Councils of War
Eyrie, the capital city of Draconia, was a city of vast towers. In a civilization that had tamed and mastered gravity, buildings of a thousand stories or more were commonplace, their walls of ceramacrete reinforced with carbon nanotube rebar were easily able to bear the immense loads placed upon them. The great towers were studded with vast balconies, where the city's dragons, in all their hundreds of thousands, came and went through the air. Below, smaller doors let the swarming millions of the dragons' servants and allies, the ponies and diamond dogs and minotaurs, come and go as well.
Air cars wove among the towers in orderly lanes, though dragons took precedence over all other air traffic, soaring freely through the artificial canyons of the city.
Towering above them, larger than any building—even those built to a dragon's scale—was the immense bulk of Eyrie Mountain. It too had landing balconies built into the slopes, for the heart of the Draconian Empire lay within the mountain itself. There, a stupendous chamber hollowed out of the living stone of the mountain held the Imperial Council. In that vast hollow, the Emperor sat on his golden throne at the center of the chamber, while all around him in tiered balconies rising in a dozen levels sat the representatives of all the member worlds of the Empire.
The dragons had said, since the earliest days of the Empire, that they were not mere conquerers, nor dictators. Every world that joined the Empire, whether conquered by military might or otherwise, had a voice here in the chamber, where the Emperor himself listened whenever the Council was in session.
There had even been a time, centuries ago, when this had might have meant something. Now the Empire was simply too big. The hundreds of worlds, and thousands of council members, meant that the Imperial Council never accomplished anything of note. There were simply too many voices clamoring to be heard, and rare indeed were the causes that could catch the interest of even a simple majority. So, with the Council in a perpetual gridlock, and the Emperor himself lending his ear to an eternal stream of complaints that could never be solved, the day-to-day running of the Empire had shifted elsewhere.
Within the mountain there was another chamber. It was large, given that it needed to hold a minimum of five adult dragons, but it was nothing like the splendid showpiece of the Imperial Council. It was a practical room, the stone of its floor sculpted into five comfortable lounging spots, while a large holo-projector at the center allowed data about the Empire and its situation to be displayed for all present to see.
The display was currently showing a simplified map of the entire Empire; an irregular sphere, its stars color-coded by their status as core worlds, general member worlds, or protectorates, each color helpfully labeled in the key that floated beside the main display. Several dozen stars were burning a dull red, marking worlds currently sustaining active rebel factions. These were scattered all around the fringes of the sphere, seemingly at random.
"Thank you all for coming so promptly," said Alchemera, who had just fed a data chip into the projector and turned it on. She was a purple dragon of average size, and she headed the economics department, in charge of both the Imperial treasury and the regulation of economic policy within the Empire, which meant that she was probably the most powerful dragon in the galaxy, even perhaps including the emperor himself. The manipulation of economies was how the Empire had grown, and the economic prosperity of its core worlds was the one thing that mattered most to all the dragons who lived within it.
The other four dragons nodded at her, some more gracefully than others.
"What's this all about?" said Lady Emerald, frowning at the display with its scattering of red dots. Her scowl was not quite so fierce as that of the red dragon beside her, but she looked definitely unhappy with the situation. Her long green tail twitched restlessly, coiling and uncoiling from around her feet. She headed the department of the interior, putting her in charge of the Empire's interests at home.
The red dragon, easily the largest in the room, snorted wordlessly. His gleaming crimson scales set off the gold pendant he wore, which bore four golden flames wreathed together into a circle. It was his personal symbol, the symbol of the Imperial Draconian Navy, and the symbol of his rank within it. He was the Grand Admiral Char, its highest officer, and thus the one in charge of the bulk of the Empire's military might. He was also the sole member of the council who wasn't the head of a bureaucratic branch of the government.
Next to the admiral, a portly blue dragon was refusing to even look at the map. Instead he idly inspected his claws, as if searching for some speck of dirt that might be caught on one. His name was Whiptail, and he was in charge of the foreign affairs department, and thus tended to have the least power and influence of those here, since generally the Empire's only interest in foreign worlds was if it could conquer them or not.
"What do you think it's about?" said Sinuous, a small black dragon as long and winding as his name implied. He regarded the holo display with a neutral expression, a perfect poker face that showed nothing of his thoughts or emotions. He headed the department of education, but though on paper he mostly controlled the Empire's school system, in actuality he was also behind the Empire's propaganda efforts. He allowed a small, almost mocking smile to appear on his narrow face for a brief moment as he continued. "The fringe worlds are restless. They begin to doubt the wisdom of allowing the Empire to absorb them."
