Expeditionary Force

by Kris Overstreet

Or, All Quiet on the Earthling Front

Expeditionary Force
a snippet by Kris Overstreet

Feli-Marshaller Yorrerl read through the briefing material on his hand-pad while his tom-mother ran the platoon through a final inspection of their drop gear. The landing ship was dropping them into Landing Zone Five, a city in a nation called America by the fractious natives of this pathetic planet. Initial military response had been rapid, but the natives had been clearly outclassed from the start. Not that it was a complete cakewalk- hence Yorrerl's platoon getting deployed as a second wave force to secure a beachhead, rather than as occupation or mop-up forces.

The young officer gave one more glance at the intel for identifying officer ranks among prisoners. The equivalent of feli-marshaller in the native ranks was called lieutenant, which translated as something like "in absence of the landlord". Peculiar concept, Yorrerl thought. What did being a landowner have to do with the army? Even more bizarre, tom-mothers weren't considered officers by the natives; sergeants, literally translated as "servants" were considered just a slightly higher grade of line soldier. Obviously the natives under-appreciated the role of those who saw to the well-being and readiness of the army.

"Twenty to landing zone," the pilot called out, and the twenty Mwew soldiers put away bits of equipment or personal items in preparation for landing. Yorrerl followed their example; they had to clear the landing ship at once so it could lift off before the native air forces could respond. The initial orbital bombardments had been less than effective in this part of the planet because the natives, those idiots, seemed obsessed with plunking their major air bases right next to major population centers. The whole point of the invasion, after all, was to conquer the people. Planets were a deci per deka- the galaxy was full of them. Servitor races worth enslaving, less so. Therefore, the "Americans" still had far too many interceptors. which had brought down a number of the invasion fleet's limited supply of landing craft already, even given the short period of time when the craft were slow enough to be vulnerable.

At ten seconds the pilot engaged emergency deceleration, and everyone grunted as seven times this world's gravity gripped them for a few vital seconds. By comparison the final slam into the pavement of the landing zone came as a gentle tap. But the soldiers had trained for this, and within five seconds all of them had undone their harnesses and risen to their feet, ready to run the instant the debarkation ramp dropped.

Sunlight flooded the dim interior of the landing craft as the ramp clanged down. The soldiers rushed down, followed closely by Yorrerl and the platoon's tom-mother, who banged the exterior of the ship three times with a fist as they jumped off the ramp. Two seconds later, its ramp still retracting back into place, the landing ship lifted, joining three dozen just like it rising into the air around them.

"You! You there!" A claw-leader in dull combat fatigues trotted up to Yorrerl, who saluted in respect. "Are you the police troops I requested?"

"No, sir," Yorrerl said, maintaining his salute. "Second paw, first century, Ninety-Fifth Claw, occupation infantry, sir."

The claw-leader gave a dismissive return salute and snorted. "Recruits," he grumbled. "Command hasn't got my last reports, it seems. I need specially trained police troops to go door-to-door among the natives and clear out the hunting-rifles and other weapons. I've used up all my own police just guarding the weapons armories and shops. We're still taking casualties from civilian pop-shots- nothing significant or organized, but until we stop it we can't establish order."

"Sir," Yorrerl said, pulling out his hand-pad again, "we were briefed that you were tightly besieged by native infantry and armored forces."

The claw-leader shook his head. "They pulled back yesterday," he said. "Making room for their allies."

Yorrerl blinked. "Allies? Sir, they're natives. No offworld contact."

"Apparently they had one offworld contact," the claw-leader said, smiling. "The ponies."

"The ponies?" Yorrerl grinned. "You mean the fluffy, pacifist, cutesy-pie ponies? Homeworld where the sun goes round the planet because they're too silly to know better?"

"That's them," the claw-leader nodded. "We intercepted native communications saying they're expecting a pony force to relieve the native siege force here. I suppose we'll get a parley flag in a while with one of them asking us to 'change our ways' or 'learn the true meaning of friendship' or some other nonsense. It'll be a convenient opportunity to send back a surrender demand by the same messenger."

Yorrerl cocked his head. "Very good, sir," he said, "but what should my soldiers do in the meantime?"

"Oh, you might as well relieve my front-line troops for now," the claw-leader said offhandedly. "I can use them to begin the weapons sweep in the city. Which transport has your cent-major? I'll make the arrangements with him, and he'll tell you where to deploy."

