New Equestria: The Harmony Age

by Roguewire

Chapter 6

Admiral Brass Gauntlet stood at the command platform of the Golden Light, a modified Armageddon-class battleship awarded to only the greatest ponies of the Amarr Empire. One of the finest examples of Amarrian starship engineering, it was superior to a run-of-the-mill Armageddon in every way, outmatching its mundane counterpart in performance, resilience and firepower.

Gauntlet watched his crew hustle about the bridge in precise, disciplined patterns as he levitated a cup of rehydrated coffee before him. The crew of this ship were all of a military sort, each one having served time in the Imperial Navy. He had to admit that Twilight Sparkle had a good eye for recruiting highly proficient crewponies.

He was not an admiral in the Imperial Navy, and had not been one for some time; an injury to one if his hind legs had seen to his retirement. None of the ponies on the Golden Light were enlisted in the Navy either, but those who were had been serving on it since before it was awarded to Twilight Sparkle "for excellence and intellect" by the Empress herself. Each one had served their time with the Navy and on the Golden Light, and they were all highly experienced.

"Admiral Gauntlet," Twilight's voice rang through an intercom speaker, "Rainbow Dash and Fluttershy are coming through the Aunenen system now. Thirty seconds until they land at the Otalieto stargate."

"Thank you, Miss Sparkle," Gauntlet replied, sipping his coffee his coffee.

"All ponies," he announced through the warship's general intercom, "get to your stations. We are having visitors in 30 seconds, so everypony better be looking sharp.”

Throughout the battleship, six thousand Amarr ponies hustled about as they scrambled to general quarters. Their hoofbeats made the entire ship shudder just subtly enough to be missed by the common sailor but perceivable by a capsuleer. Everything was running like a highly-organized machine, and that was just how Twilight liked it.

Fluttershy and Rainbow Dash were escorting their guest through the Aunenen system. This was to ensure that the situation which had befallen them the day before was avoided. Pinkie Pie was also in the system with her Chimera, her fighter squadron at full readiness.

This left Twilight, Applejack and Rarity to greet them in Otalieto. Rarity had chosen to fly a Myrmidon-class battlecruiser that day; it was actually a surprise that she had come out at all that day. She had complained about how she was in absolutely no condition to meet with any corporate representative, but had decided that showing up in a warship would not be the greatest hassle if she did not have to be seen physically.

Applejack piloted a Maelstrom-class battleship of Minmatar design. It was an intimidating vessel armed to the teeth with cannons, and its solar panel arrays gave it a threatening visage. Applejack was a fearsome fighter, and when not piloting mining vessels she was in command of equally fearsome warships.

The stargate before them flashed, and the first pony through the gate was Fluttershy. Today she was in command of a Falcon-class recon vessel, a ship based on the more common Blackbird-class cruiser but designed for electronic superiority. The combination of cutting-edge technology and a very powerful signal generator made the Falcon a frighteningly effective electronic warfare vessel.

"She is coming through now," Fluttershy transmitted in her timid voice.

A moment later, the stargate flashed again, and the gate revealed a Tengu. This one did not belong to Rainbow Dash.

Twilight cleared her throat, and began to speak.

"Harmony would like to-"

"Surprise!!" shouted Pinkie Pie as she uncloaked her Nemesis stealth bomber and barreled at full speed at the Tengu, pulling away at the last second. Crackling balls drifted in her wake before they burst into a brilliant display of light and color.

Where she had gotten starship-sized fireworks launchers was anypony's guess, but it was not nearly as farfetched as her starship-sized snowball launcher.

Twilight froze. If Pinkie Pie was supposed to be in a Chimera in Aunenen, why was she in Otalieto in a stealth bomber? Why was she testing the patience of a pilot who a few months ago had threatened to kill her in nasty ways?

When the colorful flashes stopped and the sparkles and fires died out, Twilight focused her camera drones on the Tengu to find that its missile launchers were tracking every move of Pinkie Pie's Nemesis, and Twilight felt a chill at the understanding that if this were a low-security system, the Tengu would have opened fire.

"Are you finished?" a harsh female voice transmitted after a few moments of tense silence.

Twilight laughed weakly, attempting to break the thick tension.

"That would be a rather surprising demonstration of our expert black ops pilot," she attempted to explain.

"You mean, 'amateur' black ops pilot. If she were an expert, we would all be dead," transmitted Karita, corporate representative of Lai Dai Protection Services. The condescension in her voice could melt steel. "If we are done here, let's proceed."

"Yes, well, follow me!" Twilight spoke as she quickly turned her Armageddon to face the Endatoh stargate in a rushed maneuver.