"And why shouldn't they?" said Whiptail, finally looking up from his claws. "They'd be better off having stayed outside the Empire, however you and your people might might try to convince them otherwise. The fringes get squeezed so that the core worlds can prosper."
"The core worlds are the Empire. Of course the Empire needs to prosper," said Emerald sharply, still frowning.
"Indeed," said Alchemera. "Nevertheless Whiptail has a bit of a point. The fringe worlds aren't happy. There are more of them in some state of rebellion now than ever before. If we don't take firm action, we might actually lose some of them, and that will spell disaster. Once one world escapes the Empire, others are going to start getting ideas."
"'Firm action,' by which you mean more of my ships, no doubt," rumbled Admiral Char irately.
"What else do we have a fleet for, if not to put down this sort of thing?" said Lady Emerald, waving a dismissive claw.
"We have them for a great many reasons. There are always piracy problems, even close in to the core worlds. Most of the fleet's smaller ships are tasked with guarding our merchant fleet. The larger ships are necessary in case some outside threat should challenge us. We need to be able to crush any such attempt immediately."
He looked over at Whiptail for corroboration, and Whiptail was happy enough to give it to him. "There are at least six multi-planet polities that border directly on us right now, including the Gryphon Hegemony, which isn't terribly centralized, but they're fairly big."
"Not compared to us," snorted Lady Emerald. "They're pipsqueaks compared to us."
"Yes, but if you have me sending every capital ship we've got to go piss out fires in the fringes, they could still take a rather large piece of out of us before I could get the fleet back together again. Breaking up the home fleet isn't possible."
"What's the state of the availability of lighter ships, say cruisers and smaller?" asked Alchemera.
"Getting thin on the ground. We have a few thousand of them, but better than half are merchant escorts, another quarter are needed as screening elements for the home fleet, and you already have the remaining quarter assigned out in the fringes, either policing rebels or reinforcing sector governors."
"So there are no free ships at all?" said Alchemera.
"Not a one. I can pull some more off the home fleet if I absolutely have to, but I am unwilling to do so without a truly pressing reason. The other options are to build more, or to pull some from merchant escort duty."
Alchemera shook her head. "That's not an option. The Empire's strength is its wealth, and its wealth is its merchant fleet. Those ships must be guarded. And we don't have the funds to embark on a massive building project right now."
"Then no, there aren't any ships left."
"Surely we can send some of the home fleet out if needed?" said Lady Emerald. "We can call them back in the, ah, highly unlikely event of a foreign invasion." She shot a grin at Whiptail, who glared back at her.
Admiral Char snorted. "If someone invaded us right now, we'd find out in two months, Emerald. It would take almost twice that long to get the home fleet out to the fringes from here. If I have to call some of it back from the fringes first, then we're adding six more months to our response time. It's bad enough as it is; taking a year to respond would be disastrous." He stared at the map thoughtfully and added, "I can break up a few task forces, some of the restless worlds have groups rather than single ships, but those groups are mostly real small fry like frigates. Sending out frigates on their own is a good way to start losing frigates, they're hardly up to suppressing a rebellion with any real force behind it."
"'Behind it' is the key word there," said Sinuous. "I sometimes suspect that there must be something behind this. The Empire has never had so many restless worlds before. One has to wonder why so many fringe worlds are rebelling at once."
"I'm afraid it may be a simple matter of size," said Alchemera with a sigh. "The Empire has never been this large before. I think we've hit a tipping point where the fringes are just too far away. We've already decided that further expansion is a bad idea right now. Trying to re-balance the economics of the Empire without a constant stream of new worlds is also part of why we're currently feeling a financial pinch, though. It's a perfect storm of otherwise minor problems that are reinforcing each other here. If we didn't have so many very new worlds, I doubt this would be happening. Give things a few decades to settle and we'll be fine."
"Why not just let the rebel worlds go, then?" ventured Whiptail. "Do we really need them all?"
"Oh no," said Sinuous instantly. "If we let any of them go, others will notice their example and start thinking about breaking away. Once that starts, it ends with the Empire reduced to mostly just the core worlds, and we could even lose some of those. We can't let anyone go."
"Surely you're exaggerating?" said Whiptail.
