Platinum
ECY 1008.11
Horsehead Nebula, The Frontier
The Antarans aboard the jet black Rakshasa set on the receiving end of the Horsehead Nebula jump point had one job to do, and they did it extremely well. In fact, were accolades something that existed in the collective, every member of the crew would have been swimming in medals. The destroyer-- six hundred meters long, and coming to a sharpened point at the bow-- hadn’t moved in two Equestrian months. The crew knew exactly what they were doing, but had no concept of why they did it, or why what they did was so important to the Antaran war effort.
Like they had hundreds of times before over the course of the war, the sensors showed that something had entered the portal Equestrian side, and the Rakshasa’s killing field was pinned on its exit point. As one mind, the Antaran crew understood what this meant, and the ship went into an alert mode. Telemetry started flowing in, and as the being possessing the eyes that read data processed it, so did the rest of the ship.
Another probe incoming. Heavier than the usual model. Destroy it.
The probe, which was indeed larger than the standard model, arrived in the system with a flash. The larger profile gave the destroyer more to shoot at, and within four seconds, one of the forward beam cannons blazed to life, catching the cylinder full on. The device exploded spectacularly, sending electromagnetic shock waves in all directions.
The collective thought about why this was. The probes usually didn’t explode like that-- in fact, the beam cannons usually melted them instantly. Together, the hundreds of minds aboard the Rakshasa sought an answer. When none was forthcoming, the inhibitor was deactivated, and the thought was passed on to the Queen.
The Queen will know. The Queen always knows.
It took more time to formulate the thought that something was wrong than it did to actually notice the error. Much more time, in fact, as the Antarans had never experienced something quite like this. Where there should have been the only voice they ever heard, there was only. . . nothing. The colony had, suddenly, inexplicably, been severed from everything it understood to be constant.
The collective pondered this for several seconds. Nothing within their eons of stored experience had prepared them for something like this. All activity within the ship ceased, and suddenly, the silence was broken by a cacophony of panic.
Where is the Queen?
Where is the Queen?
WHERE IS THE QUEEN?
The portal opened, and, much to the Antarans’ surprise, eight small vessels shot out.
----
Twelve Home Hours Earlier
Rainbow Dash was not a happy squad leader.
“Lt. Greaves! Remind me where you should be during yellow alert!”
The griffon stood at what may have counted as half way to attention and mumbled something. This made Lt. Commander Dash quite a bit angrier. She left the hangar floor and hovered in front of her subordinate, placing her muzzle an inch from his beak. The other two griffons sucked in their guts and stood rigid, each trying to steal a glance at the explosion sure to occur. They were not disappointed.
“WHAT WAS THAT, LIEUTENANT?”
“. . . in the ready room, Sir.”
“THAT’S RIGHT, GREAVES. WELL DONE.” Rainbow landed, feigned applause, and walked up the line of pilots.
“AND WHY IS THAT, LIEUTENANT MERCKS?”
The female griffon, two spaces to the left of the visually relieved Greaves, spoke sharply.
“Because yellow alert means we need to be out of the hangar at 90 seconds notice, sir!”
Rainbow took to the air again and put her face in Greaves beak once more. The pilot nearly tripped over himself trying to avoid any contact between the two.
“AND WHY IS THAT, GREAVES?”
“Because Platinum goes down after 91 seconds, sir.”
“Damn straight. And last I checked, the holodeck is NOT in the ready room. The flight deck is locked down during yellow alerts for a reason. You and your buddy in security could have compromised this entire ship. How are your wings supposed to do their jobs down a wingman?” She raised her voice on the question, expecting an answer. When none was forthcoming from the shaking griffon, she sighed and turned her back on the wing.
“Forget it. And take some time to study. All of you. All holodeck time is cancelled for three weeks. Replicator rations too. Now get off my flight deck. Dismissed.”
The wing shuffled out of earshot, waiting to lay into Greaves for costing them three weeks of hot food. Rainbow Dash let them go before she moved, checking her watch as she did. It read 16.55, meaning that Beta Wing would be returning from patrol soon. Right on cue, Gamma exited the ready room and approached their Falcon-II’s, each of which was being busily attended to by a swarm of flight crew ponies. Alerts began flashing around the hangar, and the door at the far end swung open, exposing the cold vacuum beyond to the dozens of beings on the flight deck. Rainbow Dash observed all of this as she made her way back to her private ready room. She was finally back where she belonged: on a flight deck, and in command of her very own squadron.
Rainbow Dash hated it.
