Friendship One

by BRBrony9

Incoming, Outgoing

With forty-eight hours until G-Day, the fighting for the spaceport raged. A thin line of Equestrian troops were holding back the tide, a great flood of Griffon soldiers and tanks and personnel carriers, nudging and probing at the line like a dog nipping at the heels of its prey. Helicopters whirred through the overcast skies, jets swooping down like avenging angels to deliver a string of bombs or a devastating cluster munition here and there. Most of the city of New Zebrica was in Griffon hands already, but the Equestrians had dug in around the spaceport.

The launch towers had already been detonated by explosive charges, creaking and groaning metal plunging to the ground, denying their use to the enemy. But in truth, the Griffons did not need the launch towers themselves. A reasonable facsimile could be erected by military engineers in just a few hours, even without using magic, which would be sufficient for the smaller missiles, though not for a heavy shuttle and its boosters. They just needed somewhere flat, level, open, and in the right part of the world. The spaceport was the obvious choice, and it was symbolic, too, a claw raised in defiance to the Sun-Princess and her mad, blind obsession which had led her country to ruin and left Griffonia and her King to rule over the whole world.

In Hoofburg, far to the west, the barges had arrived after a twisting, winding journey through the canals and rivers of backwater Equestria. The final canal they rode upon was the only water for miles around, so remote was the military spaceport's location. The canal had been dug for the sole purpose of transporting the huge barges that carried the heavy-lift military rockets to their launch complex. With the arrival of the final barge, they would likely never be used again. Four launches remained. The two rockets on the pads at New Zebrica had gone up as soon as they could, before the Griffons could get close enough to intercept them during their ascent. After that, the launch towers had been demolished by explosives. Hoofburg was now the only Equestrian launch facility. There were four rockets left to launch, safely delivered by barge. To erect each one, fuel it, prepare it, and load the crew and cargo, would take a minimum of eight hours each if all the safety checks were bypassed. Two rockets were already on the pads and fuelling up.

That gave them enough time, but only just. The two prepared rockets took to the skies one after the other, blazing like comets in the night. Twelve hours later they would rendezvous with Friendship One, now shed of her external metallic snakeskin cradle, and dock with her. While they were still orbiting toward the much larger ship, the final rockets would launch. Naturally, not everything went to plan.

Of the two final rockets, one was carrying medical supplies and oxygen equipment. The other was carrying the final batch of crew, twenty ponies crammed into a shuttle built to hold only twelve. They were engineers and civilians, the last batch of rounded-up lottery winners plus a few Equinaut crewmembers who had volunteered to pilot the last shuttle, the final rocket from home.

The supply rocket was scheduled to launch several hours earlier than the crewed shuttle. It did, climbing into the predawn sky at about the same time the Griffons finally broke the Equestrian line at New Zebrica. Somewhere, deep in the endless bowels of the thing, something went wrong. Catastrophically wrong. An artificial sun blazed into life in the skies over the western desert as the supply rocket tore itself apart, fuel flashing into brilliant, searing life all at once, a huge explosion rending the dawn and abruptly cutting off the crackling roar of the engines. Flaming debris rained down all across the launch complex and downrange, into the empty desert, as though a volcano had just erupted.

Angry, panicked hooves bashed control consoles and desks in a rage as the impotent flight controllers watched the rocket explode. Only two other rockets, remarkably, had been lost during launch in the whole of Project Rebirth. Both of those, unfortunately, had carried crewponies on board. At least this one was just a drone-ship, a capsule crammed full of equipment instead of the warm press of bodies. But they were useful supplies, and now they were gone, and there was fresh worry. Did the scrambled rush to launch overlook something? If so, had they overlooked the same thing with the shuttle?

The launch, despite the lateness of the hour and the importance of the mission, had to be postponed. Technicians began the painstaking search, examining every rivet and screw, every circuit and pipe, every programme in the launch computer and flight systems. It would take time, but the symbolic disaster of losing the last flight from Equis would have been catastrophic for the morale of the colonists. A new launch time was scheduled- noon. After the twelve-hour flight to the colony ship, that would leave the crew of Friendship One six hours to depart before the expected arrival time of the gamma ray burst.