"She, sir," Yorrerl said, pointing to a larger knot of solders fifty measures off, surrounding a tall officer in a peaked cap.

"Oh, by the..." The claw-leader shook his head. "I'll have that stupid hat off her head! The civilians make a game of sniping, even if their guns can't penetrate our uniforms. And her face isn't armored! And they learn fast what our insignia mean."

An exchange of salutes later, the claw-leader was off to confer, and Yorrerl was left with his tom-mother. "Rest the troops for the moment," he said. "And send someone to find out where the supply depot is, just in case. I expect we'll be told where to go shortly."

Indeed, less than an hour later Yorrerl's platoon had replaced another in a chain of prefabricated armor shelters on the outer perimeter of the landing zone. The hill below them had been cleared of obstructions for five hundred measures, offering a nice open field of fire right down to the road that ran between a fenceline and a waterway at the bottom of the slope.

But across the slope the next hill over remained wooded... and in the sky behind it, dark clouds were building up, far more quickly than Yorrerl could ever remember seeing. He pulled out his hand-pad and called up the local weather forecast, which showed sunny and clear for the day... and then, as he watched, was replaced with a storm warning.

Abnormal storm clouds building west of LZ, moving east at sixty km/soldec. Conditions inside storm reduce laser range to approx. eighty measures. Expect interference with ground comms and connection to fleet in orbit.

Yorrerl switched on his squad comms microphone. "Marshaller here," he said. "All units switch from laser to railguns. Repeat, laser to railguns."

A chorus of acknowledgments echoed over the network. The railguns had much more limited ammunition than the lasers, but even misses would continue flying downrange pretty much until they hit something, be it a hundred measures off or wherever gravity and air resistance finally forced them to hit the ground. Fog and rain, on the other hand, dissipated laser fire, rendering it a short-range only option.

There was also the minor danger of lightning and static- the latter would disrupt and garble high-bandwidth digital comms, but the former could be safely disregarded so long as the defenders remained within the prefab pillboxes. And since every one of his soldiers was trained to be self-sufficient in cases of communications blackout, a temporary loss of comms would be an inconvenience, not a crippling blow- at least not on the defense.

So I guess the ponies have weather control technology, Yorrerl thought. But that's never been an effective weapon of war, not on the tactical level. We had a whole chapter in OCS about that. But then, you can't expect a species which never fights to know anything about tactics or strategy- or surprise. "Everyone get ready for an assault," he told his troops over the channel. "They're going to come in under the cover of this storm."

Even as he spoke a wing of fighter craft soared overhead and into the clouds. Apparently high command thought the same thing he did. Yorrerl almost hoped the fighters didn't break up the assault completely. Neither he nor any of his troops had seen combat. The experience would do them good- and it might give them a paw up for remaining in the regular army once the invasion was over.

The fighters vanished into the clouds. There was some rumbling and banging, but Yorrerl couldn't tell if it was combat or just more thunder. He could see flashes of light, which might or might not be lightning or lasers or something else.

And then the wind came, a chilling gust out of the storm front, shaking the prefab shelter. "Stay alert! Weapons ready!" he shouted, and got a handful of static-popping responses. Up and down the thin line rail-gun rifle barrels extended from the firing ports of the shelters.

KRAK-A-BLAM!

The lightning strike came down three shelters north of Yorrerl's, lighting up the outward-facing side in a solid wave of plasma. He heard the muffled scream without need of the comms, saw something fly out of the back of the shelter-

- and then a series of lightning bolts showered down like an artillery barrage, striking each shelter with almost total precision. The soldier next to Yorrerl screamed as the railgun in his hands- the well-constructed, EMP-protected railgun- crackled with electricity, smoking from its tiny barrel.

The spikes in my ass! Yorrerl cursed mentally. "LASERS!" he shouted over the coms. "SWITCH TO LASERS!" He repeated himself twice more as the static roared in his ears, but he thought he heard acknowledgment of the order here and there. How, he wondered, how could they be that precise with static electricity? Lightning is almost random! That kind of precision is impossible!

Then the first sheet of torrential rain fell, followed by another gust of freezing wind, and then the rain returned to stay, almost blinding Yorrerl's view out the gunport. More thunder erupted behind his position as the storm rolled overhead, but he ignored it, focusing on the slope he was assigned to defend... and the softer rumbling he could just barely hear over the lightning strikes and the hissing cold rain. "Here they come!" he shouted. "Suppression fire!"