She hated serving on Platinum while the new Hurricane was still being field tested. She hated her promotion, the stupid chevrons she had to wear with it, the fact that nobody bothered to actually call her “Lieutenant Commander,” and the isolation that the position brought. She hated her assignment, out here in the least important theater of the war, spending half the time testing technology that hardly ever worked, and the other half babysitting twenty griffons. She hated how Applejack had caught so much heat for almost getting Daring captured, and she hated no longer being able to fly the coolest ship in the galaxy.
But what she hated most was her second in command, and as Beta 1 was pushed into in its customary spot, Rainbow Dash hated herself for hating its pilot.
She entered the ready room and sat down, stretching her wings. She had increased the resistance setting on the metal one in order to build back some of the strength in the muscles that were actually attached to it, causing her immense pain in the rest of her body as other muscles tried to compensate. She didn’t really need to do it; after all, the bionic wing worked just fine, and it wasn’t like she’d need to pull off any rainbooms anytime soon. But she persisted, partly as a way of giving her something to focus on, and partly as a self imposed penance. For what, she didn’t exactly know, but it made her feel better.
Rainbow was about to kick her feet up on the desk and get back to the Daring Do volume she had picked up back on Home when the door buzzed. Glancing wantingly at the book, she set it down, lowered her legs and faced the entrance way, hitting a key to open it. An imposing griffon walked in, stopping to salute once she had crossed the threshold.
“Ho, Commander.”
“At ease, Gilda.”
Gilda stood rigid, and, looking more annoyed than relaxed, blew a tuft of feather out of her eyes. Dash motioned towards one of the seats facing her desk. The griffon remained standing.
“Nothing new to report. The HCD charges have just as little range as ever. Eggheads say we should be fine, but I doubt it.”
Dash nodded.
“Do they work, at least?”
The griffon avoided her commander’s gaze and answered tersely.
“I guess so. That’s what the observers said, anyway. We sent Beta two into the blast radius, but it didn’t do anything to her sensors or comms.”
Rainbow Dash turned back to her desk.
“Very good, Lieutenant. If that’s all, you can get some sleep.”
Gilda saluted and turned to leave. As she hit the doorway, Rainbow’s voice stopped her.
“Gilda, I. . .”
The griffon sighed audibly, and blew more feathers out of her face as she turned back to her squad leader.
“Did you really have to do the whole ‘tell me something just as I’m leaving thing?’”
Taken aback, Rainbow Dash forgot what she was going to say.
“What?”
Another sigh, and more feathers.
“Nothing.”
Rainbow raised an eyebrow, but decided to let the matter drop.
“Greaves was out and about when he shouldn’t have been again. I told Alpha that they are banned from the the holodeck and from the hot chow for a few weeks. Tell them that you talked me out of it, and its only the holodeck that they lose. Understood?”
Gilda stepped forward with some menace. Rainbow felt her muscles flex instinctively.
“No, Commander, I won’t do that. Don’t pretend that you care about these guys. If you want to punish them, punish them. And don’t pretend that you care about what they think of me. No matter how much neither of us wants it, they’re your squad now. So deal with it yourself, Commander.”
She turned and exited the room with a swish of her tail, leaving a trail of displaced feathers in her wake. Rainbow Dash let her go, and the door shut soundlessly.
Rainbow Dash’s inner mind screamed.
You think I like the “you’re so stupid I have to wipe your butts” style of leadership? You think I want to punish Greaves for something I’ve done dozens of times?
She wanted to shout, to call Gilda back in and give her a piece of her mind, but the resisted the temptation. Commanders, she had learned, sometimes needed to be the bad guys. And while punishing the whole squad so severely was harsh, it was in no way out of the ordinary for Zu Squadron. Rainbow Dash had been told two things about Zu: that it was an unruly, undisciplined group of bickering griffons, and that, after Antara, it was the best squad that Equestria had left in the war.
Both claims were spot on. Rainbow had seen Zu Squad, when it’s members were up to showing off, pull of some mind boggling feats in their Falcon-II’s. Rainbow Dash may have been able to coax more seed out of her craft than anypony-- or Griffon, for that matter-- could, but these pilots could make their fighters dance on a needles edge. Gilda, especially, was more a part of the ship itself than she was it’s pilot. She could stop on a whisker and pounce in another direction faster than most pony pilots could find their emergency retro-thrusters. The result was, as Rainbow Dash had discovered during training exercises, that members of Zu Squad were incredibly hard to lock on to, let alone hit.