The science could not be so precise because, although they knew the orbital track and distance of Sigma-225b, they did not know, yet, precisely where in its orbit it had been when it exploded, because the light emitted by the blast had not yet arrived. Celestia, however, could be more accurate, because she could feel it coming, drawing nearer and nearer like a gathering storm, the ghostly cry of a dead star. It visited her all the time. Played on her mind, whispering, whispering, then talking, then shouting, and now roaring, a terrible howling that only she could hear.

It is coming.

It is coming.

New Zebrica had fallen. Shrouded in a pall of dust and smoke from relentless bombings, the spaceport was a broken shell of its former self. The control room was gutted, both by Griffon firebombs and Equestrian demolition charges. The launch towers lay crushed and broken on the thick concrete, all twisted girders and pipes, like some construction toy knocked over by a petulant foal, tired of playing. Dazed survivors, uniforms blackened by soot and death, sat in bunches, rounded up and disarmed by victorious Griffon squads.

Once each building had been searched and cleared, room by painstaking room, and the ground swept for mines, the three anti-satellite missiles were rolled in across the bumpy, broken ground, carefully, slowly, their drivers craning their necks for potholes and shell craters, guided by Griffons walking ahead. Engineers stood by to lay planks or dig wheels out of any of the soft, cloying mud that the steady drizzle had been producing. Locations had been identified for each missile to be placed, and the engineers had been busy erecting makeshift scaffolding in lieu of launch towers. As noon approached, the happy Griffons were greeted by clearing skies, azure blue and bright sun overhead. They sang their national anthem as they toiled, marching prisoners away or setting up the three launch platforms. Griffonia, King of Nations.

The clearing skies betrayed them.

In orbit, an Equestrian spy satellite made a timely pass over the spaceport. Every such satellite still operational had been tasked to the area, several expending all of their remaining propellent to change orbit. Instead of one pass every ninety minutes as a single satellite would be capable of, the Equestrian high command now had a snapshot every fifteen minutes. They knew the missiles were there. Now was the time for Celestia's plan.

"Contact, contact! New contact, bearing two-seven-eight degrees, range two-thousand-four-hundred miles, altitude six-eight-thousand feet, climbing. Unknown contact, mark as Alpha."

A bright red dot flashing on the viewscreens of the early warning centre, Griffon Missile Corps.

Just one, a single blood-red sigil on the map, being picked up by over-the-horizon radar tracking.

"Altitude one-hundred-thousand."

"EWC, this is GHQ. We have your target, tracking. ID?"

"Not at this time, General...standby."

This had to be a mistake, didn't it? A computer glitch. Wary eyes scanned the screens, waiting for the dozens, then hundreds of other contacts they were sure had to be following. Target Alpha continued climbing.

"GHQ, this is EWC. Confirmation of target ID. Confirmed radar and thermal signature matches Equestrian Manticore-Class ICBM."

"Understood, EWC. Any further targets?"

"Nothing yet, sir."

The screens remained stubbornly blank, apart from the single icon. One missile. One nuclear-tipped ballistic missile. Just one. But why, what purpose did that serve? What was its target?

One missile was not enough to destroy Griffonia, nor to destroy its army. It was enough to destroy a single target and nothing more. The nuclear holocaust they had trained for was not appearing on the screen. If it did, that would be grounds for firing every single one of Griffonia's missiles in response. But one missile? Grounds for great concern, but not total nuclear war.

Phones rang off the hook as Griffon commanders tried to ascertain what the hell Celestia and her generals thought they were doing. What was the target, and why? Sew confusion? A high-altitude EMP blast? That would surely destroy their own precious spaceship in the process, as well as throwing much of Equestria back into the stone age. An attack on the army advancing on Canterlot? Possibly, but tactical, short-range missiles with greater manoeuvrability would be better for such a situation, where targets were on the move. This was a strategic weapon, being hurled into a high suborbital trajectory from the missile fields of the western desert. It was targeting something that was stationary.

