Contact

by DATA_EXPUNGED

The Empty Star: The Front Part 1

February 19th, 1173 a.n.m.

War is, as those who wage it soon learn, a cruelly fickle beast. The very same fortunes that can see a soldier home to her loved ones after a tour of duty can see whole armies obliterated in the blink of an eye.

While fate had seen fit to spare Equus from the fate that had befallen so many of her children, it had been a near thing.

Defended by a paltry sum of sensor platforms, littoral patrol ships, and one single destroyer that had happened to be in the right place at the right time, the world had been practically defenseless; a buffet to be pillaged and dined from at the Changelings’ leisure.

The fate that the mother world would have faced, had Princess Celestia’s battlegroup been any later in reinforcing the beleaguered Canis, was not something many ponies thought about if they had any choice, lest even Princess Luna find herself unable to aid them.

Though the attack had been repulsed, the writing was on the wall. Or, perhaps, ponykind had finally allowed themselves to read it.

The time for diplomacy had ended. There really was no chance for peace. It was something that everypony had known, deep down. But ponies are creatures of hope, and most had hoped, fervently, that they were wrong.

A hope that had finally been shattered, violently, by reality. Those in the Guard, who had been forced to accept this reality years ago, could only shake their heads in sorrow.

Friendship, the very foundation of Equestrian society, had, somehow, failed. It was them, or the Changelings.

While conflict was nothing new to ponykind, their culture’s very founding stemming from it, it was with heavy hearts that ponykind set about preparing.

For the first time since the Windigo Era, they would fight a war of aggression.

Patrols increased, in size and frequency. Never again would the Changelings be allowed to roam and sneak across Equestrian territory unchecked.

Industry revamped itself. The performance of the Canis in defense of Equus had vindicated the Everfree’s previously untested design, and had shown that the future of naval warfare lay in agility, the Canis having killed a craft at close range that in previous engagements had required a numerical superiority of two, or even three, to one to defeat even in ideal conditions.

While the juggernauts of the current fleet had their purpose, the doctrine of front-line combat had forever shifted, and ponykind’s factories adapted to accommodate this fact. The lessened cost the new fleet was just a bonus. Some called the changes crazy. Some called them crazy enough to work.

Garrisons grew, ships once flung into the depths of space now chained to the worlds that had built them. Never again would the worlds of ponykind, the mother world especially, be left undefended.

Scouts dove into the night, searching. Never again would the Changelings be allowed the element of surprise.

Invasion plans were drawn up. Never again would the Changelings be allowed the initiative in this war.

Saddened by the failure of peace, hurt by their losses, but confident in their course of action, ponykind prepared. They were ready, ponykind had decided, to do what needed doing.

But war is a fickle creature.

And it rarely leaves one unmolested for long.

Alpha Canter system, deep space
May 28th, 1173 a.n.m.
ESV Everfree - DDA - 001EVF

Alpha Canter had once been one of Equestria’s farthest colonies.

A pristine garden of a world orbiting an orange sun slightly dimmer than Equus’ own, it had once been home to millions. Once, even, it had served as the launch pad of expeditions into the Dark Arm.

The gateway to the galaxy.

Now it was a corpse; killed by the Changelings, drained of everything of value, and left to rot, its only inhabitants a hooffull of FTL beacons the bug-like aliens had seen fit to ignore.

This was the sight that greeted the Everfree as it exited FTL, shedding excess momentum in a nova-bright flash of radiation as it slowed once again to sublight speeds.

“Eff-Tee-El to Ess-Tee-El transition complete, captain. We’re about five thousand kilometers from beacon oh-one-oh. Holding position.”

Battlegroup Wonderbolt continued to transition around them. Composed of frigates and destroyers, and backed up by retrofitted cruisers, it was Equestria’s first experiment in the whimsically named Rainboom doctrine. As a test, the battlegroup had been sent out on patrol among the Dead Worlds, where encounters with the Changelings was all but guaranteed.

The crews of BG Wonderbolt spoiling for a fight as it was, nopony complained.

“Come to new heading. . .,” Captain Valencia Orange glanced at her command readout, checking the orders the Everfree had just received from the Lunar Light, the cruiser serving as Wonderbolt’s flagship, “ oh-two-five by negative oh-three-six. Make sure we intercept the Honeycrisp, Neighpon, and Diamond Dog.”

