My Brave Pony: Starfleet Nemesis

by Scipio Smith

The Price of Revenge

The Price of Revenge

The Revenge shuddered and shook, though whether that was from the recoiling of the great guns of the battleship as they thundered forth against the enemy or whether it was from the actions of that same enemy in assailing the ship Starla could not tell.

"Q Turret reports direct hit, target down."

"Two more large hostiles approaching from the surface."

Around her, the bridge was a hive of activity. The captain and crew seemed able to ignore the shaking of the vessel - although seemed might be the operative word, judging by the beads of sweat forming on their brows - as they crewed their stations and continued to do their jobs even in the face of this unexpected onslaught. What were these enemies bursting out of the ground beneath them, where had they come from, who had sent them and why were they targeting the Revenge? The answers to these questions were unknown - although Starla had a couple of good ideas, if Twilight Sparkle wasn't responsible she'd eat her bow - but at the same time, being unknown, they didn't matter; the crew of the Revenge continued to work, continued to fight their ship, even in spite of the situation they had been thrown into.

Their cool and calm professionalism was an exemplar of the very best of Starfleet.

Starla felt Artie's hand close gently around her arm. "We should get out of here, Starla, we're just in the way."

Starla tugged her arm away from him, not fiercely or with any hostility but firmly nonetheless. She didn't want to go back down to the hangar deck and stew in ignorance. She wanted to stay here, where she could follow the progress of the battle - somewhat, at least - from the constant stream of reports being fed to the captain from all stations.

"Sir, increasing numbers of small hostiles latching themselves to the hull. Secondary batteries report they're too fast coming in for accurate tracking."

"Order the marines out onto the hull to clear they away."

The ship shook, and even some of the crew were knocked sideways. Those standing stumbled, Starla had to reach for the first available support to keep from falling. A console exploded in the face of one luckless ensign, sending them flying out of their seat to lie, dead and burned, on the floor of the bridge.

"Hull breach, deck seventeen! Intruders have entered the ship!"

"Security to that sector," the captain ordered. "Can you raise the Redoubtable or the Thunderer? We could use some help down here."

"Redoubtable reports hostiles closing on its position, sir; their apologies but they have troubles of their own."

"Can you establish contact with United Equestria?"

"Negative, sir."

The ship shook again.

"Y turret out of action, sir."

The captain growled wordlessly. "Commence immediate assent, we'll try and shake them off in the atmosphere and-"

"Belay that order!" Starla snapped. If the Revenge ascended now then she would lose her best and maybe only shot at Twilight. "You will continue to descend until you reach a safe altitude for a combat drop. Once my team has left this ship then you may ascend or otherwise act as you see fit."

Revenge trembled from another hit. "By that time it may be too late to rise again!" the captain protested.

"Then your sacrifice will be remembered," Starla said coldly, ignoring Artie's shocked gasp from behind her. "You will be honoured as heroes of Starfleet."

"I am the captain of this ship-"

"And I am the Grand Ruler's sword," Starla declared. "You will obey my commands or I will see you hanged for cowardice in the face of the enemy."

They stared at each other for a moment, Starla's blue eyes like ice gouging into the brown eyes of the Revenge's captain. He looked away first, as she had known he would. "Continue the descent."

Starla nodded. "His Majesty thanks you for your service," she said. Her gaze flickered to the ship's plaque, mounted to the wall of the bridge. The motto beneath the name read 'Shines with untarnished honour'. "You do your vessel proud," she added.

The captain did not respond. He settled into his chair with an air of resignation, and would not meet her eye again. None of them would meet her eye. But were they not of the Starfleet? Did they not understand the duty might compel them to this point? Were they not willing, every pony among them, to make the ultimate sacrifice for the glory of Starfleet?

If not then they were cowards, and she had no more thoughts to waste on them. She turned to go and strode from the bridge, leaving Artie to run to catch up with her.

"Starla," he called, as he came up behind her in the narrow corridor. "Starla, wait a second." He grabbed her by the arm and spun her around to face. "Starla, wait! This is insane!"

"This is war," Starla replied.