Flashes of red light, flickering faster than the eye could follow, lit up the rain-swept slope below them. The rain swallowed them up, but here and there a light of a different color- pale green here, hen-blue there, violet, yellow, other soft colors- seemed to flicker back in response.

Then the new colors began to glow steady, one ball after another appearing through the rain. Yorrerl counted twenty-one in all, almost two of them for each one of his emplacements. But as he watched he noticed that the balls were spreading out- apparently the assault was going to hit not just his pawful of troops but the units to either side of his in the line as well. On the one hand, that seemed a bit ill-advised- the enemy's best hope surely lay in a concentration of attacking power, not a dispersal. On the other hand, their weather control, however it worked, had seriously diminished Yorrerl's defensive ability...

... which, he realized with his first undiluted moment of raw fear, might mean that the ponies really did know what they were doing.

His eyes focused on the ball of light closest to his own shelter. It appeared to be approaching very, very quickly. He could just about make out shapes inside the light... and then his eyes flicked to the ball next over, and he could see now it wasn't a ball of light at all, but a wall instead- a shield of energy being pushed ahead of a pair of ponies, garbed in what looked like prehistoric plate-metal armor. Even as he watched, one of the armored ponies lowered its horn, and a blast of light thicker than any laser blast leaped out and slammed into the armored shelter next to his own, rocking it almost off its anchors. Laser fire responded, but bounced off the shield harmlessly.

"And where is our air support??" Yorrerl shouted aloud, as he pulled out his own laser pistol from its holster, stuck it through the gunport next to the soldier's rifle, and began blasting away at the wall of light only twenty measures away-

-which stopped cold at less than ten measures from the front of Yorrerl's shelter. The horned pony not holding up the energy shield blasted the shelter with his own beam, and Yorrerl swore as the heaving of the shelter walls nearly pulled the pistol from his hand. Then, just as the shelter settled back into place, he saw two more primitively armored ponies, these without horns, leap over the unicorns, land directly in front of the shelter, and spin around on their forehooves, presenting their raised hindquarters to Yorrerl's view.

Yorrerl had just a moment to count four brightly shoed hooves coming almost directly at him before they struck the prefabricated armor shelter, ripping it entirely off its anchors and hurling it back over the crest of the hill behind him, leaving him and his soldier exposed to the elements.

Pistol still in hand by some miracle, Yorrerl fired blindly at his attackers. He stepped backwards out of the foxhole which the shelter had protected, looking around to see the rest of his platoon fleeing toppled or destroyed shelters and running to the rear. He flinched as huge spears plunged down out of the skies, followed by winged ponies that pulled out of dives just before striking the turf, then swinging back around to retrieve their weapons wherever- or whatever- they had struck. He could hear his men screaming for help, for medics, or just out of mindless fear.

Something with a sharp point touched his neck. "You are my prisoner, sir," a soft, polite voice told him. "Please open your hand and release your weapon."

Yorrerl let his pistol drop to the ground.

"Thank you, sir." As Yorrerl turned, he saw one of the two horned ponies who had assaulted his position raise a hoof to its helmet. He could just see a primitive comms headset tucked underneath. "Day Guard Company A reporting: breakthrough successful. Consolidating gains. Company B is clear to follow up. Tell the National Guard we'll be ready for them to relieve us in twenty minutes."

Yorrerl tried to brush the rain out of his eyes. He gaped as more quartets of ponies, horned and not, passed through what had been his position at full gallop. In the air above his hill, not quite two dozen winged ponies, each carrying a spear under each forehoof, soared past just behind them. As he watched, he thought about what artillery might have done to break up the attack, if they hadn't relied on air forces for all their ground support. "What happened to our air support?" he asked aloud.

"I think they said we rescued seven of them," his captor said conversationally. "I'm sorry, but the rest failed to eject before their airships crashed or exploded. We'll do the best we can for any of those who survived, of course."

"How?" Yorrerl asked. He looked around him in shock, which was easier with the rain slacking off at last. "Everyone knows about you ponies. You're pacifists! You always talk about peace and harmony! You have no war record of any kind, going back centuries before you made contact with the galaxy! We thought you too inferior to be worth conquering!" He waved his hands at the ruins of his position, at his platoon being corralled together and herded towards him. "But you just went through my men like a roll through gravy! Where did THAT come from?"