“Aye, ma’am.”

The earth pony sighed to herself as the ship around her gave a small shudder, turning to accelerate along its new course. Matter met antimatter with a dull rumble, and they were on their way.

So far, homecoming wasn’t the dramatic triumph Valencia had imagined it would be.

The destroyer and her frigate escorts accelerated away from the rest of Wonderbolt, on a course that would slingshot them around the former colony. If this system went the way that all the rest had, this would simply be first of several dull loops around an empty star, and then Wonderbolt would move on; bored out of its collective mind and that much more frustrated.

At the distances the universe seemed to prefer, nopony in Wonderbolt would know either way for several hours.

Captain Valencia Orange jerked awake at the sound of the chiming alarm coming from her desk console.

She had decided, an hour after the Briar Patch slingshot, that there were more productive things she could do with her time than stare at a starfield on a viewscreen or hover over her bridge crew, breathing down their necks as they worked, and retired to her cabin to catch up on the mountains of paperwork which captaining one of Their Majesties’ ships required. This had, as it generally did, yet again led to her falling asleep at her desk.

“Uhwuh?”

It was about the third chime that her brain had engaged enough for her recognize what was going on and paw at the console with a semi-responsive hoof. She was greeted by the monotonous voice of the Everfree’s AI.

“Captain Orange, you are requested on the bridge immediately.”

Some words had special meanings in the Guard.

“Immediately” was never uttered by anypony unless the situation was dire.

Valencia was on her hooves, her fatigue completely forgotten, and out the door before the desk chair had completed its flight across the room.

“Out of the way. OUT OF THE WAY!”

Valencia barreled through the destroyer’s corridors at a gallop, fully aware of the shudders of maneuvering thrusters around her as she raced towards her destination.

She hadn’t ordered any maneuvers, and they were still hours from their next burn.

Oh, horseapples.

She barely noticed the hiss of the door opening before her, so intent as she was on getting to her destination.

The bridge was chaos. Chaos with a purpose to be sure, the ponies around Valencia moved with intent and didn’t waste a second’s effort on panic, but Discord himself might have been hard-pressed to best the sight before her now.

“Sitrep, guys. What’s goin’ on?”

The navigator on duty, a unicorn mare by the name of Amethyst Flake, paused scrabbling at her control board just long enough to point at the viewscreen, though her eyes never left the board’s readouts.

Valencia’s heart leaped to her throat at what she saw. The chitinous armor. The organic shapes. The sickly green-black that everypony in the Guard quickly learned to recognize and hate. There, silhouetted against Alpha Canter herself, were Changeling ships.

All of them headed straight for the Everfree and her escorts.

Suddenly, Valencia decided she would have been perfectly fine with an empty system.

Moan later, Cia. Focus on the bugs right now.

She scrambled for the command chair, locking herself in as soon as her rump had touched the padding.

“This is Captain Orange to all hooves,” she said, cueing the AI to activate the ship-wide comms system, “as of right now, we are at combat stations. This is not a drill. I repeat, not a drill.” She knew without having to see that each and every pony under her command began to race to the positions where they would be able to help most during the coming brawl.

“We don’t have a lot a time, and I’ve never been all that good at speeches, so I’m just going to give it to you straight.

“We’re about to engage the Changelings.

“Odds are, a lot of us aren’t going to see tomorrow. But this is what we’ve trained for, and I know that you, of all ponies, are ready to weather the coming storm.

“We have the tools.

“We have the tactics.

“And we have the strength of will to prevail. And we WILL prevail. For our friends. For our families. For the lost. For Harmony.

“We. Will. Win.”

Her ears pressed themselves flat in embarrassment as she heard warcries echoing around the bridge.

“I thought you said no speeches, cap,” Valencia’s comms officer, Petal Song, snarked.

“Shut up,” - this earned her a smirk - “and do your job. Get a tight-beam back to the Light and kindly ask the Fleet Captain to get his and the rest of Wonderolt’s plots over here, asap.

“And while you’re at it, tell the frigates to get into a starburst, centered on us.” The stallion nodded and set to work.

It was then that Valencia finally got the chance to look at her command readout, its tactical display showing her everything the ship saw. It only confirmed her initial assessment of the situation.