This ability had been explained to Rainbow as coming from the Griffon’s genetic predisposition to avoiding predators. Where for centuries ponies had been their own worst enemies, Griffon society had developed in a land fraught with predators, making their fight-or-flight reflexes tend sharply towards the latter. Zu Squadron itself was named after a progenitor of the Griffon race who, in one of the many creation myths the species subscribed to, avoided a dragon’s flame for eight days before it exhausted itself, letting Zu claw the beasts eyes out. Rainbow didn’t buy into the veracity of the story, but she liked the various retellings she’d heard nonetheless.
But for every advantage Griffon genetics gave its pilots, it seemingly piled on two disadvantages. As the Admiral who assigned Rainbow Dash to Platinum had told her, the centuries of living in fragmented and threatened communities had long favored distrust and combativeness over cohesion. This cantankerous nature had, of course, manifested itself in the modern Griffon military, which was (somewhat justly, Rainbow Dash would probably concede) looked down upon by Ponies, Buffaloes and Zebras alike. It was no well kept secret that the small but well armed Griffon units had not been deployed to Antara because they could not work well with large fleet actions. Post Ant Hill, this meant that the Griffons, while still making up less than twenty percent of the combined military, retained the service’s most intact corps of both officers and enlistees. As a result, Zu Squadron had been thrust into a position of prominence that it was neither prepared for nor desired.
That was where Rainbow Dash was supposed to fit in. As one of the very few fighter pilot survivors of Ant Hill, every unit in every fleet was clamoring for her services. Once her assignment on Daring had been suspended, EqCom decided to give her Zu in the hopes that she would turn them into a replacement for Manticore Squadron. She had done well, she thought, but the climb was only getting steeper. She could only drill the need for real wing based tactics so much-- the squad needed real combat for her lessons to have any real meaning. Without the danger of swift and unforgiving death to prove why her lessons were needed, nothing would actually stick. And, she thought, sitting out here for weeks testing new tech-- no matter how important the egg heads thought it was-- was a waste. At the very least, Zu could be patrolling a border and racking up some experience. A glance out her ready room’s window at the large screen projecting the ship’s killboard made her feel even more frustrated. The board carried only three names, and the other two-- ponies in Platinum’s other squad, located on the lower flight deck-- had less actual sorties than Rainbow Dash had kills.
Her comm badge buzzed, and a pegasus whose name she hadn’t bothered to remember addressed her.
“Commander, our scouts have found a way through to the Capella portal. We should be there within twelve hours. The Captain wants Zu ready to test the HCDs when we get there. Understood?”
“Yes sir.”
“Good get all your people back in. We leave in fifteen. Bridge out.”
----
Beta wing took the lead and ran straight at the destroyer’s forward batteries. The beam cannons, deadly to a Falcon-II, even with at full shield strength, proved the prognostications of the eggheads correct by firing wide repeatedly, and the fighters capitalized, burying a full salvo-- 36 anti material missiles-- into the teeth of the Rakshasa. Had they been making any noise in the vacuum, the guns would have fallen silent. Out of ammo, the four Falcons fled the field, jumping back into the portal to rendezvous with Platinum before it made the jump itself. With the destroyer’s close range armaments disabled, the carrier could enter the system unabated.
“We’re not done yet. No witnesses to give them a clue,” Rainbow instructed her remaining fighters.
“Alpha, hit the bastards where it hurts!”
With Beta on its way out, Alpha dove on the destroyer. The impact of the first salvo had actually hit the craft hard enough to start it listing to starboard, presenting Rainbow Dash with the opportunity she’d been hoping for. She broke formation and dove beneath the enemy, dodging fire from the still active beam cannons on the underside. A red blast grazed her aft shield, overloading it and setting off alarms throughout the cockpit, when the guns stopped firing. In the second before he was certain they’d open again, Rainbow looked through the canopy at the hulk 20 meters above. The guns, mounted on swiveling turrets, were abandoning his current position and aiming to where she’d be in less than a second.
About time you guys got your heads screwed back on.
She inverted the Falcon-II and dove away from the destroyer, barely missing out on what looked like a fence of burning hot red beam fire by several feet. She reversed out of the dive and, now moving in the same direction as the Rakshasa, climbed to face it. A quick instrument check showed that Greaves had destroyed the starboard batteries and punched a hole in the ship, Mercks had, for good measure, melted the already fried communication array and Teak had torn away the port side engine. Only one thing left at this point had to be done, and Rainbow Dash armed her warheads to do it. Gilda, who for some reason was still in the system, popped in on the comm just as she was going to pull the trigger.
