight flinched. "I, uh... aren't we supposed to report things like this to... you know, the authorities?"

"We've been in charge of this city for less than two hours. I'm not sure I believe that's enough time to even inform all the residents of what's happened. And you're already helping us hunt down your own soldiers?"

As Twilight struggled to think of something to say, Rainbow Dash groaned.

"See? I told you this was a stupid plan."

"Rainbow! Ix-nay on the lan-pay!" Rarity murmured, noting the increasingly bemused looks they were getting from the soldiers.

*Hold on,* mumbled the Fire Warrior with the scanner, *I'm reading an energy signature nearby...*

"Don't orry-way!" Pinkie said happily as the train door behind the soldiers slid open. "I ink-thay aela-Gay is about to ick-kay some erious-say lot-pay!"

Gaela stepped out of the train, her power armor fully active and her plasma pistol already aimed at the back of the nearest human. She fired the pistol and her servo-mounted laser at the same time, spearing one man through the back and disintegrating another just as her metal-clad feet touched the ground.

A split-second later, as the Lamman soldiers were whirling around, the ponies at the front of the tightly-packed group dove to the side, revealing the short and well-armed dragon standing in the middle of them.

"Hit it, Spike!"

Spike took a moment to make sure his aim wasn't directed toward Gaela, and then pulled the trigger. The resulting blast from the melta gun speared through two Fire Warriors, vaporizing them utterly and going on to make a respectable hole in the side of the train car.

By then Gaela had already reached melee range with the unit, battering aside their rifles as her power axe hummed noisily and her servo arm lashed out.

Applejack wasted no time, leaping toward the back of a Fire Warrior and kicking him onto the ground. "GET 'EM!!" Rainbow Dash was quick to follow, diving into another.

Gaela cut apart an auxiliary with her power axe as she pushed the soldiers back, cleaving straight through the pulse rifle he was trying to block with before cutting through to his torso. Her servo arm reached for the next - and last - human soldier, but the man twisted out of the way as the augmetic clamped shut, bring his rifle around to slam the butt into the side of Gaela's head.

The Dark Acolyte staggered, and she mentally berated herself for not engaging her helmet before leaping into battle. She swung wide with her axe, leaving an arc of glittering sparks in front of her, but the man dodged back before drawing his combat knife and darting forward again.

Gaela's servo arm saved her, jutting forward and obstructing a clear stab at her face. The man was already slipping to the side as she discharged her plasma pistol again, though, searching for an easy angle of attack as the sizzling bolt of energy passed by him.

The duel lasted no longer, however. Skilled and agile as this particular soldier was, he was also badly outnumbered by now, a fact of which he was reminded as a pair of pink hooves smashed into his shins and knocked him down.

"You traitorous scum!" the man growled, flinging his knife at the Dark Acolyte as he was on the ground.

The weapon struck her torso plate and bounced off, barely scratching the armor.

Gaela lifted her axe, her expression cool as ever. "So says the alien's puppet."

The smell of burning flesh reached her nostrils as Gaela pulled her weapon free of the auxiliary's chest, his blood cooking against the power field.

"I feel like you could have come up with a better one-liner right before you finished him off," Pinkie Pie mused, looking up at the cyborg, "you know, something that REALLY taps into the tragic irony of two members of a species killing each other for-"

"Thank you for your assistance, Pie," Gaela interrupted, "now stop assisting me and get in the train."

"Yes'm!"

Gaela could see that there was only one Tau guard remaining, and he was being trampled into the ground by Applejack, Rainbow Dash, and Smoke Stack.

"Aim for the head! Yeah, that's right!" "Go! Go! Go! Go!" The two royal guards that had been escorting Gaela cheered on the battle from within the train, thrusting their hooves into the air in front of the windows.

"It saddens me to think my tax bits pay their salaries," Rarity grimaced as Gaela walked past her.

"Pilot. Get in the train and set it to leave immediately. The Tau could detect us at any time and launch pursuit units." Smoke Stack didn't waste any time on confirmation, breaking into a gallop toward the engine. "Everyone else, get in and stay down. We may not be safe yet."

Most of the ponies scurried into the train car, but Twilight halted when she saw a trail of red crawling down Gaela's cheek.

"Gaela! You're bleeding!" the alicorn gasped.

"Minor cranial trauma. Irrelevant," the Dark Acolyte replied as she scanned the city with her bionic eye. She could see anti-air batteries being set up even from this distance, and she wanted to have an initial count to give when she reported to the Warsmith.

"It's not irrelevant! What if it gets infected?" Twilight chided. "There's a first aid kit on the train, come on."

"I don't need it," Gaela insisted as she finished her scan, "even if infection were to take hold, I can eliminate the diseased tissue later and replace..." she trailed off as she saw Twilight staring up at her with her muzzle scrunched up.

The Dark Acolyte sighed as she turned around to enter the train, which was already starting to move. "Oh, fine. Just get in, already."

****

Canterlot Castle - throne room

*We've doubled our patrols to try to prevent any more of our squads from being ambushed. And Kroot Hounds have been deployed with a Carnivore team to try to track down the path of the escaped natives.*

Several Tau Fireblades were gathered around a tactical hololith displaying the city and mapping out the patrol routes and new turret batteries that had been deployed over the city, trying to manage their occupation of the pony capital. Voidsong's battlesuit loomed over them from behind, engrossed in its internal strategic displays more than the logistic discussion going on in front of her.

Behind all of them, Celestia, Luna, and Cadence sat beside the throne, engrossed in their own conversation and largely ignored by the invaders.

*They're probably on the train already,* admitted another officer with a sigh, *we've dispatched a team to intercept and destroy it. And we're setting up a barricade to block the rail entrance.*

*What gear type? They've already killed two battlesuits and a dozen infantry.*

*Heavy search-and-destroy capability. They won't get away this time. But I'm more concerned that some of the agents capable of killing our men might still be here in the city with us.*

Voidsong suddenly interrupted. *I'm not concerned about that at all. If they manage to kill ten or twenty soldiers, that's unfortunate, but that's not going to change the outcome of a battle. I don't really care if a handful of spear-wielding quadrupeds are running around in our territory so long as we can keep the base refueling stations and power relays secure.*

Her sensor head swiveled about to take in the other battlesuits and Fire Warriors standing at attention in the throne room, and even spared the Princesses a bright crimson glare.

*What I'm most concerned about is tipping off the Iron Warriors. If they know we're here, then our job becomes far more difficult. We're still not aware of the full range of tactical options they can bring against us, or how much they know about our ultimate aim. And they can always decide to bring the hammer down on Black Point if they decide they really want to spite us.*

One of the Fireblades shifted uncomfortably. *In that case, the issue may be out of our hands, whether or not we catch the train.*

That officer had Voidsong's attention immediately. *Explain.*

*Well, there are the winged natives, mainly. We spent so much time planning for the psykers that we didn't put too much thought into how we'd stop the ones with wings from getting out of here.*

*Don't we have fighters and Stingwings to stop them?* asked another.

*Not enough. Apparently they'll stop if they're spotted, but the blasted things are too small to easily locate with scanners and too numerous to keep track of. And some of the Vespids told me that they can hide in the clouds somehow when they get to altitude. Not just, like, above them or anything, but IN them. I don't really understand it, but I don't think the Vespids do either.*

A distorted growling noise came from Voidsong's suit. *So we have an unknown number of aerial escapees from the city, as well as the train. No telling whether or not they'll head to the gue'la, though.*

Voidsong stepped back from the ring of officers. *All right, then. We need a back-up plan. Attacking the fortress was our best bet for keeping this 38th Company contained and away from the Warp core delivery team and Black Point, but if they're coming here instead we'll still be diverting a lot of firepower away from their base and its engagement zone. All the better if we can hold them off and force them to call in reinforcements. They have no way into the city besides by air or the train. We wreck the train and barricade the tracks, then it's air drops or nothing, and soon we'll be able to tear the skies apart if they try.*

*Yes, Shas'o. We'll begin preparations immediately.* Several of the fire caste officers bowed to the High Commander.