It wasn’t good.

Nearly two-dozen craft, ranging from frigates to cruisers, were arrayed out before the Equestrian ships. Wonderbolt, at thirty strong, was just large enough that the fight the fight could, possibly, be considered ‘even’. If they could get there before the destroyer and company were vaporized.

Even a blind mare could see that the Everfree’s fight would be a delaying action at best.

“Cap, they’ve hailed us.”

As expected. Besides their monstrous disregard for life, the Changelings seemed to have an almost instinctual need for drama. Each fight always began with taunts, playing on Equestria’s desire for peace, and then smashing it to bits before rubbing the pieces in its collective face.

Not today. Not ever again.

“Ignore it, Song. I think we’ve all got a pretty good idea what they want to say.”

“Yes, Ma’am.”

His console beeped again.

“Cap, the Light’s responded. They’re moving. Standard orders ‘till they get here; fight hard, die well, yadda, yadda.”

“And I’m guessing they forgot to give you an ee-tee-ay?”

The stallion’s look said it all.

Valencia considered her options, barely restraining an eyeroll. A minute out from contact, she had an incredibly small window to form some kind of plan. Then it hit her. She called up the specs on the frigates’ class.

The Timberwolf class ships were the result of Rainboom being taken to its logical extreme. Nearly as long as the Everfree, each ship was little more than a collection of fuel tanks, thruster assemblies and a reactor strapped to a battlecruiser-scale pulse battery, with enough of a pressure hull wedged in the middle to house just enough crew to run the insane contraption.

Each frigate actually had more delta-v than the destroyer they escorted.

And, in theory, at least, packed almost as punch.

Perfect.

“Okay, here’s what we’re going to do.”

“Song, tell the Neighpon, Honeycrisp, Diamond Dog to slave their targeting computers to ours. We’re gonna focus fire.

“Gunnery, I want you to start working on targeting solutions for every ship out there. Prioritize your targets by size, and then range. Get the little buckers up close first, then the big ones out back; if we’re going to live through this, we need to kill the ships that can actually catch us, and we need to do it quick-like.

“As soon you as you have those targeting solutions, send them off to the frigates.

“I want all ships ready to make evasive maneuvers at a moment’s notice. Shoot-n-scoot, guys.”

She glanced at the command readout. Ten seconds.

Seven.

Four.

“Frigates report ready, ma’am.”

One.

A predatory grin wormed its way onto her face in that final moment before contact. The bugs were in for a world of hurt.

“Squish ‘em.”

A brief flash appeared at the muzzle of the railgun as it fired, flinging the multi-ton slug forward at an appreciable fraction of lightspeed, joined nearly instantly by dozens of missiles, and the blood-red lances of fury that lashed out from the Everfree’s forward pulse batteries.

Around her, the frigates answered with their own silent volleys of hellish energy.

Seconds later, the alien frigate, subject to a barrage that would have given the Lunar Light’s armament a run for its money, shuddered, quaked, and finally cracked open before boiling away under the glares of the energy weapons.

The Changelings retaliated, particle beams and plasma warheads screaming out into the void, but to no avail; the Equestrian formation simply wasn’t there anymore. The initiative lost, the aliens nevertheless gave chase.

Valencia reveled in the kill. Part of her worried about that, but the rest simply didn’t care.

The next one wouldn’t be so easy, though. It was obvious that the Changelings hadn’t expected her to just ignore them and shoot first, and that had given her the element of surprise. But with that gone, and her quarry now chasing her down. . .

Things were about to get interesting.

“All ships,” the AI once again took its cue and broadcast her voice to the frigates, “prepare to turn and address. I want weapons locked on target eff and primed to fire. On my signal.”

She watched the tactical display, waiting for the Changeling frigate, which had grown bold and recklessly accelerated far past the point its fellows could support it, to enter the killing field she was setting up.

“Now!”

As one, the Equestrian formation silenced their engines, flipped end over end to bring their weapons to bear, and fired.

Like the first, the alien ship never stood a chance, simply vaporizing under the assault.

Nopony noticed one of the Changeling cruisers jump to FTL until it was too late.

Collision alarms squawked as the behemoth of a ship landed on top of the destroyer and unloaded everything it had on the quartet of ships.

