Siege
Twilight tried to focus on exploring the empty system, finding out all the interesting little facts about it, but it was hard. This was just another empty, uninhabited system; they’d gotten fairly good information on a couple of those by now. It was valuable, and could potentially give them very useful data about the way the universe worked, but right at the moment it wasn’t terribly exciting. Especially considering what was going on elsewhere in the ship, with Rainbow and Fluttershy speaking to someone from the Council for the first time.
Finally, she couldn’t handle the tension anymore. She had to know what was going on. Twilight left Silver Stars in charge of the ship and darted off the bridge, headed to her office which was both relatively nearby and quiet, so she could tune in to what was going on.
She dropped into partial network immersion, her holodaemon seeking out the node that Rainbow was maintaining to allow the translator systems to function. It located the pegasus almost immediately; there was a fair amount of activity centered on her, and Twilight realized that Rainbow was maintaining a connection to most of Fluttershy’s staff, allowing them to see and hear everything that was going on in the little closet.
The two pegasi clearly hadn’t been talking to the captive for long. “…course I’m not going to let her hurt you,” Fluttershy said as Twilight’s connection stabilized, the translator trilling in the alien’s language as she spoke. The unicorn opened an illusory window, allowing her to see both ponies and the captive. Both ponies were seated on floor cushions, and there was another pile that the alien sat on, its back against the wall. Fluttershy shot what looked like an annoyed glance over her shoulder at Rainbow, though she winked where the captive couldn’t see her. Rainbow maintained the tense, angry set of her body, though one corner of her mouth quirked up for a brief fraction of a second. “Honestly,” Fluttershy said as she turned back to the alien, “I won’t. She might growl, but she’s not evil; she won’t hurt you, I promise. Is there anything I can get for you? Water? I could try to find something you could eat…”
“Somepony check and see if the doctor ran tests on what he could eat,” a voice in the net said.
“On it.” Looking closely, Twilight could see a small earbud that Fluttershy was wearing, in order to communicate with her ponies. Rainbow didn’t need one, of course; her interface implant did everything Fluttershy’s eyepiece and earbud could do, and quite a bit more besides.
“I… water would be appreciated,” the alien trilled in its own tongue, translated instantly by the array of holodaemons and datadaemons being managed by Fluttershy’s experts.
“I’ll have somepony get some for you. Warm? Cold? Hot?”
“Cold, please. But not frozen.” The alien shifted its position.
“He’s surprised. Didn’t expect to be cared for?”
“Possible, and it fits with his earlier behavior. A bit ominous; why wouldn’t he expect to be cared for, when Rainbow Dash and Twilight Sparkle risked so much to bring him back alive?”
“A bit of kindness could go a long way here.”
“I’m gonna back off some,” Rainbow’s voice said in the net, while she stood silently glaring at the alien. “I’ll stay here, so I can be scary, but I don’t think I’ll growl any more. Feels wrong, especially since he’s so scared.”
“That sounds like an excellent idea, ma’am. It gives Fluttershy a chance to seem protective, without making further threats to undermine her.”
“Somepony bring some cold, sterile water,” Fluttershy ordered. “Where’s Cinnamon Swirl, by the way? I don’t hear her; shouldn’t she be there?”
“She’s in the hospital. Got into a fight; I’ll fill you in later, miss.” There was a pause. “Water’s coming.”
A moment later, there was a tap at the door. Fluttershy opened it, and an engineer passed her a small flask. The yellow pegasus took the flask in her mouth, slowly approached the alien who watched her with huge eyes, and set it down in front of him. “There you are,” she said softly, stepping back. “Drink up; we can bring you more if you need it.”
Darting a glance at Rainbow Dash, the alien reached out and picked up the flask, opening it and taking a deep drink. “Thank you,” he said, licking his lips with a surprisingly dark-colored tongue.
“That was grudging, but genuine, I think. Try to follow up on it, maybe?”
“Is there anything else we could get you? Food? Is that cushion comfortable?” Fluttershy asked gently, maintaining her distance and staying partway between the alien and Rainbow Dash.
The alien looked at her unreadably. “What do you want with me? Really? I don’t know anything. There’s nothing I can give you. If you aren’t planning to torture me or kill me, then what do you want?”
Torture? Twilight thought, aghast. Where in the world did that come from?
Fluttershy shook her head. “Really, all we want is to talk. Your people have refused to do that, which is why my friend here,” she indicated Rainbow with a toss of her head, “took such a risk to get you, so I could talk to you.” She smiled. “Could you at least tell me your name?”
“Zziir,” the alien said, an odd trill to the name. “Zziir is my name.” He paused. “I… did you destroy my ship?”
Fluttershy shook her head again. “No. We left it alone.”
“What about… about the rest of the bridge crew? I don’t remember much after you came over my control panel at me.” Zziir looked at Rainbow Dash.
“They’re fine,” Rainbow said. “I thumped a couple of ‘em, but they’re okay, I think, except maybe for that first one I hit. I had to kill a couple of the ones that came in after we did.”
“Ouch, I wish you hadn’t said that. Might make things harder.”
“I figured it’d be better to be honest,” Rainbow retorted.
“Can you show me?” Zziir asked. “Show me that my friends are okay? Prove it to me?”
“Sure,” Rainbow said, without waiting for Fluttershy to respond. “Hold on, let me pull it up.” Twilight felt the movement in the network as the daemon resident in Rainbow’s implants fed the record to the ship’s systems, projecting it onto an illusory screen that sprang to life in front of the alien. A secondary screen appeared next to the one Twilight was watching, conveying the same information; she guessed that Rainbow had set it to general access for anyone linked in. “Which one of these do you want, Twi?” Rainbow’s voice asked, as the view flicked over the bridge. “May not want that one, I might’ve hit it too hard. Think I broke its head.”
Twilight watched as the scene replayed, though it was rather uncomfortable since Rainbow’s eyes darted around so much, watching every part of the bridge at once. When it got to the part where Rainbow shoved the other creature back into its seat, the fact that the translator was on let her finally understand what it had said. “Zziir… please, he’s my friend. Don’t take him, he hasn’t done…!” The creature cut itself off when the blades in Rainbow’s foreleg pointed directly into its face. “Please… please don’t hurt me. I won’t fight. Don’t hurt me.”
“Ready to go, Twi?” Rainbow’s voice growled, not understanding the creature’s words.
“Just… about…”
The viewpoint pulled back away from the other alien, just as Rainbow had done. “Please,” it asked, “Leave Zziir. I think he’s hurt. Take me instead. I’ll go with you, just please, leave him here.” Rainbow kept backing up, still not understanding. “Chudal,” the alien murmured, turning to the prone creature on the deck, “can you do anything? They’re bigger and stronger than me, but we can’t let them…” it trailed off as the other creature didn’t respond. Zziir’s friend turned back to Rainbow. “Please, please, he’s barely adult, and he’s hurt. Leave him here, let our doctor help him. You can take me in exchange. I don’t know what you want, but I’ll go with you, just leave him here. Please.” The playback closed as Rainbow and Twilight teleported back to Dauntless, the last view that of the alien stretching out a pleading hand.
“That upset him,” one of Fluttershy’s experts observed. Zziir looked a little agitated, his ears swiveling in little motions, his body rigid.
“I wish I’d had that translator on,” Rainbow observed. “I’d have taken her up on it.”
“Him,” Zziir corrected tersely. “Why?”
“’Cause it would’ve showed that we really didn’t want to hurt you.” Rainbow shrugged. “Would’ve been easier to convince him, since I would’ve already showed I’d listen.”
“If you wanted to talk, why did you destroy the first-contact ship?” Zziir asked suddenly, leaning forward. “Why didn’t you just talk to them instead of killing the people who were supposed to be on your side?”
“The first-contact ship?” Fluttershy asked, in a puzzled tone. “What do you mean? What first-contact ship?”
“I mean when you people fired on the diplomatic ship that tried to talk to you!” Zziir replied heatedly, “What, did you think they wouldn’t tell us about that?”
“I…” The two pegasi exchanged confused looks. “Rainbow Dash, could you pull up a picture of the Interloper?”
“Sure.” A three-dimensional illusion of the Interloper vessel, the one that had been Equestria’s first contact with the Council, appeared in front of the rainbow-maned pegasus.
“Is this what you mean?”
Zziir peered closely at the hologram. His eyes widened. “I… what? Why are you showing me this? This is an infiltrator cruiser. What does it have to do with anything? How did you even find this?”
Fluttershy and Rainbow shared a glance. “Infiltrator cruiser?” the yellow pegasus asked, “I don’t know what that means. This is the first ship from your people that we saw; it opened fire on us when we tried to talk to it.”
“It’s also the only ship we saw until we jumped into the middle of that fight between you and the Tazaft,” Rainbow said grimly. “Is this what you mean by a first-contact ship? ‘Cause if it is, they suck at their job.”
There was a pause as the alien stared. “That’s probably shock,” somepony speculated.
“Let’s wait and see what he says, don’t push him.”
Rainbow and Fluttershy waited, silently, until Zziir spoke again. “I… why… I don’t even know how else you’d know what this looks like. Even the Tazaft wouldn’t know what this is.” He stared at the display. “There have been all those rumors… you really haven’t had a first-contact ship? No one came to you to try to talk to you?”