The horned pony gave him a peculiar look. "I know we don't get many visitors besides humans," he said. "But do you really not know anything about us?"

"Only that you talk about feelings and mysticism until people ask you to shut up," Yorrerl said. "And that you always offer your enemies a chance to become your friends."

"That's almost true," the horned pony said. "We do forgive our enemies a lot... but only after we've beaten them." The last words landed like granite. "Young cat, on our homeworld we have monsters who try to eat us, suck our souls out, enslave our minds, level our mountains, set fire to our cities, subvert our leaders, and even rewrite the very laws of nature itself. And we fight them on the regular, youngster. Compared to them, this," he waved a hoof at what had briefly been a battlefield, "this was a cute-ceanera."

Yorrerl blinked.

"It was a kids' party," the horned pony translated.

"Oh." Yorrerl nodded slowly. He had to admit, from the other side it had probably been just that.

"Not that you didn't do the best with what you had, of course," the pony continued, obviously offering what consolation he could. "But you just didn't know what you were up against. And the humans have a saying: He who knows the enemy and knows himself need not fear the outcome of a hundred battles."

"Well, we thought we knew you," Yorrerl admitted. He raised his hand into a salute. "Feli-marshaller Yorrerl, Ninety-fifth Claw."

The pony returned the salute. "Corporal Amber Light," he said. "Canterlot traffic control."

Yorrerl hissed reflexively. He'd been captured... his position had been taken by... "Traffic control??"

The pony shrugged. "I said we fought monsters on the regular. I never said we won." He pointed a hoof skywards, where sun was beginning to break through clouds- clouds, Yorrerl noticed, which were being herded by large numbers of winged ponies. "They only give us the easy jobs. Our real heroes are up there, fighting the real battle."

Yorrerl's hand-pad chose that moment to chime. Slowly he withdrew it from its pocket and keyed it on. Before he could speak, the voice of the claw-leader roared from it: "Repeating, all units report! Pull back to the inner defense line at once! We have enemy soldiers inside the perimeter! The natives are rising against us! We've lost all contact with the invasion fleet! Pull back to the inner defense line and defend the landing field at all costs!"

Yellow light surrounded Yorrerl's hand, and he felt the hand-pad get plucked out of his grip. The horned pony gave him an apologetic look, then spoke loudly and directly at the pad. "Enemy garrison commander," he said, "this is Amber Light of the Equestrian Expeditionary Force. On behalf of our commander Prince Shining Armor, I am authorized to accept your surrender at discretion."

And, as the claw-leader's voice went totally silent, the horned pony looked at Yorrerl and said, "Don't worry. I have the feeling we'll be offering you all the chance to be friends real soon."

Author's Note:

First and foremost: this is NOT a post-Maretian scene. If it were the humans would be doing much better on their own.

This was inspired by a sudden mental vision of a guardpony reminding someone that the tradeoff for their peaceful fluffy world is a series of incredibly powerful threats of a kind humanity never even comes close to facing. The image was so strong and compelling that I had to write a scene to frame it, even if it meant going where a LOT of other writers have already gone- one end of the eternal "ponies are helpless in war" v. "ponies kick ass" fandom argument.

I take neither side completely. As the scene I've written here shows, the ponies can be damn effective, especially given time to organize and plan. But, at the same time, the attack I've written here could have been utterly destroyed, as the alien viewpoint character notes, if only they'd had ground-based artillery to break up the charge rather than depending on air support. The ponies here were attacking second-line, inexperienced occupation troops, not the invader spearhead or any actually vital, well-protected position. And I don't even take on ponies on defense, where (in the show, at least) they tend to roll up like cheap rugs in the name of Let The Heroes Save The Day.

And now a few words on the elephant in the room- the whole concept of interstellar invasion, which is ludicrous. I'm going to gloss over the reasons for invasion- humans have usually made up their reasons for war after the fact to justify something they just plain wanted to do in the first place. Let's look at the sheer logistics of invading an inhabited planet.

Consider, first, that as a very rough rule of thumb America has between one and two police officers for every thousand ordinary citizens. That's merely to keep the peace and enforce basic laws, and that's assuming the almost universal acceptance if not support of the population. Given that, then even if humanity decided to welcome our new insectoid overlords, it would mean shipping eight million occupation troops across interstellar distances, landing them, and providing edible food and ammo, never mind all the other necessities, until local sources can be obtained.