"He may be a bit, but not by much," said Alchemera. "Only the core worlds really benefit economically from the Empire. The outer member worlds don't do too badly, but most of them would do a little better outside the Empire. And the protectorates are much worse off than they'd be otherwise. We let the interstellars squeeze them as hard as they like. They're mostly the ones in rebellion, though a few of the newer member worlds have rebel groups too."
"Perhaps we could get the corporations to ease off a bit, then?" asked Whiptail.
"It'd never work," said Lady Emerald. "They have far too much power here at home. We can deal with losing fringe worlds more easily than we can deal with angering any of the big interstellar companies."
"What do we do, then?" said Whiptail.
Alchemera gave him a wry smile. "Our options are limited. We can't take our claws off the neck of the fringe worlds. If they start leaving, Sinuous is right, the wheels will start to come off. And Emerald is right that the interstellars won't let us stop squeezing them. Our only option is to squeeze harder, until the fight goes out of them."
"I'm not sure I like that," said Whiptail.
"Well it's not you who will have to do the squeezing!" said Admiral Char, rather bitingly. "You don't have to like it." He turned to Alchemera. "Although I don't like it either. Reducing the home fleet feels like an act of desperation. We're the Draconian Empire, we cannot possibly be that desperate."
"No? So you're willing to be responsible for us losing at least a dozen fringe worlds? We will lose them if something isn't done," snapped Alchemera.
Admiral Char scowled at her. "Why does the 'something' have to be done by me?"
"Because you're the one who has the ships. I suppose we could scrape up some ground troops from somewhere, we do have an army."
Char snorted again. "Only in theory. Those idiots couldn't find their tails with both hands. All right, I suppose that if we're all agreed that we'll start losing worlds if I don't...?" he glanced around, and got nods from everyone except Whiptail, who was examining his claws again. "Very well. I'll see what I can do to free up more ships. I am not going to pull capital ships out to send to the fringe though, you'll mostly be getting destroyers. Maybe a few cruisers."
"Thank you. I want at least one cruiser or bigger, or a pair of destroyers, at every single one of these worlds," said Alchemera, gesturing at the map. "About half of them already have a naval presence, and so far that's been very effective at containing any rebels. If we can get the rest of them similarly bottled up, we should be able to keep the lid on the situation." She smiled, showing her sharp teeth in a cheerfully predatory grin. "After all, it's not like any of the rebels have warships of their own. That would spell trouble."
"Let us be thankful for small blessings," said Sinuous, returning her smile.
The others smiled and nodded too.
"Now while we're all here, I wanted to get your feedback on how I'm spinning this upswing in rebel activity for the domestic press," said Sinuous. "And perhaps toss a few ideas about dealing with foreign press your way, Whiptail. I'd hate to encourage anyone from outside the Empire to stick his snout into this mess, so why don't we..."
Alchemera leaned back and listened as her peers discussed the running of the Empire. Her head ached, and she was glad when the conversation wound down soon after. She said her goodbyes to her fellow shadow rulers and headed for her home in one of the high-end towers on the mountain's slopes.
She passed the Imperial Council on her way out of the mountain, and wondered—not for the first time—if the Emperor had the easier job, or if she did. He had to listen to the whining of thousands of diplomats, but his decisions had little effect outside the council chamber itself. Alchemera was spared that torture, but she had to live with the consequences of her choices, and they could be very far-reaching indeed. The stress was constantly with her, no matter how she tried to relax.
Fortunately, when she arrived home she found that her pony servant had already prepared a bath. The huge tub was a luxury that many dragons eschewed, the water bills were stupendous, but Alchemera enjoyed her relaxing baths far too much. She could afford them, she was more than wealthy enough.
"How did the meeting go?" asked Azure as he added scented oil to the bath for her. The blue-maned pony had been with her for several decades now, and had become something of a relief valve for her, he never minded if she complained about her fellows with him, and he never gossiped either.
"It went better than I'd expected, actually. That fossil Char actually agreed to release the ships we need to put down the rebels."
"Oh? He's been insisting we need to make the home fleet bigger for years. I'm surprised he let you cut it down for any reason."
"I know. Honestly, he has a bit of a point, weakening the home fleet could be a bad thing. Not that I think we'll ever use it, but it's a powerful symbol. Still, no one has to know we've pulled some of the light units from it but the fleet itself, and they won't be talking. Not if they want to keep their jobs." She sighed and settled into the water. "Oh, that is good. Thank you Azure. You always know just what I need."