“You’ll get caught in the shockwave. Don’t launch until you’re within 20 meters, then accelerate past the ship. Don’t turn, just go!”
Twenty meters was approaching rather quickly, and Rainbow was rather confused about what she’d just heard. What was Gilda still doing here? And what made her think she could call the shots for her squad leader? Still, Gilda was probably right-- Rainbow had not considered the shockwave of the new, Griffon developed Pincer torpedoes. She wouldn’t get another shot, as Platinum was due in the system any second. It killed her pride to do it, but the pilot released her grip on the trigger and floored the afterburner.
I’ll do you one better, actually.
The target indicator confirmed that the destroyer, obviously doomed, was moving forward rapidly, the result of the helm’s abortive attempt at escape. Rainbow readjusted her heading, pounded the accelerator, and simply released the clamps on the two warheads, allowing her to barely avoid clipping the bow of the enemy ship as she flew past perpendicularly. The torpedoes, flung forward by the momentum of release, found their targets and imploded spectacularly, punching a hole in the as yet untouched bottom of the destroyer and separating the first hundred meters from the rest of the ship. The resulting internal explosions of munitions and fuel sent pieces of the craft thousands of kilometers in every direction.
The Rakshasa was unequivocally destroyed.
Completing the picture was the light show announcing the arrival of Platinum, with its hangar bay opening and the emergency return to ship broadcast wailing on all frequencies.
Rainbow Dash took her time heading back, savoring the moment. It wasn’t until the bridge informed her that eighteen large contacts were due in system in ninety seconds that she engaged the burners and touched down on A deck.
The hangar doors ground shut behind her and Platinum jumped to the other side of the system. The entire engagement had taken less than four minutes.
I could get used to this, thought Rainbow Dash.
----
“To eternal glory of Zu Squadron!”
“To first blood!”
“To Platinum!”
“To the eggheads and their Hive Connection Disruptors!”
The twenty griffons raised their glasses of ale and shouted as their commanding officer looked on, gently nursing her cider. None of the beverages contained actual alcohol, of course, but they were no less satisfying after a hard day’s work.
It certainly had been a good day for Zu Squadron. Granted, any day where every ship that went out came back in was a good day, but, for Rainbow Dash, this one was special. Alpha and Beta wings hadn’t been perfect by any means, but they had operated on the same page as individuals and as units. She didn’t want them to get too excited-- they’d only taken down one destroyer that was crippled before they arrived, after all-- but she allowed this christening to go on as long as it was kept within the confines of the ready room. She took another sip of her drink and tried not to think of Applejack. She didn’t want the positive emotions to die-- not until the party ended, at least.
A griffon sat down next to her.
“Don’t make a speech,” Gilda said quietly.
“Huh?”
“If you’re planning on making a speech, don’t. Griffons don’t react the same way that ponies do to oration. You’ll lose most of the respect you earned today.”
“What respect?”
“That stunt you pulled to take down the destroyer. That was ballsy.”
“Ballsy? What does that mean?”
“Would you shut it for two seconds? I’m trying to help you here. You proved that you had guts today. You may not have noticed, but not many Zus were happy about having a pony in charge, even if I did vouch for you. But today, you proved your worth. Don’t ruin it by saying anything they may perceive as pandering. Got it?”
Rainbow Dash took a pull from her mug to buy a second to think.
“Yeah, I got it.”
Gilda got up out of her chair.
“Good.”
“Thanks. And, uh. . . thanks for the assist today,” Rainbow said uneasily. Gilda did not answer.
“So that’s how its been, huh?” Rainbow wondered aloud. Her cider didn’t respond. She drained it and got up to leave the room. None of the griffons noticed her absence.
The next few weeks were eventful, to say the least. Platinum’s mission was twofold; after completing control tests on the Frontier, the ship was to jump into the relatively unimportant Capella system for field testing. EqCom knew that testing its new toys, especially the HCDs, would require not only live targets but a backwater sector to do it in, as anything the Antarans observed on the front lines would be filtered through their entire navy in seconds. But the Antarans still required subspace portals for intra-system communication, and here, three jump nodes away from any enemy system, Platinum could operate without having to look over its shoulder-- as long as the Vega-Beta Eridani blockade held, anyways.