*Excellent,* Voidsong said, turning away from her men and then switching her language to Gothic, "now that that's over with, would SOMEONE like to explain to me why the sun has been setting for two straight hours now?"

The Tau in the room looked shocked by the observation, and one by one they turned to stare outside at the colorful splashes of orange and red that painted the skies above the distant mountains.

"That would be because of me," Celestia sighed.

Voidsong turned her suit around, the mechanical feet stomping heavily against the stone floor. "What?"

"Well, I suppose it would be more accurate to say it's because of YOU," the white Princess admitted, "you disabled my magic, so I cannot lower the sun."

Voidsong was silent for several seconds as Celestia glared at the battlesuit. "...... What?" she asked again.

"I'm responsible for raising and lowering the sun," Celestia huffed, quite irritated at all the incredulous expressions she was getting from the aliens, "but since you've stopped my magic somehow, I can't do it."

There was another long silence as the Tau kept staring at the increasingly annoyed Princess.

"That is the single stupidest thing I have ever heard," Voidsong finally confessed. Then she turned around and walked off toward a pair of Air Caste officers, once again speaking in her own language and rendering the discussion incomprehensible to the ponies.

Celestia's feathers ruffled irritably. "Stupid? What's so stupid about it? Who did she THINK raised the sun every day?"

Luna leaned in toward her sister. "Actually, we believe that most other planetary systems render the cycle of night and day without the aid of their inhabitants."

Celestia looked alarmed at the prospect. "Seriously? Entire planets just... spinning wildly through space without anypony to control them? Isn't that dangerous?"

Luna shrugged. "We cannot say. 'Tis common enough, apparently, that extraterrestrial beings seem quite incredulous that it is not the case here."

"Say... Luna?" Cadence asked cautiously. "Just how... 'buddy-buddy' are you with the humans, anyway?"

Luna's head recoiled, and she made a face at the smallest of the three alicorns. "We art not 'buddy-buddy' with any humans, at all," she insisted as her eyes narrowed.

"Well, not that I'm accusing you of anything, and really it would be hard to fault you under these circumstances, but you seem to know way more about the aliens than we do, that's all," Cadence said uncomfortably. Celestia also looked interested in the topic now that it had been brought up.

Luna snorted, shifting her weight onto her other side. "We will have thee know that we hast spent no small amount of time parsing the dreams of the invaders for information. Our knowledge comes from our efforts there, not any friendship with the humans."

The other two alicorns looked surprised at that, and fairly impressed. Of course, Luna felt that they didn't need to know that she spent as much dream time as possible inside the head of one particular alien, or that her time in his memories were spent having grand, violent adventures more than digging for information. Also, she felt that whether or not she was "buddy-buddy" with Warsmith Solon was irrelevant, since he wasn't technically a human. So she definitely wasn't lying.

Probably.

"That's an excellent idea, Luna," Celestia said approvingly, "although in hindsight inspecting the dreams of the Tau as well would have been useful."

"But hardly as entertaining," Luna mumbled absently.

"What?" Cadence asked.

"What?" Luna repeated quickly.

****

Several miles outside Canterlot

Gaela pulled her hood back up over her head as soon as Fluttershy finished securing the gauze patch over her wound.

"Thank you," she mumbled awkwardly, turning away from the pony that had dressed her injury. She was embarrassed enough to be troubling her equine acquaintances with such a meager injury, even if it was at Twilight's insistence, and even more embarrassed to being subjected to their ancient medical technology. Bandages and tape? In the 41st Millennium? She might as well treat herself with wild herbs!

The Dark Acolyte moved over to one side of the rumbling train to sit next to Twilight, who was in turn seated next to a blissful-looking Spike. The young dragon had a lipstick mark on his cheek, and seemed lost in a distant fantasy.

"I must confess to yet again being impressed by your resourcefulness," Gaela allowed as Twilight turned toward her, "if not surprised. Somehow I knew you'd find a way out of the city."

"Of course we would! We're just that great!" Rainbow Dash boasted.

"Though we had some serious help this time," Applejack said, winking at Spike and nudging him with her foreleg. He promptly tilted and fell over onto his side, his melta gun clattering onto the floor of the train. He didn't seem to notice.

The ponies giggled at the sight, although Gaela didn't see what was amusing about it.

She turned to stare out the window, her optics focusing upwards toward the mountain cliff that held Canterlot. It was much harder to tell from here that there was anything wrong with the city; no flights of bombers screamed overhead, no columns of smoke reached for the sky, and there was no echo of gunfire through the mountain range. The Tau takeover had been swift and complete, with not a shot fired. Canterlot was still the gleaming, ridiculous city that it always was, with no indication of the storm brewing within.

"The sun sure has been setting for a long time," Twilight said casually, her eyebrows arched as she met Gaela's gaze, "almost as if the planet's rotation had mysteriously stopped."

"One more word and I swear I'll defenestrate you," the cyborg snapped back.

Twilight rolled her eyes at this, and decided to let the matter go.

"So what's the plan, my fellow ex-cons?" Pinkie Pie asked with an aggressive grin as her head popped up between the pair. "How're we gonna lay the SMACKDOWN on the Greater Good and boot out the Space Commies?"

"Well, the first step is to inform the 38th Company as soon as possible. Gaela, can your vox system reach them yet?" Twilight asked.

Gaela frowned as she made the attempt. "Negative. I'm being jammed."

"All right, then we get to Ponyville and ask Mister Delgan-"

"No, you don't understand," Gaela interrupted, standing up in her seat and grabbing her plasma pistol, "this is no spread disruption effect. It's one of the damned jamming modules this sept attaches to all their heavy units. We're being followed."

The ponies fell silent, and then one by one their ears flattened as they heard the whine of a Piranha attack skimmer's engines gradually growing louder behind them.

"Ugh. Persistent, aren't they? As if it wasn't enough trouble to get away in the first place," Rarity grumbled.

"Well, on the plus side, whatever was disabling our magic isn't working this far from the city!" the unicorn guard said as he levitated a bag of peanuts in front of him.

"Yeah! So Twilight Sparkle can save us!" agreed his earth pony counterpart as he opened his own bag of peanuts.

Twilight resisted the urge to slap a hoof into her face and turned back toward Gaela. "What's coming for us?"

Gaela's helmet slid into place underneath her hood, and her optics cluster glowed brightly as it processed the incoming energy signatures.

"Two Piranha attack vehicles. But they're moving too slowly. I think they're escorting something..."

Her scanning range continued to expand, and she grit her teeth beneath her mask. "A transport. I believe its carrying Riptides."

Rarity groaned. "Well, that's just-" then her eyes bulged as she fully digested that statement. "Riptides? With an 's'? As in, plural? Just to kill US?"

"I think you should be flattered," Gaela suggested as she smashed open the adjacent window with her elbow.

The Dark Acolyte leaned out and fired her plasma pistol, aiming at the first chunk of blue and black that she could see. The sizzling green bolt duly plunged into the front of a Piranha attack skimmer and sent it swerving from side to side as the plasma burned its way through the frontal plating and wreaked havoc with the sensitive anti-gravity control mechanisms.

Gaela ducked back into the train as the skimmer's fusion blaster fired back, and the ponies yelped as a long strip of the car's outer wall dissolved into a bright orange sludge and dribbled away.

"Gettin' awful drafty in here!" Applejack shouted as she held her hat down. "How we gonna get outta this?"

"I don't really know!" Twilight confessed. "The only time I've seen an active Riptide battlesuit before we had help to destroy it! A LOT of help!"

"We'll finish the weak targets first. Rainbow Dash," Gaela commanded as she plucked another grenade from her belt, "you know how these work, correct?"

The blue pegasus grinned before she saluted with a foreleg.

"Put it in the skimmer cockpit," the human woman tossed the krak grenade to Rainbow Dash, who caught it in her mouth and then immediately took off through the new gap in the side of the passenger car.

The racer zipped upward above the train and then leveled out, searching the area beneath her for her targets.

They weren't hard to find. One of the piranha skimmers was leaking smoke as it peeled away, not willing to risk further damage to its vehicle. The other was hovering above the train, out of sight of the windows; no doubt it was concerned about suffering the same fate as its wingman.