"You're welcome, ma'am," said the creature who was not a pony at all, with a tiny bow. He continued to hover attentively over his mistress, but mentally he was composing his next letter to his queen. The captains probably wouldn't talk, no, but somebody was quite definitely going to know about the reduction in the home fleet's strength.
"Simultaneous" has little meaning across the stars. Not when relativity plays havoc with time and news moves at the speed of a ship's journey. Yet as much as any two things could be simultaneous, two very different meetings were. Removed by many light years worth of travel, any news of what might happen at one meeting would take months to reach the other. Both meetings were held in secret, so no such news would ever come. Yet each meeting might eventually have profound consequences for the other. So, even as the most powerful dragons in the galaxy spoke of the fate of their empire, a little group of ponies with no particular influence beyond their single, unimportant world gathered together to speak of rebellion.
Luna took her seat at the conference table in a room hewn from limestone, hidden deep beneath the earth. She choose a place to Glory's right, though she had no idea if such symbolism was in use among these ponies. It had nearly faded entirely in the Equestria she knew. She felt a moment of melancholy for that thought. She'd missed a thousand years of history, and though this universe seemed to have followed a different course, it was even further forward along it than hers, so she had missed who knew how many centuries more here. She was utterly adrift from time, and from anything she might call home.
She pushed that thought aside. There might be time later for such sorrows. Now there was only time for the struggle before them, and she had chosen to commit herself to it. There was no going back now.
Around her, other ponies filed into the room. Electric lights lit it, though they were dim and flickering, and the stone walls here were bare and scored with rough tool marks. No time had been taken for aesthetics nor for comfort, only for cold practicality.
A half-dozen ponies entered the room, along with a single diamond dog. Luna watched them, gaging the mood of the room. Fear and determination mixed in equal parts, with an ugly undercurrent of anger. These ponies had been hard-used and they knew it. There was also quite a bit of curiosity. Ponies were looking at her, wondering what she might do.
When they were all seated, Glory rose to her hooves. "Thank you all for coming on such short notice. Princess Luna has asked me to call you together to speak to you. Princess?"
Luna rose. "Thank you." She surveyed the ponies, and the diamond dog, catching the eyes of each in turn. "Ladies and gentlecolts, I must begin by telling you that I am not the help from Equestria that you were promised." A murmur of surprise and dismay ran through the room, but Luna ignored it and continued. "I know nothing of the pony who made such promises, nor of whatever plans she and her people may have. Perhaps that help is yet on its way. Perhaps it will never come. Yet I am an alicorn, and I have promised to help you. And I do not break my promises." Her voice was firm and determined. "I will do whatever it takes to free this world from the dragons, and I believe that together we can find a way to make that happen. But as I am not part of whatever plans have been made on other worlds, I need your help to come up with plans that we can use here and now."
"What sort of plans do you have in mind?" asked one of the gathered ponies.
"Plans for attack," said Luna. "No war has ever been won by remaining on the defensive, I am sure you know that better than I."
"But if we attack anything openly, we'll just get that damned ship over our heads," said another pony, bitterly.
Luna grinned, a hard, fierce grin. "Not if we attack the ship first," she said.
There was a chorus of incredulous shouts, mixed with several eager, bloodthirsty exclamations that it was about time the ship was taken down. The two reactions immediately threatened to turn into an argument, but Glory banged one hoof on the table until everyone else present quieted. She looked at Luna again. "Explain."
"It is quite simple. The ship hinders all else you do here. Take the ship out, the rest of the equation becomes perfectly straightforward. I have more than sufficient power to tear the ship to pieces." There were a number of shocked stares around the table at Luna's confident proclamation. "Unfortunately," added Luna, a bit more hesitantly, "there is a problem with reaching it. When I am here on the planet, the forces..." Luna struggled to find the term she needed, and wished, once again, that Twilight were here. She would have had not only the words, but the numbers, the math that proved them. Finally Luna gave up on explaining it elegantly and just said, "Gravitational pull, that is the basis of my power. But I am attuned to the moons, not the planet. The planet's gravity interferes with my magic. I am powerful even here, but the ship is not small, and the distances that are considered 'near' in space are vast indeed. Projecting the needed force over the current distance is impossible while I'm in this gravity well. I need to get off the planet, out, say, to the orbit of the nearest moon."