In her nervous haste, she turned the vessel too quickly. Her crewponies struggled to maintain their balance as they were jolted about the warship. She felt several heavy thuds as cargo containers in her hold slammed into bulkheads after skidding about.

"Miss Sparkle," Brass Gauntlet spoke forcefully into his intercom, "please warn us before you attempt such a maneuver again."

"My apologies," Twilight quickly apologized.

"Still," Gauntlet spoke, "Karita sounds like a tightly-wound one."

"Karita is always difficult to deal with," Twilight replied with little enthusiasm. "She always assumes that we are at our worst. Pinkie Pie wasn't very helpful either."

The rest of their flight was uneventful, and their flight through the constellation to Uesuro was tinged with a tense silence. Already their meeting with Karita was turning sour, and Twilight was worried that she would finally have it with Harmony.

They landed before the Moon 15 station at a close ten kilometers, giving them enough distance to visually scrutinize the station itself.

"I must admit," Twilight spoke while trying to break the tension with small talk, "this station is an exemplary piece of Caldari engineering. More than half a million souls residing within, and there is still ample room for docking stations and a full-sized manufacturing center."

"I must admit, I'm surprised that it is still in orbit, no thanks to you ponies," Karita replied with no small amount of sarcastic condescension. "Like the dozens of stations that Lai Dai has set up, including the hundreds of others built by all Caldari, we build stations which will hold up to the rigors they are subjected to."

The station's tug drones towed the representative's Tengu to the station, and the others were towed in as well, one at a time.

"I will perform the inspection on my own. Do what pleases you, but stay out of my way," Karita transmitted.

"She's quite a happy soul," Applejack jested to Twilight on a private comms channel.

"Let's just hope that she is more impressed with the state of the station itself," Twilight replied worriedly.

•••

Three hours later, the six founders of Harmony sat anxiously in their conference room. They kept to themselves, occupied in various ways to stifle their nervousness.

As Twilight flipped through holographic displays, Rarity put her new eye to use in stitching an embroidery that she had out aside after the eye in her old clone body was put out. Rainbow Dash was yet again on her implanted cellular phone with Goldie from SilentStorm, and Spike read a comic on his datapad.

"Twilight?" Spike asked, "what's taking Karita so long? She's been gone for hours now."

"Karita wants to make sure that nothing is out of order with the station," Twilight explained. "Besides, we are all ponies and only two of us are Caldari, so I don't think she is particularly thrilled that we are running the station."

"It sure would be different if you were all griffons," Spike mumbled and turned back to his illustrated story of brave capsuleers rescuing damsels in distress from Zazzmatazz the pirate lord.

"So, what does it look like for a roam into Black Rise?" Rainbow Dash asked her confidant on the other end of the line.

"We're gonna have to ask Silent Storm about that," replied the stallion on the other end. "Chances of yes, equal chances of no. Hopefully something interesting happens, yes?"

Goldie's Amarrian accent was chiseled and refined, the sort of voice which could only be cultivated by the ultra-elite of the Amarr Empire.

"Also, Silent Storm heard news about something going down in Black Rise. More activity than normal, so a roam is still questionable."

"Any idea who it is?" asked Rainbow Dash.

"No idea," Goldie replied. "Could be pirates, could be SCUM, could be the bloody Pandora Legion for all we know. We're heading out in frigates, so we won't be doing too much fighting. Sorry to leave you behind."

Rainbow Dash groaned inwardly. She particularly enjoyed flying with SilentStorm's ponies, and it was disappointing that she would be unable to fly out with them today on account of a very temperamental corporate representative.

A chime rang on the console next to Twilight. She pressed the answer button quickly with her hoof.

"Who is it?" she asked with professional tone.

"Fleet here," replied their security desk Pegasus, "Karita is coming, and she doesn't look happy."

"Since when is Karita ever happy?" Twilight replied with mixed frustration and sarcasm. "Thanks for the heads-up."

"Hey Goldie, gotta go, talk to you later," Rainbow Dash said before she hung up her call.

The ponies anxiously took up a corporate posture as they readied themselves to greet Lai Dai Protection Services' corporate representative.

A pony opened the door from the outside, and a chocolate-furred griffon with similarly colored feathers stormed into the conference room. A sour expression hung on her raptor's beak.

Karita took a seat at the conference table and produced a datapad from her jacket. A moment of tense silence hung in the air.

"Was everything found to your liking?" Twilight asked as professionally as she could while hiding her nervousness.

"Where do I begin?" Karita announced, having much to tell and little of it good.