Behind that was the transport. Little more than an engine mounted behind a series of hooks and clamps with a small cockpit on top, the vehicle didn't appear especially sturdy and didn't have any obvious weapons. However, there was a pair of massive battlesuits hanging underneath it from magnetized grip handles, and they did.

As her gaze lingered on the Riptides, she couldn't help but notice one of them raising its heavy burst cannon in her direction. Rainbow Dash took off like a bullet, a rainbow-colored ribbon trailing her body right ahead of an impressive stream of blue energy flares. The haughty pegasus zig-zagged through the air to further throw off the Riptide's aim, and soon the high-pitched whistle of the burst cannon discharge petered out.

Rainbow Dash slowed briefly to get her bearings. Then she eyed her target, curved downward, and spun into a suicide dive with the krak grenade held tightly in her jaws and her forelegs outstretched in front of her to cushion her impact.

The impact with the chest of the Piranha's pilot, specifically.

The skimmer lurched to the side suddenly, and the gunner recoiled in shock as he tried to figure out what had just landed in the seat in front of him; it had all happened so fast that he wasn't sure.

He got his answer as a bright blue pegasus stood up on his pilot's lap and started slugging the stunned soldier in the face repeatedly with her forelegs, causing his head to rock backward repeatedly under the (frankly unnecessary) barrage. After a full ten straight punches - or were they technically kicks? - the pilot's helmet finally came loose, beaning the gunner on the head before bouncing away off the side of the skimmer.

"I am SO cool," Rainbow Dash declared as she flipped the grenade up into the air and then bit down onto the pin.

With another flap of her powerful wings, the pegasus tore the pin free of the explosive and took to the air again, sailing up above the battlesuit transport before glancing downward again.

She was most gratified to see the Piranha explode and come apart in the air, spilling dozens of shattered and smoldering armor pieces onto the roof of the train.

Any sense of success and pride she felt at her assault (and it was a lot), however, withered as the transport slowly lowered itself toward the train. A moment later, the Riptide battlesuits let go of their magnetic grips.

Every passenger save Gaela cringed as they heard the sound of the train car behind them straining to hold up the heavy battlesuits that had landed on top of it. Riptides, like all Tau armor suits and vehicles, were quite light for their size thanks to the Tau's mastery of poly-ceramic silicates, but the train, like all things of pony construction, was flimsy and unarmored. Really, it's like they never expected to have running gun battles anywhere, the silly creatures.

"D-Do you think this will be able to k-kill one of those?" Spike asked nervously, having snapped out his lovesick daze and hoisted his melta gun.

Gaela glanced at him briefly as the sound of footsteps caving in metal approached. Her gaze lingered on a small meter on the side of the gun.

"It will help, certainly. But that weapon has one discharge left. You have to reload."

Spike blinked. "Reload? I, uh, don't really have any more ammo or anything. I never brought any."

"And so your brief period of usefulness comes to an end. Whatever. Don't fire until I say so, and aim for its torso. Sparkle, ready yourself to raise and lower your barrier on my command."

Twilight nodded as the rest of her friends gathered behind her nervously.

The footsteps stopped as one of the Riptides activated its jet pack, and Gaela spotted a rapid energy buildup in her optics.

"Shield up," the Dark Acolyte commanded. Twilight's horn flared.

Searing blue bolts of energy started ripping through the train roof immediately, leaving large, smoldering holes in the metal before pelting against the magic barrier below.

Twilight grimaced as she felt the shield's strain, as if needles were poking into her horn. But she had gotten a lot more practice resisting attacks on her barriers lately, and it held firm. Soon much of the roof had been ripped away completely in the storm of projectiles, and the defenders could see the formidable battle armor looming over them.

Briefly checking that the second Riptide wasn't waiting to follow up the volley, Gaela waited for the heavy burst cannons to stop firing before she raised her plasma pistol. "Shield down." Then, the moment the shimmering barrier flickered, "Fire."

The Tau Riptide raised its left arm as the melta gun and plasma pistol were unleashed against it, and the shield dome on its wrist crackled as it took the full brunt of a melta gun and a pair of plasma bolts. The energy barrier crackled ominously, severely weakened, but it held. A heavy laser splashed against the battlesuit's shoulder like an afterthought, scoring the outer armor but doing little more, and the Riptide's heavy burst cannons started spinning up again.

"Shield up!" Gaela barked. Once again, a bubble enveloped the ponies and their Acolyte acquaintance, protecting them from the next wave of pulse fire as Twilight grunted in pain.

"Oh wow, did you even hurt that thing?" asked one of the Royal Guards from behind the shield bubble.

"Dude, that's crazy. Armored, huge, well-armed, flight-capable, and they even have shields!" the other guard mumbled around a mouthful of peanuts.

"I know, right? How will they ever get out of this one?" the first one asked his partner as he levitated a few peanuts of his own into his mouth.

"I'm starting to resent the helplessness of your military forces," Gaela informed the mares behind her as Spike gulped fearfully.

"Join the club, darling," Rarity grumbled.

"Rainbow to the RESCUE!" came a sudden howl that cut through the whine of the battlesuit's weapons and brought the ponies' attention further upward.

Rainbow Dash corkscrewed through the air as she dove into the back of the Riptide suit's sensor head, aiming to crush the most sensitive part of the battlesuit and cripple it.

"Gyow!" Instead she bounced off the head plating with a pained yelp. "Blugh!" And then belly-flopped onto the barrier.

The Riptide's latest salvo had concluded by then, and Gaela once again instructed Twilight to lower the shield.

"Oof!" Rainbow Dash promptly fell flat onto the floor, her eyes spinning in their sockets.

"This is crazy!" Fluttershy wailed, covering her head with her front hooves. "On our own we can't beat one of these! How are we supposed to beat two?!"

Gaela raised her plasma pistol to fire again - having no better ideas on how to deal with the threat - when Fluttershy's words had her wonder what had happened to the second battlesuit.

She got her answer as a cluster of explosions came from the front of the train, sending heavy vibrations through the passenger cars behind it.

"The engine! Those alien creeps blew up the engine!" Smoke Stack shouted as he raced down the train through the passenger cars. "We have to do something! The train is losing speed, and we'll-" he stopped speaking as soon as he opened the door behind the other ponies, his eyes bulging as he saw the massive Tau war machine looming over the hole in the roof.

The Riptide's sensors swept over the extent of the decelerating train, detecting no other life forms of note. "Surrender yourselves and face punishment for your resistance, or be destroyed immediately," the Riptide barked. Its partner was returning from demolishing the engine, its jet pack burning as it hovered to the side of the tracks.

"I don't like those options," Gaela admitted as she finally lowered her plasma pistol, "Sparkle? Some of your witchcraft would be quite welcome right now."

"Okay, okay... I... uh..." Twilight glanced above as the second of the battlesuits floated overhead, its heavy burst cannons aiming downward into the passenger car. Her eyes glanced over to the hole in the side of the train, spotting an area of empty plain amidst a vast forest. "Oh, forget this!" the alicorn suddenly shouted, her horn flaring with energy.

Before the Riptides could respond to the sudden energy surge with another salvo, Twilight and her friends teleported away in a flash of purple light.

The nearest suit recoiled in surprise, and then realized that there were still three ponies left behind in the car.

"We surrender!" shouted the two royal guards immediately, raising their forelegs into the air as peanut crumbs dribbled from their mouths. The conductor pony groaned miserably.

*Leave them. None of these three have wings,* advised the first suit as it lifted up off the train roof, *complete a sensor sweep of the surrounding area. See if you can pick up the gue'la's power signature or communications. We can't let one of their soldiers get away.*

The other suit's sensor fins unfolded as both battlesuits turned their electronic gaze from the helpless stallions below. *Noted... I'm picking up a vox transmission. Triangulating origin point... complete. They didn't get far.*

*Good. No surrender for them this time. They cannot be allowed to escape.*

****

0.4 Kilometers from the train wreck

"Yes, that's correct. They've taken Canterlot City... yes, the one on the mountain. They're establishing a refueling point in order to assault Ferrous Dominus, I believe..."