"Easier said than done," muttered one of the ponies. Several others murmured agreement.
"It can be done," said Glory. "There are shuttles that could be hijacked."
"And shot down before we can get far enough out," pointed out the diamond dog pragmatically. "Just getting a stolen shuttle off the planet without the spaceport guards shooting it down would take a miracle. Getting all the way out to Jackalope is impossible."
"We could hire a shuttle legally," offered another pony. "Or smuggle her up on a worker's shuttle going to the orbital yards.
"The orbital yards..." Luna only heard that soft, thoughtful whisper because she was sitting right next to Glory. No one else noticed, the conversation about shuttles continued.
"Getting her to the yards isn't getting her out to the moons," said the diamond dog.
"What about hiring a shuttle, then?" that was Dream.
"Maybe, but it'd be pretty expensive, and it still might be noticed. There's no real lunar traffic out there. We'd need something to pretend we were heading for."
"I know where we can head, and where we can get something much, much better than a shuttle," said Glory, her thoughtful look turning to a smile of dawning hope as the idea that had been working its way through her mind suddenly blossomed.
Luna looked at her intently. The others did as well, and the room fell silent as they waited for her to explain.
"It's fitting, I think, to use my parent's failure to bring success now. The yard my father founded is still up there. It was simply abandoned when his business was forced to close. As was the last ship he'd been building." A low murmur of sudden understanding ran around the room, and Luna found her heart lifting. If they could have a ship to match the dragons' ship... "He got the hull itself finished, I know that much. The rest, well... I'm sure we can come up with the needed parts one way or another. It's easily thirty or forty times the size of that cruiser. It's no warship, but it's big, it could take a few hits. Frankly, they'll be hard pressed to hit anything important, even if they shoot at it all day, given how much of it is empty hold. We even have some conventional weapons we could put on it. Nothing as powerful as the worms' ship has, but enough to give our bow a second string, in case something happens to the princess. But weaponry aside, the ship would almost certainly hold up, even under fire, for long enough to get the princess out to the nearest moon."
"That is a completely insane plan," said the diamond dog, shaking her head. Then she smiled and added, "I guess insanity has the benefit of being something the worms will never see coming."
Glory's expression sobered a bit, and she nodded. "I don't think it's that insane. True, it may not work. But Luna's right, if we let them just bottle us up here in the caves, what good are we? This has a real chance of letting us actually chase the worms off. If this works, we'll be the ones with a ship in orbit. I think it's worth the risk." She looked around the room, and Luna saw agreement on every face there.
"We have nothing left to lose," said Dream, softly. "They've taken it all away already. I say we do it."
"All in favor, say 'aye' now," said Glory, scanning the room.
There was a chorus of "ayes" of varying levels of enthusiasm.
"Any against?"
There was a long silence. "As you say," said the diamond dog finally, "none of us have anything left to lose."
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Ooo, this is going to be a great epic, I just know it.
5421042 Assuming I finish it. I'll probably finish at least book one, I have a good chunk of it written. I meant to post this bit last week, in fact, but just kind of forgot.
5421114 Heh, I know that feeling. Grand plans and the hopes to show them off one day. Good luck my friend, good luck.
Is that Changelings being thrust into the story?
Teeheeheeheehee
What about warmoons?
5424005 There's a changeling in the Rebel Dreams chapter too. So yes.
5424133
"That's no moon... it's a moon with an alicorn driving it!"
5424718 I find myself amused how everyone has jumped immediately to Luna driving a moon around.
That's not actually terribly practical! I won't say it'll never happen, but fighting conventional ships with a moon would be like trying to swat gnats with a sledgehammer. Mostly you're just going to make a mess of everything, and not get very many gnats. (Though admittedly the ones you do get will be very thoroughly squashed.)
5424799
That's the beauty of it. The moon-riding alicorn is a big flashy thing, so they'll all be to busy gawking and freaking out and posting to space-twitter to see that gravity lance coming in from the left.
5424799 5424828
We know it's not terribly practical, but practicality isn't the point.
The point is that each and every one of us gets an absolute gas out of the image of Luna sitting on the moon, reins wrapped around one hoof and ten-gallon hat frantically waved in the other, complete with a magically projected, "Yeeeeee-HAW!"
5424166 I think I can see were this is going
(At least in it's overall idea) Nice story!
Wee!! Let's go kill some worms!
Fuck yeah, Luna be going on the offensive.
5424914
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