The Everfree rocked as blow after blow landed, the shields straining under the assault before breaking completely.

“EVASIVE MANEUVERS!” Maybe Valencia could still save her ship.

Emergency thrusters detonated, throwing the ship to the side. It wasn’t enough.

Plasma ripped into the Everfree, slagging armor, cooking crewponies, and exposing the ship’s guts to space. Though not the killing blow it would have been, the destroyer was crippled, her left side reduced to a semi-molten mass of metal. Valencia didn’t need the AI rattling off damage reports to know she was in trouble.

She could worry about where that tactic had come from later. First, she had to deal with the results.

The one bright side to the situation was that her bridge crew hadn’t been tossed around. Much.

Amethyst rolled the ship, anticipating her captain’s order, to present the as-yet undamaged starboard side of the Everfree to the cruiser.

The frigates had fared better. Being far faster and more maneuverable than the destroyer, they had escaped the worst of the cruiser’s wrath by simply outrunning it, though the Diamond Dog and Neighpon had both been scorched by very close misses.

The frigates’ retaliation was swift. As the Everfree limped away, they turned and fired, pulse batteries lashing out at the cruiser, chewing at its armor. Missiles from the fleeing destroyer opened the gashes further, before a lucky shot from the Honeycrisp reached through and impacted on the cruiser’s reactor, damaging it. Not enough to destroy it, the alien ship was nonetheless crippled as it suddenly found itself without power as some safeguard or another went into action, shutting the reactor down.

Valencia sensed an opportunity.

She reached for it.

“Flechette,” she addressed the gunnery officer, “prime the rail gun again, and get ready to fire. Amethyst, flip us around.

“Try to line up the reactor on that ship.”

The wounded ship spun, turning to face her would-be-killer.

“Target locked in, ma’am; railgun crew standing by.”

“Fire.”

The great cannon barked again, sending another slug flying.

Impact. The slug had flown true, obliterating the heart of the juggernaut before them. There was no explosion, without an ongoing fusion reaction, that was impossible, but the spray of shrapnel left no doubt. The cruiser was dead.

They could celebrate later. Those frigates would be on them at any second.

“Helm, new course. Null by oh-two-five. Give me a sixty-second burn.

“Song, get the frigates back into formation.

“And keep those sensors peeled, guys. They pull that trick again and we’re dead.”

Nopony in their right mind would consider the Everfree combat-worthy anymore, but Valencia didn’t have the option of retreat. Not yet. With the rest of Wonderbolt still an unknown amount of time away, the Everfree comprised nearly a third of the Equestrian firepower in the battle, even if she was crippled.

They were forced to fight until either they were dead or help arrived.

And so the dead-ship-flying leaped along her new course with no hesitation, ready to continue her fight for the empty star.

Valencia looked at the tactical readout on her screen.

“All ships, lock up target dee and start looping around to line up a shot. Fire on my signal, and then come to new heading oh-eight-oh by negative one-one-oh.” She hoped she didn’t need to remind them to not stop moving. Learning that lesson had hurt.

Where had that FTL-jump tactic come from? Why had nopony seen it before?

She shoved those questions aside again as the group finished its loop, flying straight at the Changeling armada. Their target was part of the frigate screen that had formed at the front of the alien formation.

“Captain, something’s coming out of eff-tee-el.”

The quartet’s charge was interrupted by a nova-bright flash, revealing very familiar bulk coming out of FTL, an Equestrian cruiser. And then another flash. And another. Flash after flash of light.

Wonderbolt had arrived.

The Everfree and her escorts blew through the friendly fleet and continued on their course, unable to shed their momentum in time to fall in line. They were committed, and so they would finish their attack run.

Particle beam fire lanced out from the Changelings ships. . . and passed the destroyer and her escorts by completely. The quartet hurtled through the storm, too fast to hit, and too fast to dodge.

Missiles and pulse batteries flashed in answer, before the ships, their engines still at full thrust, turned to vector off of their course, away from the Changelings, diving into the particle beams.

The Neighpon took a hit, a beam bursting through its shield and savaging its armor, and then they were through.

Kill number four.

Behind them, Wonderbolt went to work. Rail guns barked, missiles raced out, and pulse batteries roared, tearing into the Changeling ships. The aliens’ response was just a brutal, plasma warheads and particle beams shattering the Equestrians’ shields and slagging armor.