"War or revenge?"

"We have a mission!"

"There are times when you have to say screw the mission because it isn't worth it, and this is one of them!" Artie said. He was thrown against the wall by the vibrations from an impact, and he clung to said wall as he kept speaking. "If this keeps up they're going to lose the ship."

"You don't know that."

"I know that there's only so much that even a battleship can take," Artie said.

"And I know that we have a chance to end this, here and now," Starla said. "I know that if we let Twilight escape then she'll do much worse than take out one single ship."

"Do you know how many lives your sacrificing?"

Starla took a step back. "Excuse me?"

"What is the crew complement of a Royal Sovereign class battleship?" Artie pressed. "Do you know?"

"A thousand?" Starla guessed.

"Nine hundred and forty officers and crew."

Starla snorted. "A little less than I thought."

"Just and merciful Ruler, Starla, you're sacrificing lives!"

"I'm getting the job done!" Starla replied. "Valour, duty, sacrifice, that is our creed and if I have to sacrifice this ship or fifty ships in order to get the job done then I will do it without a moment's hesitation."

Artie's expression was impassive. "You can live with these deaths on your conscience?"

"Yes," Starla said instantly. She turned away before he had the chance to continue this tedious conversation.

First Lightning, now Artie. When did everyone become a moralising bore all of a sudden?

The ship shook again, but this time it was not just a momentary trembling that made Starla stumble. It was a sustained rumbling, growing more and more intense until Starla could barely keep her feet in the corridor. The sound of metal screeching and tearing began to reach her ears, growing louder and louder before the wall of the corridor just in front of her was torn apart as a metal claw almost as large as Starla herself ripped through the metal plating as though it was cardboard and gouged three tearing rents in it.

A bulbous metal head, like that of a praying mantis, burst through the wall where the claw had torn through.

It gazed at Starla with one bulbous eye that glowed electric blue.

"What in the Grand Ruler's name?" Artie muttered.

Starla said nothing as, with a thought, she summoned her bow from the morphing grid. It appeared as though it were growing outwards from the centre, emerging from the aether into her outstretched hand, curing towards her. There was an arrow at the ready.

Starla drew back, her muscles tense. Her voice was as cold as the vacuum of space. "Starlight Arrow."

The arrow leapt from her bow, glowing with the brilliant light of the stars. It struck the mechanical mantis in that bulbous blue eye and exploded in a crimson flower. The insect made a sound that she might almost have taken for a scream of pain, if robots could feel anything like pain. The insect shook its head, mechanical jaws whirring.

"Starlight arrow!" Starla repeated, louder this time and with greater ferocity, as a second deadly shaft soared from her bow. The mantis' face was already ruined from her first blast, a chunk of its head blown clean away, though even this second assault did not appear to fell it it retreated with what remained of its head, backing out of the hole that it had made.

"We should get back to the others before more of them-" Artie began, before three more creatures entered through the hole in the wall.

"I had to say it, didn't I?" Artie muttered, pushing past Starla to charge forward, one hand outstretched to grip his staff as it materialised into the air beside it.

It finished appearing just in time for him to deck one of the three intruders with a spinning uppercut to the mandibles.

The three looked like winged ants. Or like ants would if they stood on two legs and used the other four as arms, anyway. Anthropomorphic ants, in the same way that Starla and Artie were anthropomorphic ponies, complete with hands at the end of their four non-walking legs. Hands holding weapons in them.

But Artie was among them now, his metal staff spinning. With a whirring blow to the side of the head he knocked one out of the hold it had flown in from, with a trio of staccato blows he forced a second ant to double over, then knocked it to the ground, then crushed its robotic head. He turned for the last of them, the one he had knocked over its heels at first which now had regained its feet. He jabbed with his staff. The ant caught the blow one handed, jaws chittering.

Artie raised one hand. "Paint bomb!"

A burst of energy that looked, at first glass, like a glob of red paint erupted from his open palm to strike the ant in the face, exploding in a blast that, again, looked a little like a cloud of paint. It blew the ant's head clean off, and the trunk collapsed to the ground with a metallic clatter.