As Gaela reported the situation to her superiors and requested a transport, the other ponies (and Spike) gathered into their own huddle to discuss their options. They were standing in a small grazing field surrounded by forest, and only a vague idea where they were in relation to their home town.

"Well, we're not going to be gettin' back into Canterlot by train, that's fer sure," Applejack mumbled as she glimpsed the distant wisp of smoke rising into the air.

"I'm sure the humans have other methods available to them," Rarity assured her friends, "if we even return with them, that is."

"Why wouldn't we go with them?" Rainbow Dash asked. She seemed rather unsteady on her hooves, the others noticed.

"To what end? With our magic disabled in the city, and with you in that state, I fear the only one of us with any serious alien-fighting power is Applejack," Rarity pointed out, "and even then, I wouldn't want to march into a battlefield with nothing but an old hat and a lasso."

"Hey, I can still fight!" Rainbow Dash insisted. "I just need a breather, and then-" she spread her wings to try to prove her point, and then hissed in pain as they folded shut again. They obviously weren't broken, but clearly she'd damaged something in her last attempt at heroics.

"Rainbow, you've done enough. Let's leave this to the human army from here on," Fluttershy insisted softly.

"Yeah! I mean, unless we get bombs and stuff first. Then we can totally help out." Pinkie grinned as she rubbed her front hooves together eagerly.

"Well, we can cross that bridge when we come to it," Twilight said, "for now our priority is getting safely to Ferrous Dominus."

The ponies heard the sound of heavy footsteps approaching, and turned toward Gaela.

"I've informed my masters of what we've found thus far, and requested transport," the Dark Acolyte explained as she approached, "however, I feel obliged to inform you that my contact with Ferrous Dominus may have alerted our pursuers to our position."

The ponies made a chorus of startled gasps.

"What? Are you sure?" Twilight asked nervously.

"I am not. I am unfamiliar with the specific sensor package normally deployed on Riptide battlesuits. So I wished to hear your opinions before I emit a distress beacon, which they'll most definitely be able to detect."

"Well, why did you contact the base if you knew it might give us away?" Rainbow Dash demanded.

Gaela tilted her head slightly to meet the glare of the pegasus. "The information I had to relay was of vital strategic importance."

"More important than our survival?!" Rarity asked, her eyes narrowing.

"Yes," the cyborg replied bluntly.

A chorus of groans came from the equines. "There's a considerable chance that the enemy had detected us anyway and is coming. The data is too important to risk my communications being disabled again before I can contact the base."

This didn't do much to lessen the glares she was getting from the Equestrians. "So. Distress beacon? Either way help is unlikely to arrive in time, so I thought I may as well let you decide."

"Okay, no, let's try to keep a low profile," Twilight insisted, looking around, "we don't know that they've found us, and we probably have time to relocate before-"

"There they are," Gaela interrupted, her optics spotting the two large objects blasting toward them over the treetops, "they're making impressive time, too. Those jet packs must be upgraded models."

Twilight made a strangling noise in the back of her throat.

"Twilight! Quick! Teleport us somewhere else!" Fluttershy begged, clearly on the verge of (another) panic attack.

"I can't! I don't have any idea where we are right now!" the alicorn protested.

"I think I'm going to go ahead and activate the distress signal after all," Gaela mumbled.

"Besides," Twilight continued, "you can't just go teleporting groups around at random over long distances! It's almost as dangerous as just fighting the battlesuits! We're lucky I spotted a clear area from the train, or I probably would have gotten us all killed!"

"To be sure, teleporting isn't the supreme tactical edge it's imagined to be," Gaela mused aloud, "your shield may prove a more useful option. Especially as the Riptides have fired a missile spread."

The missiles sailed over the trees in high arcs, leaving thin, wispy contrails as they confirmed their target lock and sailed downward. Some of the warheads didn't manage to register the lock in time to adjust course, and these stray explosives hammered the ground and foliage at random as they fell. The majority, however, converged properly on the quivering purple bubble holding the only electronic power signature within kilometers besides the Riptides themselves.

Twilight's barrier rippled and glowed, straining against the force of the blasts as the heavy battlesuits drew closer. Within the bubble, pony, human, and dragon shared a grim look.

"Is there any way we can make a break for it?" Spike asked nervously, still holding his depleted melta gun.

"Not all of us," Gaela replied, "the only way for you to survive is by destroying them somehow, or if you flee for the tree cover while the Tau descend on me." The Dark Acolyte sounded detached and somewhat weary, evidently resigned to her fate.

"NO WAY!" Twilight snapped, the veins around her head pulsing angrily. "We are NOT leaving you to die on your own!"

Fluttershy, who had already turned toward the forest and spread her wings in preparation to flee, screamed internally as she forced herself to sit back down.

Gaela turned her head toward the glowing alicorn silently, and then focused her gaze on the massive battlesuits slowing to land a mere ten meters away.

"Well, then. I have a melta bomb, a power axe, a plasma pistol, and no ideas."

"YOINK!" Pinkie said, snatching the melta bomb from Gaela's belt. The Dark Acolyte didn't bother asking if the pink pony had any particular plans for it; she didn't imagine it mattered much either way.

After landing, the Riptide battlesuits leveled the heavy burst cannons at the quivering shield dome.

One of them released an electronic crackle from its speakers before it spoke. "You had your chance to surrender. Now fall with honor."

With that, both suits super-charged their nova energy cores and opened fire.

A veritable river of shimmering blue energy flares spewed from the Riptides' cannons, and Twilight screamed as she fought to hold back the blistering deluge. Every one of the ponies ran desperate, unlikely plans through their minds as they waited for the torrent to stop; lasso? Sonic rainboom? The Stare? Rapid retreat? Each idea came to nothing in their minds, undone with a casual twitch of mechanical muscle, brushed off by nigh-impenetrable armor, or ended by a bolt of boiling power. Twilight may have had more success in coming up with a solution, surely, but her entire strength of mind was focused on holding back the stream of death that would rip her and her friends apart.

Eventually the heavy burst cannons finally relented, and smoke blasted from their coolant compartments as the weapons threatened to overheat from the energy surges.

The Riptides paused to take readings on the gently quivering shield bubble, and then stomped forward, looming over their targets while their main weapons cooled.

"Sparkle. Can you hold back another salvo like that?" Gaela asked darkly.

Twilight's forelegs had faltered at some point during the barrage, leaving the front half of her body slumped onto the ground as her horn pulsed furiously.

"I don't... think so..."

Gaela raised her plasma pistol, and the power field on her axe ignited. "Then lower the shield. Our fate is in the hands of the Dark Gods, now."

Heavy footsteps approached from the forest.

Everyone involved in the extremely one-sided standoff was concentrating entirely on causing or avoiding the impending massacre, so its understandable that nobody really paid attention to the sound of another creature approaching, even when it started ripping the branches from trees or crushing bushes underfoot in its passing.

It thus came as quite a surprise to everyone when one of the Tau battlesuits was tackled by a large monster covered in spines and howling angrily.

The other Riptide immediately launched itself upward on its jet pack, turning away from its targets to take stock of this new threat. The monster wasn't quite as big as the Riptides, and it seemed to be bizarrely lacking in skin; the tendons and ligaments of the creature were improbably exposed to the air, and covered all over in thick, bony spines. The beast had thick, serrated talons that seemed to burn furiously as they clawed against the Riptide's impact armor, leaving dark stripes on the outer plating.

"What in Sam Apple's name is THAT?!" Applejack shouted, her mane sticking straight out behind her as the pair of giant combatants rolled about over the ground.

"That... would be a daemon," Gaela said, still holding her earlier pose briefly before lowering her arms, "a Warp consciousness temporarily transferred to reality and given a tangible form."

"You summoned a daemon?" Rarity asked, backing away with wide eyes.

The second battlesuit dropped onto the melee and hammered the daemon in the side with its shield arm, knocking the horrific beast off of its partner. The moment it was free of the Warpspawn, the grounded Riptide raised its heavy burst cannon and fired desperately, spraying a clumsy fusillade into the daemon's side.