The Griffon capital? A decapitation strike, to kill the King and military high command? One missile was not enough for that. The capital had anti-ballistic missile defences ringing its outer suburbs. No, that couldn't be it either. That didn't leave much, and it did not take long for the Griffon generals to realise what it implied. They knew what the target was before the tracking radars of the EWC could inform them of the missile's trajectory.

"Colonel Garner, this is GHQ. Abandon mission, I say again, abandon mission. Pull all troops back to phase line Apple immediately. Minimum distance five miles. Evacuate anti-satellite missiles. We believe you are the target of incoming nuclear weapon. How copy?"

Colonel Garner, an experienced, level-headed Griffonian regimental commander, shook his shaggy-maned head as he replied into the field radio inside his armoured command vehicle. "Sir, the missiles are already being deployed. We can't evacuate them. They're off their transporters and halfway up the damned launch towers we've been building."

"Then evacuate your troops at least!"

"There must be a mistake, sir. The ponies...they wouldn't..."

"Well they have. Now get your ass in gear, Colonel! You have five minutes, tops."

"Understood..." Garner poked his head from the hatch of the APC and roared. "Every Griffon get the fuck out, now! Pull back to phase line Apple immediately!" He ducked back down, radio gripped in his claw, and spoke into it.

"All units on this net, all units on this net, this is Hammer 1-1 actual. Execute emergency withdrawal to phase line Apple. I say again, emergency withdrawal to phase line Apple. Adopt NBC procedures and take cover immediately. This is not a drill."

All across the spaceport, Griffons began taking to the air, flying back north, towards phase line Apple, the first line of trenches the ponies had dug to try and defend the outskirts of the city. Tanks, APCs and trucks began to roll, streaming away over the concrete and tarmac, leaving behind three makeshift launch towers and three anti-satellite missiles, one half-erected and leaning against its tower, one in place and almost ready to launch, and one swinging gently like a child's toy from a heavy wheeled crane.

The EWC continued tracking the missile as it reached its apogee, shedding its protective nosecone, exposing the warhead to the chill of space before it separated from the body, little puffs of propellant angling the conical device correctly onto its trajectory. It began to plunge back down into the atmosphere, friction heating it like a re-entering shuttle, until it arrived some four thousand feet above the spaceport.

From the viewscreen of the external camera inside his command vehicle, Colonel Garner saw a blinding double-flash of brilliant, impossible white. They were only about three miles from the spaceport. Some of his troops had made it to phase line Apple and adopted suitable procedures; get behind something, don't look at the flash, gas masks and the stinking rubber chemical suits on. Others, slower or escorting wounded or prisoners, had not made it so far. They were the first to die.

As as second sun illuminated the Zebrican plains, the three anti-satellite missiles, lying at ground zero, were instantly consumed by fire. A few seconds later, Garner's carrier was caught bodily by the blast wave and rolled over, as if by a giant invisible claw. The spaceport, so recently fought and bled for by the last courageous Equestrian defenders, was turned to ash in a heartbeat. A huge mushroom of fire and smoke rose into the sky, towering above the cowering Griffons who had made it to a safe distance. As nuclear weapons went, it had been a relatively small, 500-kiloton explosion, but that was more than enough for its intended purpose.

Meanwhile, three thousand miles away to the west, the final countdown had begun.

Comments

[FredMSloniker]

NUCLEAR LAUNCH DETECTED.

[Mr Swanky Hat]

"There must be a mistake, sir. The ponies...they wouldn't..."

preparing to murderer a bunch of civilians at a desperate fallen Equestria that they say is there last hope of survival, what did you expect? A dance off?

[Booster Spice]

The Griffins forgot.

Celestia always plays Ghandi.

[EclipseoftheRisingSun]

11112540
flashbacks to Planetary Annihilation