To keep a populace under control that doesn't accept your authority, you need a lot more troops- on the very lowest end, one soldier per two hundred civilians in the occupied territory. (No, the US didn't come even close to that number in either Iraq or Afghanistan. Look how well that worked.) So now we're up to forty million invaders, minimum. And you have to feed them all, clothe them all, and equip them all over the same however-many-parsecs you shipped them in the first place, because if the natives are hostile you will NOT be able to live off the land for long.

(Incidentally, one of the major causes of British defeat in the American War of Independence was that the redcoats were almost totally dependent on importing food from England. Although some farmers did indeed sell food to the British army, it was never enough for their needs- which included not just the army but camp followers and tens of thousands of Tory refugees. The sheer logistics nightmare this caused crippled what was otherwise overwhelming British naval superiority early in the war and limited their ability to project power on multiple fronts- essentially turning British armies into garrison forces.)

Could it be done? Well, if you have the technology and industrial base to cross the interstellar void in days or weeks AT ALL, then yes, it could be done. But it would still take absurd expense and effort. And any little setback- ANYTHING- could cause the whole enterprise to unravel.

Six female ponies who just happen to be their generation's Chosen Ones popping up on the invasion fleet flagship and wreaking havoc would almost be overkill.

In this snippet humanity should be grateful that their invaders deliberately decided to minimize civilian casualties (since their goal was slaves and not real estate). History shows repeatedly that the most efficient and effective means of making an invasion stick is, put bluntly, genocide. Alien invaders, if they want the planet and not us, won't bother landing huge invasion forces. They'll drop about a hundred asteroids on our major population and industrial centers, maybe wait a few weeks for the fragments of civilization remaining to totally collapse, then move in with a much smaller force to mop up remaining resistance and round up the handful of human survivors for slavery or the zoo, whichever.

If we ever meet evil aliens, hope and pray that they're greedy and stupid like the Mwow.

Quick reminder: Patreon for long-term content-creating support, Ko-Fi for tips.

Comments

[A.P.O.N.I.]

Expeditionary Horse?

[Vailen]

OK, this needs to be a series of short stories.

[Venerable Ro]

Ah, bad luck, they got the competent ponies. It's a two-sided problem, the kinetics would have wrecked the shields, as they're designed to do, but they were also attracting lightning discharges. The lasers were evidently sufficiently insulated, but were never going to penetrate those barriers. Very difficult. As you say, heavy artillery would have done the trick, specifically shells, not missiles.

Frankly, at this point I'd pull my forces and start throwing KEWs from out of orbit until the battleground settled down again, but then I'm not much a fan of this kind of wasteful nonsense anyway.

[Georg]

I would be lacking as a writer if I did not link The Road Not Taken by Turtledove here.

[Silent Wing]

Not what I expeted when I read the short description, but it turn out very well either way.

I think you are right, about the logistics being the main problem, in case of an invasion. You have just to watch back to the second world war, when Germany invaded Russia. Way to long suplie lines at the end + all the trouble with partisans should have made clear from the beginning, that it can only end in a disaster.

[Uber]

Using humans as slaves? The aliens must be pretty dumb if they think meatsacks are gonna be good at productivity.

Like seriously, if they have the technological capabilities to cross interstellar distances, then automation on their side must be at least decent enough for them to not rely on organics.

It's not one hundred percent certainly, but likelihood should be pretty close.

This story's prose is good, but looking from realistic point of view the alien's motivations are pretty hard to believe. Slavery is really inefficient.

[FanOfMostEverything]

You know you're in for something good when the first few words introduce you to someone whose title is literally "Cat Herder."

"Twenty to landing zone," the pilot called out, and the twenty Mwew soldiers put away bits of equipment or personal items in preparation for landing.

The Mwew: We're not the Kzinti, honest!
Okay, to be fair, they do seem more disciplined than Niven's cat-men.

How, he wondered, how could they be that precise with static electricity? Lightning is almost random! That kind of precision is impossible!

derpicdn.net/img/2013/9/22/432550/medium.jpg

Yeah, that was a speech worth setting the scene for. Magnificent stuff. Equestria is a pastel-colored deathworld, after all, and equine civilization does manage to hold on even when the protagonists are otherwise occupied. Thank you for a wonderful little read.