Shielded with an extremely refined version of Daring’s stealth system, Platinum patrolled the Capella system, picking and choosing its targets at will. The system held many small asteroids full of minable resources, giving the Antarans reason to occupy it, but little else of any importance, making it an easier place to operate within. Not easy, as Rainbow Dash had to keep reminding her squad, but easier.
With the tedium of friendly territory replaced by the ever present stress of a hostile system, Zu settled into a routine fairly quickly. On its two flight decks, Platinum held forty active fighters in two squadrons, with Zu playing the role of assault team. The other group, Tartarus Squadron, was the intercept team, tasked with hunting down enemy bombers and torpedoes. Tartarus was a solid, if unglamorous, group of veterans that had been in the neutral zone during Antara, and they flew the smaller, nimbler Hornet fighters in circles around Zu’s Falcons. Rainbow Dash loved the Hornet’s speed, for sure, but wouldn’t trade her Falcon-II’s teeth-- and armor-- for anything. Especially after the model had gotten her through a forced re-entry without either engine working.
Though Tartarus was the designated intercept squad, Rainbow kept Zu in the normal patrol rotation out of both solidarity and the need to train as much as possible. And so, every other day, the griffons woke at 0500 and climbed the ladders from their living deck to the ready rooms. There, after eating, grabbing as many stimulants as possible and donning their flight suits, they waited in silence for Rainbow Dash to arrive. She entered the room at 0530 each morning, gave her briefing, asked if there were questions (even though she knew none were coming) and was out the door at 0535. The squad followed her soon after, each pilot performing a systems check both on their own craft and on a wingmate's. At 0555, the hangar door opened, and Alpha squad took off, the Falcons screeching as their tires dug into the worn metal of the flight deck. After watching their departure from the ready room windows, Beta hung about, trying to kill the two hours before their own turns to kick the tires, while Gamma, Delta and Epsilon went back to sleep, albeit with one eye and one ear open.
Two shifts each covered twenty hours of the day, but eventually Zu came to live for the final four. Rainbow Dash had the entire squad out for training for at least a portion of the remaining time, and she made sure that they enjoyed it by throwing in as many curve balls as she could; if she could think of it, she decided, it could happen. So Zu worked on attacking a target as one without radio, fighting without radar, without missiles, without optical enhancements. One day, they spent an hour firing off operator guided missiles and having wingmates attempt to steal control before they hit their targets. Much of what they did was useless in the long run, but it was fun-- and Rainbow Dash enjoyed seeing her comrades start to care about her exercises.
On even days, Zu hunted. Platinum had probes scouring the system, looking for anything Zu could smite. Their harvest was bountiful. Platinum would deposit the squad just outside of the enemy’s radar range and pick them up after they’d finished things. The targets were often lightly defended, but the lasers they fired back were just as deadly as if they’d come from a Sathanas, so Rainbow Dash kept every griffon-- and herself-- on their toes at all times. It was during the twelfth such mission, though,that Zu got caught off guard.
----
“Gamma, go for the gas miners, but not too close-- use the Trebuchets. Delta, you’re on the corvette, Epsilon, watch our backs. Alpha and Beta provide cover. Just like we planned. Go!”
The Falcon jumped forward as, having finished repeating instructions that everyone already knew anyway, Rainbow Dash leaned on the afterburners. Epsilon held its position as Alpha formed up behind her, with Beta to her left, Gamma and Delta below. The sixteen fighters moved as one until eight enemy contacts engaged an intercept course. Rainbow looked to her port side and was barely able to discern Gilda’s form in her Falcon’s cockpit. Gilda looked at her commander, gave a quick nod, and spoke to her wing, who changed course towards the corvette, hoping to draw its escorts while Delta was able to tackle it unopposed.
Rainbow was immensely grateful that she and Gilda had formed a decent working relationship over the past few weeks. They still were far from friendly, for sure, but the griffon had, as far as Rainbow could tell, stopped merely tolerating her existence. Rainbow’s impressive kill count-- still more than the rest of the squad combined-- may have had something to do with that.
The Antarans took the bait, and four of the fighters (Mara class interceptors, as it turned out) changed course to engage Beta Wing. Delta dove underneath their trajectory towards the corvette, aiming to come in from astern, bypassing the ship’s considerable forward flak cannons.
While Rainbow watched this, the other four Maras doubled back towards the gas miners, mixing in with their charges. The miners looked and handled like bloated insects, presenting massive targets for the long range Trebuchet missiles that Zu had spent the last three missions testing. Slower and larger than a Harpoon, the Trebuchet packed twice as much punch and could fly three times as far; they were designed for intercepting enemy bombers, but Zu had discovered their anti-material potential after Gamma wing nearly bought the farm attacking a gas miner-- and its rather volatile contents-- earlier in the week. Dax and Vish had gotten quite a talking to after that, but even Rainbow had to admit that the explosion they caused was massive considered to projections they’d seen. Minus one for the eggheads, it seemed.