Fluttershy shook her head. “No. We’ve tried to talk to your people several times, but all you’ve done is shot at us.”
“It’s why my boss had me grab you,” Rainbow added. “Figured if we did that, we’d at least be able to figure out why you’re shooting at us.” She shook her head. “Speaking of, why are you shooting at us? I mean, yeah, we’ve blown up a bunch of your ships by now, but we didn’t start it!”
“Rainbow,” Fluttershy said reprovingly.
“Well, we have!” The cyan pegasus responded, a slightly defensive edge in her tone. The translator was faithfully rendering their speech to the alien, who watched them closely. “We can’t act like we haven’t! What, you want me to lie?” She turned back to Zziir. “Look, if we’ve killed any of your friends, I’m really, honestly sorry. We don’t want to. What we want is to find a way to stop it! We could’ve blown your ship up too, or the other one you were with, but we didn’t.”
Fluttershy sighed. “Rainbow isn’t very diplomatic, but that is why she and Twilight took you. I’m honestly sorry they had to do that, but we needed something. Some way to talk to your people. We want to be friends, but no one we’ve encountered has been willing to let us try. Please, is there any way we could stop all this? Any way we could stop fighting?”
Zziir stared. “He’s thinking, don’t interrupt him!”
“I… can almost believe it,” the alien said slowly. “The infiltrator service… they’re not good people. I know that. And there have been all those rumors…”
“Rumors?” Fluttershy asked, cocking her head to the side. “What kind of rumors?”
“That… well, that Fifth Fleet command has been getting a lot of visits from infiltrator cruisers. According to some of the other logistics personnel, anyway.” He stared at the hologram still drifting in front of him. “I… believe those rumors more, now.”
“Fifth fleet?” Rainbow asked.
“Yes, Fifth Enforcement Fleet. It’s the formation responsible for this part of the Council frontier.”
The pegasi looked at each other again. “The ships we’ve encountered were all from the same force?” Rainbow asked.
Zziir flicked his ears. “Yes, that was second and eighth task forces you encountered today. Fifth Fleet Command… there have been a lot of rumors that the infiltrator service has been visiting Command Headquarters a lot in the last year or so. I thought it was just a dumb rumor, but…”
Fluttershy’s brow furrowed, even as Rainbow’s ears turned back in tension at the news. “Wait… the people who sent this ship and the people we’ve been fighting… they’re not necessarily aligned with your government?” Fluttershy sounded troubled, which was exactly how Twilight felt. At the same time, though, she felt a sense of hope. If there was a government that didn’t feel this way, could she contact them?
The alien’s ears flicked again, in a different motion. “No, the infiltrators… they’re not nice people. No one trusts them. They’re supposed to just make sure that the Council knows about threats and things like that, but… I… you really just want to talk to someone? That’s all?”
Fluttershy nodded heavily. “Yes. But if the people responsible for this entire area don’t want to… I don’t know what we could do.”
“Oh, good move, ma’am. Asking for his help without stating that you are.”
Zziir licked his lips, his long, double-jointed arms shifting nervously. “You could try going to Baltor,” he suggested. “That’s the seat of government. Someone would listen to you there.”
Rainbow raised an eyebrow. “If it’s the seat of government, there’s gonna be a zillion ships and defense platforms there. We barely got out of the last trap, and you’re suggesting we head right into another one?”
Zziir looked at her strangely. “So you want someplace lightly defended?”
“That’s kind of a suspicious request for us to make.”
“It does rather sound like we’re looking for something to attack.”
“What we’d really like is to find someone who’d listen, and could introduce us,” Fluttershy said. “Just someone to hear us out and speak on our behalf to your government.”
“Hey,” Rainbow’s voice said on the net as Fluttershy spoke, “Talky-ponies. I got an idea, but I want to run it by you guys before I say anything. What if I ask him about a base, someplace with a bunch of fixed defenses but no ships. Is that too suspicious?”
“That sounds good to me, Rainbow,” Twilight said before the others said anything.
“Concur,” said another voice.
“Go for it,” said a third.
“Right.” Rainbow cleared her throat, and spoke out loud. “Hey, I can get you not wanting to point us at someplace undefended. I’d be nervous about that, too. But, I mean, you guys have attacked us every single time we’ve seen you. Tell you what, is there someplace with a bunch of fixed defenses, but no big fleet? That way, we could go in and sit outside their range and not have to worry about them coming after us, but we couldn’t really hurt them either.”
Zziir looked at her silently for a moment, and Twilight thought they’d blown it. Finally, though, he said slowly, “How far are you willing to go?”
“Do you mean distance?” Fluttershy asked.
The alien’s ears flicked. “That was a nod,” one of the ponies in the net observed.
“As long as we know where we’re going, distance doesn’t matter,” the yellow pegasus told the captive.
Zziir gave her an odd look. “Well… okay then. There’s a place fairly close to Baltor that has a naval supply depot; it doesn’t have an on-station response force, but it’s pretty heavily fortified.” He fidgeted. “I’ve… one of my cousins,” the term Zziir used actually had a shockingly precise meaning, Twilight noted, but it couldn’t be translated directly. Something like Father’s father’s brother’s daughter’s adopted son, but the translator rendered it as “cousin”, “is in command, and he knows me. I… could speak for you, tell them what you’ve told me.”
Fluttershy’s eyes widened. “You’d do that for us?” She asked, softly. “You’d speak for us, when we abducted you?”
Zziir flicked his ears again. “You were desperate. I can understand, I think, if you’re telling me the truth.” He looked at Fluttershy intently. “It will also show me that you are serious. If you are willing to let me speak for you in a situation where I could pass a message you wouldn’t catch.”
Fluttershy smiled. “I hope you don’t do that, but if you do, I won’t be upset. We could also use the chance to get some provisions for you, so we don’t have to guess at whether any of our food is edible for you.”
“Yes, there is that.” The alien made a gesture with both hands. “Do you have a star map? I could give you the coordinates…”
Twilight cut the connection as Zziir began giving directions to the base to the two pegasi. She paged the rest of her friends for a meeting; this was something they should probably discuss.
Twilight, Applejack, and Rarity sat in the meeting room, making small talk and waiting for the two pegasi to arrive. Pinkie had preferred not to attend this meeting; she was still dealing with the stress brought on by her experience with Fluttershy, and didn’t feel up to participating right now. Rainbow and Fluttershy had already called and said they were on their way with the information they’d gathered, but they hadn’t arrived yet; they’d continued talking to the captive, trying to learn everything they could. Finally, though, the door hissed open, and Twilight finished the joke she was telling Applejack before looking up to see Fluttershy standing there, a slightly odd look on her face. “Ah, Fluttershy, there you are,” Twilight said, smiling. She frowned a bit. “Isn’t Rainbow with you?” Had the two pegasi started fighting again? It had seemed like they were getting along so well!
“Yep,” a voice said suddenly, centimeters from Twilight’s ear and louder than normal conversation would be. The unicorn started so hard she almost fell off of her cushion, and spun around, heart racing, to see Rainbow standing there and grinning triumphantly. Twilight gave her a dirty glare, which only made the pegasus grin wider. “What? You told me to turn off the noisemakers when I came to talk to you.” The unicorn heard a strangled snicker that might have come from Applejack, but chose to take the high road and ignore it. Acknowledging it would only encourage the polychromatic cyberpegasus, anyway.
Twilight closed her eyes, shaking her head in exasperation. “Yes, I did. Thank you for doing that.”
“You’re welcome!” Rainbow said cheerfully, before trotting over to a vacant seat and sitting down, still grinning, Fluttershy just rolled her eyes as she took a seat next to the other pegasus. Despite the momentary expression of exasperation, Twilight saw none of the tension she was used to seeing when her winged friends were together, and that made her heart lift a bit. Which was noticeable, since it was still pounding from the start Rainbow had given her.
Fluttershy cleared her throat, ignoring the distraction and focusing on the business she’d come here to discuss. “Um. Well, first off, our captive’s name is Zziir,” she pronounced the name with an odd trill, reminiscent of the way the creature’s companion had spoken, “and he was the navigator of the freighter you boarded.”
Fluttershy quickly summarized what Twilight had heard her talking to the alien about, and what she’d learned from him. The location of the Council’s capital world of Baltor was interesting; it was much farther away than she’d thought. The space they claimed must be enormous.
Rarity’s eyebrows lifted in surprise. “How did you learn all this, darling? I’d expected the creature to be much more taciturn.”
Rainbow Dash chuckled. “He got a lot more talkative when I growled at him and Fluttershy made me back off.”
Fluttershy gave the other pegasus a severe look. “Well, yes, because you gave him an enemy to focus on and let me defend him and be his ally.” She smiled. “Thank you for that, by the way. I don’t know if it would have occurred to me to ask you to do that.”
“Any time. Figured it might work.” Rainbow smirked. “No one would’ve believed you as the bad guy, anyway.”