[PonyDragon]

Yorrerl blinked. "Allies? Sir, they're natives. No offworld contact."
"Apparently they had one offworld contact," the claw-leader said, smiling. "The ponies."
"The ponies?" Yorrerl grinned. "You mean the fluffy, pacifist, cutesy-pie ponies? Homeworld where the sun goes round the planet because they're too silly to know better?"

Is it bad I love the story already?

First and foremost: this is NOT a post-Maretian scene. If it were the humans would be doing much better on their own.

Especially if the Changelings would rush to help them...

---

Great story!
I enjoyed reading it.

Also, lots of interesting background in the Author's Notes, which makes it clear you really thought things through.

[A.P.O.N.I.]

For those that liked this, check out Knight Breeze's Humanity Within trilogy, starting with What I've Become. By the end, we've got a combined strike force of ponies and humans boarding alien ships. Pretty cool.

[Silent Wing]

10241755
Thanks for the tip, I will certainly look into it, when I have a bit more time.

[TomRedlion]

Clearly your protagonists never read This Page. If they had, they would have chosen different tactics or even a different target planet. Humans make lousy slaves. A famous WWII-Era Japanese flag officer once noted that The USA makes for an extremely expensive invasion target.

[Da Fennec]

AN excellent story.

"Homeworld where the sun goes round the planet because they're too silly to know better?"

Anything that is an exception to the rule isn't silly to you understand it. Something is causing that exception to the star's gravity pulls the planets into orbits around it

[eric167]

Homeworld where the sun goes round the planet because they're too silly to know better?"

stop. think about that again. a STAR revolves around the planet because someone on that world wants it to. do you really want to go up against a civilization that can treat its local celestial objects like pinballs? getting your invasion fleet smacked by a moon or star is kind of a dumb way to die.

[Arkonfleight]

On the bright side, they could have been singing.
Luckily they left them some dignity.

[Winter_Solstice]

I love stories where a person or people are seen as weak by their enemies but surprisingly turned out to be otherwise. This tale is a great example, and if this was simply a casual effort on your part, I should probably start reading the rest of your work.

[Da Fennec]

10241800 At least you won't have deal with the shame of it. Of course someone or multiple someones will write it off as pilot error

[Eroraf86]

Ah yes, the eternal battle of logistics and practicality vs. Rule of Cool. Any civilization capable of mass interstellar travel has no need for fleshy slaves, and space is so huge that there could be hundreds of advanced civilizations throughout the galaxy, yet because of the vast distance, they would not even know that we developed radio technology. But we want entertaining space stories, so we suspend our disbelief for the sake of our amusement.

That said, I have a special fondness for authors, like yourself, who can write an entertaining space story, while at the same time using the acceptable breaks from reality to educate the reader. Sci-fi writers, as a rule, have no concept of scale, and you are the delightful exception. Thanks for the fun story.

[Antiquarian]

"That's almost true," the horned pony said. "We do forgive our enemies a lot... but only after we've beaten them."

Equestria seems to like the "hammer them until they become our friends" trope. And I'm not objecting.

10241736
"Equestria is a pastel-colored deathworld." Blunt and accurate.

[LordBrony2040]

What people seem to forget is that underneath the comedy, the ponies are basically semi-godlike super beings.

Rarity has hauled around literal tons while Twilight has taken an anvil to the skull and just shrugged it off. The Wonderbolts can fly a mach speeds in what amounts to spandex without shredding their wings and Rainbow Dash alone can create city destroying natural disasters if she has a bit of time, while some of the earth ponies have enough force behind their movements to turn people into paste with an accidental touch.

And then of course, there's Luna, who can move the moon around at what has to be several hundred thousands of miles an hour (if not millions) to just swat an invasion fleet that comes into her space, or completely flood the Earth in a matter of seconds using the moons gravity if in a ground war (and that's not even getting into what she could do to the magnetic poles or atmosphere with the moon).

[Kris Overstreet]

10241804 The musical number was got out of the way before the attack went in. Sensibly.

[Kris Overstreet]

10241816 Every once in a while I have moments when my compulsion to write, which is usually a chore and frequently painful, becomes an effortless flow. This is one of those times (once I got the invaders established- that was a chore).