"... I don't THINK I summoned it," Gaela admitted. As far as she was aware, daemonic summonings required more than a passing appeal to the Dark Gods to work.

As the Warpspawn howled in rage, more heavy footsteps came from the forest.

This time Gaela and the Equestrians took full notice of the approach, and were treated to the sight of a huge metal beast walking up to the edge of the forest. Metal tendrils lashed about its body and swatted aside branches that obstructed the path of the smokestacks lined up behind its shoulders. Its tail, a thick bundle of cables and tubes, lashed about behind it, shredding the ground cover and leaving a rough trail for any who cared to follow.

"Is that Crabapple?" Rainbow Dash asked incredulously as Applejack nodded dumbly. They could all see the mis-matched armor plate bolted onto the Maulerfiend's hip and bearing its "cutie mark", but the question still warranted asking.

"Okay, well, now I have NO idea what's going on," Gaela grumbled.

Crabapple seemed confused to see the Riptides, which was understandable. The Tau battlesuits seemed to have a better handle on the situation, and the one that wasn't airborne quickly activated its jet pack to take to the sky before both suits fired on the new threat.

Crabapple snarled and crept forward through the barrage, much of the fire splashing off of its plating without ill effect. A spread of smart missiles did little more, and Crabapple broke through the swarm of flames and pulse fire into a run as burning shards of plating fell to the ground around it.

Pinkie let out a whoop as Crabapple leapt for the nearest enemy, its hands crackling with power as they scraped at the Riptide's legs. The battlesuit fought to stay out of the daemon engine's grasp, its jet pack straining as lasher tendrils reached to restrain it.

"All right! Go get 'em, girl!"

"Woo hoo!"

"Aim for the face! The FACE!"

As some of the ponies began cheering on the unexpected rescue, Gaela kneeled next to Twilight and helped the alicorn up.

"Sparkle, I'm not totally sure what's happening, but if we want to run this may be our only chance," the Dark Acolyte said, "I can switch my armor to low power mode to better try to evade detection, but if we're going to escape it has to be now."

Twilight blinked dizzily as she watched Crabapple swipe at the air behind a retreating enemy. The Riptide suits were barely staying out of reach, having great difficulty putting down an enemy that was almost as agile and well-protected as they were.

"Can Crabapple win?" Twilight asked.

Gaela grimaced beneath her helmet. "This may be my distaste for the automata speaking, but I believe the battlesuits will prevail. Between numbers, shielding, ranged weapons, and mobility, Crabapple is outmatched."

"What can we do to help?" Twilight asked, her expression hardening.

Gaela glanced away toward the combat. "I'm not-"

"HOLY SHITE!!"

The shout of alarm came from the forest again, and the ponies turned to see what had emerged this time.

Wyatt Daniels grabbed his rail rifle from his back as he stared incredulously at the combat happening in front of him. Scootaloo was clinging to his shoulder, and the other two CMC were at his feet. The fillies looked far less shocked than he did, for some reason.

"Aw, are you serious?" Scootaloo complained as she spotted the daemon limping away at the edge of the battle. "It took us, like, two hours to summon that thing, you jerks!"

"What's everypony doin' here, anyhow?" Apple Bloom asked, scratching at her neck below her bow.

"Tryin' to stay alive!" Applejack shouted to her younger sister.

"So far, so good, then," Sweetie Belle observed.

About at that time, one of the Riptide suits landed behind Crabapple while the daemon engine tried to tug the other battlesuit down with a pair of lasher tendrils wrapped around its leg.

The Riptide with the free shot charged its reactor as it raised its burst cannon at a low angle, aiming to rip the siege walker's legs off.

A burst from Daniels' rifle struck the Riptide's heavy burst cannon as the weapon was spinning up, interrupting the shot. The armor-piercing rails punctured the weapon casing with ease, casting a great fan of sparks out the other side along with a good chunk of the weapon's power regulator. Lashes of hot plasma crackled all about the super-heating cannon for a few seconds before the limb exploded, nearly throwing the entire battlesuit onto the ground.

"Ha! Take that, loser!" Scootaloo cheered from the mercenary's shoulder.

Daniels wasn't feeling nearly as smug about his success as the battlesuit started to turn around. "Down! Get down, now!" he suited actions to words, leaping back behind the trees and huddling on the ground as a warhead cluster erupted from the damaged Riptide.

A volley of smart missiles sailed up into the air, failed to register a target lock, and then hammered the tree line at random. Trees were smashed to burning splinters and topsoil pounded into scorched craters underneath the barrage, and the battlesuit barely paused at the sight before it staggered back around toward its more dangerous opponent.

"Ha! You missed us!"

"Scoots, shut up!"

The daemon, in the meantime, was lurching away from the combat as green fire leaked from the scores of wounds in its side. It was confused, angry, and lacking any idea of who its master was thanks to its amateur summoners mucking up the ritual. But in its haze of fury and disorientation it at least decided that it didn't want to stay here with these obnoxiously hard-to-rend creatures.

Then a small yellow pegasus softly landed in front of it.

Bloodied lips curled back around jagged teeth, and the daemon released a guttural snarl as it prepared to smash the tiny winged pest into the dirt.

"Sssssh. It's okay. I'm not your enemy," Fluttershy cooed softly.

The daemon lurched to a stop, surprised. Its upraised claws twitched, but did not descend.

Fluttershy walked up to the monster and raised a hoof to tenderly touch its lower jaw. "We're not the ones who did this to you," Fluttershy said calmly, her eyes darting to the pulsating hole in the daemon's side, "they're our enemies too. And we could really, really use your help in stopping them." Fluttershy smiled and tilted her head to one side, her pink mane swinging in front of her face. "Is that okay?"

The daemon snapped its head around, its pitch-black eyes narrowing at the Riptide battlesuits fending off Crabapple. It gave a short, sharp growl to indicate that, yes, that was quite okay.

And then, with a beastly howl, it vaulted back into the fray.

Crabapple went crashing to the ground as the damaged Riptide hammered a punch into it, leaving a heavy dent in its carapace plating while the other battlesuit ripped free of its grasp.

That same suit was then promptly tackled to the ground - again - by the daemon that had interrupted them in the first place. It raised its shield-arm to ward off the blows, but being on the defensive gave Crabapple time to get its bearings and leap back at its attacker.

"Daniels! Bloom! Y'all okay?" Applejack asked as she approached the edge of the forest. Gaela had mentioned that they should at least find a position with better cover as they figured out what to do, and she followed the apple farmer with most of the others in tow.

"Oh, I've had worse, to be sure," the man murmured as the CMC seemed to be making themselves comfortable on his back, "I'm not standing up again as long as those suits are still active, though."

Scootaloo snickered and scuffed the man's shoulder with her hoof. "Come on, man! Don't be a wimp!"

"We need you fighting, rifleman," Gaela agreed, "your weapon is best suited to cutting through armor that thick at any kind of reasonable range. But this time, aim for the cockpit. We're only likely to prevail if we can kill the pilots."

Twilight frowned. The cockpit was the weak point? She thought back to the inert Riptide suits she had seen in the hangar base. Those suits had been opened and had allowed her a look inside the hefty walkers, although she hadn't been paying especially close attention at the time.

"Acolyte, if even ONE of those missiles just now had sniffed me out, me and the pones would be dust right now!" Daniels retorted. "I can't dodge ordnance volleys, and the cover here is a little sparse!"

"A valid point. The younglings should probably stay away this time so that they won't perish along with you."

"Oh, sod off!"

"I have an idea!" Twilight blurted out suddenly, her head snapping up. "I can get the pilots! I just need the suits... distracted, or immobilized somehow!"

"One distraction, coming up!" Rainbow Dash said, gritting her teeth as her wings unfolded.

"Rainbow Dash, please, you're going to break your neck out there. I have a better plan," Rarity said as she walked up to Daniels and the fillies, "Sweetie Belle, do you remember that new spell you have?"

Sweetie Belle perked up. "My new-new spell, or my old-new spell?"

"The annoying one that nobody ever wants you to cast," Rarity clarified, "well, I want you to cast it now. And put as much power into it as possible!"