“Treb locked. Firing!” said Dax, Gamma’s wing leader. The white projectile streaked away, and both wings waited lustfully for the shockwave.
It did not come. At the last possible moment, a Mara darted out from behind the target and shot down the missile before disappearing behind another miner.
Well. That was unexpected, thought Rainbow Dash. She opened a channel to the entire squadron.
“From this range they’ll track down anything we throw at them, and we won't get a lock on the Maras. Alpha, we’re moving in. Epsilon and Gamma, get any we flush out. Gilda, how are we doing?”
“Little busy, Commander! All crafts still alive, but these Maras won’t sit still! Can’t get good locks!”
“Alright, keep on it, get help if you need. Alpha, lets get in there. Careful what you shoot at, and keep talking. Out.”
She broke the formation and dove at the miners, still a few hundred klicks away. Her squadmates followed obediently, but broke into different directions as they neared the targets. There were eight of them, each armed with a popgun of a anti-fighter beam; on one’s own, they stood no chance, but en masse they could concentrate fire with deadly efficiency. A beam that struck Dash’s forward shield illustrated this point.
She rounded a miner and saw a Mara racing in the other direction. Her Falcon gave chase, but Rainbow knew that it would eventually be for naught; while the she could just about match the Antaran’s speed, it could maneuver with alarming sharpness. She broke the pursuit and changed directions, hoping to find another target.
“Alpha! We’ll never corner them in here. Try and flush them out!”
She saw something flash away to to her right and spun the Falcon to face it as the craft ran along the side of a miner. A Mara rounded it barely ten meters ahead of her, followed closely by a Falcon. Rainbow gasped in surprise and rolled to starboard, away from the larger craft, as the Falcon, which she saw belonged to Greaves, passed just over her while unleashing a few hundred bolts from its chain gun.
“Whoa there! Calm down, Greaves!”
“It’s under control, Commander. I want to get smoked out here by my own fire just as much as you do.”
“Fine! But call out what he’s doing, I’m gonna’ try to get in front of him!”
Rainbow looped around and leapt forward, dodging fire from a miner to port. She swerved and took out its beam cannon with a blast from the forward gun.
Greaves yelled into the comm. “He’s rounding another miner! Dax, can you see him? Lead the Commander to him, I’ll stay on his tail!”
Dax replied quickly, and Rainbow saw him plotting a course and a target for her on the radar, which was linked between each vessel, allowing for any pilot to mark anything for their squadmates.
“Affirmative. Commander, continue on this heading until you pass two miners, than hold up at the edge of the third. Greaves, stay on him, but push him to the end of the formation. Teak, can you swing by this miner and take out its cannon? The commander is going to be sitting still for a few seconds.”
Rainbow had engaged her burners as soon as she heard his instructions, then cut them as she passed the second Antaran vessel. She came to a stop within feet of the third and immediately began taking fire from the anti-fighter beam on the adjacent craft. Teak swooped in and silenced it.
“Thanks Teak, watch my back. Dax, ETA?”
“Ten seconds!”
“Roger.”
Rainbow stood still, sweating bullets as the seconds wore on. A red blip directly behind her showed on her radar as the third tick passed.
“One on your tail, Commander!”
“I see it! How long!?”
“Five sec. . .shoot, the Mara’s gone vertical! Fifteen meters above you!”
Rainbow swore, and two things happened in very quick succession.
First, the pegasus routed all engine power to her ventral retros and jack-in-the-boxed vertically. As she moved upwards, the black shape of the Mara flashed in front of her cockpit, only for a quick burst from her guns to overwhelm its shield and decommission the vessel. As she was rising, Mercks appeared below the two and put a volley through the trailing Mara, causing explosions to ripple through its crab like form. The Antaran’s momentum carried it forward at a some speed though, and Rainbow noticed with some concern where it was heading.
“If he hits a miner they’ll all go up! Get out! Get out! Get out!”
