My Little Space Empire: Mechs are Magic

by Wheezyandbreezy

Unfortunately the Crying Will Continue

Sir Rainbow Dash gently pulled her palm off of the cheek it had gotten stuck to for the umpteenth time that day. The axiom about hammers and shelves definitely applied. After the battle of the Horsehead Nebula the golden age of piracy had come to a sudden violent end. The only organized crime that could escape Twilight's roving eye was small-scale smuggling, which she didn't feel particularly inclined to hunt down with a vengeance. Not to say that piracy was nowhere in the galaxy, but incidents were so rare that local imperial bastions could handle complaints. So Rainbow Dash sat there, bored out of her skull, for the billion and third photo shoot next to her mech. Her augmetic arm had gained a quiet squeak from having to wave so often for such a long duration.

"Twilight!" Rainbow whined. "Can't you just start a war? Please? Just a little one."

Pinkie Pie appeared behind her and assumed a deep masculine voice. "Mah boy! This peace is what all true warriors strive for."

Twilight gently levitated her back by her side. The tabloids had made no end of her relationship with Pinkie Pie, a media campaign that S.P.I.K.E. had to watch diligently to keep Twilight from seeing. Freedom of the press was enshrined in the Imperial constitution, but every time a paparazzi asked some outrageous question, or a tabloid printed a wanton falsity Rainbow Dash got one step closer to getting her war. "Despite her way of putting it Dash she is right. You've fought hard, now it's time to relax and rest on your laurels, like Applejack."

The ag worlder had, as promised, kept up regular communication with her family on Dulce. Now she was laying idly on a passenger bunk on a long range transport. In reality she was doing Twilight a favor, she wanted to see if an orchard farmer really could travel safely from one side of the galaxy to the other. So instead of taking the route from Terra to Pomum Dulce she had gone to her cousin Braeburn's house on the planet Appleloosa, ironically on the exact opposite side of the galaxy. Then she would travel from there to Pomum Dulce.

She had finally earned some R&R and was going to spend a full year at home. Her and Twilight had a long, tense discussion about her career, and it was only by the narrowest margin that Twilight managed to retain her in her service. In Applejack's mind they were done. They'd set out to rid the galaxy of piracy, and for all intents and purposes they had done that. Her being on a space bus home proved that. She had no intention of abandoning her Viceroy of course. She'd meant what she said when she took her oath. Applejack understood that her service was for life, and even if it wasn't she would come a runnin if Twilight needed her. But that was just it, she didn't need her anymore, and what's the point of having fiefs if you don't get to spend any time on them. Applejack and Fluttershy had become genuine friends, but she never stopped loving Rainbow in secret. Everytime she thought about her it made her realize just how much time she'd lost in the military. It had been eight years. Both her own mother and Granny Smith had given birth twice by her age. Beyond homesickness she wanted to return to Dulce to maybe, just maybe, to find someone to start a family with.

Rainbow Dash refused entirely to be put out to pasture, so Twilight had reassigned her to being a flight instructor, to train up the next generation of pilots. Fluttershy had voluntarily gone back to practicing medicine and stayed close by her little knight, as she still called her, in one of Terra's space station's med bays. Rarity remained as the Admiral of the Damocles, and her and S.P.I.K.E. spent most of their days designing, and tinkering around with new designs for ships and mech units. Pinkie Pie had always been a baker at heart, so she was allowed to open a small confectionary on Terra. Though she was strictly ordered to never again participate as a stripper inside of a cake, an order she found genuinely offensive. She had said, "Sparkly Warkly! You know I only get naked for you now!"

Twilight had requested parliament to send out an official inquiry into the galaxy's security situation to get a better idea of the empire's realistic military demands. Peace for all intents and purposes had been secured within the empire, and the few sentient races that shared the galaxy with them had seemed to want not a damned thing to do with them in the last thousand years, so they didn't seem to be a threat.

Parliament had requested a drastic diminution of the military budget, and Twilight had accepted. Hundreds of millions of soldiers were given their severance pay, and honorably discharged. So many war ships were disassembled that the galactic price of construction metals dropped. The following cut in planetary taxes fed into the already explosive growth of the economy, and the recently dismissed veterans more often than not quickly found gainful employment.

Twilight had kept a reserve force always prepared for sudden emergencies, but the rest of the galaxy was littered with bastions containing mostly interceptor class battleships for policing purposes. A grand ceremony had been held on Terra. Twilight had requested Parliament to attend and a galaxy rejoiced to see Twilight voluntarily lay down her sword. It had been difficult for Celestia to keep a straight face as Twilight drew her blade, allowed its edge to fade back into its handle, and placed it beside her own in her little black box. "Until such time as you order me to take it up again." She had said. Celestia couldn't have been prouder of her most faithful student. She'd given her a task that she was supposed to work on as a career, and she had completed it in just three years and six months, half the time it took her to conquer Terra.

With military matters for all intents and purposes handled, Twilight turned her eyes towards her next project. Figuring out how to make a super psychic.