Gaela's eye twitched from behind her mask, and she gripped her power axe tightly as she started mumbling prayers of protection in Binary.

"All right, Rarity! Here I go!" Sweetie Belle cheered as her horn started to spark ominously.

Crabapple's fist slammed into the Riptide's shield projector with the force of a cannon blast, overloading the generator and shorting out the barrier. Its lasher tendrils had wrapped around the limbs of the battlesuit, holding the enormous armor suit fast as it was raked by the siege crawler's power fists.

A loud cracking noise came from behind the two wrestling machines, and Crabapple saw the daemon go tumbling end over end across the ground. The servile machine hesitated, its attention diverted. Originally, it had been charged with capturing the daemon and safely bringing it back to the CMC. Did destroying the Tau battlesuits take priority over that first task? It didn't know.

A mechanical foot hammered the Maulerfiend in the face, snapping its attention back to its current struggle. The Riptide suit charged its jet pack with its nova reactor and then kicked off from the struggling daemon engine, tearing free of the mechatendrils. Once in the air again, it registered a lock for its next missile salvo and tried to gain distance from the sentient machine.

The target lock registered easily, and the next volley of smart missiles slid into the launch racks.

And then, suddenly, the target lock vanished as a two dozen different things started to go wrong.

Crabapple saw white as sparks blasted from the cabling under its neck, and its leg servos ground to a stuttering halt. Then jets of fire spewed from its smokestacks as its power core overheated, and the daemon engine released a terrified-sounding screech.

"I'm helping!" Sweetie Belle said cheerfully as she floated several inches off the ground, her eyes consumed by pure light.

Gaela was restraining a scream as her power armor fed painful surges of electrical feedback into her nerve sockets, and her servo arm lashed about wildly as if searching for something at random to crush in its pincers. Daniels had to take his hands off of his rail rifle as its casing grew disturbingly hot, and he quickly dropped his pulse pistol onto the ground next to it as it released an ominous and irregular humming noise.

As for the Riptide battlesuits, they each became near inoperative as several vital systems malfunctioned at once. The battlesuit hovering in the air fell like a stone as its jet pack went dead, slamming into the ground and twitching while sparks shot from its actuators. The other Riptide wobbled and flailed as its sensor inputs were reduced to images of ghostly screaming faces and enormous, bloodshot eyes, and smoke started pouring from its exhaust vents as its reactor coolant systems faltered.

The only one of the four large combatants that wasn't suddenly reduced to a quivering mess was the summoned daemon, which took enthusiastic advantage of the anomaly. Seizing one of the battlesuits around the shoulders, its jaws stretched open and bit into the head of the Tau war machine. Both armor plating and razor-sharp bone cracked in equal measure as the daemon pulled and twisted, and after a few tense seconds the armored suit finally relented. The sensor mount came free of the Riptide's shoulders, and the daemon pushed the battlesuit onto its back as it chewed noisily on its mouthful of heavy armor and delicate sensors.

This had the surprising effect of freeing the Riptide pilot from the bizarre sensor images that had effectively disabled it.

The suit's secondary scopes came online, and the pilot was treated to the unobstructed sight of the daemonic beast chewing on a mouthful of armor. Ignoring the confused and inexplicable damage warnings flashing all around him, the pilot seized the daemon by the lower jaw, tearing open the beast's mouth and jamming his heavy burst cannon into it.

*Chew on THIS, freak!* the Riptide howled as its primary weapon fired into the daemon's maw. The burst cannon hiccupped and spat smoke as it discharged, but proved more than adequate at tearing the daemon apart from the neck down. Within seconds the Warpspawn collapsed onto the ground, its entire body rapidly disintegrating into puffs of emerald-colored fire.

The Riptide stood up slowly, its legs quivering slightly as the last of the spell's effects finally passed. It was seriously damaged now, but not out of the fight by a long shot.

It caught sight of a pink pony running out from between its legs, and the battlesuit raised its heavy burst cannon to take it down. That prospect seemed less likely as it got a look at the state of its primary weapon; the heavy burst cannon was a smoldering wreck. Plasma was leaking from the main power feed, acidic drool oozed over the motivators, and there was a tooth lodged in the main coolant unit. It would have been hard to use the weapon even if its main targeting arrays were still active, which they most definitely were not.

And things certainly weren't helped by the melta bomb that suddenly exploded over its knee and took out its left leg, either.

The other Tau war machine had been mostly left alone as its vital systems sputtered, and its pilot growled in frustration as the sensors finally flickered back on and the suit's limbs became responsive again.

As it stood up, however, it saw something that gave it pause.

One of the ponies - specifically, the purple one that had been generating all those annoying shields - was latched onto the front of the torso armor, its horn glowing furiously.

"Come on... come on... come on!" Twilight growled as she continually revised her estimates in her head for a precision teleport. She had to get this JUST right for it to work, and she would happily admit to being quite nervous now that her target was moving again.

The Riptide quickly turned to see that the Maulerfiend was coming to its senses, and idly raised its shield hand to squash the pony against its chest.

"COME ON!!" Twilight screamed, her horn flaring even brighter.

And then the Riptide battlesuit froze. A second later it slowly moved into a kneeling position, its arms spreading out at its sides as the battlesuit went into standby mode.

The Riptide pilot blinked repeatedly, finding herself laying on the grass and staring up at the sunset-colored sky. She had no real idea what had just happened, but she wasted no time in sitting up and spotting her Riptide armor.

Before she could stand, however, a hoof fell onto her shoulder and pushed her back down to the ground.

Applejack glared down at the shocked pilot, and then looked up at the remaining battlesuit. Crabapple had descended on the crippled Riptide and was now tearing it apart with gusto; it was no longer a threat to them.

"Well, gosh, ya really had us goin' fer a minute there, didn't ya?" Applejack asked as she applied more weight to her hoof. Her voice was exceptionally lacking in good humor. "But yer not so tough and scary outside yer fancy armor, are ya?"

The Tau pilot could see the other ponies slowly walking toward her, some of them looking (understandably) upset. The human woman was approaching as well, and seemed to be adjusting her grip on her axe.

"If you're going to kill me, then hurry up and do so. I will not beg for mercy," the alien groused.

"Oh, Ah would, but the youngin's are watchin'," Applejack noted, "what's about to happen to you ain't exactly rated for 'Everyone'."

"Awww, but we wanna watch!" Scootaloo whined, throwing her hooves up into the air.

"They killed our daemon!" Apple Bloom agreed, pouting.

"We worked SUPER hard to summon it!" Sweetie Belle added, "as an aggrieved party, I'm pretty sure we deserve vengeance."

There was a long pause as the older ponies gave the CMC unreadable looks.

"Bloom, we're gonna have a long talk about this cult thing after all this is over, all right? Fer now, y'all turn around."

"Awww!" the fillies whined.

Daniels picked the young ponies up one by one and carried them away. "Come on, girls. Let's leave the adults to their war crimes and go watch Crabapple finish off the other suit." They perked up at this considerably.

Applejack waited until the CMC were out of earshot, and then returned her attention to their new prisoner.

"Y'all are gonna pay fer what you've done," she hissed through clenched teeth, "did you think ya could walk all over us ponies and get away with it?"

"We've done what is NECESSARY. Nothing more," the battlesuit pilot murmured.

"I've always found the Tau's attempts to justify their military aggression fascinating," Gaela admitted, stepping close enough so that she was standing over the hapless alien, "most species can manage with a simple imperative for racial supremacy. And some others don't bother with such trifles at all."

The Riptide pilot struggled to get up, but Applejack's hoof merely dug more firmly into her shoulder. "This is different, cultist! We're not here to give the unenlightened a philosophy lesson," the alien spat, "you fool humans treat this like a game, but the stakes are higher than you could possibly imagine!"

"I suppose we do treat it like a game," Gaela agreed as she raised her power axe, "and it's a game that you're losing."

The axe descended.

Author's Note:

Remember how I said that this was going to be a two-part finale? I totally meant three.

Also, I'm glad it's cool with everyone that I'm basically just making up the rules for Twilight's teleport spell as we go along. That's super helpful, seriously.