True to Rainboom doctrine, none of the Equestrian ships stay still for long. The battlegroup scattered, ships accelerating in different directions, never staying on the same course for more than a few seconds, never giving the Changelings a chance to draw a bead on them.

They boxed the aliens in, dodging everything thrown at them and shrugging off what few hits landed. And then they picked the aliens apart.

Where her own fight had been a desperate dance to stay alive, where, in past battles, the forces before her would have been described as an ‘even match’, Valencia’s command screen showed a massacre.

Wonderbolt was eating the Changelings alive.

Correction. Had eaten.

It was beautiful.

Rainboom had been a gamble. A radical idea that had been based on the performance of one ship in one battle. A desperate measure for a desperate time.

And it had payed off better than anypony could imagine.

The battle was over. For the first time, ponykind had not only won, but had done so decisively.

There was still the matter of the FTL-jump tactic, the one that had nearly destroyed the Everfree and her escorts. Was that a fluke? A single flash of tactical brilliance by one captain? Or was it something more?

Valencia snorted.

Did she care? She knew to watch for it now, and once she filed her report, so would the rest of the Fleet. After that, it was in the spooks’ hooves.

“All hooves. . . stand down from combat stations. Good jobs guys, I knew you could do it.

“Cider’s on me when we get back to base.”

Valencia refused to think about how many she wouldn’t be buying drinks for.

Sol system, Equus high orbit
July 30th, 1173 a.n.m.

She worked in her office, waiting. The mare had spent the last few days interviewing guardsponies, building a picture of what had happened in the star system that Equestrian cartographers had simply labeled “LV-218”.

Her cover demanded that she turn over her findings to the Equestrian diarchy, and so she had. The picture of events that those findings showed was important enough that somepony would question her if she didn’t, and she had worked far too hard to get where she was to risk it.

Luckily, copies were as easy as a button press.

And so she waited, keeping herself occupied with busywork while she did. There was something vaguely satisfying about paperwork anyway.

There. The communications window she’d been waiting for. She opened her desk and popped open a secret compartment within it. It was well hidden, but it always forced her to scrabble blindly for her target.

A transmitter, carefully disguised to resemble Equestrian technology. She plugged it into her computer terminal, making sure that the computer itself was isolated, and activated it.

A face appeared on the screen, cold and imperious.

“The ponies have stumbled across something that I think Her Highness will find quite interesting.” She transferred the file containing everything she knew about LV-218 over the link.

The face nodded, and the connection was severed.

She stowed the transmitter back in her desk, and resumed her paperwork.

Author's Note:

It's just not Magic Effect (why yes, I am running with that) without Da Chief pulling out some inspirational ditty about victory in the face of impossible odds, and all that.

But yeah, the war didn't just stop because of a bunch of stupid in some far off corner of the galaxy.

So here's some ponies opening a can of whup-ass on the bugs. This particular engagement takes place within a week or two of LV-218.

Comments

[DATA_EXPUNGED]

Comment. Critique. Crucify!

Okay, maybe not that last one. That last one hurts.

[Shark8]

Hm, I find it's an interesting premise. (Though I do want to see more human contact.)

It has pretty good construction, though it would be better for you to use ETA instead of ee-tee-ay and FTL instead of eff-tee-el.

[DATA_EXPUNGED]

5719860

Hm, I find it's an interesting premise.

If you like the premise, I suggest giving Victory at All Costs (a link is in the description) a read as well if you haven't already; it's where Contact came from and this story is set in that universe. It'll give you a little more background.

(Though I do want to see more human contact.)

We'll be seeing more humans shortly. The War and the events that occurred in LV-218 play into each other from the beginning, so I'm trying give both plot lines their due attention. This story is as much about continuing the story in VaAC as it is about pony/human contact shenanigans.

It has pretty good construction, though it would be better for you to use ETA instead of ee-tee-ay and FTL instead of eff-tee-el.

That was a stylistic choice. It felt a little more natural to 'spell' things like that out in the dialogue, since that's how acronyms work in spoken English. I'll only be doing that for things that aren't 'really' words, like ETA and FTL.

I'm also kind of stuck with it, since I did that last chapter and I'm trying to keep things consistent.