Chapter Thirty-Four: The Battle of Cloudsdale
Location: Everfree Imperial Garrison
Local Time: 21:26
The alien leaders faded from around the holotable, replaced by an image of the Cloudsdale region. The city itself was represented with simplified geometric shapes. Surrounding it were the four Carracks of Captain Rann’s skirmish line, lit up in green. Approaching from the east were thousands of red dots. Gavrisom activated the comm. “Are you reading me, Captain?”
“Aye, sir. The enemy force is being led by three of the alicorns. Should I pull out?”
“No. I didn’t want this situation, but if we back out now, we’ll look weak. You’re cleared to engage.”
“Understood, sir.”
Rann turned to his comm officer. “Transmit to all ships: fire at will.” The officer nodded and relayed the orders. A moment later, waves of laserfire poured out towards the ponies. His ship was the closest to the incoming horde, and his gunners were racking up an impressive body count. Forty dead, sixty dead, a hundred, two hundred. All within five seconds of the ponies entering firing range. There were so many crowding the sky, every shot was practically guaranteed to hit at least one of them.
Three hundred, four hundred, five hundred. And then the creatures were upon him. In the light of laserfire, he could see the surprise on their faces as they slammed into the Ardent’s particle shield, but they quickly recovered and began a pattern of flying back from the shield and throwing themselves into it again. Glancing at a technical readout, he saw the particle shield was at ninety-nine percent. He gave another order to his comm officer. “Call over the Valourous to clear these scum off our shields. They’re too close for our own gunners.”
The Valourous’s lasers would weaken his ray shield, but that didn’t concern him overmuch. There were all of three ponies in the enemy force that could even affect that shield. Granted, in the few seconds the alicorns had been firing at his ship, they had dropped the ray shield to ninety-four percent, but that was no more impact than he would expect from a heavy turbolaser volley. Even if they did penetrate the shield, a Carrack’s hull was sufficiently reinforced that it would take them a while to break in. During which time they would be subjected to the firepower of his entire line.
He checked the tactical display again. Less than eight thousand red dots remained, out of the over ten thousand at the start of the battle. His cruisers were cutting them to ribbons. By the time the alicorns dropped his shields, they would be nearly on their own. The Valouous arrived and unleashed a broadside against his shields, clearing away a good hundred or so ponies in moments. The rate at which the creatures were dying was falling, simply due to the fact that enough had been killed that they now had room to maneuver. Still, when he checked the display yet again a mere ten seconds later, the ponies’ numbers had dropped to barely more than seven thousand. This “battle” would be over in three minutes, at the most.
Then he heard a thunderous boom, and the night sky outside lit up in rainbow colors. “What the hell was –” Another, far louder boom cut him off, and he was thrown to the deck as the entire cruiser shuddered violently. He scrambled to his feet, a klaxon blaring in his ears.
“Sir!” an officer called. “Particle shields are down!”
“Close the blast shields!” Thick durasteel shudders slammed shut over the viewport just before several ponies would have smashed through.
A voice came over the intercom, along with the sound of blasterfire. “Hull breach on deck twelve! We have boarders! Repeat, we have boarders on deck twelve! All security forces, please respo–” The comm abruptly turned to static.
Rainbow Dash groaned and shook her head, dazed. Whatever these things were made of, it was tough. She had expected to split it in half, not make a seven-foot entrance. The sound of boots pounding on the cold metal floor forced her to hasten her recovery. She had just pushed herself to her hooves when eighteen – or was it just nine? – humans in an all-black version of the Imperial Army trooper uniform rushed around a corner. Noticing her, they skidded to a halt and lifted their blaster rifles. She took off in the other direction as bolts flew around her. She was no coward, but she also wasn’t quite brash enough to charge better-armed enemies in an enclosed space, especially since she still wasn’t quite certain how many of them there were.
The bolts and the thumping of boots followed her, and over the noise, she could hear one of them shouting. “Hull breach on deck twelve! We have boarders! Repeat, we have boarders on deck twelve! All security forces, please respo–”
The sounds of pursuit suddenly stopped, and she turned around. “Twilight!” Smoke was rising from both the tip of her friend’s horn and the backs of the humans spread out on the floor. Twilight stared vacantly at the bodies.
“I… I killed them. I just… They were trying to kill you, and I… I just reacted.”
“Get ahold of yourself! Like you said, they were trying to kill me, first! You didn’t have any time to think about it.”
“No, you don’t understand! I… I could’ve just grabbed them, immobilized them. Or pulled the weapons out of their hands. Or, hay, even just used less power! All of those would’ve been just as quick, just as easy, or more so. But my first instinct… was to kill them. It felt natural, it felt right. What’s wrong with me?!”
Rainbow Dash rested a hoof on Twilight’s leg. “Hey, it’ll be alright. You’ll be okay. Look, we can talk about that later. Right now, there are a few thousand ponies who need our help.”
Twilight gave herself a shake. “Ri– right. Celestia and Luna are in here, too. Let’s try to meet back up with them.”