Artie glanced at her. Starla nodded, and they both began to run.

They darted down the corridors, passing damage control teams and marine squads running this way and that to confront this piece of damage or this intrusion onto the ship. As they ran the great guns continued to boom out from their turrets and barbettes and casements, the sound of the fire echoing through the ship's interior...but at the same time too the Revenge continued to shake under multiple impacts, unceasing hammer blows that made the armour echo like a gong and the interior tremble like a drumskin.

"Do you think they're firing on us, or just trying to claw their way in?" Artie asked.

"Both," Starla said, as she led the way.

They reached the hangar deck, where Danaus Swift and Green Sickle had re-joined the group. They were almost the only ponies in the hangar, which seemed to have largely been evacuated. There were pilots ready to man the dropships, there were no deck crew attending to any business at all, there was just her squad standing in the middle of the hangar deck as it trembled, looking in need of leadership.

Buddy spotted her first. "Starla, Artie! What's going on?"

"We're under attack," Starla said tersely. "Gear up and get set for a combat drop. What's our altitude?"

"Thirty thousand feet," Buddy said.

"Let me know when we hit twenty six thousand."

"Hey, kid," Artie said. "You ever made a freefall drop before?"

"Once," Danaus said. "In training."

"You'll be fine," Starla said. "Just stay close to me and do what I do."

"Yes, ma'am!"

The ship shook under what sounded like a series of repeated impacts.

"If this is what's happening in the air then what's the opposition on the ground going to be like, Lucero?" Dyno asked.

"I don't know," Starla admitted. "But I do know that whatever is out there, whatever is down there, whatever Twilight Sparkle and her miscreant little friends have waiting for us, this team is a match for it and more. Now let's have a good jump like we mean to, and be mean to fools like we need to. And remember: no one goes home until Twilight dies. We're going to lay her body before the throne a second time, and this time it is going to stick, am I right space ponies?"

"Ma'am, yes, ma'am!" they chorused, slamming their boots into the floor as they came to attention.

Starla might have said more, more to encourage and inspire before they were flung once more into the fires of battle, but at the moment two sets of metallic claws ripped through the hangar doors as another of those metal mantis things started trying to get inside.

"Madre de dios!" Dyno muttered. "What is that thing?"

"The enemy," Starla said simply, taking aim with her bow as she drew back on it. "Starlight arrow." She aimed for the eye again, but this one was wiser than the first or else it just had more room to move because it used the claws of its left hand to block her shot. The exploding arrow took out two of its three claws, but that was little consolation to not taking it out.

Dyno and Myte had recovered themselves, and their rocket launchers materialised on their shoulders in a haze of blue light.

"Boom-boom rockets!" they chorused, sending a pair of missiles corkscrewing into the mantis' head. The mechanical monstrosity let out that eerie pained screeching sound as it pulled away and disappeared from view.

Through the hole that it hade made in the hangar doors Starla could see whole swarms of those things, and of the smaller ant-like machines and of even larger robots that looked like giant flying spiders, smothering the blue sky and obscuring it from view as they rushed in rapid swarms towards the Revenge.

"Am I the only one who looks back fondly on the days when you got one monster per week?" Artie asked.

Starla ignored him. "Buddy, what's our altitude?"

"Twenty eight thousand."

"We can't wait any longer, we'll have to go now," Starla said. "Captain, this is Starla Shine, we're about to make our drop. Once we're clear you are free to act to preserve the ship at your discretion."

"Understood. Good hunting."