The yellow pegasus cleared her throat. “He was trying to say as little as possible, but I did get him to talk to me a little bit. There are eighteen different species in the Council, including thirteen permanent members and five probationary members. Zziir’s species is one of the permanent members. It seemed to me that he was really proud of that.”
“And what exactly is the distinction, darling?” Rarity asked. “Between permanent and probationary members, I mean?”
“I’m not really sure. It actually wasn’t what I was trying to talk to him about, just something he told me to try to impress me, I think. We were trying to learn more about what we might be able to do, and what we actually faced.”
“Which isn’t good.” Rainbow interrupted grimly.
Fluttershy sighed. “No, it isn’t. There are two major external-security organizations that the Council operates; the infiltrator service, and the Enforcement Branch.” Rainbow called up an image from the archives, one of the pictures taken by the Warden cutters of the Interloper. “That ship that we first encountered sounds like an infiltrator ship, which is what Zziir identified it as. It was alone and it was sneaking around, which isn’t the way the Enforcment group operates. I’m not sure exactly what the infiltrators do, and Zziir doesn’t seem to like them, but it looks like they may have had some kind of interest in us.”
“Until we blew their ship away.” Twilight filled in with a sinking heart.
“Maybe.” Fluttershy didn’t sound as definite as Twilight had expected. “Whatever they wanted, it probably wasn’t good; according to Zziir they’re not very nice at all, and if they were poking around where we live they probably weren’t doing it for fun. They sound really mean and nasty.” Fluttershy blinked, then cleared her throat, changing track a bit. “All that we’ve built in the last few decades upset them, and I guess they’re really angry for some reason, but they’re not our problem now. The ones that attacked us, Dauntless, I mean, are all Enforcement ships; the sneaky ones found some bullies to fight us for them.” Fluttershy looked upset, understandably so, Twilight thought. “The thing is… Zziir isn’t sure why they’re fighting us. After I talked to him for a little while, he was actually quite willing to believe that our getting involved in the fight with the Tazaft was an accident, which makes it very strange that they seem so unwilling to speak to us.”
“Perhaps he was just trying to tell you what he thought you wanted to hear,” Rarity offered. “Under the circumstances, I can’t say I’d blame him.”
“It’s possible,” Fluttershy said tentatively, “but I didn’t get that feeling. I could be mistaken, but he really did seem nice once he calmed down a tiny bit. Anyway, what we’re dealing with now is the Fifth Enforcement Fleet, which is also the group that’s been prosecuting the Council’s war with the Tazaft.”
“Heh,” Rainbow interrupted, “you guys are gonna love this.”
Fluttershy shot her an annoyed look, but continued. “From what Zziir said, the Tazaft started the war because they felt the Council was taking too long to consider their application for membership. They’re trying to make a statement, and force the Council to take them seriously, because they felt like they were being ignored.”
Twilight frowned. “Wait, so the Council takes new members?”
“Yeah, they’re normally really nice about it, according to Zir.” Rainbow didn’t pronounce the alien’s name with the same trill Fluttershy put into it. “He actually thought we’d blown up the first-contact ship. It took a little talking to convince him we’d never seen one.”
“That is odd,” Rarity observed with a frown. “Where would he have gotten that notion?”
“His commanders, apparently,” Fluttershy replied. “The good news is, he’s willing to help us try to contact his government. The bad news… he’s heard a rumor that his unit, Fifth Fleet, is planning to flatten us.”
Twilight felt a chill in her belly. She hadn’t heard this part. “Flatten us? You mean…”
“Zziir thinks there is a chance that his fleet is moving on our home world, yes,” Fluttershy said quietly. “It’s just a rumor, and he doesn’t know how much truth there is to it, but it seems to be a very popular rumor.” There were a lot of rumors in the Council fleet, evidently.
“But… but this is crazy!” Rarity exclaimed. “All we’ve ever done is try to talk to them, and we’ve only returned fire when they fired on us first! Why would they be acting this way?”
“We don’t know.” Fluttershy’s voice was soft, worried. “Zziir doesn’t know either. He fully expected us to kill him. Or torture him.”
“He really did,” Rainbow said, a little bit of sadness creeping into her tone. “It was hard to act mean after the first time I growled at him. He was so scared…”
“Zziir knows almost nothing about us, apart from the fact that we supposedly killed the Council first-contact team.” Fluttershy bit her lip. “From what he knows, no one knows anything about us, which is very strange because the infiltrator service has been watching us very closely. There are all kinds of rumors about their ships visiting the Fifth Fleet’s headquarters.”
Twilight wondered how closely they’d been watching, and for how long. Her thoughts were interrupted. “How large is this ‘Fifth Enforcement Fleet’, Fluttershy?” Rarity asked. “What kind of enemy are we potentially looking at?”
“It’s big.” Rainbow interjected grimly. “Real big. What tried to trap us? Third and Eighth Task Groups.”
Twilight had done the math on that already, as Rainbow clearly had, and she felt a chill creeping into her bones at the reminder. Assuming that the slightly more than two hundred ships they’d seen in each detachment was a “task group”, then the entire fleet had to be at least sixteen hundred vessels. Even the homeworld’s defenses wouldn’t be enough to defeat a force that powerful, though they would be able to hold it off for a while.
Applejack looked sick with sudden fear. “Twilight... we gotta get home, right now! The Princesses… they hafta know about this!”
Twilight shook her head. “We have something more urgent.”
The Warden’s green eyes widened. “More than savin’ our home?”
Fluttershy nodded. “Yes. Rainbow and I convinced Zziir to help us contact his government. That fleet is too big for us to beat on our own, but if we can get them called off…”
Applejack didn’t look confident. “How sure are you that it’ll work, Fluttershy?”
The pegasus hung her head. “I don’t know. I don’t know how much time we have, so we can’t afford to delay. I only hope we aren’t already too late.”
“Do you have the location we need to head to?” Twilight asked. At Fluttershy’s nod, she continued, “Okay, send it to the bridge, and I’ll have Silver Stars set course immediately. It’ll be a few hours before we hit the Jump limit, so perhaps we could reconvene when we get where we’re going?”
“That sounds good,” Fluttershy said, as the five ponies rose from their seats.
“Come along, darling, let’s go get some lunch,” Rarity suggested, receiving a nod from the yellow-coated pegasus. “Would the rest of you care to come along?”
Twilight shook her head. “No, I’m going back up to the bridge. I want to be available immediately, in case I‘m needed.”
“Me and Dash have some stuff to do, too,” Applejack said, glancing at Rainbow.
“Yup. Need to check on some supply stuff,” Rainbow added.
“Fair enough, darlings, I’ll see you back home, I suppose.” Rarity turned to Fluttershy. “Come along, dear, let’s see if Pinkie Pie is hungry.”
The meeting broke up, the five ponies headed in three directions.
The bridge was quiet when Twilight reached it, the officers she’d come to depend upon focusing on their jobs. The unicorn could see at a glance that the ship was still some distance away from being able to jump out. Sighing, she settled herself in her commander’s seat, bringing up the information on the Council that they’d received from the Tazaft and starting to go through it again, hoping vainly that she’d find something that explained their behavior. Maybe what Fluttershy had learned from their captive would give her a clue, bring some small fact into focus…
Argh, the captive! Twilight was torn on whether Fluttershy was right to put so much trust into the creature. Admittedly, they wouldn’t lose much if he didn’t pass along the message they wanted, and they could potentially gain quite a bit, but it worried her to have to depend on someone they’d kidnapped. And what were they going to do with him afterward? Give him back to the base he was taking them to? Hold on to him? What would they do with him if they kept him?
Twilight chewed the issue of Zziir’s long-term fate over as the ship cruised along, but she hadn’t come up with a decent solution by the time they reached the Jump radius. The Jump warning tone sounded throughout Dauntless’s vast hull, and moments later the ship vanished once again, reappearing in reality deep within Council-claimed space.
Twilight stared in mild awe at the image of the Council depot on the screen. “So this is it?”
“Yes,” Zziir replied. Fluttershy had escorted the alien up to the bridge. “Ta Ahii Depot, one of the major supply nexuses for the Enforcement Fleet. You shouldn’t see any warships; this is a collection and distribution nexus, and the Fleet doesn’t typically resupply here.”
“Oculus?” Twilight asked, making sure that the translator systems were functioning, so Zziir could see they weren’t planning anything underhoofed.
“I don’t see anything that looks like the warships we’ve seen, ma’am. Bunch of ships like the one we took him off of, though.”
Twilight could see that. Contact icons swarmed the screen, too many to count by eye, moving in remarkably orderly patterns around the colossal spaceborne construct of the depot. The depot itself dwarfed any artificial structure Twilight had ever seen; it was easily ten times the size of Equestria’s orbital shipyard, in every dimension. The thing was humbling, especially considering that it had been built out in the middle of nowhere; Zziir had explained that it had been constructed as a collection point, and that it was close to three homeworlds and a dozen colony worlds, though this system itself wasn’t heavily inhabited apart from the cluster of colonies and industrial yards that supported the depot.
Zziir’s ears flicked in a nod. “They’re military freighters, making runs between Ta Ahii and the Fleet bases along this edge of the frontier. The next major supply convoy from Khll isn’t due for another day or so, or you’d see bulk freighters, too.”