She again spammed the afterburners and sped in the opposite direction, her fellow Alphas following suit like birds being shooed from a field. Rainbow checked her mirror as the Mara impacted a miner and exploded. Rainbow realized that there was no way she’d escape the shockwave and braced herself. After a few seconds, she opened her eyes and realized that while the Mara itself exploded on impact, the large cargo compartment of the gas miner had merely buckled under the strain of the collision. This was puzzling, considering how the millions of gallons of refined stellar dust should have gone up with the ferocity of a dozen sonic rainbooms.
“How are we still alive?” radioed Greaves.
“Corvette is down, all Zus accounted for” replied Gilda, with no sense of timing whatsoever. “Whats going on on your end, Commander?”
Rainbow didn’t answer. She was busy performing a scan of the miners. After analyzing three of them, she came to a conclusion.
“They’re empty!”
“What? Empty?” asked Dax.
“There’s nothing in these things. Scan them yourselves.”
There was a moment’s silence as the griffons did.
“What the hell? Why would they defend empty gas miners?” said an annoyed Mercks.
It was Gilda that figured it out first.
“We haven’t heard from Platinum in a while.”
Rainbow’s eyes went wide.
“All Zus return to ship! Now!”
Half of the squad had jumped to FTL drive before she finished the sentence.
----
Rainbow Dash’s first observation was that Platinum was in bad shape. Her second was that Tartarus Squad was no longer escorting it. Thankfully, it seemed that they had not gone down without a fight, as the carcasses of two Antaran Cain class cruisers suggested. Two live ones, along with dozens of contacts that likely were their bombers, were in pursuit of the carrier, whose rear beam cannon was in constant operation. Rainbow had been hailing the ship since she exited FTL, but had yet to receive a response. She guessed that the Antarans were blocking communications, but the significant damage to Platinum suggested that its comm array had been disabled. The ship was venting plasma in all directions, its shield was phasing in and out of operation, and in many places large chunks of hull-- including one running diagonally down the port side of the ship, exposing one of the flight decks-- were missing. She listed slightly to starboard thanks to a disabled port side engine bank.
“Gamma, Delta, Epsilon, run bomber patrol! Nothing touches Platinum! Alpha, Beta, we’re going for the first Cain! If they catch Platinum, we’re walking home! Go for the engines!”
Aware that two FTL jumps and a mild engagement had strained her power supply, Rainbow transferred power to the engines by reducing the juice her shields received. Her wingmates followed suit.
I’m not losing another home.
“Alpha, pattern Zeta at the dorsal guns, draw their fire! Beta, crack the engines!”
She climbed as flak began to pop around her cockpit. Attacking a Cain head on was not a smart move, but time was not on Zu’s side, and sweeping around to hit the engines from behind would take far too long, especially when there were two cruisers to be dealt with. Rainbow knew that the Cain was most vulnerable from the top and rear, so having her two wings dive at it would be the best course of action-- as long as she could take the heat of of Beta for long enough for them to take out the engines. After reaching her jumping off point, she rolled upwards and accelerated from the loop’s vertex directly at the guns while diverting power from her weapons to shields. They began rocking as the flack enveloped her view, but the fire quickly died down as the cannons found three new targets. Alpha wing flashed across Rainbow’s cockpit, drawing fire from some of the guns, and she took the chance to fire off two Trebuchets. The warheads flew from her chassis and skipped between Greaves and Teak, whose Falcons shielded them from the flak cannons until it was too late. Rainbow flew past the Cain’s stern as the missiles impacted the cannons. Beta Wing, seeing the opportunity, attacked the point where the engines protruded from the cruiser’s hull, and with no cannons able to deter them, their ordinance hit home with a brilliant flash. Rainbow scanned the vessel, and was pleased with what she saw.
“Good shooting everyone. That’ll slow them down. . .”
She was interrupted by a frantic Dax.
“Commander! We need help! We’re down three fighters, they keep sending Maras with their bombers!”
Rainbow had been wondering why this Cain had not fighter support.
“Roger, we’re on it!”
Alpha and Beta about faced and raced back to Platinum. Over three dozen enemy contacts surrounded it. Rainbow locked on to one, a Nephlim-class bomber, and let fly with a Trebuchet. She took the Treb’s “fire and forget” motto to heart and found another target to pursue, and the buzzer that signaled a confirmed kill went off as she unleashed another missile. It, too, found a target.
As she reached Platinum, her radio crackled on the emergency frequency.
“. . . FTL drive being repaired. . . to hold them off. . .”
She tried to reply, but the message repeated, so she figured that whoever was making the broadcast couldn’t hear her. She radioed her squad.
“Zu! Platinum needs time to get the FTL going! Hold them off!”
Gilda responded on a private channel.