"Starla out," Starla ended the connection as she jogged towards the new hole that had just been torn in the hangar doors. "This is our destiny, space ponies! Lift up the humble and war down the proud! And one proud little princess is about to get very, very humbled. Sieg Starfleet! All of you, with me, come on!" She turned away, trusting that they would follow without her having to actually keep an eye on them, and leapt out of the hangar and out into the open sky. She had a brief glimpse of the Revenge in action as she oriented herself facing downwards head first - fire poured out of every gun of the ship, from the massive main guns in their eight turrets dorsal and ventrally mounted to the ship's hull, to the many secondaries in their dorsal and ventral barbettes or else set in casements down the long flanks of the battleship, all of them spitting fire at the numerous enemies who swarmed about them. But their enemies were so numerous there seemed little or nothing that Revenge could do to winnow their numbers, and fire was springing from more plances than just the guns: the ship itself was on fire, flames leaping from open rents torn in the hull, the hull were hundreds at least of the robotic ants crawled up and down, overwhelming with sheer numbers the marines who tried to fend them off. Shine with untarnished honour, Starla thought. I swear I will remember you. - before she tucked her wings in up against her body and began to drop.

She fell like a stone, the air beating against her face like waves in a storm breaking upon the shore as she fell, hard and fast, the ground of Luminoth beneath rushing to meet her.

It was a question of judgement, undertaking a freefall drop. Open your wings too early and you'd exhaust yourself flying down to the ground. Open them too late and - assuming your own momentum didn't rip your wings clean off as you tried to decelerate - you wouldn't slow down enough to survive impact. It was a matter of balance and judgement, and getting it just right.

Not yet, she thought, as she dropped straight towards a swarm of ants.

"Don't worry about the enemy," Starla commanded her team. "Plough through them. They seem focussed on the ship." Let's hope it stays that way.

With one hand, she touched the insignia she wore at her belt. "Starfleet! Power up and sound off! Starla Shine, Power of Space!" Instantly she said the phrase, the magic words as it were, she felt her armour began to spring to life around her, growing outwards from her morpher to envelop her in its elastic embrace. It was like a living thing, she thought as the battle suit enveloped her clothes, the helmet enclosing her face; it was an expression of the living will of the Grand Ruler, his love for her reaching out across the stars to keep her safe from all perils. Blessed be the Grand Ruler my strength, who teaches my hands to fight and my fingers to war.

"Artie Bristles, Power of Art!"

"Dyno and Myte, Power of Fire!"

"Buddy Rose, Power of Flora!"

"Well, what do you know," Dyno said. "He finally got it right."

"Yeah, I did, no thanks to you," Buddy said. "It came up when I was calling Lily last month. I notice none of you ever told me it was flora, not fauna. You just let me make an idiot of myself for the last five years."

"It was very funny," Myte said.

"Cut the chatter kids, remember we're on the job," Starla said. "Swift, Sickle, power-up."

"Green Sickle, Power of Steel."

"Danaus Swift, power of aaaagh!"

"Kid!" Artie yelled.

Starla spun in mid-fall, curling up around her belly so that she could see what was happening above and behind her. They'd caught Danaus, a half-dozen ants with more of them closing in on him every second, they had got him in their clutches and they tore at him as he thrashed wildly like a beast caught in a net, screaming in pain as they tore him apart.

Starla cursed wordlessly as she summoned her bow, sending arrows streaking upwards from it as fast as rain, the darts leaping into the air as she drew back and released again and again, striking down the ants all around. But it was not enough. They seemed drawn to Danaus like sharks to blood, and they just kept on coming.

"Hold on Danaus, I'm coming," Artie said, as he spread his orange wings about him to slow his descent and began the slow climb upwards.

"Artie, don't, there's no way you'll make it in time," Starla said.

"We can't just leave him!" Artie cried as he continued to rise, his staff held before him.

"Even if you got there you'd be overwhelmed, and you couldn't carry him that far anyway," Starla said. "There's nothing you can do. There's nothing we can do."

Artie hesitated, hanging in the air, being left behind by his squadmates as they fell through the sky towards the surface. He hung there, suspended between his descending squad and the dying Danaus Swift, lingering between heaven and earth. And then, with a wordless scream of rage, he dropped.

Starla didn't look away. She owed it to Danaus and his mother and father not to look away as the ants tore his wings off and ripped him into pieces. She owed it to them all to listen to him screaming until there was nothing left to scream any more.

And when all this was over she would have to go to Brogan and tell Khan and Rani that their boy died bravely without a trace of fear because sometimes a comforting lie was better than the cold-hearted brutality of truth.