“Message from the depot, ma’am,” Chatterbox interjected. “They’re asking us to identify ourselves.”
“That was quick,” Silver Stars observed. She sounded impressed. “They must have spotted us the second we arrived.”
Twilight looked to the catlike alien. “Well? How should we respond?”
Zziir licked his lips. “Could you record a message from me?”
Twilight nodded. Her horn glowed as she activated the bridge recorder. “Go ahead.”
Zziir looked a little nervous. “Ta Ahii depot, this is Zziir Delriin, attached to Fifth Enforcement Fleet, currently aboard the… what was your ship called again?”
“The Dauntless,” Fluttershy supplied.
“Aboard the Equestrian starship Heroic,” the alien continued. Okay, maybe the translators aren’t a hundred percent accurate yet, Twilight thought. It’s close enough, anyway. “We request permission to approach the depot, and I personally ask to speak to Commodore Iirrka, once we are in convenient communications range. Please have the defense systems online, but please do not fire.” The aliens eyes darted over to Fluttershy and Twilight. “I am not certain whether this ship is hostile or not, and I prefer not to have the depot threatened.” He paused. “Will you send that?”
Twilight nodded. “Of course.” She closed the recording, packaged the whole thing, and sent it to Chatterbox, who sent it winging out to the waiting depot. “It’s been sent, though I cut it off at ‘I’d prefer not to have the depot threatened.’” She smiled gently. “I didn’t think they needed to hear you ask us to send it.”
Zziir blinked. “You’re not upset?”
“Not at all,” Fluttershy told him. “You didn’t ask them to fire at us, just to be ready. I can understand that, and having someone who’s not going to fire first is all I asked for.” She smiled. “Besides, if you have family over there, I can completely understand why you’d want to keep them safe.”
The alien blinked again. “I… thank you, for understanding.”
“It’s the least we could do,” Twilight replied. “Thank you for helping us.”
Dauntless crept closer, keeping their acceleration low so as not to seem like they were making an attack run. They were going only a little bit faster than the sluggish transport ships that swarmed around the huge depot, and Twilight approved of Silver Stars’ decision to keep it that way. They received a terse reply partway there, telling them that the depot’s commanders would be available once the Equestrian ship closed to communications range.
It took quite some time; the depot was well inside the system, a good distance from the Jump limit. On one hoof, Twilight was glad for that; it gave the depot commander time to evaluate their approach and prepare himself. On the other, though, she chafed at having to take so long before returning home. The rumors Zziir had heard, and the revelation of how powerful the force they faced was, had kindled a cold fear in the unicorn’s heart.
Dauntless drew to a relative stop about two light-seconds from the depot. It was close enough that the communications delay would be fairly short, but far enough that they would be difficult to hit. It was honestly close enough that Silver Stars was a little worried; if the depot opened fire, they would be in range of its missiles for long enough to potentially take serious damage before they were able to claw their way back out of range. It didn’t fire, though, just sat there, vast and still. The freighters had mostly moved to the other side of the station, keeping its bulk between them and the Dauntless.
Twilight waved Zziir over. “We’re close enough. Are you ready to talk to them?”
Zziir’s ears flicked an affirmative, and Twilight turned to Chatterbox. “Open up a channel, analog radio signal, please.” She didn’t want to take any chances of an improperly coded signal being misinterpreted. She nodded to Zziir.
The alien cleared his throat. “Cousin Iirka? Are you there?”
There was a pause of almost four seconds, one of the annoying things about dealing with a lightspeed lag. “I am here, Cousin Zziir.” Like Zziir, the other alien used a remarkably precise one-word term that described their exact degree of relation, but the translator rendered it simply as “cousin.” “This is something of a surprise. I have never even seen a ship like that; how did you come to be on it?”
Zziir darted a look at Twilight, clearly having discerned that she was the pony in charge. “May I tell him?”
“Please do. I won’t stop you.”
Zziir quickly related the events that had led to him being captured by Twilight and Rainbow, including what he knew about Fifth Fleet’s activities. He briefly described the short interrogation, and the requests that the ponies had made of him. He finished with, “… and now they’re looking to contact the Council, but they’re afraid of going anywhere with a fleet presence. Cousin… have you heard anything about this? You’re fairly high up on the chain of command, I’m sure you’ve heard of the species that shot down our first-contact party.”
There was a very long pause, longer than the lag called for. Finally, the response came. “Zziir… is this anything like what happened with your aunt Maalkara?”
Twilight almost held her breath. This was exactly what Zziir had cautioned them about, that he’d be able to pass a message they couldn’t understand. She waited anxiously for his reply, wondering if they would have to fight their way clear.
“No, Cousin, nothing like that.” Zziir trilled. “I’m not under any duress, and they haven’t threatened me at all. I’m not sure how much I believe, but I think they genuinely do want to speak to us; they seem desperate to do so.” Twilight relaxed imperceptibly. He believed them. She’d been afraid that he’d betray them, but that didn’t seem to be the case.
There was another long pause. “Cousin… this seems unbelievable. No, I haven’t heard a word of any species attacking a first-contact team, but the Council has supposedly been in closed session for months now, debating something. Could these creatures have something to do with that?”
“I don’t know. They say that their only encounter with the Council was an infiltrator cruiser that opened fire on one of their system patrols.”
“I’ve heard nothing about that, though it’s likely I wouldn’t. The infiltrators keep to themselves.” There was a brief pause. “You there, who Zziir is speaking for. What exactly do you want? Why are you here?”
Twilight cleared her throat. “We only want to talk to your people, and we want to find a way to stop what feels like a war we didn’t start. If you could send a message to your government, asking them on our behalf to meet with us, that’s all we ask.” She glanced at the alien. “And if you could give us some supplies for, er, Zir?” Twilight just couldn’t make her throat produce the right noise for the alien’s name. “I know I’m mispronouncing his name, but we aren’t sure we have the right supplies for him. Could you send some over?”
“Why don’t you send him back to us?” The voice on the other end asked.
It was a fair question. She opened her mouth to speak, but Zziir beat her to the punch. “I’ll volunteer to stay, Cousin. These folk have no reason to trust us, and I’d like to stay with them as a gesture of good faith. They’ve treated me very well, and I’m not afraid of staying here for now.”
Twilight frowned in surprise, but Fluttershy smiled gently. “Thank you, Zziir. I appreciate all you’re doing for us.”
The depot’s response brought them all up short. “Wait… Fifth Fleet is your station, right, Zziir? They emptied out their headquarters depot a few days back. It’s likely they’re engaged in something major right now… and there are rumors that the new Admiral is involved with the Interventionists.”
Zziir made a choking sound. “The Interventionists? That doesn’t exist! Wasn’t that just the excuse the Council used a few decades back to do a major reorganization on the infiltrator branch?”
“What are the Interventionists?” Fluttershy asked.
“They’re fiction,” Zziir said in an undertone. “Some faction of the Council that supposedly wanted to wipe out more primitive species because they didn’t want too many members on the Senior Council. No one’s that evil.”
“We’re sending a shuttle with food supplies,” the depot replied, ignoring the aside, “and we’ve already sent a message to the outsystem courier to head to Baltor immediately with your message. It may be several days before they put together a response, though. You may want to head back to your home system; I’m a little worried about Fifth Fleet’s behavior, considering what you’ve told me.”
Fluttershy and Twilight shared a worried look. “Thank you, Commodore Iirka, we’ll do that,” the pegasus replied. “How worried do you think we should be?”
The response was grim. “In your place… I’d be worried. Very worried. The message I sent to the courier had every ‘urgent’ tag I could put on it, but the Council doesn’t react very quickly. Hopefully, the Interventionists won’t intervene before the government does.”
The two ponies shared another concerned look. “Thank you,” Twilight said, before closing the channel. She turned to Silver Stars. “Captain, get those supplies loaded as fast as you can, and then make full speed for the Jump limit. I want to be home as soon as possible.”
“Aye-aye, ma’am,” Silver Stars replied crisply. Twilight could see concern lurking beneath the other mare’s professional exterior. She only hoped their worry was unfounded.
Dauntless arrived in her home system a matter of hours later, reappearing in the system where she’d started.
“Receiving a transmission for you, ma’am.” Chatterbox said, almost the instant the Jump shock cleared away from the bridge crew’s minds.
“What?” That couldn’t be possible. Dauntless had just entered the system. It would take close to half an hour for the light from their entry to reach the homeworld, and another half-hour for any reply to reach them.
Unfortunately, reality didn’t seem to care whether that wasn’t possible. “There’s a transmission from home, ma’am. Addressed to you, origin point is direct from Princess Celestia.”
Twilight’s brow furrowed. How could the Princess have known she was coming? She felt an ominous chill pervading her body. “Is it marked private?”
“No, ma’am.” The unicorn stallion’s voice was worried. “It is marked urgent, though.”
“Put it on the main speakers.”
“My ever-faithful student,” Celestia’s voice began. The winged unicorn’s voice sounded... weary. Almost exhausted. Twilight felt a spike of anxiety drive into her belly. “I can only hope you receive this in time. We are under attack, Twilight Sparkle, and the situation is dire.”
