My Little Space Empire: Mechs are Magic

by Wheezyandbreezy

The Last Charge of the Wonderbolts.

Applejack and Fluttershy were staring straight down the barrels of ten thousand cannons. Applejack sat in her mech frozen in terror. She was shocked out of her stupor by a scream coming over her coms. "FOR THE WONDERBOLTS! FOR CELESTIA!! FOR TERRA!!!" Fluttershy roared the warcry she'd screamed in a hundred battles on a dozen worlds. She charged full throttle into the fray. Applejack knew the situation at a glance. She followed as fast as her boosters would carry her. It was the same tactic they'd used in a thousand battles, get in close so they couldn't hit you without hitting each other.

Fluttershy's warcry had shocked Rarity into action as well. She thanked her lucky stars that Twilight had ordered the fleet into readiness. They assumed firing positions and assigned targets. Rarity snapped at the helmsman. "Well you heard the Knight! For Terra! Onward!" The entire fleet roared with pride and moved forward. They began to pick off the closest targets in a massive opening salvo. The invading fleet charged forward full speed. She put through an emergency transmission to the invasion fleet that had departed only hours earlier that day.

Oddity of oddities it was Rainbow Dash herself who answered. "Sup bitch?" Rainbow said unenthusiastically.

She had just enough time to notice Rarity's expression before she was deafened by Rarity screaming, "DASH! GET YOUR SCARRED ASS BACK HERE WE'RE UNDER ATTACK!"

"What the fuck! How?!" Rainbow screamed as she tore a tech over the railing with her augmetic arm. Rarity cut the call and focused on the battle. The Imperial fleet that had set sail for the Changeling's homeworld had puttered along at a leisurely pace, but Rainbow had them turned around and high tailing for home in a matter of seconds. "I will personally tear off the balls of every single one of you if we're not home five minutes ago!" She screamed at the frantically scrambling techs and helmsmen.

A female crewman timidly told Rainbow, "Sir, we can't push the engines that hard or they might go critical!" She, for reasons she could not have told you if you had asked her, decided at that moment to joke. "And I don't have balls."

Rainbow gave her the single most intimidating glare she'd ever seen as she raised her augmetic hand. She curled it into a fist and the woman's eyes went wide. The fist began to vibrate and the woman's pupils narrowed to pin pricks. The fist began to gyrate forward and back quickly on its servos and she scrambled back to her seat then frantically pushed buttons.

Fluttershy and Applejack couldn't miss at this range, but their munitions couldn't punch through the larger battleships hulls, so they focused their fire on the bridges of the larger ships, and picked off any fighters that came into range. The fleet was too tightly ordered to respond to the two individual mechs, and with Rarity's fleet tearing them apart they grew desperate. Every ship in the fleet charged full throttle towards the planet.

Rarity's eyes went wide with realization. She got on the ship's coms and S.P.I.K.E. connected her to every bridge, personal com, and ship's radio. "Soldiers and sailors of the Imperial fleet, this is your Admiral speaking. When I was knighted I swore an oath never to retreat, never to surrender. Out there are a million or more monsters that want to take your people and use them to make more monsters like themselves. "She drew her plasma sword and burned a line on the bridge's tile floor. "I for one will not let one of those poorly wrought creatures past this line." Her voice rose with emotion. "WHO'S WITH ME?!" The entire fleet cheered at once and every fighter, mech, and boarding craft deployed at once. Rarity decided against mounting up as she needed to coordinate the fleet.

The two fleets fought a desperate struggle in the void. Ships mowed down wave after wave of fighters, battleships loosed broadside after broadside, ship's atmospheres ignited and broke apart. The invading fleet was in decisive control of the battle. Rarity with her pattern oriented mind observed that they were fighting as a single unit. Each squad of fighters would fire in perfect unison on a target then instantly move on to the next target. Several landing craft attempted to break past the fleet and dash for the planet and Rarity barely managed to keep them from breaching their lines.

She kept ordering the fleet to lower and lower orbits, but they soon ran out of sky to give. Any lower and they would be out of Terra's orbit and into its atmosphere. There were simply too many targets to watch and too few eyes to track them all. Rarity herself brought up a point defense laser from her perch on the command deck and mowed down ship after ship, but the tide was endless. She knew that soon the wave would break and thousands of landing craft would blow past the fleet. Then the battle would devolve into brutal ground combat and guerilla warfare that could drag on for years.

No. They had to be held here. She would not let them cross her line. She had vowed never to surrender, and never to retreat, and she'd been giving up ground for too long. A horrifying thought entered her mind and all other considerations faded into the background. She rose and walked as in a dream towards the cargo bay. S.P.I.K.E. saw what she was doing and called after her. "Wait Rarity where are you going? You're needed on the bridge!"

He followed after her to the ship's onboard teleporter, and they arrived at the cargo bay. He saw Rarity staring at Twilight's mech suit. He looked from her bloodless face to the suit with the large hole melted through its canopy and snapped. "Rarity you're more useful on the bridge than in the void, and Twilight's suit isn't spaceworthy anyway. Forget about it!"