At least, she vowed, she would honestly be able to tell them that their son had been avenged.

They dropped the rest of the way in silence, unfurling their wings in the final stage of their descent to slow them down enough to land, feet first and safely, upon the surface of Luminoth.

Starla couldn't see Artie's eyes beneath his visor, but she could see the tear tracks running down his face.

"He was just a kid," Artie said. "He was barely out of training, he...he was just a kid, Starla."

Starla pursed her lips. Now, and only now, did she understand why Lightning had lied to the traitor ponies about where their orders had come from despatching them across the empire. Public confidence in His Majesty should be maintained. She hadn't wanted Danaus on the team, she hadn't asked for him to be assigned to their team; instead, as Artie knew full well, the Grand Ruler had mandated that they needed a uniforce wielder to face off against Raven and apparently he was the only one to hand. But she couldn't exactly turn around and blame His Majesty for this even if she wanted to; even a god might err upon occassion but when it happened it could never be admitted. All she could do was to say, "The enemy killed him, not me."

"That's right." Artie nodded. "But you could have scrubbed the mission when it became clear that the situation had changed. You're the team lead, you have that authority."

"The situation has not changed," Starla said. "We still have a job to do."

"This team was adequate to hunt down a few fugitives from justice, but this?" Artie gestured at the sky above, still filling with mechanical horrors. "There should be a fleet here, and a Starfleet army."

"We take out Twilight and we stop this now," Starla said. "Kill the final boss and the army will fall apart, that's how it works. We can end this before anyone else dies."

"Starla," Buddy murmured. "The Revenge, it...it's going down."

Starla turned, looking in the direction that Buddy was pointing. She could see it, up in the sky, the Revenge falling to the ground, not in a controlled descent but in a wild drop. Part of her engine block was on fire, and more flames were blazing throughout the hull. She was listing to starboard and her tail was dropping faster than her nose. There was no doubt that the crew had lost control.

She saluted as she watched the great ship fall to ground, striking the surface of Luminoth with an enormous explosion that leapt up towards the sky as though the soul of the dreadnought was seeking to return through fire and smoke to space. She noticed Artie, and every other member of her team, doing the same: saluting the ship and her company as they made the ultimate sacrifice for Starfleet.

Shines with untarnished honour.

"Nine hundred and forty ponies," muttered Artie.

Starla ignored him. "We'll properly mourn our losses later. For now, we still have a mission to complete. For Rhymey...and for all of those we've lost."

"Starla..." Buddy began, his voice trembling if only a little. "I don't...if I die out here what's going to happen to Daphne? She's lost everyone else in the service of Starfleet...who's going to take care of her?"

"I will, if it comes to that," Starla said. "But it won't. Because you won't die. You're not the kid. You're strong and experience and you won't die, I promise." She stepped forward, resting her snout against his. "If need be, I will give my life to get you home. But I need you right now. I need you at your best. I need you all at your best, on the razor's edge. Are you all still with me?"

"All the way to the end, chicita," Dyno said.

Buddy nodded. "Yeah, yeah, I'm with you Starla."

"Me too," Artie said, if reluctantly. "Let's finish what we started."

Green Sickle gave a wordless nod.

"Then let's go," Starla said, as she led the way.

It didn't take them long to come across a trio of balloons, in the colours of the odious Pinkie's cutie mark, tied to a tree. Not long after that they stumbled across three diamonds strategically placed as to catch the light, and it didn't take a genius to work out that theses were markers left behind for Twilight's friends to guide them. Presumably to guide them towards a meeting with Twilight, who had gone on ahead to prepare some aspect of their malevolent plan, the plan that was seeing her raise hordes of robotic insects into the sky. What she meant to do with them next Starla didn't know and didn't care. She would end this before it got that far.

It was as they followed the trail that Twilight Sparkle started talking to them, her voice crackling into life on the comm.

"Major Starla Shine," she said. "To what do I owe the pleasure of this visit. I hope you didn't come all this way just to see me."

"No, I didn't," Starla grunted. "I came here to kill you."

Twilight laughed. "Oh, Starla. Do you really think that killing me will make anything better?"