[Scratchpad]

10241707
You know, this could almost be a future set in your Farmer Bruener storyline (if these cats were dimensional invaders rather than galactic).

[Kris Overstreet]

10241823 True, no need for slaves- and if they needed slaves, snatch-and-run raids would be cheaper and more effective than trying to nail down an entire planet at one go.

But human history shows that one hell of a lot of wars are less about "I need" and more about "I wanna".

[Uber]

10241865

I can concede on the fact that ponies are far more superior to humans physically ( Big Mac regularly hauls large volumes of apples) but.......
- Where are you getting that RD can create city leveling natural disasters?
- Wonderbolts can't fly at mach speeds, only RD again ( and that's using Sonic Rainboom)
- Luna's moon moving is honestly non-combat applicable, considering the fact we only see her move its orbit and even if she can do all the aforementioned stuff you've listed above, this claim is built on the assumption that she can somehow move our own moon ( considering the aliens are invading our world), which is honestly kinda stretching it.

Even if the ponies do superior physical stats, infantry battles honestly doesn't really matter when the enemies can just simply bombard you from orbit.

[Angelform]

A spacefaring species that regards organic slaves are worth using.
A spacefaring species that regards manually controlling the orbits of you system as a sign of weakness.
A spacefaring species that regards a reluctance to kill as pacifism.

This is a story about blithering idiots being blithering idiots.

It isn’t a ‘bad’ story in the sense that there aren’t any significant problem with it. It just feels so shallow and banal as to have been a waste of time.

[Kris Overstreet]

10241957 I plead two defenses: first, the need to give a frame for the badass speech at the end; and second, there are too many examples of human conquerors (successful or otherwise) being EXACTLY THIS STUPID.

[Kirtai]

Well, if you have the technology and industrial base to cross the interstellar void in days or weeks AT ALL, then yes, it could be done

If they can do that then they've broken physics as we know it and may as well be using magic (Discord levels or higher) for all we'll be able to do anything to stop them.

[Iron Comet]

Reminds me of a book series I read once. First book was written in the 80's and was about humanity creating a invasion fleet to attack another world. It made a big deal about the troops having to be kids trained up to combat readiness from age 12 and deploying at age 18 and the logistics train being literally launched a year after the initial invasion force with all the extra supplies they would need to fight a ground war. Every piece of equipment and troop needed to be accounted for. Because how precious they were as they couldnt be replaced. Written with the Cold War and Vietnam in mind as well so the weapons and tactics were less sci-fi and based on those weapons and gear. This reminded me of that a bit.

[keroko]

10241899

Wonderbolts can't fly at mach speeds, only RD again ( and that's using Sonic Rainboom)

Well, we've seen Rainbow Dash casually break the sound barrier even without a sonic rainboom:

And we know there are other ponies who can match her, such as Lightning Dust, and unless she is so far above the other Wonderbolts it's not even funny, it stands to reason they would be around her level as well.

Incidentally, if we assume Equestria's atmospheric conditions are roughly the same as ours, Rainbow Dash just went from zero to 343 meters per second in under said second. Let that gut punch to physics sink in for a moment.

[Skeeter The Lurker]

Months later, the wing-genralier sat in, at least for him, a cramped room in what he heard was called the "white house". Though why the circular room was called "the oval office" eluded him. Not that it mattered at the moment.

Flanked by two surviving lower ranks, including a Feli-Marshaller present at the initial attack. Also in the room were a few VIPs including someone called the president, a few people from someplace called the UN, a couple of other races from other planets and sectors who were on "good", for lack of a better term, with them. All were here, naturally, to watch the signing of the, ugh, peace treaty.

There was also her. That pretty white know-it-all, horn headed, limp winged, smug faced, translation unavailable, so-called princess.

He was quite mad at the sudden and wholly unexpected outcome, if it wasn't that obvious. He was quite a few emotions, really. Annoyed, irritated, embarrassed, pure unbridled fury, and shame to name a few.

Annoyed at these humans, who couldn't just accept being made into a servitor race...

Irritated, because his elite troops got their shit kicked in by ponies who on a normal day stocked a store shelf. Seriously how does that happen?

Embarrassed, because of this colossal mess, the other servitor races were now making efforts to gain help of the ponies and rumors abounded that other races that put up with them were now gearing up to also kick them in. FUN TIMES.