“Exactly how long are we talking here, Dash?”
“No idea.”
“Great.”
Gilda went back to the open channel.
“Zu Squadron! To the death!”
The griffons that remained repeated this cheer across the comm link. Rainbow Dash would have felt proud, had she not been concerned with the second Cain, now rapidly gaining on Platinum. Worse still were the Nephlims seemingly materializing out of nowhere all around the carrier. Some of her anti-fighter weaponry was still kicking, but Dash realized that Zu was the only thing standing between it and oblivion. As if in answer to Rainbow Dash’s concern, the Cain unleashed a massive blast from its forward beam cannon that ripped straight through Platinum’s starboard hull. The carrier began listing even further, and many of its running lights dimmed.
Gilda spoke to Rainbow once more.
“Commander, Platinum can’t take a broadside from that thing. We need to take out its big guns, now.”
Rainbow considered this. Gilda was exactly right, but her plan was near suicidal. The Cain’s broadside cannons were, besides being able to fry a Falcon instantly, guarded by both flak cannons and anti-fighter beams. Rushing directly at them, though, was the only way to find the right angle to disable the guns.
“Gilda, if we go for the cannons, we don’t make it back.”
“We’re already dead, Dash. We both know that.”
Rainbow Dash had no answer. She flipped on the open channel.
“Zu! We’re taking the cruiser down with us! To the death!”
The griffons again repeated her cry, with just as much enthusiasm but with much fewer numbers. Rainbow Dash vectored towards the Cain as eight Falcons formed up behind her. They barreled at the Antaran at full speed, flak bouncing off of their shields. The Falcon directly to Dash’s port side exploded as it caught an anti-fighter beam head on, and Rainbow Dash instinctively rolled to occupy the space it once existed in; her instincts were proven correct, as the beam tore through the space she had just vacated.
The Cain had caught up to Platinum, with the remnants of Zu in between the two capital ships. Their targets zeroed, the pilots launched everything they had at the cannons. As Rainbow could have predicted, the flak cannons swatted most of the missiles before they could hit their targets, though she could have sworn that at least a few got through. The forward cannon fired into Platinum, punching another hole in her once proud frame, while the rear aperture sputtered, proving Dash right.
“One down! Zu Squadron! You know what to do!” yelled Gilda, her confidence never waning. She hit her afterburners and sped towards the remaining cannon, Rainbow Dash and the others following close behind. One hundred meters from the gun, though, it fired.
Dash closed her eyes.
Seconds passed, and they slowly opened.
“What?”
She was alive-- unless the afterlife was eerily similar to life itself, of course-- and, more than anything, confused. The other Zus had also defied the odds by continuing to exist.
A greenish haze, protruding from the beam cannon, surrounded their ships. Rainbow tried to escape it, but the controls of her fighter had gone completely dark. She tried to radio Gilda, but the comm, too, was dead. She could see a griffon in a Falcon ten meters from her own banging on his console as the craft drifted aimlessly.
Gradually, Rainbow dash realized that the six surviving Zus were being pulled towards the Cain. As they reached the ship’s hull, a compartment opened, and the Falcons were pulled inside. Each landed with a thud. Rainbow Dash managed a look outside the door as it slowly shut. Two more Cains had arrived on the scene, and each was using a similar green haze to drag Platinum out of sight. She noticed that Gilda, her fighter laying at an odd angle to Dash’s right, was watching their carrier too, her mouth agape. They locked eyes, each searching for answers that would not come.
The hull sealed tight, and the compartment went dark.
Stats
Page generated in 0.018 seconds
Total duration
1,067 users online
1,574,748 hits today, 1,872,792 yesterday
FIMFiction
My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic Fanfiction
Designed and coded by knighty & Xaquseg - © 2011-2024
Follow & Support Us
Support us
SubStar
Chat!
Discord
Follow us
Twitter
MLP: Friendship is Magic® - © 2024 Hasbro Inc.®
Fimfiction is in no way affiliated with or endorsed by Hasbro Inc.®
Story is still breathtaking! Cliffhangers in all the right places. The change in perspective was a breath of fresh air.
I wonder what will happen to Zu squad...
3396369 Thank you so much. It has been fun to write. Appreciate the support!
Good stuff, good stuff. But check back over the chapter - about where they attack the destroyer you missed a /center tag. You also may want to look over everything and add some indents. Not all paragraphs have them.
3398970 yeah, formatting is all messed up. Thanks for the catch, will get on it!
...how exactly does a spaceship list?