"Is this where you start to preach to me about the magic of friendship and how we should all just get along, because if so-"

"No," Twilight said, cutting her off. "This is where I tell you that killing me won't make a blind bit of difference and you know it, because you weren't happy when I was dead, were you? Maybe you thought you would be, you probably hoped you would be, but you weren't happy were you? Because if you were then your husband wouldn't be on the ship named after me with all of my friends having come here looking for me. And you wouldn't have come here to kill me."

"I'm here to avenge my friend," Starla growled. "Rhymey, the pony you murdered."

"Technically, Rhymey died by Delta's hand, but I accept that that is a very small detail," Twilight said. "One that doesn't change the fact that you're here because you think, in the teeth of all the evidence, that my death will make things better for you."

"I guarantee that I'll feel better knowing that you're dead again," Starla replied. "And this time there won't be any science experiment to bring you back."

"Maybe not," Twilight said. "And maybe you could even manage it. But when I'm dead, you'll still be the sad and lonely little girl whose husband didn't love her enough to stick around, just like her mommy didn't love her enough to stay alive."

"Don't say another word about my mother, you pathetic little-!" Starla snarled. She took a deep breath. "Congratulations, Twilight, you made me angry. I have to say, it's nice to finally meet the real you after all this time. Was it very frustrating, hiding your venom beneath that simpering mask of niceness all this time? You do realise that these markers you left behind are pathetically obvious. I thought you were supposed to be a genius."

"I am a genius, but the markers are supposed to be interpreted by five rather stupid ponies," Twilight replied. "And since you can follow them it seems I pitched them at the right level."

Starla laughed. "Really? That's the best you can do?"

"Why are you doing this, Twilight?" Artie asked. "Destroying ships, killing ponies, killing Rhymey? After all that we've been through together...why?"

Twilight was silent for a moment. "Why didn't you save me, Artie?"

"Huh?"

"On Draylon Four you were ordered to lead a drop into a bandit camp. But you aborted the mission before dropping."

"Yeah, I did," Artie said cautiously. "Recon indicated that the enemy were much more securely dug in than intelligence suggested. In my opinion casualties from a coup de main would have been prohibitively high. I cancelled the drop and recommended a combined land and air blockade to force their surrender."

"And for your life-saving initiative you were busted back down to junior lieutenant and had to climb up the ranks again serving Lightning Dawn," Twilight observed. "Did you regret it?"

"No," Artie replied tersely.

"Then why didn't you disobey orders to save my life like you did the lives of the ponies under your command on Draylon IV?" Twilight asked. "It's a simple question."

"Is that what this is all about?" Artie asked. "We let you die and now you're taking revenge? I didn't think you were so petty."

"I'm doing this because it's what I was born for," Twilight declared.

"Made," Starla said.

"Excuse me?"

"You were created, not born," Starla said. "You're a copy of Twilight Sparkle, created in a test tube."

"Yes, I know," Twilight said. "I was created to be a warrior, a slave of the Grand Ruler with a single purpose: to fight and kill. I won't serve the Grand Ruler, but I will fulfil the purpose for which I was made: the destruction of my enemies."

"We're only your enemies because you've made us so," Artie said.

"Are you really so naive? Are you really that blind?" Twilight demanded. "Do you actually think that I will ever be allowed to live in peace and freedom while Starfleet continues to exist? Do you ever believe that I will be allowed to survive outside of their control?"

"No," Starla said. "Because you are not worthy to survive. You are a traitor, and you always were?"

"Always, no," Twilight said. "Twilight was loyal. On her own terms, to be sure. You see, Twilight beleived that you could be made better than you are. Twilight believed that the power of friendship could get through to you and make the world a better place. But I'm not Twilight Sparkle, and I'm not so naive. I know what you are: killers, undeserving of mercy. Undeserving of anything but judgement."

"Your judgement, I suppose," Starla said.

"I alone have the right to judge," Twilight said. "I was not born into this world, I alone have the right to stand above all races and pass judgement upon them."

"It's my judgement that you should fear," Starla said.