Shame, because he knew there were probably a large number of things he could have done to mitigate this, and the true top brass were prrrrobably going exact a painful price before things truly went bottoms up.

And fury.

Pure, white hot, unbridled, fury at the so-called "princess" of the ponies. For when asked why nearly 80% of the provided combat force were meager wage slaves, she had simply said such:

"Luna made a bet."

---

I... Uh, I liked this. Made me grin.

Nice one!

~Skeeter The Lurker

[Booster Spice]

Im waiting to see if a certain Master Gunnery Seargant Major Hearthwarming Rose ever manages to make it to the field.

Welcome to Equestria. Its like Australia, but deadlier.

Thats why ponies make freinds quickly. They have to. The naive dont live long enough to take time.

[Uber]

10242291

That scene feels like an outlier, considering when she competes against Lighting as shown here.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r5HtQZtcbgA

Or flying with the other Wonderbolts as shown here.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D9Q2G8Gh0-M

Timestamp at 2:45.

She doesn't even remotely approach what she has shown in your video.

Or maybe RD holds back purposely? Who knows?

Her speed is pretty inconsistent throughout the series's entirety and I'm inclined to believe that it's whatever the plot demands it at this point.

[Jade Dawn]

Homeworld where the sun goes round the planet because they're too silly to know better?"

[Misplaced Mage]

10241707
Not to forget Footfall, by Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle. It’s one of the earliest examples I know of using a redirected asteroid as a KEW.

[PiMan]

10241707
I'm reminded more of his Worldwar series, beginning with In The Balance.

[Misplaced Mage]

10241823

Sci-fi writers, as a rule, have no concept of scale, and you are the delightful exception.

This, in a nutshell, is one of the key differences between an author of sci-fi and an author of science fiction.

[duithy]

someone who thinks about the logistics of interstellar war thank you
the short version is all dependent on ftl
no ftl no interstellar war is possible it's just not
"slow" ftl c to 5c it's "possible" but massively unlikely to be worth it with multi-year deployments to reach an engagement its more reasonable to think of it as a colonization effort with guns.
"fast" ftl ~300c now you can have an interstellar war. you should not for lots of other reasons but finally travel is not one of them.

[Vaguely Demented]

Magic, it gets the job done.

[Georg]

10242465 Niven and Pournelle had wonderful senses of grand scale. When you make Ringworld, an artificial world with a habitable surface of approx. 3 million times the earth, whose defense is to make the sun it is orbiting into a giant solar-pumped laser...

[B_Munro]

10242510

Actually, if you're going the genocide route, you don't need FLT. One large rock with some ability to adjust it's course and moving at 99% the speed of light and you're good.

[B_Munro]

10242390

Yeah, if I was that cat-person in, say, the Star Trek universe and heard about the Pony planet which has a sun going around it my immediate thought would be "Oh Great Garfield in heaven. They've got a Q on that planet, don't they? Or an Organian. Or maybe a Douwd."

[Jade Dawn]

10242574
i.kym-cdn.com/entries/icons/facebook/000/022/506/manofculture.jpg

[fanreader999999]

Good stuff, but MLP's cartoon basis kinda ruined the story from the start. Even if you ignore the most OP aspects of MLP (ie. moving the sun and moon), the logistical advantage of being able to instantly convert 1/3rd of your population into aerial cargo and troop transports alone would rewrite all terrestrial military strategy and tactics. Hell theres even an episode about this: In Hurricane Fluttershy, the pegasi create an artificial tornado to transport water. Thats a nice tank, is it waterfall proof?

[Booster Spice]

10242574

Could be worse.

Could be Leutenant Berkley.

[Kris Overstreet]

10242554 Only if your interests in the world in question are strictly limited to mining the asteroid belt remaining after impact.

[Kris Overstreet]

10241957 My favorite example of real-life idiotic underestimation of the enemy:

"Why do you duck, gentlemen? Why, those rebels couldn't hit an elephant at this dist-"
--- last words of Maj. Gen. John Sedgewick, USA, May 9, 1864

[duithy]

10242554
it would work I would not call i war however

[Kris Overstreet]

10242611 War is whatever makes the enemy stop shooting back.

[A.P.O.N.I.]

So many Vulcans in this thread. By which I mean, so many people who think that logic would decide whether a species would go to war. Or go interstellar raiding.

[duithy]

10242614
so peace is war