Rann watched the feed from a security holocam as a blast door was thrown inwards, messily killing most of the squad waiting on the other side. The survivors only got a few shots off before they were wrapped in blue auras and slammed into the bulkheads. He grimaced and turned away from the screen as the dark alicorn walked through the doorway. With that, over three quarters of his ship’s security team was down. There was only one company of Navy troopers aboard – the rest of the crew was gunners, mechanics, engineers, and officers. Those gallant boys had certainly exacted a heavy price in blood from the boarders for every deck lost, killing or incapacitating at least two of the armored ponies for every man. But wherever the alicorns, the blue-uniformed ones, or the one with the rainbow hair showed up, the battle turned in favor of the aliens. The platoon defending the engineering bay, aided by pistol-armed crewmen, had repulsed seventeen attacks, taking down over two hundred armors and even three uniforms before the rainbow showed up with an entire squad of uniforms. That had been the last hope of driving off the boarders. It was clear to him that the ship was lost.
He returned to the comm and pressed the button to transmit to the dirtside base. “Admiral, the Ardent has been boarded and our security personnel are being overwhelmed. I’m requesting permission to destroy the ship.” There was silence for a few long seconds.
“Permission granted. See you on the other side, Captain.”
“Likewise, sir.” He switched to the intercom. “All hands, to the escape pods. All hands, to the escape pods.” Then to his line’s assigned comm channel. “This is Captain Rann. The Ardent is lost. I’m transferring the flag to the Valourous. You are now under the command of Captain Bel. It has been an honor, gentlemen.” Finally, he faced his bridge crew.
“My good friends. You all know what I must do, and you know that I have never shirked my duty before. I do not intend to start now. My task does not extend to you. You are all free to leave without dishonor, to escape this vessel, to return home and see the faces of your loved ones again. I cannot order you to stay. But you also know that a Carrack requires at least two crewmen to control it. So I now ask for a volunteer, to help me ensure that the Ardent completes her final journey. Of course, you will not survive this voyage. If you stay, you will never again feel the warm embrace of a woman, or hear the burbling of a newborn baby, or watch the fiery colors of a setting sun. You will sacrifice your life, and break the hearts of all who care about you. But you will also be denying an enemy a valuable prize and ensuring that this old girl ends her life in honorable service of the Empire. Stay, and you die as a hero. Who will volunteer?”
He smiled when every single officer stepped forward. Still, some of them had moved a fraction of a second later than the others, and he immediately dismissed them as candidates. Out of the rest, he looked for someone who wouldn’t be mourned by a large or dependent family. “Lieutenant Higgs,” he said, choosing an officer with only one son, a recent graduate from the Imperial Engineers Academy who would be able to support his mother. “You’ll stay with me. The rest of you, go. Get to the escape pods.” They all threw him sharp salutes, then rushed out of the bridge. After all but Higgs had left, he walked up to the hatch, shut the blast door, and shot the control panel. He and Higgs then strapped themselves into chairs.
“So, what are we doing, sir?”
“First, we get as many men off this ship as possible. Then, we smash her into the ground. Pull up the holocams leading to the bridge, and let me know if any ponies start making their way here.” He pulled on the security officer’s headset. “I’ll try to keep our boys away from ’em… First escape pods away.”
Twilight leapt backwards as a door clanged shut between her and a platoon of guardsponies. With a snarl, she ripped it out of its frame. This was getting infuriating. That was the seventh time a door had closed for no apparent reason. Somehow, the humans were watching her and doing everything they could to slow her down. Obviously another application of their technology. If it wasn’t such an annoyance, she would be fascinated by it. Maybe, after this war was over, she would have a chance to study it and apply it to uses other than war. Suddenly, that voice came back.
“The last escape pods are away. So long, you alien filth. I hope this takes a few of you with us.”
It had said something about “escape pods” before… and hands? Why did they need to put their hands on these “escape pods”? She had been confused but happy when the voice had first came out of nowhere. Immediately after it had spoken, the humans stopped fighting and ran away – though the blaring noise and flashing red lights that followed were decidedly irritating. Then a revelation came to her. Other words she had overheard the humans saying clicked together. “Hull”… “Deck”… “Boarders”… All terms used by Equestria’s navy.
In recent years, some enterprising unicorns had proposed that airships could be used to allow non-pegasus ponies to fight in the sky, as a sort of flying navy. These ideas had been staunchly opposed by the pegasi officers, and Celestia’s distaste for militarization meant that the idea had never gone anywhere. But if the humans had fully adopted the idea – which they clearly had – then they might be using “hands” in the same way the navy used “hoofs.” And if that was the case, then “All hands to the escape pods” sounded worryingly similar to “All hooves to the lifeboats.” But that was only said when ships were –
The floor beneath her tilted sickening, and she had to take flight to avoid sliding down the heavily polished metal. “Everypony!” she called to the guards. “We have to get out of here!” Panicking, they flew back the way they came. By the time they reached the opening, the Royal Sisters and Rainbow Dash were waiting for her. “Is everypony else out?”