Attack?! “Oculus, get me a look at the homeworld, now!” Twilight snapped.
Celestia’s voice continued. “We don’t know who they are. They appeared only a few hours ago and attacked without warning, and without mercy. Luna and I are keeping the shield raised, and all of Equestria is working to help us, but I fear that before long it will prove to be too much.”
“The shipyard’s gone, ma’am.” Oculus spoke over Celestia’s message, the unicorn’s voice hushed, as though she didn’t want to speak. It sounded as loud as a scream against the utter stillness of the rest of the bridge crew. “There’s a significant debris ring in orbit, and I’m seeing constant explosions against the planetary shields. I’m not reading any message traffic from anywhere in the system, apart from the homeworld. The cutters, the miners, the construction ships and surveyors, the science stations and habitats... all of it’s gone. All I can find is debris.”
“No...” Twilight whispered. The Council fleet. It had to be. She felt like she’d been struck; it was too much, far too much to take in like this. Had Zziir lied? Had the Council been planning this attack all along? Had they told her to come back here, so they could wipe out Equestria completely? There were so many dead already, shattered to dust and floating in the cold of space...
Celestia, of course, couldn’t hear her. “They are bombarding us constantly. Even a single weapon getting through the shield will have apocalyptic results. We cannot hold, my student. There are far too many for you to fight; you must run. Take your ship, and all the ponies aboard it, and flee. Try to rebuild Equestria somewhere far from here, for this world is lost. We will delay them as long as possible, draw out our deaths to keep their attention here, and we will bleed them as much as we are able. Hopefully they will not be able to follow.”
Celestia’s voice softened. “I have loved you like a daughter, Twilight Sparkle. Please, listen to me as you would your mother; do not attempt to relieve us. You would only die. Save yourselves. Save something. Run.”
“The message is looped, ma’am,” Chatterbox’s voice sounded like thunder in the dead silence of the bridge. “Set to constant broadcast, looks like.”
“I’ve found three formations of Council ships,” Oculus said quietly. “There may be more that I can’t see. Each one is more than eight hundred strong. They’re staying out of powered missile range, sending their own rounds in ballistic. They’re looping around, accelerating to send them in at high enough speed that the defenses can’t stop them all.”
No, they wouldn’t be able to. The defensive systems, augmented by the phenomenal telekinetic power of the Celestial Sisters, could only destroy what they could see. Missiles coming in that fast would be nearly impossible to spot in time, before they smashed into the shield with the cataclysmic force bestowed by their velocity. She wondered in a moment of blinding irrelevance how the Council fleet could carry that many missiles, but it didn’t matter. Her home was dying, right in front of her, and there was nothing she could do. Nothing. Her mouth tasted like ashes.
Twilight’s head came up abruptly. There was nothing she could do, not alone, but the lesson, the one lesson that Celestia had taught her in a myriad of different forms, was that friendship could conquer, when one pony alone would fail. And Dauntless had friends, regardless of the Council’s true position.
“Charge the Gate drive, as fast as possible,” Twilight snapped. “Set our destination as the Tazaft base.”
Silver Stars’ eyes snapped around to meet her Commander’s, sudden determination glowing like fire in their depths as she realized what Twilight intended. “Yes, ma’am!” the captain barked, and the bridge crew exploded into frantic action.
“Chatterbox, prepare to send a transmission.” Twilight didn’t pause to hear the stallion’s acknowledgment. She activated the bridge network, setting it to record her voice. “Dear Princess Celestia,” she said, consciously imitating the letters she’d sent as a student, all those long years ago, “Today I’ve learned that friendship can bring a glimmer of light, even when the world seems darkest, and can give you hope when all seems lost. You’re going to learn it, too.” Her voice turned hard. “Don’t you dare give up, Princess. I’m jumping out... but I’ll be back with friends. I will be back, do you hear me? Hold on, Princess. Just hold on, keep Equestria alive long enough for us to get the reinforcements you need, and we will be back!” She ended the recording, and sent it to Chatterbox. “Send that back to the homeworld.”
“Yes, ma’am!” The stallion said with a grin. “Sent. That’ll light a fire under their tails!”
“I hope so,” Twilight said grimly. “I don’t know how long it will take to bring Uhlsie’s fleet back with us, and I need them to hold out until then.”
The jubilant mood faded as the engines charged, and everypony was forced to helplessly watch the speckles of light blooming against the planetary shield as the Council bombardment continued unabated, thundering against the helpless gem of the world. Twilight felt sick to her stomach, knowing that even one of those missiles slipping past would cause untold havoc, murder huge numbers of ponies. Maybe even ponies she knew, friends she’d left at home. Or perhaps it would hit zebra lands, or kill buffalos or griffons. All those options were unacceptable, all were murder.
Some of her friends had been on the shipyard, she realized, the memory of their faces stabbing like icy knives in her heart. She’d known ponies out on the orbital habitats, the science stations. All of them were almost certainly dead, and she felt a cold anger building in her heart at these monsters, these beasts who would murder so many for no reason.
Finally, the engines cleared, and Dauntless jumped, bound for the distant glimmer of the star that housed the Tazaft forward base.
The Tazaft recognized them immediately, and they were allowed through the patrols around the base without fuss. Tazaft ships swarmed around space near the surprisingly orderly construct of their staging base, thousands strong. Most were warships, but others were tenders, cargo ships, repair vessels... ships of a dozen different roles that were necessary to make a deep-space naval installation function.
Twilight contacted the Tazaft military command the instant the transmission delay was short enough to make it practical, and was routed to Eklsee without even having to ask twice.
“Thlaaht Shkarku! It is a pleasure to see you again,” the alien greeted her, the spines on her head moving slowly. “It seems that the Council forces have partially withdrawn from this region of space; I was gathering my fleet for a strike on their headquarters before they could return. Perhaps you would be willing to join us?”
“They haven’t withdrawn,” Twilight explained hastily, “They’ve massed to attack my homeworld. They have hundreds of ships, thousands. I need your help, Uhlsie, I need it desperately.”
The Tazaft was silent for a long moment. “Are they all in one force? All attacking your homeworld in one group?”
Twilight blinked at the question. She shook her head slowly. “No... they’re in smaller fleets, about eight hundred strong each.”
Eklsee’s lips peeled back from her teeth, surprisingly far, baring blunt incisors flanked by an astonishing set of tusks that Twilight hadn’t even suspected that the alien possessed. “Excellent. Concentrated we could never have beat them, but dispersed like that? We have a chance. We can bleed them.” The Tazaft tapped keys that Twilight couldn’t see, looking away from the video pickup. “Your world will require us three jumps to reach; my ships can manage two without recharging, so I will need to bring my tenders along. I will leave them in the system before yours, to make sure I have a line of retreat, should things go badly.”
“Uhlsie...” Twilight’s stomach was churning with worry and fear, tension coiling so tightly around her body that she feared she would break, like an overwound spring. “Uhlsie, we can’t withdraw. They’re bombarding my home. I can’t leave. I can’t abandon them.”
Quills rattled. “And I cannot sacrifice my fleet if things are hopeless. Fear not, Thlaaht Shkarku, I do not intend to flee unless victory is impossible to attain, and I have plans. You have accurate survey charts of your home system, yes?”
Twilight nodded, furrowing her brow. “Yes, I’ll send them along. Why?”
“From what I have seen, your ship cares not for gravity. Ours are different; they can only jump to where space is... flat. That is the best I can describe it, with this translator. Ordinarily, we jump in directly above or below a star, but that will put us far from your world, and give the enemy time to concentrate into a force we could not defeat.”
Twilight tilted her head, wanting to get this conversation over as quickly as possible so she could go help her world. “We’ll send the charts, one moment...”
“We need them with precise locations and masses of the planets and the star,” Eklsee said hurriedly. “Your world has a moon, yes?”
“Yes, it does.”
“Good. Good. We will jump to one of the flat places created by the world and the moon and the star. It is difficult to calculate, but with the kind of charts I’m sure your people could build, we can do it.” The alien flashed those tusks again. “We can give you the exact time we will do so. If we do, do you think you can lure the enemy past that location at that time? If they are already close enough that we can strike them with lightspeed weapons, we could finish that group off quickly and with few losses, leaving fewer of the enemy to crush.”
“Yes, I believe we can do that.” Twilight paused, thinking hard.. “Uhlsie, can you jump outside the orbit of the moon? I doubt we would be able to lure them that close to the planet; the defenses would destroy them if they came that far in.”
The alien made a noise in her throat, her fingers stirring. “You are sure of that?”
“Yes, very.” Coming so close would allow the Princesses to grab the ships. While they weren’t quite as powerful as their movement of the moon and adjustment of the planetary rotation suggested, (both the planet and its moon were extremely magically active, and responded very easily to a sufficiently powerful touch) they were more than strong enough to crush and rend starships by the dozen, especially when their strength was boosted by the defense systems’ resonator matrices. With the strength Twilight knew her teacher possessed, any detachments sent close to the world the Sisters watched over would have regretted the mistake. Briefly. They could also sweep the moon around in its orbit, though doing so would disrupt the tides badly. In fact, they’d probably already been doing it, hence why the Council fleet had broken up to attack from multiple angles. Twilight made a note to make sure to tell the Princesses to put the moon where her charts indicated it should be.