Rarity spoke as if in a trance. "No, but it does have an intact sync drive." She slowly climbed the boarding ladder and crawled through the hole melted in the cockpit.

S.P.I.K.E. showed amazing likeness to exasperated confusion. "What does that have to do with anything?!"

He looked and saw that Rarity had tears falling down her expressionless face. She pressed a few buttons and then looked at S.P.I.K.E. like one looks at their executioner. "S.P.I.K.E.y wikey. . . Please connect all ship's controls to this mech unit please."

S.P.I.K.E.'s eyes shot open in surprise. He limply held his hands out in silent babbling pleading. His programming couldn't process a request so unfathomably dangerous. "Rarity! That's insane! The amount of information alone would overwhelm your mind. The mental strain would."

Rarity spoke with a terrifying calm. "S.P.I.K.E. I will not be ordered about like a child. Do as your Admiral orders."

S.P.I.K.E. took several steps backwards in horror. He tried to process a valid reason to override his programming. This was clearly endangering the woman he loved, but he was now the ship's A.I. and he wasn't allowed to defy an order from an officer. He knew what would happen if they didn't do this now, he understood the danger to Terra, but he could hardly bring himself to do it. Rarity looked him in his holographic eyes and smiled. She nodded her head once and activated the sync drive in Twilight's mech.

S.P.I.K.E.'s programming ran a gamut of simulated emotions, but one thing he could not do was cry. He knew from general experience that it was the thing to do in this situation, but he was literally unable to cry. He projected a single drop of nervous sweat at the corner of his eye to simulate the action as he gave all control of the entire fleet to Twilight's mech suit.

Every muscle in Rarity's body tensed as her mind synchronized with fifty thousand different computers simultaneously, each one becoming an extension of herself. She opened her eyes and saw out of a hundred thousand cameras. She moved her fingers and ten thousand cannons retargeted at her will. Cannoneers and point defense gunners raised their hands in surprise as their joysticks began to move on their own. She could feel herself floating in the void, enormous and great. The sensation of utter power almost overwhelmed her as she flexed her new bodies. Rarity was now one small woman and a thousand enormous battleships at the same time.

A predatory light entered her eyes and simultaneously every ship in the fleet turned towards Terra. Ten thousand macrolasers glowed and suddenly every ship that had slipped past her evaporated into space dust. Applejack and Fluttershy had been causing as much damage as they could, but suddenly the invading fleet's giant distraction was removed. They now had the breathing room to spread out and focus on the two of them.

Applejack called repeatedly for covering fire as they attempted to cross back to friendly lines, but for some reason no one would respond to her comms. "It's lahke the whole damned fleet had their mahds on somethin." She growled. Fluttershy was down to using her melee weapons while Applejack covered her. They were just about to consider attempting to board a ship, when suddenly several streaks of blinding light met their eyes. Rainbow's fleet had just dropped out of hyperspace.

Both knights cheered as they saw mech units and fighters pouring out of the ships and heading towards them. Applejack called out to Fluttershy over the comms, "YEEEHAW! That'll keep em off a our backs! Come on Flutters! Let's get back to the ship n reload! The cavalry just arrived!" Fluttershy took off in front of Applejack and she followed. She set her thrusters to maximum and their two big slow mech units began to exit the wreckage field of the invading fleet. All of a sudden Applejack felt herself hit hard from behind.

She looked in the rear view screen and saw that none of the invading fleet had turned to engage with Rainbow's ships. They were still on a suicide charge straight for Terra. Just as Applejack realized the situation, it became much worse. She crashed bodily into Fluttershy's mech and went spinning off. She stabilized herself and hailed the other knight. "Flutters! What in the hell are y'all doin?! We gotta git outta here!"

Rainbow Dash barked orders and the fleet began to mark targets. She saw they weren't even turning to engage them, they were set on a mad dash towards the planet. Well no matter, Rainbow had no objections to stabbing an enemy in the back of they were too stupid to stand and fight.

Her eyes tracked their line of fire and saw the Imperial fleet picking off with surprising precision any landing craft or boarding vessel that tried to slip past them. Her eyes went wide as she saw about halfway between the two fleets, were two mechs. Exposed. Out in the open. And what was worse, one of them wasn't moving.

Fluttershy's voice came back solemn and calm. "My power core's dead Applejack. Take good care of Rainbow Dash for me."

Applejack eyes went wide. She looked towards the invading fleet and saw that their macrolasers were already glowing. She whispered, "no!" As she hit her boosters at full throttle towards Fluttershy.

Rainbow screamed, "FLUTTERSHY!!!" As she hit her boosters at full throttle towards the unmoving mech. Rainbow cursed at herself for using her old mech instead of the new one Rarity and S.P.I.K.E. had built.

Applejack raced towards Fluttershy. Out of the corner of her eye she could see a wave of blinding white light coming towards her. She was only seconds away from her target when her world went blinding white then pitch black.

Time slowed for Rainbow as she saw a wave of white hot plasma engulf the woman she loved.

Comments

[Admiral Q Ponyform]

dang, so it all falls apart now