"There are hundreds of homeless migrants located in Hangar 33. Hangar 47 is filled entirely with garbage. Half of the manufacturing staff are overpaid by a factor of three."

She placed down her datapad and leaned over the table, her claws scratching at its surface.

"What is an Altassian Condor doing with a nest in a wide-open tramline intersection?"

"Um," Fluttershy nervously stammered, all heads suddenly turning toward her. "Polly doesn't mean any harm. She's trained not to pick up anypony and fly away with them."

Karita blinked.

"You own an Altassian Condor, a predatory bird known to pick up ponies and fly away with them, and you named it Polly?" Karita asked, attempting to register that what Fluttershy said was not a joke.

The gryphon sat back down and flipped through her datapad with a sigh.

"There are at least a thousand reasons why I want to tell the board that you are incapable of managing this station," Karita proclaimed, "but unfortunately they were right about you."

"What do you mean?" asked Twilight, puzzled by her sudden contradiction.

"Of at least a dozen similar stations," Karita began to clarify, "this one outperforms them all in manufacturing capacity and output by threefold. Although the security on this station is lacking, there have been next to no instances of crime on this station in the past three months. I'm honestly amazed that you are able to keep everything going as long as you have with this station. Tell me, how do you manage all of this."

Twilight smiled at Karita, encouraged by her sudden complement.

"If you noticed, we have more recreational parks and facilities than other stations, and we have also invested heavily in improving life conditions for everypony on this station. We have been doing what we can to keep everypony here happy," Twilight spoke with resolve.

"Yes, we do also pay the workers here well above the average salary," Rarity interjected, "but those bits are coming out of our own coffers. We too work hard as capsuleers, and why should we hoard wealth when we can assist those who need it more than we do?"

"We improved the hospitals here as well, if that isn't a problem," Fluttershy meekly spoke. "When there is an accident, the workers want to be able to have the best medical care they can have access to."

"And if everypony works as hard as they can, at the end of the month we throw a huge party!" Pinkie Pie spoke energetically.

"Business is a lot more than just numbers," said Twilight, "it's about getting everypony to want to work hard, not just getting them to work harder."

Karita considered that statement. As much as she had heard about business techniques, the idea of making citizens want to work harder was a new one.

"Interesting. I'll have to remember that one." Karita began tapping through her datapad again. "Anyway, I have one other task to ask of you. Lai Dai Protection Services wants to set up another station in the Villasen System. As you might already know, it is in low-security space and is also fairly dangerous. I'm asking for one of you to provide a meaningful escort to that system to ward off possible threats."

Karita reached the capsuleer profile that she was interested in.

"Rainbow Dash," she spoke, eliciting an interested response from the Pegasus, "excellent victory ratio in combat, minimal overall losses, glowing certificate reviews. Four years in the Caldari Navy. I would like you to accompany me to Villasen. Get into a ship and I will issue you double the normal loyalty points befitting an escort mission. I will be ready in a half-hour, and we will depart a half-hour after."

She cut off the conversation as she stood up and tucked the datapad into her jacket. She walked to the door and opened it to leave, but turned to the six ponies.

"Thank you. This inspection has been more stimulating than I expected," she said, closing the door behind her as she left.

Rainbow Dash didn't know whether to be flattered or upended by the mentioning of her Caldari Navy service, which was a touchy subject for her. She was just as surprised as her friends that she had been chosen to escort Lai Dai's representative to Villasen.

"Go ahead and git some air in yer space wings, Rainbow Dash," Applejack encouraged, "we got some cleanin' up to do around here. Never thought somepony would leave a whole hangar fulla' trash around here."

"I'm not in much condition to go anywhere, myself," Rarity added, "why don't you go show Miss Karita how a Harmony pilot clears a path in Black Rise."

Rainbow Dash perked up at her friends' encouragement.

"Yeah, it's not every day that anypony gets to see how awesome I am. I'll show Karita just what a Navy-trained pilot can do!" Rainbow Dash's answer was filled with proud enthusiasm.

Ready or not, Karita would get to see her in action first-hoof.

Author's Note:

Okay, this chapter was originally intended to be the first part of Chapter Six. However, because the sixth chapter was becoming too long (well above the 4-5,000 word average), I have split this chapter into two. This is now Chapter Six, and the next will be Chapter Seven.

Stay tuned for the next chapter!

Comments

[LightningS]

Glad to see this story isn't dead. Not enogh EVE stories on here.

[Roguewire]

3403648
No, this story certainly isn't dead. School has been taking away from my time working on it. I'm doing my best to get more of the story onto fimfiction.