Eklsee made a rumbling noise in the back of her throat. “We can do the jump you describe. It will lend additional risk to an already risky attempt, but I am willing to take that risk. Send me the charts, Shkarku, and I will give you the time we will arrive.”
Twilight felt an overwhelming surge of relief rush through her. She wasn’t alone. The Tazaft, and their thousands of ships, would be there to help. Maybe they could do this, after all. Maybe her world could live. They still had a heck of a fight on their hooves... but she wasn’t alone.
She quickly assembled the information Eklsee needed, sending it to her station even as Dauntless reversed her course and began to boost back outsystem for jump. She received back a message of thanks, containing the precise timestamp, helpfully translated into the Equestrian system, that the fleet would arrive, as well as the location. “I hope we can do this, Thlaaht Shkarku,” Eklsee said on the screen. “If we can defeat this fleet, perhaps it will be enough to end our war. Even if it does not, I consider it worth the price to defend my ally.”
“Thank you, Uhlsie.” Twilight sent back. “Thank you.”
“I will see you on the battlefield. Go with courage.”
Dauntless reached the Jump limit, and the Gate drive engaged with a surge of power, flinging it once more back to its place of origin.
There was no time for speeches. Twilight wanted to give one, wanted to tell the crew how important this was, but they already knew. Thoughts had flown around the network, spreading news of what they were doing to everypony aboard, and everypony knew what they faced. Everypony knew they would likely die… but they would die saving their world. Twilight was content knowing that she would fall that way, and she knew her crew felt the same.
The transmission was sent the moment Dauntless re-entered the system, letting Equestria know they were coming and what their plans were. Celestia sounded exhausted when she acknowledged Twilight’s message, after the long delay. She also sounded unhappy about her student’s return, but Twilight heard the tiniest ghost of hope in her mentor’s voice. The moon moved to where it should be, but slower than she knew the Princesses could move it. They were barely in time; Celestia was reaching the end of her endurance, and Luna must be, too. Still, that glimmer of hope in the Princess’s weary voice filled Twilight with determination; she would not fail.
The Council force was already turning as Dauntless charged toward them, alone against eight hundred foes. Her shields slammed into place, managed by every engineer who could be spared from other duties, and missiles spat in pitiful clusters from her launchers.
:I’ve only got a few minutes’ worth of ordnance: Wingblade’s thought pulsed to the network.
:Don’t hold back too much. We need their attention: Twilight sent back. She could feel the tension, the determination in the net, colored brown and red and tasting of glowing embers.
The missiles were effective all out of proportion with their relatively tiny numbers. The two engagements Dauntless had been in had given Oculus and Wingblade a vast amount of information on Council electronic warfare and point defense capabilities, and they’d modified their doctrine and their systems to account for it. The Council ships would shift their own systems on the fly, as would Twilight’s officers, but this time Dauntless was starting out ahead of the game.
The sensors told a grim story. Even as Council ships detonated in diamond-hard blinks of light, torn asunder by Equestrian missiles that slipped like thieves through even their massed point-defense, contemptuously ignoring the Council fleet’s attempts to jam, Oculus was tallying the foe’s numbers.
Three task forces besides this one were flinging their hate at the helpless world, striving to murder those that had done nothing to them. Four sub-fleets in total, more than three thousand enemy ships. The Tazaft forces that were coming would only outnumber them four to three.
Still, they were separated. If they could fall on the enemy one force at a time, defeat them in detail, they could still do this. They could. Twilight had to believe that, for the alternative was unthinkable.
The first enemy salvo roared in, a concentrated deluge of death all directed at the lonely figure of the Equestrian exploratory cruiser. Twilight could feel the gunners’ minds straining as they fought to direct their defenses, and she felt Night Breeze’s frantic attempts to twist the ship out of the path of the oncoming ordnance. Warheads detonated against Dauntless’s shields, but the mighty barrier held, at least for the moment. Twilight could feel the ozone tang of system overloads throughout the ship as parts of the shield absorbed too much energy, and the engineers fought to stabilize them.
A second colossal salvo streaked in. Again the shields held, again they defended the ship from the Council’s rage, but Twilight could feel them weakening. The load was immense, though, and the systems were starting to fail under the strain. There was no way the exploration cruiser could stand up to this many foes; all they could do was sting and run.
Dauntless pulled out of the enemy’s range, her engines straining as she fought for distance. :Excellent work, everypony: Twilight pulsed, feeling the iron tang of relief from Wingblade and Peppermint Punch as they shifted their attention from the monstrous strain of managing the point defense to focus on the launchers. :That’s phase one. Phase two is ready?:
:Yes: Came the thought from Monkeywrench down in Engineering. The mare was terse in the network, eschewing extraneous thoughts, saving her energy for her work. She was ready, though, Twilight could feel it.
The lavender mare allowed herself a brief moment of satisfaction. Things were going well, and on schedule. The other Council forces were continuing their bombardment of the planet, evidently trusting this force to handle her lone ship.
Perfect.
Dauntless staggered suddenly, light and heat flaring from her engine pods in an abrupt flash, so intense it was almost an explosion. Her acceleration dropped precipitously, falling far below her maximum, dropping low enough that the pursuing ships would be able to bring her back into range within minutes. Scenting blood, the Council fleet pushed their own acceleration up to the maximum they could sustain, eager to close and kill the ship that had slain so many of their compatriots.
The Council ships closed quickly.
Nothing appeared.
:Where are they?!: Twilight pulsed, panic suddenly clawing at her thoughts and oozing outward, mixing with the fear she suddenly felt from the rest of the crew. :That was the timestamp! Where are they?!:
Monkeywrench fought to push Dauntless back to full speed, clawing to reverse the sudden slowdown she’d done to focus the enemy on the cruiser and drag them out of the Council fleet’s reach. The engines protested, the chaotic energy deliberately introduced to create that light cascade preventing them from functioning smoothly.
The Council ships closed like hungry wolves, scenting injured prey. They would be in range in moments.
:Energy spike!: Came the thought from Oculus. Twilight felt relief surge through her at the message. :Here they come!:
Tazaft ships exploded out of the void, thousands of them, heralded by violent pulses of energy that utterly blinded the Council ships. The Council fleet staggered, surprised and disoriented, their sensors overloaded, unable to see their attackers and not expecting the sudden, overwhelming assault. The Tazaft ships were already within beam range, Twilight and Silver Stars having lured the Council force perfectly into ambush position, and the swarm of ships poured around them, enveloping the blinded task force and tearing at them with shocking savagery. Beams stabbed and flashed, and Council warships came apart in a vast scintillation of energy and debris, spattering across the sky as the Council force died.
:Beautiful: thought Wingblade, :Beautiful: The raw passion in the young mare’s mind would have brought tears to Twilight’s eyes, if she’d been wholly in her own body.
“Brilliantly executed, Shkarku,” Eklsee’s voice spoke in radio waves through the void. To the ponies in the network, it seemed achingly slow, taking what felt like hours to convey the simple message. “That could not have gone better.”
:You could have been more on-time: Wingblade thought sourly over the bridge network.
:It was only about half a minute: Twilight thought reprovingly, while composing her return message. “One down, three to go,” her voice said, slowed to a speed that Eklsee would be able to understand.
Even as she sent it, though, she was looking at the sensor returns with a chill. Two of the Council sub-fleets had linked up while she led the first to its doom. The third had already altered its course, and the slow Tazaft ships would never be able to reach it before the whole fleet merged once more. Dauntless would not be able to lure the separated force away, not with the Tazaft fleet already in the system. Panic again surged, met by the sick fear radiating from the entire bridge crew. Even Wingblade was emanating a slow, deathly terror as the situation registered.
“They are no longer separated, Thlaaht Shkarku.” Eklsee said, evidently noticing what the Equestrians had already seen. This closely tied to the translator, Twilight could hear the tightness in the alien’s voice, the wish to deny what she saw. “We are only twice their number. I cannot engage them now, not unified as they are and without surprise. They would crush us.”
“But we can’t leave now!” Twilight cried over the comm system, her voice crawling like a glacier while her mind and thoughts raced. “We can’t! If we leave, my world dies! Every pony in Equestria will die, every griffon, every zebra... every thinking being! They will all die if we abandon them! Please, Uhlsie, please! I can’t do this alone! We can’t let the Council murder them! Please, help me!”
Twilight felt sick as the reply to her plea came lumbering in. “Would that I could, Thlaaht Shkarku. But this fleet is two-thirds of the ships the Tazaft possess; I cannot lose them here, fruitlessly, and leave my people helpless. I am deeply, truly sorry, but I must withdraw.” Twilight started composing a retort, but Eklsee wasn’t done. “Come with me. With the charts you gave us, we could return in a day or so, when I have had time to gather my transport ships. We could decoy them away from your world again, you and I, lead them to the edge of the system while my transports evacuate as many of your people as possible. We cannot win here, but perhaps we can save some of your people!”