“We don’t know,” Celestia replied as the guardsponies fled, “but we can’t go looking. We have to go, now.”
“But what if there are other ponies trapped in here?!”
“You will not do them any good by staying,” Luna told her gently. “If there are not other ponies still here, you will have stayed for nothing. If there are, it is already too late for you to help them. Look outside.”
She did, and saw the ground rushing up to meet them. She knew they were descending quickly – it was an effort to fly downwards fast enough to keep up with the opening – but she hadn’t realized just how far the vessel had already fallen. “Oh. I…” She sighed. They were right. There was nothing she could do in the time left before impact. “Okay. Let’s get out of here.” They flew out into a sky almost empty of ponies. Many of the surviving pegasi were gathering a short distance from the crashing human ship, but Twilight yelled at them to fly further away. She had done projections for the results of a meteor hitting Equestria, and while this would be a relatively small impact, that just meant that the area of total destruction would be less than two miles. She wanted to be much further away than that.
She had barely passed that threshold when the craft plowed into the ground. She and the Royal Sisters managed to wrap themselves and a few nearby pegasi in a shield before the wave of dust and debris overtook them. The cloud obscured the ponies who weren’t inside the shield, for which she was glad. She knew they would be lucky to only have most of their bones broken. The bubble of protection rode the wave until it petered out three miles away. As the dust settled and debris rained out of the sky, the air cleared to reveal a scene of desolation.
A deep crater marred the rolling hills, which were now covered in a thick layer of dirt and stone. Remarkably, in a testament to over-engineering, the rearmost portion of the craft was still intact enough to be recognizable. The same couldn’t be said of Cloudsdale. Its inhabitants still had some of the temperament of their warrior ancestors, and many had joined in the battle. For this, the Imperials had delivered harsh retribution. Though there were few truly solid buildings in the city, the turbolasers still wrought almost total destruction, their intense heat vaporizing most of the cloud structures. Most catastrophically, the weather factory was annihilated. Twilight had no way of knowing it yet, but almost a third of the city’s population – twenty-six thousand pegasi – had been massacred in the five minutes it took to overwhelm the Ardent’s defenders, and over nine thousand guardsponies had died in the battle. The Wonderbolts had suffered the least, but they had still taken the heaviest casualties of any single day in their history, losing six cadets.
No longer blockading anything of worth, the remaining three human craft turned skyward, slowly disappearing from view. As Twilight took in the horrifying sight, Rainbow Dash flew up to her, a strained expression on her face. “Hey, Twilight?” she said, the pain evident in her voice. “I know I said we’d talk, but…” She glanced at where the Wonderbolts were gathering. “I think I need to go… calm down.”
Twilight looked over the thousand surviving guardsponies, and she was relieved to see a familiar face sticking out among the crowd. “Yeah… Yeah, I understand. I think I’ll be doing the same.”
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They lost a Carrack-class Light Cruiser. By this time, Imperial High Command would've heard its lost and would've send a fleet. With how much of a threat the ponies are to the Imperials on this planet, they would've sent at least 10 Star Destroyers escorted by Carracks. But with how powerful the alicorns are, they would double that and send at least 20 Star Destroyers. Somebody important is bound to be sent to Equestria, whether it's a Grand Moff like Tarkin, Darth Vader, or even the Emperor himself with multiple Royal Guards. I'd like to see that though, Equestrian Royal Guards vs the Emperor's Royal Guards. I want to see their Double Bladed Vibroblades in action.
7467673
Until the ponies are an actual threat to the Imps, I doubt we will see a quick resolution. Besides, if the leaders want to contact the Imps and ask for help on a backwater planet, they'll be ridiculed.
7467851 Pretty sure the Imperial Garrison has been sending reports to Imperial High Command so they should know what's going on by now. My question is, what are they going to send before things get out of hand. They boarded and got a Carrack-Class Light Cruiser to crash and no doubt the Equestrians will analyze the wreck and find any weaknesses. Who's to say they'll do it again but this time they know the weaknesses?
I will admit, I hate Dash in stories where she can rainboom through human ships and the Rainboom acts as an F****** kill all or EMP. But you have done this in a way that actually made sense. It basically opened it like a missile, wich makes more sense than the stereotypical way it is used on the site.
Still the only story I follow religiously. Almost as much as DBZA
7467886 the ponies wouldn't know what the difference between the hyperdrive and the escape pods. It would be too alien for their best mages to figure out, and I'm sure it would take a thousand unicorns firing energy beams to pierce the hull of a light cruiser.
7467886 they might not recognize any weaknesses though.
At most they'd find out how tough the hull is and find out how to break through it with out a rainboom.
7467945
7467935 He left the engines intact for a reason. They're going to target the engines of the ships next.
At this rate, the casualty totals are going to qualify this whole really backwater war as another Imperial atrocity.
7467994 Yes but still their not gonna know how to destroy the engines and they've got to get past the particle shield first. Which by then their would only be corpses and the princesses left.
7469411 The princesses will probably try with their combined magic to knock out the engines.