Finally, I hope you Spike fans enjoyed him being a badass, because I'm probably not letting him do anything cool ever again.

Comments

[GiftedMonster]

An intriguing chapter, and certainly fascinating.

I will be very interested to see what happens in the next couple of parts, though Twilight's guess about the planet being a throw away might come to disturbing fruition.

Cheers
GM

[lebowski42]

But Spike being a badass was by far the best part; he's got thumbs, he's a dragon , he's got a friggin melta gun AND he's the only one to get a direct offer from minor chaos god and shrug it off for a far more sensible option.

Frankly every other character should follow his lead , I'm sure Celestia would approve.

Don't get me started on the CMC, they're actually summoning deamons now ? There is begrudgingly working with people who are mad cultists for evil gods , and then there is actually summoning their direct manifestations.

Right now it seems like they are not dooming everyone on the fact that the chaos gods are having a bit of fun ?

[EverfreeSparkle]

Never letting Spike do anything cool ever again eh? I'm cool with that. Oh and fucking cliffhangers!

[Hey its that Pony]

Fluttershy, why are you so terrifying when you have no right to be?

Much love for Spike being useful and for making the more sensible decisions.

What's Applebloom rubbing at? Hasn't been washing behind her neck has she?

Love that the planet stopping has not gone unnoticed.

Observation of the Tau. There seems to be a rather large amount of high ranking female officers among this group, particularly on the field. Nothing wrong with that of course just something I don't really see very often.

[spinner335]

Can we have some sort of scene where the CMC commits horribal violent acts befitting of each off their respective cults in front of celestial. Please.

[Moonreaper666]

4580780

Scootaloo bites a Tau's head off for Khrone

Sweetie Belle uses lightning to disintegrate a tau for Tzeentch

Applebloom vomits someone to death for Nurgle

[spinner335]

I was thinking some more like scootaloo collecting the heads of fallen soldiers maybe even if their wounded but yours is great

[SFaccountant]

4581271
4581329
Whoa. Dark.
How about some morally ambiguous acts of open Chaos worship? I think that would be a lot more consistent with the kind of "corruption" I've shown so far. I think it might damage the story tone if I were to turn the CMC into genuine mutant cult fanatics rather than children toying with powers beyond anybody's comprehension.

4580045
Follow his lead? Fair enough, but it's not like the dark gods have ponies lining up to sell their souls for power. The only ones who did were the CMC, and for a very specific reason.

[AlphaThroughZeta]

4581377 i was thinking the cmc could just pray to chaos in front celestia like your idea

[Moonreaper666]

4581377

Applebloom "Oh, look at our prisoner. He is dying?"

Sweetie Belle "Oh OH, I know... we should experi-fix him!"

Scootaloo "Can't we just amputate his leg?"

[spinner335]

4581377
Fair enough maybe just applebloom visits the canterlot hospital.

[Vaderman]

Everything is cool and awesome...with one BUT!
Where the heck are the MIGHTY DREADNOUGHTS?!(put mechanical voice here)
It's Iron Warriors story we are reading here, not about a bunch of loyalist pussies! (ultra heretic mode on)
P.S. Pweeeeeese...

[SFaccountant]

4581827
Well, that's a... very unique criticism.
You want dreadnoughts, huh? Okay. I can do that.

[Hey its that Pony]

4581827
Huh. Those walking killer buildings haven't crossed my mind all through this story.

I know I like to toss them down in big numbers in the computer games but I think most chapters tend to let their Dreadnoughts sleep unless they really need them for one reason or another. Not completely sure about that though.

[Vaderman]

4582751
Considering the presence of newly arrived Tau fleet and the course of all story I think the shitstorm will soon begin! So I think it won't be a shame for Iron Warriors to wake up at least one or two of their veterans from cyber dreaming.(or how this is called). Because why the hell not?
P.S. Yay for the dreadnoughts!

[GBscientist]

The CMC are hilarious, as usual, but my favourite parts were Spike being awesome and Luna's comments on Celestia's penal practices. Overall, the fight scenes were very well written, but this chapter was lighter on laughs that previous ones.

[SFaccountant]

4582751
4583038
Chaos fleets don't treat their sort-of-fallen veterans with any such respect, and in fact drop them into the fray any chance they get (rather than sleep, Chaos dreadnoughts naturally prefer the catharsis of violence). There were dreadnoughts assaulting the base in the Everfree, for example. I didn't show any when the Tau attacked Ferrous Dominus, but there were certainly some dreads fighting there as well.
So yeah, I can feature more dreadnoughts. Why not?

[spinner335]

Remember to keep in mind that chaos dreads are generally insane (more so than usual for chaos) and that when not fighting the life support box and robot tank thing are separated and both chained up. So what is basically a space marine cripple being barely kept alive in a coffin that can't move on its own mind you is chained up, damn. And the dread is also chained up so that is one insane machine spirit.

Wow I am afraid
Also don't the iron warriors make extensive use of obliterators?

[SFaccountant]

4585314
Yeah, that's probably why Chaos forces are a lot more eager to commit them to battle. They're kind of jerks.
As for Obliterators, they're very common in Iron Warriors armies, but not in the 38th Company. As its composed of the Legion's "losers", elite soldiers are even more rare than normal. Sliver and his Rusted Brotherhood, for example, are both the only Terminators and the only Plague Marines in the fleet.
I've been trying to find a way to explain this in-story that's both relevant and interesting, but I've had no luck.

[spinner335]

4585347
You could have a pony comment on how with how much fire power the 38th has and then have Galea comment on how they don't have things like obliterators, mailers, daemon possessed marines, demon princes, demons in general, the planet killer, kroot who have eaten chaos corrupted flesh, titans, hereteks, daemon weapons, chaos worshipping aliens, or even more troops because lets face it compared to most other small armies in warhammer they are tiny.

[Hawk24731]

HAHAHAHAHA
By Khorne and The Emperor this is great!

[Vaderman]

4585347
About the concept of Terminators- Plague Marines in 38th...
Maybe they are here for disobeying an order during the siege or
some simple shit or Slither lost a lot of man during an operation one day? ( just trying to be obvious)
P.S. Can't wait for dreadnought massacre shitstorm of shanenigans

[Heitomos]

Another marvellous chapter! I can't wait to see the planet starting to spin again, or what's going to happen to Canterlot. Thankfully, the ponies haven't been hurt yet, and the Iron Warriors are REALLY good at building things very quickly. Still hoping for a can of Princess Kickass though. :P Can't wait to see the next one!

[SFaccountant]

4588633
I already have back stories prepared for all the 38th Company characters of note. I just haven't reached the point where I feel any of them would spill their life stories to curious aliens, or that the readers would care to hear them. These chapters are long enough without some Chaos Marine's sob story taking away from all the murdery goodness and pony shenanigans.

[Vaderman]

4589411

Maybe you can make chapters with title FAQ with biography of some main characters if someone wants to know?( it's me)
P.S. Yay for murder and shanenigans!

[Hey its that Pony]

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4590058
Personally. I'd love to read them revealed in the story somehow at some point. It would make them more interesting that way.

Anyway. Considering how very friendly/familiar the forces of Chaos have gotten with the Ponies in this story, I was thinking that it's almost a shame that the 38th don't like Slaanesh worshipers.

Just imagine a bunch of Noise Marines weaponizing Vinyl Scratch's beats.

[Vaderman]

4590137
SLAANESH?!?!?!
Nopenopenopenopenope!
Iron Warriors never were in good terms with whore god and never will be.(I pray this to be true)
P.S. If it proves wrong in future I will go GW main office, find a guy who have thought that making Iron Warriors worship Slaanesh will be good idea, make him eat an ustable plasma generator( very big one if you are curios) and throw him in the Warp (direction will be Slaanesh's Palace Anal of Pleasure or how the f*** it is called) and blow all this s*** up!!!

[Vaderman]

SLAANESH?!?!?!
Nopenopenopenopenope!
Iron Warriors never were in good terms with whore god and never will be.(I pray this to be true)
P.S. If it proves wrong in future I will go GW main office, find a guy who have thought that making Iron Warriors worship Slaanesh will be good idea, make him eat an ustable plasma generator( very big one if you are curios) and throw him in the Warp (direction will be Slaanesh's Palace Anal of Pleasure or how the f*** it is called) and blow all this s*** up!!!