Twilight understood. These weren’t Eklsee’s people, and their friendship wasn’t close enough for the alien to seek annihilation to affirm it, but she was willing to come back, to try a different approach. Twilight couldn’t leave, though. She knew something Eklsee couldn’t; the Princesses would never last another day. Without the Sisters, the shield would not hold, and when the shield fell, the Council would murder her home. Just as Eklsee couldn’t stay, Twilight couldn’t leave. “I can’t go with you,” Twilight’s response whispered out. She knew this was wrong, knew she should leave as Celestia had asked… but she couldn’t. “I understand why you have to go, but I’m staying. The defenses won’t hold for that long, unless something keeps the Council from focusing on them. We will try to decoy the fleet away from the homeworld for as long as we can; if you still feel any sense of friendship toward me or my people, please, gather your transports and try to return. Maybe I can lead them away for long enough.”
Eklsee’s quills clattered as she replied. “Your courage humbles me, Thlaaht Shkarku. I will do what I can, but I fear that there will be nothing to return to.”
“I would welcome whatever you can do.” Twilight was surprised that she didn’t even feel bitter. Sad, yes. Hopeless, yes. But she could understand the alien’s decision.
“Die well, Thlaaht Shkarku. I will try to write a song for you.” The Tazaft ships reversed their acceleration, headed back to their emergence point, and minutes later, Equestria’s last hope vanished as suddenly as they’d come, leaving Twilight and her bridge crew feeling hollow, watching the vast Council fleet bearing down upon them.
:Signal from the Princess: Chatterbox interjected.
Twilight tied her thoughts into the communication system. :My faithful student, that was brilliantly done. A quarter of the Interlopers, gone. Can you do it again?:
The unicorn’s heart felt like a lump of lead as she responded. :No, Princess. I’m sorry, but our allies can’t fight a force this large. We’d hoped to catch them while they were scattered, but....: Twilight couldn’t finish the thought, couldn’t bear to tell her mentor that this was the end. She no longer believed what she’d heard at the depot, no longer believed that the alien they’d taken captive had been telling the truth. If he had been, there was no way this could have happened.
There was a pause. :I see. Still, you have bought us time. Now run, my student. Take your ship and go. Don’t think about what is happening behind you, and do not look back:
:I’m sorry, Princess. I can’t. There’s a chance that we can distract them long enough for our allies to come back with transports, to save at least some of you. We’re going to try.:
The Princess’s return thought was shot with anguish, desperate. :Twilight, no! Please! Don’t throw your lives away like this! Please, please, run while you can!: Twilight had never felt that kind of raw pain in her mentor’s thoughts before. It was agonizing to experience.
Twilight cut the connection, severing her contact with her beloved teacher. She hoped the Princess would be able to forgive her. :Are the rest of you okay with doing this?: she sent to the bridge crew through the link.
The others pulsed a brief thought to Silver Stars, unanimously allowing the captain to speak for all of them. :Yes. We’re Wardens. This is what we do.: There was a tinge of pride to the thought, pride mixed with sadness, a steely current of determination lying underneath it.
:All right then. Let’s go.:
Dauntless’s pitifully small number of missiles didn’t even last all the way through the first pass. The Council’s return fire smashed through both point defense and shields in a hurricane of flame, gouging savagely at the cruiser’s armor. There were no more freak failures like the first warhead the ship had taken, but Dauntless was brutally battered nonetheless. Twilight’s mind wanted to cringe away, knowing that the breaches in the ship’s hull had killed several of the crew, smashed them to pieces or burned them to ash, but she couldn’t afford it. Couldn’t afford to feel the pain.
The cruiser pulled out in front of the enemy fleet, fleeing for the edge of the system. The Council ships followed doggedly, probably hoping to kill her before she could vanish again. A pointless fear; the damage from the exchange had destroyed the Gate drive. It would take weeks in a shipyard that no longer existed to fix it.
Dauntless would not be leaving the system.
Again and again, she slowed, allowing her pursuers a single salvo each time, to keep them from breaking off, her crew knowing that every second that they endured the brutal battering bought their homes and loved ones a few more seconds of life. They were determined to draw it out, to make their deaths purchase as much time as they could, praying that they would last long enough for Eklsee to gather a rescue force and knowing that they wouldn’t. Missiles gouged and smashed Dauntless’s armored hull, opening more and more rents, blasting more and more of her crewmares into meat and ash. Twilight felt Peppermint Punch die during the third attack, her mind shrieking as it overloaded with the strain of constant linkage. Wingblade clung determinedly, absorbing the shock of the unicorn’s death and fighting on alone. Twilight threw herself into the weapons’ officer’s link, doing what she could to keep them alive for a few more seconds. Just a few more.
After the fifth attack, Twilight felt another mind join the bridge crew, edging in to replace Peppermint. :Hey, Twi.:
:Rainbow Dash?: She asked the question, even though she already knew.
:Yeah. Helping out where I can. Rares is down in Engineering, trying to keep the shields from collapsing completely. A.J.’s helping run damage control, Fluttershy’s down in the medbay, and Pinkie’s trying to record what she can. You know, so just in case someone pulls it out of the wreck, they’ll know what happened: There was a pause. :Heh. Thought you guys would all outlive me. This kinda sucks:
:It really does.:
Then the sixth salvo was upon them, and there was no time for anything else. Rainbow threw herself into the fire control network; she wasn’t as experienced as Wingblade, but she
knew the basics, and she had the same enormous mental resilience that Twilight and Rarity had.
Dauntless staggered outward, pulling out of her pursuers range one more time. She was a broken, air-bleeding wreck, half her crew dead, and Twilight knew that if they took further damage, they wouldn’t be able to pull out of range again. The engines were failing anyway; in a few minutes their acceleration would drop, and the Council would catch her for the last time. Oculus, freed for the moment from the task of pinpointing enemy missiles, spotted something new. :More contacts: her exhausted mental voice slurred. :Directly ahead:
More Council ships, Twilight saw. She no longer felt afraid, no longer felt sick, didn’t even feel a chill, she just felt numb at the news. More of them, come to murder her and her home. The Council must have sent more, must have felt that Fifth Fleet wasn’t enough. These must be reinforcements, just arrived, dropping out of FTL. There were more than five thousand, a massive force, dwarfing the one that pursued them and bearing down as fast as the one behind was pursuing. The contacts lit the sensor display ahead with a sea of red icons. :How many ships do they need to kill us?: She thought bitterly. Nopony replied. Twilight noted that one group, about seven hundred ships, was pushing out ahead of the main fleet, driving at accelerations that rode the edge of what she knew would burn out a Council drive. They risked losing their engines, stranding them here until extensive repairs could be done, which struck Twilight as strange. How odd, she thought, realizing that there were actually several different types of ship in the oncoming fleet, when she’d only seen one type in Council forces before. It doesn’t matter, she thought privately, the knowledge of her failure settling like a lead weight in her stomach. This is it.
:There’s... a lot of comm traffic going back and forth from that new force: Chatterbox noted a moment later. :A lot. There’s... Commander! Listen!:
Twilight tied herself into the comm system again. The oncoming fleet was broadcasting a message, a broad-band analog radio signal in several different languages... including Equestrian.
“This is High Admiral Turthak, commander in chief of the Baltornic Council Enforcement Division. I am here with elements of the Third and Ninth Enforcement Fleets, and components of Kruusch and Terran Planetary Defense Fleets. Fifth Enforcement Fleet is hereby directed to surrender and stand down immediately, and Admiral Peters is to be placed under arrest, pending charges including misrepresenting the orders of a superior, illegal employment of force, mutiny, treason, attempted xenocide, and multiple counts of murder. Again, Fifth Fleet is directed to stand down. All crews are to be taken into custody and returned to Baltor. Any ships that refuse to do so will be considered to be in rebellion against the Council, and will be fired upon.” The translated voice was toneless, flat, but listening to some of the audio in the other languages, Twilight thought she could hear a cold rage in the alien’s words.
Twilight couldn’t believe what she was hearing. This Council force... was here to stop the other? Why? Even if the depot commander had been telling the truth, he’d said it would take days for any reply to come. Still, she felt a cautious stir of hope, a tiny glimmer in the darkness, that perhaps all was not lost.
Her thoughts were interrupted by another message, this one a tight-beam radio transmission from the sub-fleet that was maintaining such dangerous acceleration. It was in one of the Council languages, fortunately one of the ones that they had gotten from the Tazaft. Twilight activated the translator daemons, feeding them the necessary information, and allowed them into her mind. “Equestrian vessel! This is Admiral Glenmore, Terran Defense Fleet, aboard the Everest! I’m sending this message directly from my flagship; please, set your heading toward me! If you can reach us, my ships will shield you! We are friendly, repeat, we are friendly!”
As she watched, two of the ships in the fleet shuddered wildly, their engines blowing out under the strain of their acceleration. She was suspicious, but what option did she have? Even if she altered their course immediately, the two fleets would close on Dauntless like the jaws of a vice. Still, she didn’t quite believe it, though the word ‘friendly’ resonated in her heart. “Why should I believe you?” She sent back, wondering wearily what kind of response she’d receive.