Twilight chuckled. "If you're so determined to kill me, Starla, then all I can say is...bring it on."

The connection cut off.

"Twilight's new personality sucks," Buddy muttered.

"This is what she always was," Starla replied. "Now she finally has the courage to admit it."

They continued on, following the trail that Twilight had left for her friends to follow, until they came to a cave that might, that probably did, lead down into the underbelly of the earth.

Not that Starla could say for sure since the entrance to the tunnel was sealed by a heavy metal door.

"Dyno, Myte," Starla said. "What do you think of our chances of blowing through this?"

Their resident construction experts studied the barrier for a moment. "Maybe, if we all concentrated our finishers, we could blow a hole in it," Dyno said.

"But I'd be worried about causing a cave-in in the process, we don't know how secure it is behind there," Myte added.

Starla bared her teeth. So close, and yet so far beyond my reach. If only we had a- She mentally cursed herself for her own cupidity. They were on Luminoth, the planet of the Warping Fairies, they didn't need to worry about the door. No physical barrier could hold them back.

She retuned her communicator to a general frequency. "This is Major Starla Shine to the Luminoth authorities, I need to speak to King Topaz immediately."

One of the advantages of dealing with warping fairies was that, because they could warp practically anywhere they wanted, there was no need to endure a long delay while the King was summoned and brought to speak to her. King Topaz's voice soon sounded loud and clear into her ear. "Major Shine! Thank goodness you've come. Everyone is quite distraught and nobody seems to have any idea what's going on! Please tell me that you're here to resolve this situation, people are starting to wonder if these tremors herald the destruction of our world!"

"I assure you, highness, that Starfleet is doing everything it can to prevent that," Starla said. "But I'm afraid I need your help to do it. Or rather, fairy help. Our way is blocked by a barrier and I don't want to risk trying to blast our way through to the other side. If you would-"

"Of course, Major, anything to see this situation resolved as swiftly as possible. I'll have one of my best warpers sent to your location as quickly as possible."

There was a delay of but a few moments before, with a pop sound, a little fairy with long black hair appeared in front of them.

"Hi there," she said. "My name's Yui, and the King told me to take you anywhere you want to go."

"First thing's first, Yui," Starla said. "First, I want you to take a look on the other side of that barrier, and go as far as you can down whatever tunnel is on the other side until you see someone. Then come back here. Be discreet. If you think you've been spotted, come straight back."

"Right!" Yui said, saluting Starla before disappearing with another pop.

"What are you hoping she'll find?" Myte asked.

"I'm hoping she'll spot Twilight and can bring us in right on top of her," Starla said. "If we can achive surprise and save having to trek through the tunnel ourselves then I'll take it."

They waited, lingering at the door, for some time before Yui returned.

"What did you see?" Starla demanded.

"Five ponies and a baby dragon heading through the tunnel, talking to someone on their radios," Yui said.

Twilight's friends. Not quite the prey I wanted, but they'll do for a start. "Can you bring us to a point ahead of them? Is there anywhere we could set an ambush?"

"I think so," Yui said. "Gather up tight everyone."

The group clustered together, even as she Yui spread her arms out wide. A brilliant white glow began to consume her, and then to consume all of them. All that Starla could see was white, losing sight of her comrades for a moment before, with a pop, she materialised in a cave, where the walls were incompletely lined with metal, lit not only by lava flows but also by artificial lights of blinking blue and white.

They had appeared on a rocky ledge, overlooking a large space below them, and the squad took cover on said ledge as they waited, not too long, for Twilight's friends to appear below them, crossing the chamber towards the six corridors on the other side.

"Hold it right there!" Starla declared, revealing herself from hiding as she drew back her bow, muscles tensed, and took careful aim at Rarity. "Former members of Friendship is Magic," she said, as the ponies turned to face her and squadmates showed themselves in turn. “Stand down and surrender yourselves and you will be taken into custody. Resist and you will die. The choice is yours.”

Comments

[N Harmonik]

Two questions, Starla:

1. Do you always think anyone who's nicer than you and a different species is putting on a facade?

2...