Wow...
Wrote it so quick that made a bunch of grammar...
P.S. Sorry for the outburst but just thinking about it makes me want put some new skulls on the Skull throne...

[SFaccountant]

4590137
Meh. It's not like one actually has to worship Slaanesh to use sonic weapons. The only particular connection Slaanesh has to sonic weaponry is that its followers enjoy using them way more than they really should. Solon could whip up a sonic blaster just as easily as he could a plasma gun (and you can bet they've scavenged some from the occasional Emperor's Children warbands they've attacked).

[Vaderman]

4590344
Hmmmm...
Sonic weapons , wanna see it in action!!!

[AlphaThroughZeta]

i want to see solon begging for Vinyl's bass cannon blueprints (AFTER ALL ITS BASICALLY PORTABLE HEAVY ANTI SHIP ARTTILLEY)
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[Dragon Turtle]

I had forgotten l about the Iron Heart until now. I thought it was just a throwaway example of the humans spreading their influence. Great job of bringing that center stage.

Among the other great things I can say about this story is the attention to strategic aspects of the magic jamming generators, versus those of the multiple signal jamming generators.

The only criticism I feel is worth pointing out concerning strategy and combat is the daemon summoning. The CMC were involved in something as tainted as that, but aren't brining about any detrimental effects? I know I should be accepting it at this point, but this fic is utterly fantastic about the balance of power otherwise. All the corporeal and non-insane magic that the combatants wield is accounted for before, during and after a battle, and their's a real sense of tactics. For wielding the nonsensical and illogical power of the warp, it's illustrated as being exchanged for the humanity, morality and sanity of those who consort with the power. It isn't the same, totally damning exchange rate as canon 40k lore, but it's still felt consequential and consistence throughout the story... Except with the CMC. They just pulled something off that even some traitor legions avoid, consequence free. Maybe if the implication is that the corruption of Dest's and the mercenaries' souls did most of the heavy lifting for the summoning? Or that this isn't even that powerful of a lesser daemon, accounting for why nobody mutated or went insane in its presence?

Speaking of those corrupted humans though, where are they? Daniels was the only one who went on a daemon hunt? I can't imagine why Dest wouldn't go along. Also, where exactly did they teleport off the train to? Did the train travel long enough to get close to Ponyville?

You might think I have a problem with Fluttershy being able to exert control over warp entities, but it's quite the opposite. It fits perfectly with the show in that, besides her lack of fear concerning ANOTHER demonic entity, Flutters prefers the company of animals to that of her own kind (general sapients), and has really skewed priorities in terms of what's worth being afraid of. Going back to the idea of power balance, Fluttershy's Animal Charisma balances out with being cowardly to the point of utter uselessness in most situations. Maybe we could have had her lecture that greater gnarloc after it crashed through AJ's barn? Then when it had it's head down, Dest could have attached a melta bomb to it.

D: "Thank you, small yellow creature."
F:

I've gotten the sense that SFaccountant isn't that interested about writing for Fluttershy. She's often away from the plot-centric events, and when she is in a scene, she's either clamming up, or just being ignored. And given that she's the only one of the group not buddying up with the 38th, and only accommodates them through lack of will, has prevented her from having any sort of character arc.

4581827
For traitor legions, those walking bricks usually get turned into defilers, probably for the sake of differentiating the factions. But there are some traitor dreadnoughts, and while most are insane, I bet any in the Iron Warriors would be comprehensible and interesting.

By the way, could someone tell me what happened to the Elements of Harmony? The actual jewels, not the group of ponies. That's not me launching a criticism, I've just lost track of them from everything that's been happening.

I predict that Twilight is going to inform the 38th company about the mine tunnels underneath Canterlot that she (and the audience) learned about in Canterlot Wedding. That will allow them to just pop up into Canterlot, and take out the HQ at the castle from the outset of the battle. The Tau sensors won't detect them coming (until it's too late) due to the layers of rock, and you could probably just make up that all the crystals create interference.

[Bugsydor]

Am I the only one here thinking Fluttershy would make an excellent cultist of Nurgle? Also, the fact that she can commune with daemons is both hilarious and very useful-looking.

[Eenor5000]

There are humans who don't fight on behalf of a Traitor Legion? Those traitors!

[the other sans]

These 'Tau' are clever little pests, I'll give them that. They've got some gizmo around here to helps enforce the laws of boring old reality

1. Help.

[Dusk Raven]

The plasma grenade detonated mid-sentence, blasting a cloud of superheated gases into the troopers.

...Aren't plasma grenades Eldar tech? The Imperium generally just uses normal frag grenades, so I thought.

Spike frowned, glancing up at Discord. "What's wrong with him that YOU can call him a weirdo?"

"I'm a sane man in an insane universe," Virgil explained unhelpfully.

"See? Can you THINK of a more boring character flaw than that?" Discord challenged Spike.

...

[Der Kaiser]

8166191 nope, what the eldar use is different. Frag grenades are just cheaper and easier to make

[NetherWalker]

Luna's expression fell as the weapons melted huge holes in the stone wall without difficulty, and a cloud of hot, dark vapor spilled up toward the ceiling.

... That isn't how a vault works.

[A Wild Magikarp]

Voidsong nodded her sensor head. *You heard Princess Horse, no mucking about in there. Get the Warp core and get out.*

So when did this professional military leader turn into a petty schoolyard bully? Seriously, there where talks before all this that it ‘wasnt their fault,’ that ‘they don’t want to fight the natives.’ Now every chance she gets she is just belittling the ruler of the entire nation. Complete and total disrespect gets her nothing but more bad rep for the Tau.

"But I must confess that I've always wanted a statue dedicated to me. Of course..." she looked back at the Princesses, and the main sensor node pulsed a blazing red, "... you're going to have to beat me, first. You're a long way away from taking your little city back."

I am PRAYING that this works out the right way. Celestia and Luna get enough abuse and embarrassment in the show. This story isn’t doing them many favors either. What needs to happen is the Legion takes down The Shadow, and then the PONIES club the Tau. I want a wrathful goddess Celestia, not a foolish, mewling dictator Celestia.

The young dragon slapped the amulet before turning away, sending the heavy artifact swinging from side to side. "Keep your stupid evil jewelry and the stupid daemons inside of it! I'm outta here!"

Thank the EMPEROR, he has a lick of sense in him! Already has twice the brains the CMC did when they sold themselves to the ultimate evils in the universe.

... Actually, who IS the worst? I don’t consider Tyranids evil, while they ARE clever, they are driven by instinct, nearly more than animals. Similar situation with the Orks. Tau have their problems, but when looking for the moral high-ground, they have it over the Imperium and The Inquisition. Chaos is OBVIOUSLY evil, but... as bad as the C’tan? Or what about the Necrons?

Spike's eyes narrowed. "Simple." Then he thrust his arms toward the skeptical pony, causing her to recoil in surprise. "OPPOSABLE THUMBS," he said darkly, flexing his claws in front of her.

Your savior is here! No, not Spike, his dexterous digits.

"The sun sure has been setting for a long time," Twilight said casually, her eyebrows arched as she met Gaela's gaze, "almost as if the planet's rotation had mysteriously stopped."

The sass is real! You are NOT going to live this one down Acolyte.

On the subject of that last bit of the chapter, it would be so much simpler if the intelligent races of the 40K universe, namely Human, Tau, and Eldar just banded together and cleaned up the mess. If it wasn’t for the bigotry, racism, and terrible diplomatic skills, so much stuff could get fixed if they all pooled their resources instead of effectively using each other as bait/meat shields/targets.

[Notrab M]

I think that spike should have accepted the daemon. It would have been a lot cooler, with the same result.

[Animatorsnake]

Ladies and gentlemen, this is the Equestrian military

[FridayPie]

"... Negative. For now, we wait," Gaela mumbled as she stepped up into the train car, "I have a feeling a certain group of ponies will be along shortly."

Did she extrapolate Pinkie Principle to all ponies?