“You don’t have any reason to.” Admiral Glenmore replied. “That bastard Peters... I don’t blame you for not trusting me.” The oncoming force that was the source of the transmission altered their course slightly; Dauntless would fly through the center of their formation if they maintained it. “You have every right to hate us. I can only offer my promise and my word; if you fire on us, we will not reply. We are friends, even if you don’t believe it. Furthermore, we will engage any of Fifth Fleet’s ships that fire on you, and if you can reach us, we will surround you so they can’t fire on you without firing on us, too. We’re trying our damndest to get to you, but you need to alter your course to let us reach you before Fifth Fleet does!”
The ships that were evidently Admiral Glenmore’s command abruptly flipped, accelerating back as hard as before. If Dauntless continued to limp on in her current course, the seven hundred ships in front of her would perfectly match her speed as she reached them. Even as Twilight watched, five more of the oncoming ships shuddered and stopped accelerating, coasting into the system on inertia as their drives burned out. Friends… Twilight had told Celestia that Dauntless had friends… perhaps they had more than they’d realized? Oh, she wanted to believe it, but she wasn’t sure she could afford to.
Behind them, the Council pursuit force was behaving erratically. Many of the ships had ceased acceleration entirely, while others still drove toward Dauntless. Had all this, all this death, all these fights, all been... what? Some hideous crime? How could anyone do that? How could it have gone unnoticed up until now?
“Cease acceleration and stand down, Fifth Fleet. This is your final warning.” The voice of High Admiral Turthak came, again being broadcast in multiple languages, as though it wanted Dauntless to hear. “We have scanned this system. We know what has been done here, and we know that the Equestrians were not aggressors and never have been. Admiral Peters’ crimes are horrific in scope, anathema to any civilized being, and any ship failing to comply with my orders will be treated as attempting to continue those crimes and met with overwhelming force. Do not fire on the Equestrian vessel. Under any circumstances. Disobey this order and you will die, my oath on it.” Most of the pursuing ships had fallen out of formation, and only a hooffull were still following. It was still enough to kill them, though; Dauntless’s defenses were essentially gone.
Twilight’s crew was on the ragged edge. Only Peppermint Punch had fallen out of the link, but several of the others were right on the verge. The next salvo would probably kill them anyway. Only Twilight and Rainbow were in any state to continue, and they couldn’t fight the ship alone. The next pony to die in the link would probably take everyone else with her. The unicorn made a snap decision. “We’ll trust you,” she sent back to Admiral Glenmore. “We’re dying, and we can’t hurt you anyway. If you betray us, I’ll never know it.” Wearily, Twilight altered Dauntless’s course toward the oncoming force, and ordered everypony out of the link.
The world rushed back, and pain filled her head. It was several seconds before her eyes worked, and a horrible, iron smell filled her nostrils. She thought it was another side-effect of the prolonged, stressful link, until she looked around. Peppermint Punch’s body lay where Rainbow had tossed it aside in order to use her station, blood and tissue leaking from her ears and nose, her mouth open with a look of agony frozen on her face. Twilight shuddered. The bridge crew collapsed around her, some still moving, some unconscious. She hoped they were unconscious, at least; they could well have died during the disconnect. Dump-shock like that could easily be fatal. Only Twilight and Rainbow remained upright and functional.
She looked up at the flickering image of the main plot, as the broken, bleeding wreck of her ship staggered into the teeth of the oncoming formation. She watched... and they didn’t fire. The ships moved in around her, their formation closing to surround the shattered cruiser, sheltering her from their own people.
A voice whispered from the bridge speakers in an alien language. Belatedly, Twilight activated the translator, since Chatterbox was lying limp at his station. “Thank you,” Admiral Glenmore’s voice said softly. “I promise, I swear, you will not regret trusting me. Thank you for giving me the chance to redeem us.” There was a pause. “Some of your pursuers are still coming. Let me show you that we’re not all like them.”
Missile traces bloomed, some heading toward Dauntless and her new escort… and others headed outward, as the Council force around them opened fire on the pursuers. Council missiles streaked out, as fast as the escorting fleet could fire, and when the incoming salvo sought to end Dauntless, it was Council defenses that warded it off. The explosions that lit the void didn’t blot Dauntless away, they eradicated the few ships still trying to murder her.
Twilight felt a stillness fall over her, as the last of her actual enemies died. The rest of her pursuers had stopped, coasting along without adjusting their course, as the newcomer force decelerated to meet them. The vast Council fleet moved into proximity with the ships that had attacked Equestria, some docking while others stood off, their targeting systems staying threateningly active while they watched their companions.
The seven hundred ships that had shielded Dauntless didn’t join their cohorts. They stayed clustered around the broken cruiser, swarming like minnows around a wounded shark. The tight-beam transmission from Admiral Glenmore activated again, and Twilight heard a heavy, relieved sigh from the alien at the other end. “It’s over. Fifth Fleet has been arrested, and they won’t attack you again. Do you need assistance, Equestrian vessel? The Terran Defense Fleet stands ready to lend you any aid we can offer.”
It was too much. Twilight swallowed hard, but the emotional whiplash of the past several hours were just too much for her to handle. It started with a single sob, but it quickly built until the unicorn was weeping uncontrollably, tears pouring from her eyes. Tears of loss, mourning all the ponies and other creatures who had died, mixed with tears of utter relief. She wasn’t dead. Her world wouldn’t die. And finally, finally her mission had been accomplished: the Council was talking to her.
Twilight wept helplessly, unable to stop. She felt somepony approaching her, felt the warm, smooth metal of Rainbow Dash’s forelegs go around her as the pegasus embraced her friend, pulling the unicorn close. Twilight leaned into the hug, resting herself against her friend, feeling the comfort of her presence and letting herself draw strength from the contact. She kept crying, as on the bridge speakers, Admiral Glenmore repeated its offer of assistance.
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Didn't see that one coming.
Is there going to be a sequel?
Phew. It's been a wild ride.
Although I totally expected that))
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You guys know there's another chapter, right? I didn't just cut it off this time, I swear, there's a denouement and everything this time around!
As to a sequel; I'm not planning one at the moment, but, well, I never intended to write a sequel to Dread Chitin, and yet here it is...
I did not see that coming...
I honestly though the Dauntless was going to sacrifice itself and save Equestria.
I guess this gives a completely different meaning to the title of the next chapter.
I shall post my thoughts on a sequel in the next chapters comments.
Wooho! Go humans!
I... I can't even begin to... This story is amazing... I'm sitting here reading this and one line hits me and I just SOB "If you betray us, I'll never know it."
I... Just....
Beautiful emotion....
Now to finish this chapter and the next and all your other stories, EVER.
There was no time for speeches. Twilight wanted to give one, wanted to tell the crew how important this was, but they already knew. Thoughts had flown around the network, spreading news of what they were doing to everypony aboard, and everypony knew what they faced. Everypony knew they would likely die… but they would die saving their world. Twilight was content knowing that she would fall that way, and she knew her crew felt the same.
i was reading this part while listening to this
i think its fits the scene perfectly
YOU DID PULL A HOMEWORLD YOU WONDERFUL FUCKER !!
Yikes. This species is probably really good at keeping family trees.
fc09.deviantart.net/fs70/f/2013/017/f/4/mlp__wuuuuut_by_keterok-d5rufyb.png
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>Question #1: That shild is covering Equestria-country or Equestria-planet? In the first case, they could just bombard other nations.
Looks to be a planetary shield. Wouldn't be of much use otherwise, as c-fractional missiles hitting something NOT covered by the shield would be catastrophic. Depending on mass and just how fast they're going, a bare handful hitting the planet would trigger a pretty immediate mass extinction. That's assuming no accompanying warhead.
>Question #2: With what weapons they bombarding the planet? Kinetic or nuclear?
Considering they were described as moving too fast to reliably detect, their kinetic component is probably all that matters. At that point, assuming a direct hit, compared to the kinetic component the warhead would be nothing but a match compared to a bonfire. Or the equestrian ground facilities might be really bad at this sort of thing and I'm horribly over-estimating the necessary velocity.
That was amazing. TV miniseries quality right there.
Terrans! Sup, brothers from another, er, dimension!
I think it should go like this.
Twilight: "I gotta think of something! Thinkthinkthinkthinkthink Twilight, think! That's it! Ooh, you're going to like Moon. And you're going to like her more than anything."
Ship captain #1: "I want it."
Ship captain #2: "I need it."
Ship captain #3: "I really like her mane!"
*Council fleet smashes into Moon.*
Twilight: "The 'want it, need it' spell. Works every time."
Just as I got to the point where the Council's weapons breached their shields, destroying their jump drive and Twilight realized they couldn't leave the system the song "Maktar Nebula - Boss Battle" came on. Perfect timing. It's about to get real!
Better yet, when I got to the Terran defense fleet coming to defend them "Dayni Moon - Fixing Clank" came on. It's like my player's shuffle knows what I'm reading.
Everything after this had me choking up with happiness. You really had me invested in this, you truly did. Fantastic. Simply fantastic.
That end...
reminds me of a book called "the Excalibur alternative" where a REALLY evil race wiped out anyone they thought MIGHT try to apply for membership in the council!